Charles Apple | American Copy Editors Society

I don’t watch American Idol, but I knew right away when the winner was announced last night. Immediately, a wall of updates came flooding through Twitter: “Scotty wins! Scotty wins!” And so on.

So first of all: Congratulations to Scotty.

Scotty who? I dunno. I’m a little unclear, frankly. One of these two guys, I think.

Luckily, we have the News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C. to set us straight.

Scotty McCreery, it turns out, is not from Glasgow. He’s only 17, in the 11th grade and is from Garner, in the southern suburbs of Raleigh. So my former colleagues at the N&O have been all over this story for weeks, now.

Here was how the N&O played the local-kid-done-good story on page one today.

The designer for page one today: Staffer Tim Myers. The picture, of course, is from the Associated Press.

Note how Scotty pushes major political breaking news — former Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards will likely be indicted on Federal charges for misuse of campaign funds.

Is this a bad thing or not? I happened to be visiting Raleigh back in May 2003, when another local man — Clay Aiken — was a finalist on American Idol. I even sat in on a budget meeting at the N&O where a little eye-rolling went on over the amount of page one coverage he got at the time.

But fact is: American Idol sells papers. And that makes it front-page news. Every bit as much as if the University of North Carolina wins a national championship.

And I’m all in favor of selling papers. So: Bring on the Scotty.

Which is exactly what the N&O did today. The “four pages of coverage” was actually more like three: One page was an ad. So my good friend Teresa Kriegsman — design director of the News & Observer — didn’t bother to send that one. She did, however, send the other three inside pages.

Here’s the first of the inside pages. Click on this or any of the others for a larger view.

The huge picture up top, supplied by the Fox network, is from Tuesday’s show. The bottom half of the page is a list of Scotty’s top five performances of the year.

Teresa tells us:

Jessaca Giglio was our “Scotty designer.” She handled all the posters we did during the Idol process. She also designed the special section with assistance from photo editor John Hansen and director of multimedia Scott Sharpe.

Turn the corner to find page eight — consisting of yet another beautiful stage shot from Fox and three more lists.

One cites all of Scotty’s solo performances this season. The bit in the middle shows some of the other contestants and lists the dates they were voted off the show.

The bit across the bottom shows other contestants over the years from North Carolina, starting with Clay Aiken, the runner-up from season two.

Across the way on page nine was filled by this pull-out poster shot.

Teresa tells us:

Thad Ogburn, our metro editor, wrote most of our Scotty stories, including a Sunday 1A piece last week. He was assisted by Brooke Cain and Sarah Nagem.

I might add that Thad is a former features editor. Brooke, a news researcher, currently co-writes the N&O‘s TV blog.

That Sunday profile was especially nice. Thad’s lede:

For months, Scotty McCreery had been ringing up customers just like any other high school cashier at the Lowes Foods in Garner.

But one day last February, store manager Terry Mascaro noticed that everything had changed. Scotty had just been featured on TV as a singing hopeful for this season of American Idol, and Lowes patrons had taken notice.

“Once they realized who it was, they all went to his register,” Mascaro recalled. Four checkout lines were soon empty, while Scotty’s stretched 30 customers deep — all the way to the back of the store.

Read the whole thing here.

Teresa continues:

Our online team put together a Web page called “ScottyWatch” that was quite popular. We even have a SCOTTY tab in our sub nav!

Sure enough, if you happen to be an Idol fan — or if you’re simply crushin’ on Scotty — then “ScottyWatch” is a must-read. Check it out here.

The folks at the News & Observer are very smart. (Which you already know, of course — After all, they hired me 18 years ago.) They’re already aiming reprint copies of todays’ paper to Scotty fans ($3.50) via their online store.

You can also buy a copy of today’s paper plus a T-shirt ($25) or today’s paper plus three nice poster reprints ($20). Check it all out here.

Average daily circulation for the News & Observer is 134,470.