News-Record.com

Like too many newspapers, the news staff here is predominantly white and predominantly male. It's been that way for years, and efforts to diversify have come and gone with little success. Journalists here teach at A&T and UNCG. Until this summer, we shared a journalist -- Val Nieman -- with A&T; she taught there and ran the student newspaper and she was an editor here. We run a week-long summer journalism workshop for minority high school students. We have a couple scholarships for minority college students who get jobs here when they graduate.

But we get little traction.

Yesterday, a bunch of editors here spent 90 minutes talking deeply about how to diversify our staff. Most of the discussion centered on race, but our overall effort is broader. We want more young people, more women and more free-thinkers. Among other things, we're looking at intensifying our mentoring program, increasing the number of scholarships we sponsor, aggressively tracking and attracting potential candidates, and appointing a full-time editor to recruit and mentor candidates. We haven't figured out how were going to do it, but we're going to do it.

The reason's are obvious: As society changes, so must we. We can't be a good newspaper if we're out of touch with pockets of the community. That includes issues of importance to the young and the elderly, black and Latino and Asian people, poor people, uneducated people...I could keep on going, but you get the idea. It's expensive and time-consuming. And vital.

I'm not suggesting that only Latinos can cover Latinos or that 20-somethings can only write about young people. I'm also not suggesting that members of specific demographic groups all think alike. Both suggestions are simplistic and distracting. The paper benefits by having more people with different experiences, whether based on race, age, upbringing, politics, gender, sexual orientation or any number of factors. Journalists with different experiences will bring smarter, broader-based perspectives in coverage.

I can hear the critics now: we're prostituting ourselves on the altar of political correctness; we're discriminating against able white males; and our liberal slip is showing.

Hardly. We're trying to be more relevant to the entire world of readers. The civic conversation will be enhanced, and the paper will be more relevant.

If you're not regularly checking the Inside Scoop blog, which is linked over here ----> then you're missing some good stuff. Written by our government reporters, it routinely has some cool items that are perfectly cyber-worthy. It's a little wonky, but never boring. And it sheds a little more insight into how government works. Or doesn't.

There's a little Guilford schools dish, there's a little 6th District news, and various entries about our elected bodies doing their civic duties. Check it out.

There's been some chatter over at Ed Cone's place that our display of the Greensboro Grasshoppers story on the front page today shows our boosterism for, I guess, the team. Or perhaps it's the name or the stadium. I dropped in a comment on Ed's site, but I'd better elaborate here.

We played the story the way we did because it was the one story of the day that people would talk about. The volcano? Still hasn't erupted. The News & Observer's main display was this story: "NCSU deals for rural land." The Winston-Salem Journal has a feature on the Land of Oz. The New York Times: a photograph of U.S. and Iraqi forces retaking Samarra.

We want people to talk about the stuff they see in the paper. We don't want the paper to be boring, any more than you do. This wasn't a story that was on TV; it was new. Plus, giving a name like Grasshoppers to a baseball team? We knew that would be debated around the water cooler, which is another reason we played up the story.

Apparently our headline is too big for some, although it's about the normal size headline on any given day. The red overline is cited, but the Sunday front page has a red headline, too, much bigger, in fact. The photo is a bit static, but it's tough to illustrate the team's new logo without showing it in use.

I promise that we don't have a stake in the name or the team or the stadium or the T-shirts sales. But we know the interest and controversy all those things create. And we do like the discussion about the newspaper and how we're doing, even if you don't agree with us!

Not especially related to the Grasshoppers issue, but interesting nonetheless is this column by The Washington Post's ombudsman (registration required). Michael Getler discusses some recent Post's front page decisions. It strikes a chord with me because I get more questions and complaints about our A1 selections than anything else.

Been out of town so I'm a little late on this one. The Pilot in Southern Pines made the news the day after the debate. It's apparently the originator of the "Senator Gone" reference the VP made about Edwards. Here's the originating editorial.

Looks like the papers across the state have failed again. Someone named Judson Cox is going to do something about it, too. He's soliciting money to start a statewide newspaper for conservatives. Here's what he wrote in an e-mail that Mark Binker, our Guilford County government reporter, received:

"A group of very concerned NC citizens have had it with the Liberal Media in our state. We are simply not being told the truth by the vast majority of NC's Media outlets, so our group has started the first statewide Conservative Newspaper."

Google Cox and he's all over the web, identified as the president of the Foundation for Conservative American Values. Here's a selection of his opinions.

His e-mail goes on: "In North Carolina, our greatest challenge is our press. NC has 110 newspapers, and all but three serve as the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party. The Raleigh "News and Observer" was founded by a Democrat, funded by the Democratic Party for the expressed goal of getting Democrats elected. They have been very successful over the last 200 years. The "N&O" dictates what news will and will not be covered in the NC press. They cover up for corrupt liberals, and they lie about Republicans. Our Republican candidates must run not only against their Democratic rivals, but against the press - this must stop.

"The only way to save North Carolina is to start a conservative publication with state-wide distribution.

"This is what we are doing! We have the knowledge, experience and name recognition. We have most of the staff in place and all the details of writing, printing and distribution covered. We have reporters already embedded in the Legislature, and some of the best columnists in (and out of) the state. We have an incredible mailing list of committed, conservative Republicans, compiled with the help of nearly every conservative group in NC. With the first issue, we're set to become the most widely read, largest circulation publication in the state!

"We will set the tone for news coverage. We will also see to it that the GOP candidates get a fair shot. The press is the only industry protected by the constitution. We are ready to do the first issue as soon as we get the cash raised. The paper should pay for itself after the first issue, but start up costs are substantial."

He doesn't identify which three newspapers aren't in the propaganda business. I have a pretty good guess how he'd rank the N&R.

I'm all for competition. The more voices the better. I hope that the NC Conservative feels the same way. I get the feeling, though, that it won't.

The National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University released a study this week that says that while arts programs are blossoming, arts coverage isn't. "Overall, there are fewer arts-related articles; newsrooms are devoting more of their arts space to listings; and electronic media are supplanting newspapers as a source for arts coverage."

We have a full-time reporter -- Dawn Kane -- covering the arts community. She writes about the Arts with a capital A. That's theater, art and classical music. She doesn't cover movies, TV or rock music. (We use Jeri Rowe, freelancers and wire services for that.)All of it is here.

The results of the survey aren't surprising (and the N&R wasn't surveyed, although Charlotte was.) The area's economic downturn that began in 2000 has meant fewer reporters on the street. We gave some consideration to reducing arts coverage, but we didn't. We know how important the arts are to readers and to the exchange and understanding of ideas.

But the report's conclusions about shorter stories and less space are on target. That's driven less by the arts and more by reader preference and cost control. Readers prefer shorter stories much of the time. And one of the larger costs of a newspaper is newsprint so, as you try to reduce your costs....

In the end, I don't anticipate any reduction in our arts coverage. There are simply too many good productions, shows and concerts being staged.

Gate City points out that we've started referring to the Greensboro Grasshoppers as the "Hoppers." In fact, that's how we referred to the newly named team in a headline in this morning's paper and online.

In fact, the sports headline writers sighed when the name was announced last week, but not because they don't like it. A long name plays havoc with headlines. In print, the word Grasshoppers takes up a lot of space. In today's paper it would have taken five inches to stretch that sucker across the page. As it is, the entire headline is only nine inches long.

Actually, I'm a little surprised we didn't shorten the name more than that. "Bats," now that was a name headline writers loved. Eddie Wooten, our sports editor, assures me that we won't whittle the name down to Hops or G-Hops.

Identifying children by name has gotten stickier and stickier as the problems of sexual predators has gotten more and more visibility. In Indiana, a band association has asked newspapers not to ID band members in photographs and stories. As a journalist, I want our report to be as complete and precise as possible. Photos and stories without full names hinders that, to say the least. As a parent, I still enjoy seeing my daughters' names in the paper for various school-related activities. Frankly, I'm much more worried about the chat rooms they visit and IM intrusions.

So we asked members of our Reader Advisory Network -- a group of a couple thousand newspaper and online readers -- to e-mail us their thoughts on the debate: who won and why. We needed their names, their political affiliations and, because the debate ran late, we needed them quickly.

We published just about every one that made the deadline. Here's a taste of the feedback I got today:

"I believe again, that the liberal media has presented how they want the readers to be influenced. How many Democrat responses did you publish and how many Republican? And for your information, I am a BLACK Republican. Bush again, talked more about the issues and Kerry was up to his old tricks of trying to slam Bush. I hope he doesn't slam his way into the White House."

"You're too liberal!! You're like CBS and now ABC!"

"I was, once again, hoping for a truly objectional article from the News & Record and, once again, I was disappointed yet not surprised. You usually "stack the deck" on your articles, i.e. agenda, and it's very transparent. I think that is why you are loosing your conservative reader. I read what interests me in about 5 minutes on line. I prefer not to pay for "fishwrap"!!"

(Because I like what I presume is an unintended slip of the typing fingers on "objectional" for "objective," I left this one uncorrected.)

I promise we didn't pick-and-choose based on politics. We picked and chose based on making deadline and including name and political affiliation.

You, too, can become a member of our Reader Advisory Network simply by clicking here. It's easy and we'll publish your thoughts and opinions, too.

You want to read some good writing and insightful commentary. Lorraine Ahearn is it this morning.

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism is sort of a journalistic think-tank at Harvard University. It has a Web site and, like many others, it solicited questions for the presidential debates. Here is the latest list, and it includes some partisan doozies, such as this one for President Bush: "Why do you believe that juries are perfect in death penalty cases and ridicule the verdicts from the same jury pool in civil cases?"

I've been following this Sinclair Broadcasting--"Stolen Honor" story was some bemusement. The political ramifications of a broadcasting conglomerate forcing such partisan fare down its stations' throats is serious stuff. And lots of bloggers have weighed in. But what interests me most is that the reason Sinclair gives for showing the documentary is that it is newsworthy (registration required).

My question is this: If Sinclair is so interested in making sure viewers of its stations get newsworthy material, why is it that the local Sinclair-run ABC affiliate, WXLV, has such a weak-to-non-existent local newscast?

Most mornings, my almost-16-year-old daughter struggles her way down the stairs, scans the front page as she eats her oatmeal, and then turns to the sports section. (She's big into high school sports.) For some reason this morning, she turned to the comics and, after reading Pickles, laughed out loud.

Our comics page takes a lot of heat from readers young and old as being (take your pick: boring, stupid, juvenile and, believe it or not, anti-American). Editors know that we change comics at our own peril. I believe we get more complaints when we remove a comic than anything else we do.

So it made my day that I actually heard someone laugh at a strip.

The APME is an organization of newspaper managing editors. It is meeting in Louisville now, and our managing editor, Ann Morris, is there. Today, the group released a report on media credibility. Not a whole lot of new stuff there. Most who responded said they trust the media, but also think we need to get back to the basics of objectivity, checking out the story, and understanding the difference between skepticism and hostility.

But tomorrow's report might prove interesting to you. Here is the headline: "Despite the recent surge in interest regarding online Web logs, four of five readers surveyed say they don't read Web logs, or "blogs." Those respondents who do read blogs urge caution but suggest the new medium offers great potential as a watchdog of mainstream media."

We'll see tomorrow. Great potential as a watchdog of mainstream media? Well, yes. But how about great potential as a news medium? Examples abound, including our own Inside Scoop and an awful lot of your blogs.

I also think that one of five readers reading blogs is a pretty good percentage for such a new medium. (It was an e-mail survey so I suspect it may be slightly skewed to more regular online denizens.)

As advertised, APME has posted its second day's report on newspaper readers. This one is about blogs.

"Readers who find blogs important say the online writers discuss stories mainstream journalists ignore and question the decisions news networks make. They recognize the fallibilities that go along with blogging but say those drawbacks are balanced by openness, interactivity and a communal nature that helps honesty rise to the top."

As a mainstream journalist, I'm with with Steve Outing, a senior editor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies: "I think they (blogs) are influencing mainstream media to become more interactive, to treat news more as a conversation and a bit less as a lecture."

This blog opens the door wider to the way we work. Come on in. You have questions about something we do? Ask it. Wonder why we cover a story in a certain way? Why we emphasize one topic over another? Why we wrote "Kerry, Bush differ sharply" in a headline rather than "Bush, Kerry differ sharply"? (I got that complaint this morning.) Well, I'm here to answer. Or try to.

Much has been written in blogs about the case of Farnez Fassihi, the Wall Street Journal's reporter in Baghdad who wrote to friends about her personal observations of life in Iraq.

I just sent a copy of this story from Editor & Publisher to my staff with this note: "The Wall Street Journal reporter’s experience with e-mailed observations of life in Baghdad should be a lesson to us all. Please guard your opinions about matters of public interest. I know that we all get e-mails from readers and sources – heck, we invite them. This is a good reminder that responses, even flip ones to friends, can take on a life of their own far beyond what you intended."

One of the many misunderstood facets of traditional journalism is that regarding opinions. We don't expect journalists to be blank slates; that's impossible. We do expect them to put aside their opinions and bias while reporting and writing a news story. The object is to pursue the truth. And along the way, our obligation is to provide accurate, fair and verifiable information. I happen to believe we do a pretty good job of it.

This is the first I've heard of this, confirming the essayist's point. Essentially, the national media haven't reported on the involvement of the FBI and United Kingdom authorities to shut down some 20 sites that are part of an alternative media network known as Indymedia.

"Now you would think that the major U.S. news media would have at least a passing interest in press freedom. Or in this era of fright is it just "not news" when government authorities -- our own and our allies -- shut down the free flow of information and otherwise intimidate alternative press voices? The Indymedia shutdown stinks to high heaven and contains more than a whiff of totalitarianism, but perhaps even worse is the silence of the major U.S. news media."

We don't do much reporting in this vein -- it's a bit outside the Triad -- but this is shameful.

Did you get enough of Grimsley and Page high schools in today's paper? One caller did and told me that our bias in favor of these two Greensboro schools was showing. We had the Page-Grimsley football rivalry on the front page. We had a look at the football game itself on the sports page. Then, we had an interview with Tray Deese, a Whirlie halfback, on The Final Cut. And finally, a report on the Grimsley-Page girls volleyball game.

The accusation was that we didn't do the same for Dudley-Smith. Actually, we covered that game earlier this month pretty much the same way: a story on the front page, one on the sports page and one on The Final Cut. Only thing we didn't have is a story about a volleyball matchup. The football game itself ended up this way.

(Please note: I alternated the names of the schools in each reference so that I wouldn't be accused of giving one preferential treatment. Some people are so sensitive.) We may not have Friday Night Lights like Texas, but we like a good high school football rivalry as much as anyone.

An interesting idea, secreting readers in a crowd of editors. It's disconcerting that the readers, finally out of the closet, would report being surprised at how thoughtful and professional editors are.

Now that I think about it, my experience with editors does bear out the idea that we have our moments of being intolerable. Pretty long moments sometimes.

Ed Cone features the newspaper's blogs in his newspaper column today.

For the record, I didn't assign the column -- as if -- and didn't have a hand in editing it. But if I had -- and gotten beyond the idea of spiking it altogether as being too incestuous -- I'd have asked, "You're calling me 'The man behind the curtain?' You're equating me with the Wizard of Oz? What's that about?"

Then I'd have asked, "What does 'semi-anonymous editor' mean?" A weekly column with photo ain't enough?

Then I'd have said -- as I do now -- "Thanks, Ed, for the favorable column, and thanks personally for the help, counsel and encouragement as the local monopoly daily wanders into this new world of the citizen's media."

Four years ago on election night, editors and reporters crowded around
the televisions in the newsroom, watching the various network anchors
report the returns.

It was 2:15 a.m. Wednesday. Our local election stories were written and filed, the pages laid out. Everything was ready to go. Almost.

Like the rest of the nation, we were waiting on Florida.

Unlike everyone else, though, we couldn't turn off the TV and go to bed, safe in the knowledge that it would all be sorted out in the morning. We had a paper to publish, we were an hour past deadline, and they couldn't count in Florida.

Those are the times that try a newspaper editor's soul.

It was an exciting evening. We had a new governor, lieutenant governor
and some new county commissioners.

But the main event was a cliffhanger. The Associated Press -- our main
lifeline for national elections -- was quiet, waiting. No "vote
projections" based on exit polling for it.

We couldn't wait much longer and get the paper to your homes before
breakfast. But none of us wanted to publish a paper without a winner.
It would be irrelevant. Readers would read "Bush, Gore wait" in our
paper while morning television was interviewing the winner.

Or so we thought.

Then, at 2:20 a.m. the networks called it for Gov. Bush, but the AP and our other news wires remained resoundingly silent. We couldn’t wait any longer. I told Mark Sutter, our Greensboro city editor, to start writing off the television report.

Here is his first paragraph: "George W. Bush was elected the 43rd
president of the United States, defeating Al Gore and ending an
agonizingly close election Tuesday, according to TV network
projections."

The headline read, "Bush Prevails."

My wife woke me the next morning -- well, after three hours of sleep -- as Katie Couric was saying something to the effect of "not so fast." And my stomach flipped. You all know the rest.

My mistake: I trusted television polling.

How stupid that sounds now.

We weren't alone. The papers in Raleigh, Winston-Salem and High Point
all bannered "Bush Wins." But that didn't give me any comfort then. Or
now.

Given that this year's presidential contest appears to be as close as it was four years ago, we could very well face the same quandary.

Election officials across the country say they've improved their
balloting and counting systems, but still. Stuff happens. Just Thursday, we published a story out of West Palm Beach about a computer crash that forced the postponement of a test of new electronic voting machines.

Do we call the winner? The answer, of course, is no. We learned our
lesson.

As it turned out, the "Bush Prevails" headline was correct. Personally, I'm glad that we didn't trumpet a Gore victory. Some readers might have accused us of having a Democratic bias.

On another slightly embarrassing note, over on page H3, columnist Ed
Cone writes about our Web logs. Putting aside the interview with me, I
do encourage you to check out the blogs at www.news-record.com. If
you're interested in journalism, local government, sports or just the
offbeat, there's a lot of information. By the way, we're starting a
fifth blog this week on local education called The Chalkboard.

As Ed says, we're trying to change your relationship with the newspaper. The blog format allows you to conduct a personal and public conversation about, well, about anything. It's essentially a live, online discussion with people in the Triad and around the world.

And best of all, it's fun.

Frank Rich, a columnist for The New York Times, is liberal. At least, in my opinion, he is. Take that as you will. You don't have to be libveral or conservative to worry about free and unfettered information. Today's column (registration required) makes a compelling case for a strong news media resistant to government pressure.

We don't battle the White House or the federal government, but we have our own run-ins with local government, whether it is over access to records (we sued the county last year) or simply over our approach to news (Mayor Holliday's campaign against our news judgment). Fortunately, we have better access than the national press. We'll continue to exercise independence as we pursue the news.

By the way, The Times' ombudsman offers up his column space to two writers arguing over the Times' political bias. Entertaining stuff.

Some readers are unhappy with us today. Well, some readers are unhappy with us every day, but today they called to take us to task about two things in particular.

First, a full page ad on page B5 says "More than Ever Vote Republican." Below that is a photograph of Patrick Ballantine and the words "Ballantine Governor." Beneath that is a line that reads "Endorsed by the State Employees Association of North Carolina." And then all the Republican candidates from this area are listed. The problem, callers say, is that all of those candidates have NOT been endorsed by the State Employees Association PAC. Ballantine has been, but not all the others. See the endorsements for yourself. The ad was purchased by the Guilford County Republican Party.

It's not incorrect because the endorsement line could be interpreted as referring only to Ballantine. But it could also be read as saying that all the candidates on the list have the PAC's endorsement. Gee, a political ad that isn't clear and has a multitude of interpretations. What will they come up with next?

Second, we published a photograph of two women sitting in chairs watching the Chrysler Classic of Greensboro. Several callers complained that the photo shows a view up one of the women's skirts. Actually, the woman is wearing shorts, and what callers think is her skirt is the canvas bag that her folding chair came in. She has it draped across her lap.

The photograph isn't revealing or offensive. But content that results in confusion rather than understanding is best avoided. We should have chosen another photograph and the ad should have been more clearly focused.

We start our fifth blog today. Bruce Buchanan and Jennifer Fernandez, local education reporters, are going to write about school matters big and small on The Chalkboard. It should become the place to go to find out what's happening in Guilford County schools and to voice your thoughts about what is or what should be happening. Let them know you're out there.

The High Point Enterprise has apparently removed its newspaper racks out of downtown Greensboro. We bought a couple copies every morning to compare our coverage with theirs. Last week, their boxes in all the places we knew to look had disappeared.

Ever since long-time publisher Randall Terry passed away last May and Paxton Media Group of Kentucky took full ownership, we've been watching to see what changes would come about. Don't know if this is one, but it is interesting to those of us who like newspapers and who make their living in the business.

We'll see where it goes. Meanwhile, you can buy the News & Record in downtown High Point.

Martha Stewart sure engenders a lot of loyalty. Several people have complained about our "Decorate Martha Stewart's Cell" contest in which we put a photograph of Ms. Stewart's face into a coloring book drawing of a prison cell. Here's one:

"I found the News-Record's "Decorate Martha Stewart's Cell" contest appalling. What next, best funeral arrangement for returning Iraqi war dead? As the editor of this newspaper I believe you should set standards of decorum and good taste, and this contest meets neither of these."

One might think that Ms. Stewart has entered that dubious territory considered "fair game" as the self-made style maven is now serving time in prison. I do. But this reader-participation wasn't intended as editorial commentary. It simply gives readers a little diversion, lets those who participate have some fun and, when we publish the submissions, will put a smile on some faces.

We've received more than 50 responses, many of them sympathetic to Stewart's predicament and using it as a way to reach out to her. Some are quite elaborate in their decoration of her new living space behind bars. One woman decorated a room but included on the wall "Martha, you don’t belong here." Another pasted cloth swatches as curtains, added a cat and artwork on the walls, and even cut and attached some gray hair to give Martha a new hair styling.

One woman wrote us: "I recently had to move into one room because of illness and had to downsize. I live in assisted living. After always having plenty of room, it seems like what Martha is doing. We have a very small space.

"I drew this picture like my room. I have more privileges than Martha but hope she can adjust to close quarters for a while, then she will be free again to spread her wings. I've always admired her and liked her TV shows. Good luck, Martha and I'll keep praying for you to have your freedom again. Trust in the Lord and he will help you through your trials."

Look for the results in the newspaper later this month.

I told you weeks ago why I don't much care for polls and why the newspaper doesn't do much with them. Now here we are. See how helpful they are?

Imagine if all the media outlets paying for these polls put that money into reporters or coverage of issues. Nah, that would make too much sense.

Don't think the news media's coverage of the presidential election has been very good? Join the club. And you'll find some surprising companions. The Committee of Concerned Journalists polled its membership on the performance of the press this fall. The result: 69% graded the news media a C, D or F.

"By large majorities they feel the news media has become sidetracked by trivial issues, has been too reactive and has focused too much on the inside baseball that doesn't really matter to voters, according to the survey.

"They give particularly low grades to television, be it local, cable or network, and much higher grades to newspapers and online coverage."

The particularly distressing piece of this is that journalists complain about these tendencies year after year without seeing much improvement.

Earlier this week, a Pleasant Garden reader wrote a letter to the editor that said this: "I am writing because I am concerned about the bias that I have seen in your newspaper. It is very obvious your pick for president is John Kerry. You interview liberals and Democrats, and I don't see anyone being interviewed who has something good to say about President Bush."

The writer said a few other things, then closed with this: "President Bush won North Carolina's vote in 2000. The newspaper should reflect the people. I am considering revoking my subscription to your paper."

At first, I didn't think much about it. I don't like losing a reader, but I know people get angry with us, and I respect that. It was that penultimate sentence -- "The newspaper should reflect the people." -- though, that got to me. It is such a common expectation from some readers that it has swirled around in the back of my mind all week.

Putting aside the idea that we only reserve space for liberals -- the publication of the letter itself belies that -- the writer is correct in saying that we try to reflect the community. We want people to see Greensboro, Guilford County and the Triad for what they are. When some readers look at the newspaper and don't see their own reflection -- whether it is what they look like or what they think like or how they view the world -- staring back at them, it upsets them.

As a newspaper, we must reflect more than simply the majority view. We want to show the community in all of its colors and attitudes and lifestyles and opinions. In fact, newspapers try to give voice to the voiceless because the majority -- whether defined by race or gender or politics or whatever -- doesn't seem to have any trouble being heard.

When we published responses from our Reader Advisory Network after one of the presidential debates, an angry reader who saw more Democratic responses than Republican asked why we didn't more evenly balance the responses. We published what we received. Printing an equal number of pro-Bush and pro-Kerry sentiments would have been orchestrating the response, which we wouldn't do and readers wouldn't want.

We want to reflect the community, and that means everyone should see themselves in it from time to time. But that doesn't mean they'll see only themselves. They should see people and places and thoughts that they don't recognize and may not even approve of. That's part of living in a diverse, dynamic democracy.

Val Nieman, ex-News & Record editor, novelist, academician and raconteur, is flying to L.A. next month to appear on "Jeopardy." We're proud and feeling possessive of Val because she came to the News & Record as our Rockingham County editor and then served two days a week as assistant national editor and three days a week teaching journalism at A&T. Last summer, she accepted a full-time gig as instructor at A&T. We didn't teach her much, but she taught us a lot.

No word on when her segment will appear, but I'll let you know. We're betting she'll take Ken Jennings' record.

Ian asks where the fault lies for the "sloppy, uninformed work that passes for political reporting." He's referring to my post of yesterday.

Off the top of my head, I'd say the fault is spread widely. In no special order:

1. The easiest journalistic form is conflict reporting, and it is prevalent in political reporting. He said this, she responded that, get both sides and you're done. It's not particularly most insightful or informative. The more reporting that's done this way, particularly in politics, the less light being shined into dark spaces.

2. With the partisan shouting matches that represent political discussion on television, real exploration into serious issues rarely surfaces. Jon Stewart says it well in today's newspaper. "You know ... what has become rewarded in political discourse is the extremity of viewpoint."

3. Political reporters and editors want to keep up with the Joneses. Even though no serious journalist wants to write about the Swift Boat issue, everyone else is doing it so we have to do it, too. That serves the purpose of driving coverage to the lowest common denominator.

4. The public has been drifting away from political engagement for years. So journalists try to catch the attention of the disengaged
with simple, shorter, edgier stories. A sound bite is better than substantive discourse because it's easier. Complex issues are hard, hard to report, hard to make interesting.

5. The candidates don't talk specifics about issues, which makes it hard to report them.

6. We don't have the willpower to resist the pack and to do what's better for the electorate. When we do, we come across as scolds or as if we're forcing readers to take bitter medicine or as boring, out-of-touch-with-the-mainstream hacks.

I happen to agree with the survey that says that TV reporting is a major offender, but print isn't without guilt. We don't do enough in-depth reporting, either, for many of the same reasons. One other I'd add: with our emphasis on local news, even the presidential race gets shunted off the front page most days. But we've published many wire stories on national issues both being addressed and ignored by the campaigns.

We had some serious press problems last night that prevented us from publishing our High Point edition. Readers in High Point, Davidson County and Randolph County received the Greensboro edition, instead. We apologize for the inconvenience. Saturday's distribution should be back to normal.

We've been getting a lot of questions about voting. That's a good thing. Two of the most popular: where's the sample ballot and what's this confusing stuff about a straight ticket vote.

The answers are: A copy of the sample ballot for Guilford County is here. And here is Randolph, Alamance, Forsyth, and Davidson. We'll print a sample ballot in Sunday's paper, too.

As for the straight-ticket question, the folks at Inside Scoop answer it quite well.

I've been asked to participate in the Greensboro Bicentennial Mosaic Partnerships Program, and I wish they had asked me to participate in the selection of the name, but they didn't. This is the initiative announced last month by Greensboro Mayor Keith Holliday to pair 180 people across racial lines and encourage them to become friends and share experiences.

Here's what the mayor's letter to me and the other 179 participants says: "The Greensboro Bicentennial Mosaic Partnerships Program is designed to change the culture of Greensboro two hearts at a time. As a transformational process, the program is based on the idea of the fundamental goodness and nobility of every human being, and the idea that societal change is most effectively set in motion through the initiative and empowerment of people like you."

Before I accepted, I considered whether my participation would skew our coverage of the program. I'll recuse myself from newsroom discussions about it, and, frankly, I'm surrounded by professionals who wouldn't permit it.

I'm excited by its potential. As a 2001 Community Foundation report showed, Greensboro is a charitable, generous city, but one in which the citizens didn't trust each other. Race is a major part of that distrust. Because community building occurs one friendship at a time, perhaps this will help.

The NASCAR nation went into mourning yesterday for yet another tragedy, although this one was off the track. A plane carrying 10 friends and family members of Rick Hendrick Motorsports crashed in Virginia. All aboard died.

Hendrick wasn't on the plane, but his brother and son were. Hendrick Motorsports is a big kahuna in racing, with more than 100 Cup series wins. The crash made national news.

For the newspaper, our racing writer, Dustin Long, teamed with two colleagues at our sister paper, The Roanoke Times, to write the story. For the Web site, we used the Associated Press.

The main article ended its 17-paragraph account this way: "Rick Hendrick pleaded guilty in 1997 to a single count of mail fraud involving the payment of $20,000 to a Honda executive. He was fined $250,000, but avoided jail time because he was battling a near-fatal case of leukemia. He was later pardoned by former President Clinton."

Several readers wondered why the AP included that paragraph. I wonder it, too. A seven-year-old guilty plea to a family member of those deceased hardly seems relevant to this story. I tend to believe that the more information the better and that we can trust the reader to sort out what's important. But this stretches beyond the bounds of good taste for no obvious purpose. We should have edited it out.

I don't have any sense of how many of the readers of the blog are also readers of the paper, but here's why some of the newspapers had an absence of color on the local front and the sports front this morning, according to our production director, Jim Schrum:

"With about 6,000 copies of the High Point edition remaining to be printed, we had to stop the press and drop the color from the following pages of this morning's paper: B1, B12, C1, C12. The press unit in question (unit 5) was tearing up blankets. The decision was made to drop the color in order to get through the run. Our mechanical staff will get into the unit today to determine the nature of the problem and fix it." (A blanket is the device that actually puts ink onto the paper.)

It's a complicated piece of machinery, this press.

Dear Sir/Madam:

If you want to control your message, announce it as soon as possible. If you want to cede control of your message, make the decision and then put off the announcement. It'll leak. Doesn't matter that you have good intentions or that you're not ready for an announcement. Information, like water, will find its own way out.

So, when a reporter calls you and asks about your project, the gig is up. If you stonewall, you put yourself at the mercy of those who WILL talk to the reporter. On the other hand, you could reclaim a modicum of control by answering the reporter's questions. It's really PR 101, although it's surprising the number of policy makers who go the stonewall route.

The most recent example of this at work is the story about the merger of Action Greensboro, the chamber, the Greensboro Economic Development Partnership and the Greensboro Development Corp. The agencies wanted to announce it Tuesday, but it was leaked early. We were chasing it, and the Business Journal was chasing it. Both of us got it the crux of it Monday and posted it online. But no one involved would talk about it on the record. Want to know who would? A city council member who was perturbed that he and other council members were left out of the loop. Hardly the message the business folks wanted out on the first day.

Could the major players have talked about it Monday? Sure. Don't get me wrong; I'm sympathetic to their desire to wait. But while they wanted to wait for the official action of the boards of those groups, which came Tuesday, the reality is that the fix was already in. None of the boards was going to block the merger.

Here's how the news media works. We get wind of a story that we think our readers should know, we chase it until we get it. Now, with the addition of civic-minded bloggers to the mix, the number of people who report "news" is growing every day. The old model of getting your ducks in a row and making an announcement will still work, but not well. My unsolicited, self-serving advice? You can't put water back into the faucet. Go ahead and talk to the reporter when he or she calls. At least you'll get to say it the way you want it said.

I received this e-mail from Marcus Kindley, head of the Republican Party in Guilford County, as part of a mass mailing. I reprint it here as it came to me.

"Dear Friends:

"In the Greensboro News and Record you have read letter after letter from democrats (I believe it to be a letter writing campaign)complaining about Kerry Edwards signs being destroyed. Well, I know for a fact that hundreds of Republican signs have been destroyed this election season. We have had many people come into our headquarters getting signs to replace signs stolen and signs torn up.

"Now we have seen that they know no bounds. Attached is a picture a gentleman brought into our headquarters today of Kerry supporters painting over a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker. This same type of Nazi tactics is what we can expect with a Kerry presidency. The left has always announced that if you agree with them it's ok, but if you disagree....... Look a how our freedom of speech is bing stifiled by the McCain Feingold Campaign financing laws.The media pushed for this and Non-Partisan races to limit Americans Voices so they can control our Government..

"I personally called the Guilford County Democrat Headquarters and asked their chairman to hold a joint news conferencr with me asking that such juvenile actions as we have seen be stopped. I called the Greensboro News and Record about it, (They had no interest in the truth as we all Know) Our headquarters has been vandalized twice, yet the News and Record has no interest in reporting this information, which was reported to the police, so they could get the info if they chose.

"In addition we see that CBS and The New York Times have tried to report a false report to missing explosives, we see a concentrated effort by the democrats and the media to feed us only their views. Ops I'm sorry they are one and the same.

"Look at what democrat nazi thugs did to this supporter of the President. It is time to work to win for the President, and keep someone with principals in the White House!

"We are in a fight for the life of our Country. Come join us!

"Marcus Kindley
Chairman
Guilford GOP"

Make of it what you will. I place it here only because of its references to the newspaper. We have written about campaign sign vandalism and have gotten countless reports of it, including sign vandalism at both Republican and Democratic headquarters.

The curse may have been reversed up in Boston, but it has blown back on us. Todd Graff, who has covered sports here since January 1999, is moving to Massachusetts. His wife has accepted a job at a biotech firm in Cambridge, near Todd's hometown of North Andover. Todd will be free-lancing.

Here's what Sports Editor Eddie Wooten said about Todd in an announcement message to the staff: "Todd has helped our section have a strong golf presence in this community, which has one of the nation's highest per-capita playing populations. ...His notebooks during the spring and summer on local golf gave us community in our section.

"Todd provided readers with a thorough report on the Panthers during their run to the Super Bowl with a don't-try-this-at-home 84 pieces during a final 38-day stretch from Christmas to season's end. They came in forms such as the takeout on Jake Delhomme's hometown, analysis of the games, features, news and notes. Todd also has covered the minor-league hockey team, N.C. State and had shifted over to the UNC beat."

Todd also brought the paper national recognition when he ranked in the top 10 in the 2002 Associated Press Sports Editors contest for his writing. He has also won state press awards for us. We'll miss him.

The editorial board is planning to publish its presidential endorsement on Sunday. As newspapers across the country have staked out their positions, some subscribers have staked out theirs.

For instance, Editor & Publisher (registration required) keeps a daily tally of newspaper endorsements. (Kerry is leading with more papers and more circulation.

And here is the first paragraph of a story in the San Antonio Express-News (registration required): "In Austin, more than 300 protesters gathered near the newspaper's building. In Philadelphia, about 800 people canceled their newspaper subscriptions. In President Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford, almost half of the newspaper's 920 subscribers cut ties." The Austin American-Statesman endorsed Bush, The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed Kerry, and you can guess who the Lone Star Iconoclast endorsed.

I'll point out once more that I'm not a member of the editorial board and did not participate in endorsement discussions. I certainly hope that the paper has enough value to you beyond its editorial endorsement that you won't cancel. Personally, I'd subscribe just to get Ed Cone's column.

Because the news business is so competitive, it's rare for an editor to announce publicly what the paper is going to look like three days before it is even published.

But, at the risk of getting tossed out of the American Society of Newspaper Editors for revealing trade secrets, I'm going to tell you what we hope to do with Wednesday's front page.

The day after Election Day is one of the few days in which we know in advance with a high degree of confidence what stories will dominate the page. We just don't know what they're going to say.

Because dozens of stories will break between 9 p.m. Tuesday and 1 a.m. Wednesday, we must be prepared. Editors have met several times over the past two weeks to plot the content of the Wednesday paper. We've talked about how races will be covered, how many additional pages we will add and how far back we can push deadlines.

But Page One -- our face to the community -- got the most attention.
Traditionally, the front page on election Wednesday is filled with stories: the results in the race for the presidency, the governorship, the Senate seat and whichever local race is most significant. The page is newsy, informative and safe. It's also predictable.

But the presidential campaign this year has been as safe and predictable as a swift boat ride down the river. Where else can you get Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" calling out Tucker Carlson on CNN? Or daily coverage of the mysterious bulge on President Bush's back?

The time is clearly ripe for a different kind of front page. Here's how our thought process went:

Our elections editor, John Nagy, first proposed that we take a fresh approach. Let's reduce the number of stories on the front, he said. While all the elections are important, only one has divided the country into blue and red, flummoxed the pollsters and got everyone talking about the explosives HMX and RDX as if they were demolition experts.

Ben Villarreal, the editor in charge of our page designers, suggested we place only one story -- the presidency -- on the front page. Or better yet, no story; just a large photograph of the winner with a headline.

That idea of designing Page One like a Time or Newsweek cover caught on. If all goes according to plan, the front page will feature a headline and a dominant photograph of the winner, stretching the width of the page and reaching past the fold.

At the bottom of the page, short descriptions of other races will direct readers to full articles elsewhere in the paper.

It would be a special edition for these unusual, divisive times. The front page would instantly telegraph who won and be a keepsake. All the election coverage of the races would be in the paper, with full pages devoted to the presidential, gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races.

All the planning in the world, though, won't make it simple. Here's what needs to happen to make this work.

First, we need a winner. No Florida funny business. Hearts will sink in newsrooms across America if Florida's secretary of state appears on camera Tuesday night.

Second, we need a winner by midnight or 1 a.m. While most of the news department would wait until Easter to get a winner, we understand that readers expect the paper to be there Wednesday when they get up for breakfast.

Third, we need a bit of serenity in the rest of the world. There are no guarantees when it comes to news. I can think of a few news events that could crowd onto the front page, but most are tragedies and are best left unimagined.

If the nation's vote tabulators aren't on their best behavior and don't get us a winner in time, we will drop back to a front page that will reflect the day's news slightly more traditionally.

It's also unlikely that we'll have a winner early enough to do this in all our editions, so some readers will get a different front page.
But these are just plans, which can go awry for all sorts of reasons. Unpredictability is one of the thrills of being in the news business.
My guarantee to you, though, is that we'll have complete coverage throughout the paper of the local races and the most significant national ones.

A final note: The quickest way to get the returns will be online. We'll have people monitoring and filing immediate returns. Find them in real-time Tuesday night at www.news-record.com.