DATE: Sunday, March 16, 1997                TAG: 9703150007

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM

                                            LENGTH:  133 lines

REPORT TO READERS IN THIS AREA, ALL ROADS LEAD TO AN ANCHORAGE

I'm not about to jump into the regionalism ruckus over the use of ``Hampton Roads'' vs. city names. But since The Pilot's local news section adopted that moniker, I've fielded calls and letters making it clear that the origin of the name is a mystery to many.

One man, who said he's lived here a year and a half, wrote that he ``can't imagine how an area surrounded by water could possibly be called `Roads' '' and that the expression Hampton Roads invokes an image of a ``small town in the middle of nowhere with one traffic light.''

``It's the WATER, stupid,'' he added. ``This area is about WATER, not roads.''

He's right, the area is about water. This may have gotten lost in the dust of automotive traffic, but ``roads'' - derived from ``roadstead'' - is actually the nautical term for a sheltered, offshore anchorage.

And Webster's New World defines Hampton Roads as a ``channel & harbor in SE Va., linking the James River estuary with Chesapeake Bay.'' Past news stories add that it's an anchorage formed by the confluence of the James, Nansemond and Elizabeth rivers.

So much for looking at our Roads as a strip of country Tarmac.

The Pilot has written numerous stories over the years about the Hampton Roads name, and they say it dates back to the 1600s, when Jamestown settlers named a creek after the third earl of Southampton. Eventually, the anchorage was named Southampton Roads - abbreviated to Hampton Roads.

Centuries later, the name was applied to the cities and counties adjoining that anchorage.

So, whatever you think about the term, be advised that Hampton Roads does not refer to the streets of a Peninsula city, as one caller suggested. It is - or was - about the water.

Beauty & the Bench'' was the headline on last Sunday's Daily Break, a profile of the Virginia Beach prosecutor, Pamela Hutchens Albert, who has been named a judge in General District Court.

The ``beauty'' reference comes from the Miss Virginia-USA title she won back in 1981, and the story featured a large photo of the smiling Pam Hutchens wearing a glittery gown and tiara. A smaller, recent photo caught her at the Virginia Beach Courthouse, wearing a stylish black outfit.

Four readers objected strenuously to what they saw as a very un-'90-ish portrayal of an achiever who happens to be an attractive woman.

The implication, said Gay Moore of Virginia Beach, is - gee whiz, she can be blonde and brainy at the same time. ``And the title somehow implies that had she been homely, there never would have been a story on her.''

Added Moore: ``I'm just appalled, and I bet she is, too!''

Well, she isn't. Albert said she recognized that the double role - pageant winner, future judge - made her situation unique. It was important to her that the story make clear that in contrast to the one pageant, she has spent 13 years as a prosecutor. And the story did that, she said.

And she was gratified by the reaction - people told her they'd shown the story to a grandchild or niece as an example of how they could accomplish a variety of things.

I'm neither judge nor jury (nor beauty contest winner!) - in fact, I'm from a generation that saw women have to overcome their looks and gender to make career breakthroughs. But I enjoyed reading about Albert. She was indeed an achiever in different ways and has good reason to be proud.

Still, I'd be uncomfortable if beauty-cum-brains were a frequent barometer for what consitutes an interesting Pilot story. But I don't think it is.

Four days later, The Daily Break profiled another local prosecutor, Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney Charles D. Griffith Jr. - no tiaras or pageantry there. In fact, the story described him as more or less the antithesis of a celebrity prosecutor, a man who ``dresses plainly, is unwilling to promote himself, and doesn't possess a celebrity's features.''

I rest my case.

Why not name the accuser? Here's another item on prosecutors, though it has nothing to do with either of those mentioned above.

A Norfolk reader wanted to know why, in a story last month headlined ``Prosecutor's husband acquitted of charges,'' the husband's name was mentioned repeatedly but never once the name of the woman who accused him of the crime - rape and sodomy charges.

Wrote the Norfolk reader: ``I'm aware of, and completely agree with, the policy of not identifying a rape victim, but in those cases, the woman is the victim. This is not the case. This was a false accusation made by a woman for whatever reason.''

Marc Davis, who edited the story, and reporter Jon Frank said they discussed this at length before the story ran. They decided against naming the woman, said Davis, because, ``In this case, it wasn't really a `false accusation,' just an accusation that the jury didn't believe. In the case of the Dallas Cowboy's Michael Irvin, the police actually said the rape accusation was false and charged the woman with that crime. The woman in the Norfolk case wasn't charged. The jury simply believed the defendant and not her.''

Frank fears that naming a woman who brings such charges might have a ``chilling effect'' on future cases.

If the accuser does need to be punished, he said, ``it probably should be done by the police, with charges brought against the accuser for filing false charges. At that point, the paper could print the woman's name.''

Doggone, missing story. A couple of dozen readers growled at us Wednesday, and with justification. A canine teaser atop The Daily Break referred readers to a story on an inside page about a contest for the Great American Dog. But there was no story inside.

It was a case of mixed signals - the story was actually scheduled for another day. And it did run, finally, on Thursday. But not before we got the message that there are many dog lovers here.

Similarly, readers got their yuks from that day's Sports section - the masthead declared, in big red letters, PORTS. Oops, no S.

What happened? Well, the S was right there on the Mac computer screen where the page had been designed. But, unbeknownst to the layout person, it was masked out by the ``invisible'' background of the photo next to it.

Other slip-ups that annoyed readers this week, but didn't quite qualify for the A2 corrections column:

A People column caption that had three misspelled words, including a reference to ``shacled'' slaves.

A reference in an op-ed column about abortion to ``killing a baby by piercing its scull. . . '' As a reader reminded us, a scull is a light racing boat.

The headline ``More and more executive women are doffing hard hats'' on a story was about more women entering the construction business. Noted a reader: Shouldn't the headline say ``donning'' hard hats? (It should.)

A ``Marvin'' comic strip showing two babies at the top of a staircase. Baby (NU)1 says, ``How are we ever going to get down?'' and Baby (NU)2 replies, ``Repel?''

As one of several readers noted, ``Marvin stands a much better chance of arriving intact if he'll `rappel' '' - as in make a descent like a mountain climber.

In Friday's Hampton Roads section, a photo of a new Suffolk nightclub looked amazingly like the MacArthur Center mall site, complete with a mound of dirt at the construction site. In fact, it was.

After several weeks of calls about the changes in the newspaper, I must admit it's a welcome relief to get back to the everyday business of goofs and glitches.

But I will share one welcome ``complaint'' about the new format. It's from a Portsmouth woman who says the only problem with the new Pilot is that there's too much news in the paper!

``But that's fine,'' she said. ``I wade right through it.''

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