DATE: Sunday, October 5, 1997               TAG: 9710040005

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM

                                            LENGTH:  111 lines

REPORT TO READERS CHURCH ST.: WHAT WAS ALMOST LOST

The best intentions, the best work, can somehow go awry. Some pitfalls and pluses:

``Church Street: What was lost. . . '' was a project that was months in the planning and weeks in the execution - a three-part Daily Break series coordinated with a documentary on WHRO-TV.

``I had envisioned both for a couple of years,'' said editor Marvin Lake, who also hosted and narrated the documentary. ``Originally a printed story, but increasingly a Ken Burns-type documentary that would enable viewers to turn the clock back to a bygone era when Church Street was in vogue.''

A team of more than a dozen people pulled off the Pilot series, but not without a hitch. In the first segment, last Sunday, one of the three pages was wrong - it belonged to Monday's installment. A correction page ran in the same day's Hampton Roads section.

Why in a separate section? Because the Sunday Daily Break is preprinted and by the time the error was discovered, all 200,000-plus copies had rolled off the presses.

Aside from that production snafu, the series did take readers down memory lane. Several were fascinated by the old photos; these were gleaned from, among other sources, the Norfolk Public Library, the Bress brothers (who used to own movie houses on Church Street) and the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

One caller noticed that, in a 1932 picture of Virginia National Bank, a poster on the building advertised Norman Thomas, Socialist Party candidate.

But another reader, a woman with long memories of Church Street, objected to a line in Tuesday's Part 3 that described it as the place ``where blacks once juked and jived in the `Harlem of the South.' ''

She had more girlish memories - of going to Marilyn's Candy Kitchen for an ice cream treat with her mother and sisters.

Definitely, a memory trip.

The colors of welfare. Because welfare is a controversial subject, stories about it often provoke comment - pro and con. This time, the target was a photo with Wednesday's story, ``The search for work begins today.'' It showed five people, all African American, at a housing project office in Portsmouth. Several readers objected.

``I think you should photograph not only people of color, but others also - white, Hispanic and so forth,'' said one reader. ``This reinforces the misconception that only black people receive welfare.''

That kind of stereotyping is something we always have to be on the lookout for. I'd say we have been careful in the past.

But I'm a bit more dubious over the complaint that the logo with our recent welfare stories is red, black and green - the colors of the black nationalist flag. Now that's a stretch. Besides, the red looked more like rust anyway.

Heil, Old Glory! It was a cute photo, of children singing and saluting the ``grand old flag.'' The children were part of a program called Kids Voting Virginia, their arms, extended at an angle.

But to Susan, a long-time reader, Wednesday's photo didn't look so wholesome. She says it looks like a Nazi salute.

Parade marched out too early. Last Sunday's Home & Garden section had an appealing lead story on the Parade of Homes, the Outer Banks' version of Homearama - complete with photos, pullouts and listing.

The problem: We were a week off on the timing. The Parade of Homes is this coming week, it wasn't last week. And the Outer Banks Home Builders Association is not happy, not even after corrections ran in several sections of the newspaper.

Some mistakes are hard to undo.

Holiday feast too late. A reader called to say she enjoyed Wednesday's Flavor story, ``Holiday feast,'' with its recipes for the Jewish holy days. Or she would have, if it had run a week earlier.

Wednesday night was the start of Rosh Hashana, the new year. By that time, she said, it was too late to use the recipes. ``It's like printing Easter Sunday recipes on Sunday morning,'' she said.

Another reader noticed a reference in that story to a woman's ``shepheardic customs.'' That should have been ``Sephardic.'' She does not come from a long line of sheep herders. ``Sephardic'' refers to Jews originally from Spain and Portugal.

He's a Democrat! Recently, a reader asked why, when we fall off the ``balance beam'' of fairness, we always fall off on the left side. If that's the case, we did it again.

Four readers complained about a political ``coverup'' in last weekend's story, ``State senator indicted in Windsor bank fraud.'' The fact that Richard J. Holland is a Democrat was mentioned only once, in a pullout on an inside page. And a follow-up story the next day completely neglected to mention the senator's party affiliation.

All four readers were convinced that, had the senator been a Republican, our story would have said so. In fact, said one caller, the headline would have said, ``Republican state senator indicted. . . ''

``Point well taken,'' said deputy managing editor Tom Warhover, who says the only ``conspiracy'' involved was the rush to get the story in print.

But the next day. . . ?

Shrinking headlines. When former Judge Luther Edmonds sued his former colleagues back in April, the banner headline, photos and text took up 3 inches on the top of page A1. ``Ex-judge sues former peers,'' the headline blazoned.

On Wednesday, Sept. 17, a federal judge threw out Edmonds' suit, ruling that his claims were ``without merit'' and threatening sanctions. The story ran the next day but with a modest two-column headline, below the fold of the Hampton Roads section front.

Norfolk attorney Kenneth Wills questioned the imbalance in presentation. ``Sanctions are very rarely imposed in either the state or federal courts,'' he wrote, ``and the judge's conclusion - that the lawsuit was so frivolous that he is considering fining its author - is at least as newsworthy as the filing of the lawsuit in the first place.''

I agree with Wills. If the original story warranted A1, so did the dismissal of the case. On the other hand, I'm more inclinced to agree with criticism that I heard back in April - that the original story was overplayed.

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