News-Record.com

A friend e-mails: "Isn't it just like Jesse Helms, whose dislike of newspapers is legendary, to die at the very worst time for newspapers?"

The reference is to newspaper deadlines, which are around midnight to 1 a.m., generally speaking. So Jesse's last act was to make sure that newspapers were the last to tell people the news. He must be smiling.

I have a couple manila folders full of newspaper clippings of my daughters' achievements in school, sports and extracurricular activities. My parents have the same for me buried in a box in their attic.

As we move more content out of the newspaper -- paper gets more expensive by the day so we're trying to save it -- we move it online. That's as it should be. Accessible information you care about is a valuable commodity.

But we've tried to keep what is called "refrigerator journalism" in the newspaper. Refrigerator journalism refers to the things that parents clip and hang onto the refrigerator. Intensely personal. Hyper-micro-local. So micro-local that it may interest only one family. That's why we devoted an entire page a few days ago to listings of community swim meet results. I didn't read any of it, but you bet I did when my children were on a swim team years ago. And it is safely nestled in one of those manila folders.

Those swim results -- and school honor rolls and graduates -- take up precious newshole. With budgets tightening everywhere, do these lists with such a limited audience deserve immunity from cuts? Wouldn't that space be better used to publish compelling content that may appeal to a wider audience? There is a related discussion on journalism Web sites that this sort of hyper-local news is one of the reasons that people find newspapers boring. Without a child involved in swimming, why care about swim meet results?

I acknowledge that newspapers can be more interesting. The stuff that we do as a public service -- write about city and state government, for instance -- will never be made into a blockbuster movie starring Bruce Willis. Online, about the only time government stories make the most viewed list is when one elected official attacks another. Yet reporting on the activities of elected officials and public servants is at the core of what newspapers do. I don't see that changing. It also doesn't need to be boring, which is the journalists' challenge.

But I digress. If we moved the lists online only -- they are online as well as in the paper now -- would they have the same emotion meaning as being in the paper? Would parents print out the online swim results to post on their refrigerators? I'm doubtful. They would, I suppose, place the Web address in a favorites folder. But Web links rot.

Would children get a thrill from seeing their names on a Web site? I'm thinking yes, however short-lived. With the omnipresence of social networks, it's hardly unusual to have your name various places online. How exciting is one more?

Still, one of the joys of getting your name in the paper is the belief that tens of thousands of people -- your friends and neighbors, too -- will happen upon it and recognize your achievement. That can happen online, too, if you have enough Facebook friends.

Before we can move listings to online only, we need to improve our Web offering. Most newspaper sites are not yet the indispensable place for all things community. We certainly aren't. When we become the place where I go to get significant information I want -- significant to me...quite possibly insignificant to you -- then we will be on the way to cracking the hyper-local code. That means helping people connect with the people, products and information they need when and how they need it. A big task, but not remotely an impossible one.

I asked one of my now college-aged daughters if she cared that we saved the newspaper clippings of her achievements. Her response mirrored what mine would have been 35 years ago: "You saved them? What'd you save them for?"

Yet, at the same time, every Christmas we still have a laugh over a photo of my little sister -- their aunt -- when she was about 4 praying next to an advent wreath, looking so uncharacteristically angelic.

The photo was taken by a photographer with the Tulsa World in 1960. My parents clipped it saved it.

Tomorrow will be one of those papers with the big story that tells people what they already know: Jesse Helms is dead. But it is a keeper because, regardless of what you think of him, Jesse was a pivotal figure in North Carolina politics.

I listened to Helms as a television editorialist as I grew up in Raleigh and wasn't impressed with his rabid conservatism or racial views. That did not change as we both grew older. But his savviness as a politician -- and manager of the press -- cannot be denied.

Through the years, I interviewed and spoke with Sen. Helms many times. He was always gracious and helpful. My first newspaper job was in Monroe, where Jesse's father had been police chief. He grew up there and went to Wingate College, which is also in Union County. While as a politician he castigated the liberal media, he was always kind to us at the Enquirer-Journal in Monroe. We actually felt pretty blessed politically because in addition to Helms, two other influential politicians -- Henry Hall Wilson and Skipper Bowles -- were born in Monroe.

All are gone now.

Juan Antonio Giner over at Innovations in Newspapers often posts photographs of newsrooms, both current and historic. Here's one unearthed from our archives that could serve as the beginning of a new series.

That's reporter Dawn DeCwikiel-Kane and me in our younger days, although somehow Dawn still looks the same today and I have no mustache and less hair on top of my head. Much less hair.

But anyway, that's not what this is about. This photo was taken at a company strategic retreat at least 10 years ago. Beer? We were drinking alcoholic beverages on company time on the company dime? In front of God and everybody? Boy, has that policy ever changed.

Hmmm, is it just a coincidence that newspapers were strong and dominant then, too?

We had discussion as to whether the story about Gettysburg and the Confederate Flag was too much on the front page. Or too high on the front page. Were there were too many images of the Confederate Flag on the front page? (The Confederate Flag is a divisive issue 'round here.)

You can see where I stood on those questions. How about you?

In December, three Greensboro police officers were suspended with pay after being accused of assault. We sued the city to force the release of more information that we believed was public information. The City Council then agreed to release as much information as possible about the case, and we dropped the suit.

Months and months later, the case is still unresolved, except that the officers haven't been charged with anything and the DA has said he does not have enough evidence to prosecute anyone.

Fine.

So what happens when we ask whether the officers are still on administrative leave? The city tells us they don't have to tell us. They refer to this ruling by a Superior County judge in another county in another case, a ruling that is not binding on the city. We're writing about this tomorrow.

Aside from the issue of why this case has dragged on for more than six months without apparent resolution, there's another point: the city's tendency toward opacity over transparency.

I understand that city lawyers are trying to protect employee rights. But the city of Greensboro is not a private business. Its employees work, in effect, for the taxpaying citizens of Greensboro.

When is someone at City Hall is going to start thinking more expansively and openly about what the public should know? Keeping information secret isn't normally the best path to restoring public trust and confidence.

We get occasional complaints -- normally when we mention Sen. Obama on the front page -- that we give him preferential treatment.

Today, your paper, once again, put Sen. Obama on the front page under "Quick Read" with a headline story on p.3, again with picture and plenty of coverage, while relegating Sen. McCain to "Washington Brief", two paragraph story farther down the page. In sales, we call this Position-Position-Position. Just another of your many ways to try to show Sen. Obama in the best of circumstances while trying to downplay his opponent. If you can't see this for yourself, you need to have your eyes checked.

That was yesterday. Obama was on the front page because his proposal to expand efforts to send money to religious groups is a decent news story. It breaks with his more liberal positions for one thing, and it expands upon a program that began in a Republican White House. On the other hand, Sen. McCain's visit to Colombia was much less newsworthy. He essentially asked the country to do a better job with human rights. Worthy but hardly surprising.

Still, we're going to track our presidential coverage to see who gets what sort of coverage day in and day out. The one caveat: When it comes to politics, we try to be fair, but we can't always give equal coverage. Sometimes candidates make news by what they say and do. And attempting to be equal cannot trump news judgment.

Media bias has become increasingly profitable given a polarized electorate in which conservatives and liberals want news coverage that tilts toward their political leanings, according to a University of Illinois study.

"You listen to news not just to get informed, but to be entertained," economist Stefan Krasa said. "And you're more entertained if they tell you you're right than if they tell you you're wrong."

Hmm. I am certainly pleased when I'm told I'm right, but I am vastly entertained when I'm told I'm wrong.

Kavita Pillai, a reporter for the Guilford Record, is leaving us for Memphis, family and, eventually, law school.

When I told her that society needs good journalists way more than it needs new lawyers, she told me that she wants to be a journalist with a law degree.

She's done outstanding work for us.

Last time we published a story about a Nelson Johnson-called news conference, we got some flack from commenters that we overplayed it on the front page.

How do you recommend we cover this story in tomorrow's paper?