News-Record.com

Newsweek has a piece about professors pulling the plug on students using laptops in their classes. Too much Web browsing; not enough eyes up.

I've spoken to classes in which most students looked at laptop screens instead of me and what I was writing on the board. Imagine talking to a group of people while they were casually paging through magazines. That's how it felt. The non-laptop users were also by far the most active discussers, too.

My conundrum: Because much of what I was talking about involved digital journalism, I didn't say anything about the laptops. I did call on some of the students tapping away, though, just for fun.

Wendy Warren, once a ConvergeSouth presenter and still a cool person, has been named editor of Philly.com. Wendy was an assistant managing editor at the Philadelphia Daily News. More personally, she is the daughter of my friend, Bill Warren, former managing editor of The Roanoke Times.

More on what Wendy is getting into at Recovering Journalist, Mark Potts' blog. Mark knows what he's doing. Wendy knows what she's doing. I have high hopes for the mix.

In the old days, when a tornado spun through the region at midnight or thereabouts, newspapers were a journalistic casualty. Because of deadlines, you can't get much of anything into the next day's paper. Your first real coverage comes 36 hours after the storm strikes. I've lived through those days, and I felt forlorn because of the missed opportunity. Big news happens in your town, and you are dead in the water.

No longer.

Now, the worst timing for a newspaper is the best timing for the newspaper Web site. When the tornado struck Guilford County Friday morning, we didn't get anything in the newspaper, but we posted what we knew until about 2 a.m. Friday and started up again at about 5:45 a.m. Reporters and photographers posted news updates, victims' stories, photos and maps throughout the day and into Friday evening. John Newsom, our main online reporter, Twittered.

Meanwhile, because so much had already been written and posted, we could plan the next day's newspaper with much more information than we usually have. We knew exactly what sort of information and visuals we had. We watched television to determine what people already knew and didn't know. We focused our newspaper coverage on giving them new information, providing perspective on how the storm formed and where it went, and showing photographs.

In the end -- now that we have more than one method of news distribution -- it worked out well for both the newspaper and the Web site. (Putting aside the death and destruction of the storm itself.) Had the storm hit an hour earlier, we would have gotten a story into the Friday newspaper and patted ourselves on the back for our hustle. I wish we could have. But, to be honest, I know it probably would have been out of date the moment it landed on driveways Friday morning.

If there are any journalists left out there who don't understand or appreciate the value of taking your journalism digital -- where people can get it even if the paper isn't scheduled to be delivered for 24 hours -- then our experience Friday should be a lesson to them. Readers seemed to appreciate it, too.

For what it's worth: Friday morning's storm brought us the most page views of any day since we installed our current measurement system in August 2006. Comparing tragedies, the traffic was a third again higher than the fire at Eastern High School in November 2006. These numbers don't include multimedia (photos, video or audio) so the total is even higher.

I asked Michael Grossman, our online content editor, his thoughts on why the numbers were so high: Typically, bad weather (hurricanes, winter storms -- both actual events and predictions) are among the most viewed. There was a death which may have added more. And it made the national news, which I'm sure helped as we got some traffic from Google, but it wasn't a big chunk of the traffic. I think the fact that there were numerous updates always helps bring people back -- the initial reporting, the city letting some business owners in, several press conference updates, releasing the identity of the man killed.

Compelling news story, constant updating and different types of media. That's a recipe for success. I'd add that we posted virtually the entire day beginning at about 12:30 a.m. and were really cranking it up before most people woke up in the morning to see the damage.

That's the headline of a United Press story from the March 7, 1951, paper, that our librarian, Diane Lamb, showed me.

Circulation of English-language daily newspapers in the United States reached a record circulation of 54,877,000 copies a day in 1950, N.W. Ayer and Sons new directory of newspapers and periodicals showed today.

The 83rd annual edition of the directory recorded that it was the 11th consecutive year that American daily newspaper circulation has increased and added an estimate that more than two out of every three Americans now read a newspaper every day.

While I'm tempted to call those the good ole days, it wouldn't be accurate unless you were a newspaper owner. Rather, they were the easy days, when newspapers were the only game in town.

More interesting to me were two other stories on the page:
* A work stoppage in the woolen industry threatens to "halt urgently needed expansion of the armed forces." The Army said, "Our new troops must have clothing, blankets and other woolen items."
* "Bakers throughout bread-loving France went on a 24-hour strike today. Forewarned, most housewives bought large supplies of bread yesterday."

Beneath the newspaper circulation story is an advertisement for Karo syrup, promoting "pancakes and hot buttered Karo. Bring 1 cup Karo to a boil. Add one-quarter cup butter, stir, serve hot. Ummm!"

I wonder how many people today use that as pancake syrup.

A survey in England reports: One in three employees admits they have been to work with a hangover and more than one in 10 has been drunk at their desk, a study suggests.

I'm shocked!

Some occupations are worse than others with regard to drinking and the workplace.

Forty-one per cent of people working in media and creative jobs said they had been to work while still drunk -- four times the average.

Oh. Well, that's more like it.

My newspaper column

Last Tuesday was an exciting day.

Participatory democracy worked overtime as Guilford County Democrats overwhelmingly endorsed Sen. Barack Obama and the county's voters approved bond issues for schools and a new jail.

Consequently, election stories dominated Tuesday's and Wednesday's front pages.

Do you know what the most-viewed story at News-Record.com on Tuesday was? A murder-suicide out of Union County, which is 100 miles away from here.

Continue reading "Web & print: different stories, different audiences" »

District Attorney Doug Henderson released a statement late Friday saying he wasn't going to recommend charges against the officers accused of sexually assaulting another officer. With the ongoing Wray case, the accusation of destruction of police records, the Kohanowich case, this has been a rough patch for the department.

My thought: Is no one advising the city on how to restore eroding public confidence in the integrity of the department and how it is run? Is everyone tone-deaf to how this is all playing out among the citizens?

Imagine this scenario: Chief Bellamy and City Manager Johnson are at a podium Friday afternoon. The mayor is standing with them. The chief steps to the microphone.

Good afternoon, everyone. As you know, the District Attorney released his statement that he will not recommend criminal charges against three officers. We respect his decision, but that does not end the case. This has been an embarrassment to the city and to the department where the vast majority of our officers are hard-working, standup men and women who put their lives on the line every single day. We demand the highest standards of behavior and integrity from our officers. We must. The citizens of Greensboro expect it. I expect it. We obviously have not seen it in this case.

Mitch is passing around a document outlining everything we know about what happened in this case. It will be embarrassing to the officers involved. That's too bad, but it is a necessary step. We are not above the law. We must be squeaky clean. After that, I will talk about actions taken as it pertains to the officers in this case, and then I will outline what we are going to do moving forward to clean up the image of the department. I will answer any question you have to the best of my knowledge, but please hold them until I'm finished.

Next imagine this alternate scenario: The District Attorney releases his decision late Friday afternoon, which is the traditional time to release bad news. He is unavailable for comment. The police chief is unavailable for comment. The city manager is unavailable for comment. The mayor? MIA.

Which do you think serves the public better? Unfortunately, the second one is the one that happened.

Afternoon update: Photographer Joe Rodriguez reminds me that city officials were dealing with a crisis themselves with the aftermath of the tornado, which could address why they were unavailable for comment. We're trying again today.

Sunday update: Today's story here. Can you imagine, five months of paid suspension and an administrative investigation is still ongoing? How tough can it be to crack this case?

As I was channel surfing the local stations watching the weather coverage last night, Fox8 had a crew in the field reporting back about the lightning strikes in the area. After a moment, anchor Neill McNeill in the studio told the reporter and photojournalist in the remote truck to power down so that they don't attract a strike.

I don't know if the crew did; I surfed on. But I bet they didn't.

I have been in Neill's position many times and told working journalists not to get themselves hurt in reporting a story. Pretty much been ignored every time. The drive to get the story is powerful. Reporters and photographers don't go to the scene not to report what they see.

*Running Toward Danger

About four weeks and change until the Citizen Journalism Academy being put on by the Society of Professional Journalists The June 7 session at Guilford College promises to be good. Learn about journalism ethics, media law, public records, new tools and smart writing, among other things. I know two of the session facilitators and they're top drawer talents.

It costs $25. Register here.