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The relationship between politicians and the press is inherently contentious. There are a variety of reasons for this having to do with image, control, interpretation and the unflinching power of the written word in black and white.

Good politicians learn how to manage the media. (Find them on the cable talk shows every night.) Others simply ignore the press. ("I don't care what you say as long as you spell my name right.") And then there is a third course.

Greensboro City Council member Robbie Perkins called the News & Record the "single-greatest deterrent" to local economic development yesterday. In an interview with reporter Nate DeGraff, he said that he couldn't even get past our headline on the latest Dell story.

"Forsyth's pitch for Dell heftier" is what it said.

The facts: Forsyth and Winston-Salem are offering about $28 million; Guilford and Greensboro, $12.4 million.

Perkins said the headline shouldn't have been published in the "home-team newspaper." And, while he was at it, he said the paper hasn't been supportive of Guilford's efforts to land the plant (see our coverage).

"The single greatest deterrent"? The "home-team newspaper"?

Well, local economic development is what it is, and newspapers aren't cheerleaders. Robbie's been around long enough to know that. But we are a big, easy target, particularly at City Hall.

This is roundabout. From Ed Cone, I learn about an intriguing post at Jay Rosen's site. Rosen pulls from Mark Glaser of OJR. It's a long conversation about the new style of media company Glaser want to work for.

It's late and I don't have time right now to process the conversation fully. But I know this: it's precisely the sort of media company the News & Record intends to become. Creating new content. Serving the public and allowing the public to serve journalism. Building a new way of doing smart, citizen journalism. More transparency. News as a conversation. We've been having serious, detailed, how-to discussions about all of those things here. This blog is one result. All of the recent discussion about aggregated content -- what Greensboro101 is doing -- is where we're going, too. Roch just beat us. But there's plenty of room.

It's a busy week for me, and I'll write more about all this over the next few days. (I wouldn't address it now except that it's out there and I don't want to miss the fun.) It's the future of journalism, and the sooner we MSM types embrace it, the better.

Man, it's an exciting time to be in journalism.

P.S. The credit given to Cone in the Rosen post is well, well-deserved. Thanks, Ed.

Amy Joyner, a reporter who has been with us since 1999, has resigned to write books. She's been a leader in broadening the readership appeal of our business coverage. She's also got one book to her credit already: "Making Dough: The 12 Secret Ingredients to Krispy Kreme's Sweet Success."

Business editor Dick Barron said this: "Amy has been with us for 5 years and has made a real impact. Most recently, she helped us develop the Work & Money section into a lively, readable page with lots of great ideas, great writing and a strong appeal to a broad spectrum of readers. Beyond writing her 'Savvy Shopper' column, Amy has assisted me in keeping good ideas on the page, and has become a strong backup for me in general."

Indeed, we'll miss her in the paper and inside our newsroom. Fortunately for us, she's married to reporter Bruce Buchanan so we'll still get to see her around.

I didn't mean to let a gorilla loose in the meeting room, (although the exercise might do us some of good). My comments about moving toward aggregating content has raised a few hackles -- no, concerns and questions is a fairer description -- of some in the room. Find them at TheShu and Ed Cone's and Pressthink and in the comments here and probably other places I haven't discovered.

I am excited about the possibilities presented by expanding the voice and reach and impact of journalism. Blogs are a vibrant addition to the more traditional formats of journalism. Blogs have scooped the newspaper. People talk to you and you talk back. Everyone who wants has a voice. It's journalism at its core.

We're trying to transform the newspaper, and blogging is changing the face of journalism. In my mind, it's a nice fit. For weeks now, I've read about the need for traditional journalism to change or die. As I paraphrased Mark Glaser from yesterday: Creating new content. Serving the public and allowing the public to serve journalism. Building a new way of doing smart, citizen journalism. More transparency. News as a conversation. It's a world the News & Record must play in. To expect us to stay away is unrealistic. We're in the news, opinion and information business, just like many of you.

We don't want to conquer. Our interest is to have a site that reflects the news, the conversations, the energy that is Greensboro, High Point and the Triad. The idea is to create a place for people to find stuff out and to engage. This is not just the concept for online; this is the concept for the newspaper.

I hear the concerns, I really do. I don't know the right model. Our vision isn't far enough along to answer many of your questions. We're experimenting and learning like everyone else. But as I look ahead, I don't think it is possible for us or any other media company to control/dominate/crush the citizen media. Really, we don't want to. As Ed Cone says, a strong local online community helps us all. And I add that it not only helps bloggers, but it helps make this place where we live a smarter community.

I could have this discussion in the newsroom or in a bar somewhere with friends...or I could have it at home with you guys, most of whom I don't know. That's pretty cool. And that, among other things, still makes it an exciting time to be in journalism.

Anyone interested in civic engagement and getting a smile, you can't miss these two items from Inside Scoop about the Guilford commissioners meeting last night.

This one reminds us that race continues to be these folks' favorite topic.

This one, well, it makes you wonder why Steve would insult a school in his own district. Updated correction: Andrews is in Bruce Davis' district. Steve Arnold represents another area of High Point.

Reporters Taft Wireback and Jennifer Fernandez interviewed more than 60 students and dozens of teachers, parents and administrators to get a picture of the problems of discipline and violence in Guilford County schools. The two-day series starts tomorrow. Here's a taste of what the students say:

Students harassed a Northwest Middle School teacher so badly that she left school one day in tears, said eighth-grader Jade Weaver, 13.

"Someone threw an eraser at our teacher the other day," said Devon McCauley, 15, a Western High School sophomore, "and she kind of just took it. She didn't say anything or do anything."

Check it out Saturday and Sunday.

Update: The week's troubles with so-called hit lists spreads to more schools.

The headlines last week were stark: "'Hit list' at school threatens 20.'" "Assault at Andrews High School sends student to local hospital." "Deputies patrol tense Northwest Middle."

The images were worse: Students led away from school in handcuffs. Police cars parked at the school door.

The emotional response was chilling: Is my child in danger?

I asked one of my daughters whether she felt safe at her high school. She said, "sure," with that frightening mix of invulnerability and naivete that so many teenagers have.

She may feel safe, but is she safe?

Daniel Okrent, public editor of The New York Times, recently wrote a column about bias at The Times. A letter writer reminds him that a previous Times editor addressed the subject years ago. He quotes him here (registration required).

I won't quote the whole thing, but essentially it outlines the three key decisions the newspaper makes before publishing a story. At each point, judgment is injected. It is on the money, except that I'd add a fourth decision, which comes at the very beginning of the process: whether even to pursue the story.

I don't know that readers actually care about these kinds of internal changes, but in the spirit of transparency, I'm posting an announcement that managing editor Ann Morris and I made in the newsroom this afternoon. (Actually, this is 99 percent the same. I rewrote a few words for clarity.)

We're pleased to announce the following staffing changes in the editing ranks beginning the first of the year:

Dick Barron, our business editor for most of the past six-and-a-half-years, will become an enterprise writer covering business. While he has done a wonderful job as business editor, Dick has been interested in writing for a while, and we’re excited about the opportunity to expand our enterprise reporting, going deeper and broader on the big business stories.

For us, these moves have two significant benefits. First, they afford Dick, John, Eddie and Joe new opportunities to stretch their wings and increase their skills. More important, each of them will bring a fresh approach to the work and will improve the paper.

Open government took a couple shots to the body yesterday.

First, Bruce Davis, the brand new chairman of the Guilford commissioners, closed the board's agenda meeting to the public. The meeting of the board chairman, vice chairman and key staff members is used to set the board's formal agenda. In the past, the meeting has been open to the press and public. Davis changed the practice because he feared "misinformation" would get out.

Then, last night, Greensboro City Council member Tom Phillips, who has refused to talk with reporter Matt Williams for the past year, suggested other council members do the same. He was upset that we had misreported some information from a previous meeting, which we had and which we corrected immediately.

Closing meetings and shunning reporters may be an effective way of managing the message. Or not. I turn to Billy Yow for wisdom and insight: "I would certainly hope that he (Davis) wouldn't run a closed door county government. Things tend to be better for fellow commissioners, the staff and the public if you have more open meetings."

I've gotten more than the usual response to my column on hiring more minorities. Some applauded. Others took the liberty of sending me their resumes. Still others suggested that we really should be hiring political conservatives.

But the greatest response came from people who warned me against violating federal discrimination law, similar to the letter from my friend Jerry Bledsoe.

While I appreciate the legal advice, we didn't go into this blindly. We have a good Human Resources Department and solid legal counsel. We know the law and won't/don't violate it. In the column, I was trying to articulate a philosophical and practical commitment to diversity, not to put forth a legal brief. Journalistically and ethically, having more minorities on staff is the right thing to do. We respect the legal guidelines.

Immediate update: Fred Gregory, a frequent contributor here, just e-mailed me a study of newspaper staff diversity. The News & Record ranks 146 out of the 200 largest papers in the country. As Fred said, "What's so bad about 146th? It's better than 200th." But we can do better, much better, and we will.

It was cold and foggy and ugly Thursday night, but that didn't stop about 250 people from coming out to our community forum on school discipline at Greensboro College. We have someone transcribing the tape of the session right now and hope to have it online this afternoon. A video of the forum will air on a community access channel later.

Our one regret is that we ran out of time before all the speakers from the audience could address the panel. For that, we apologize.

Two panelists expressed concern that the newspaper didn't spend enough time writing about the good things happening at schools. This complaint comes up whenever we publish articles like those we've publishing this week.

Education has been a major focus of the newspaper for many years. We have three reporters assigned to write about our public schools. As a newspaper, we must write about the issues that divide us, and fights, arrests and so-called hit lists are news stories worth telling the community. So are the good things.

While we do have a story in this morning's paper about more hit lists, we also have an article on students featured in People for battling against cancer. Much of the sports section today features successful high school athletes. Yesterday's paper had a large spread on Kernodle Middle School students learning unique skills in an exploring technology class. Wednesday's paper featured an equally prominent story about the technology lab at Andrews High School.

We know you want to have an accurate appraisal of what's happening within the school walls. That includes the good and the bad.

Update: We couldn't get the transcript completed today. We'll post it Monday.

Meredith Barkley, who's been with the News & Record since 1981, is retiring Dec. 20. He is not going to have much time on his hands, though. He's planning to work with the poor in Haiti, continuing his lifelong commitment to helping those less fortunate.

We're sad that he has chosen to retire early because he has contributed so much to the paper and to us personally. But we're glad that he's truly pursuing a passion.

Meredith's first job here was as a reporter in the Randolph Bureau. Three months later, editor Walter Rugaber sent him this note: "I thought your piece in the April 26 Leader on the Moore County fiscal situation was intelligent and informative. This is the kind of story we can do well and the competition can't."

He hasn't looked back. Notes like that from every editor since fill his personnel file, which is thicker than a Sunday newspaper. In addition to Randolph, he's worked on the copy desk and reporting on Rockingham, nightside, cops, courts, business, real estate, community news, among others.

He's had a piece of many of the big stories in the past 20 years, including the Klan-Nazi trials; the Nan Schiffman murder; many, many weather crises; Blanche Taylor Moore; child abuse; Asian gangs; Burlington Industries; K-Mart/GGO protesters; the Episcopal Housing ministry; and just about every big business story for the past 10 years.

His journalism is first-rate. But we value Meredith for his professionalism, his easygoing ways, his wonderful attitude, his quick laugh and his friendship. Most of all his friendship.

In 1983, then-city editor Susan Fulton said in his annual evaluation, "It has been a pleasure working with Meredith Barkley."

Indeed, it has.

The executive sports editor of The Charlotte Observer wrote in a column (registration required) that the newspaper will stop voting in the AP college football poll. The poll is part of the BCS, which as the column says, is a mess. In essence, a lot of money is at stake in the rankings. "The credibility of this newspaper is more important than the prestige of voting in the AP poll," Mike Persinger wrote.

Persinger, who attended Northwest Guilford, raises a great issue. On our staff, Rob Daniels votes in the poll. He, too, questions our participation. We'll discuss this one further. Do you have any thoughts?

There are days when I long for the media environment of 20 years ago. Daily newspapers ruled the roost. Editors could pick and choose what was covered without much regard to what any other medium did. There was competition certainly, and we thought it was tough, but we didn't know anything.

To quote Chad and Jeremy, "that was yesterday and yesterday's gone."

A letter to the editor complains that we are failing our readers. An excerpt: "Soon, according to CNN, there will be 150,000 Americans serving in Iraq. Every day, many of these brave soldiers find themselves in harm's way. It is a very difficult war for our soldiers to fight, but all realize that they may have to make the ultimate sacrifice. It is up to us on the home front to keep these men in our thoughts and prayers each day and be ever mindful of the tremendous sacrifices being made."

"Unfortunately, the News and Record seems to be trying to push this war out of sight and out of mind. Last Saturday, the news from Iraq was on page A8, on Sunday page A9, and on Monday page A9. I would hope the paper will re-evaluate how it decides which stories make the front page. If news of the ultimate sacrifice of American lives is not worth the front page, what is?"

It's a powerful, heart-rending question. In a way, every American death in service of country is worth the front page. In the same way, every murder in the Triad tears at the fabric of community and deserves more than a few lines inside the paper. Perhaps every death of a Triad resident is worth noting somewhere other than the obituary page. But, aside from the question of limited space on the front page, we don't believe readers want or need stories from the war zone on our front page every day.

Our readership information says clearly that readers do not use us predominantly for national and international news. When they can flip on the television at any time of the day and get a report from the national news channels, when they can search thousands, perhaps millions, of Web sites for in-depth reports from overseas, local newspapers must travel a different road.

The course we've chosen is to emphasize local. It is, for now, one area where we have a degree of expertise and where we can provide exclusive content. There are many, many places to find out how the war is going; there are fewer to read about violence in the schools, commitments to Dell or who won the state football championship. Coverage of Iraq is important, and stories about the war will always have a place in the newspaper. But they will only occasionally make the front page. It's not because we're pushing the war out of sight. That couldn't happen. We pushing local into view.

A friend of mine who is in marketing in another industry told me today that those of us at the newspaper were nuts.

A newspaper editor often feels as if he walks around with a "Kick me" sign on his back so I'm used to this kind of opening comment. I asked him why.

"You promote your competition in your own paper. That's like McDonald's having a sign for The Whopper in its restaurant."

"Are you talking about the letters to the editor again?" I asked. We had once gotten into an argument over the value of letters from readers. He told me we were nuts then to subject ourselves to criticism in print. ("No other business does that. Even other media businesses -- television and radio -- don't do it. All it does is erode your credibility.")

"Not this time," he said, "although I'm still right about that. I'm talking about that column by Ed Cone this morning. He's writing about an alternative to the newspaper. Why would you publish that? You also write stories about other newspapers coming to town and competing Web sites. Why would you want to give your customers any information about other sources of news?"

I said: "If you publish a daily newspaper that cares about its readers and wants its readers to be informed, to be smarter, you're going to tell them things that might hurt you, just like you're going to tell them things that they may not want to know or that makes them mad. This is pretty much what we do."

He looked at me as if I had just spent my life savings on lottery tickets. "What do you think advertising is for? Tell them to buy an ad."

"We want readers to know they can rely on us to tell them things they don't know or might wonder about. Besides, competition is healthy. It makes us better."

He still had that look on his face.

"Look, did you know what a blog was until you read Cone's column?" I asked. "Would you have known that ESP was out of business but that another entertainment weekly is about to come into the market if you hadn't read it in the paper? All I'm saying is that it's a reader service."

"Well, it's a dumb one," he said. "You could have done without those stories and columns and I wouldn't have missed them. What if someone reads Cone, realizes they can get news online and other places and drops the paper?"

"Most of our readers are smarter than you. They know they can get national news lots of places. We're local. And before you say it, Cone is talking about micro-local news, and he's right. It's a market everyone is trying to figure out how to reach."

He just shook his head. We've been friends for years, but he's never understood the news side of newspapers. "Well, when you figure it out, how about letting me market it," he said.

Shortly before 5 p.m. yesterday, several people crowded around a newsroom television watching CNN, which was broadcasting the Scott Peterson verdict live. After the jury foreman said the word "death," they turned away and went back to work. That was all they needed to know.

That was all we needed to know, too, about how the Peterson sentencing story should be played in the paper.

We published a photo on the front page, sending readers inside the paper for the story. The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun in Durham did something similar. On the other hand, The Charlotte Observer and the Winston-Salem Journal put the story at the top of their front pages. (The New York Times and The Washington Post had only brief front page mentions. Our sister papers, The Roanoke Times and The Virginian Pilot, bannered it.) See all the front pages here.

Should we have displayed the story more prominently? Our thinking is that all most readers wanted to know is what penalty Peterson got, and they heard that on television. We couldn't have added any value. Plus, the Peterson case is one in a long-line of news stories driven by television and its 24-hour hunger for content. My feeling about it is captured very well by this column in The Boston Globe. And when we don't feature the war on the front page that often, why would we put the Peterson case?

As I was researching a newspaper column on Meredith Barkley, I discovered that he had wrestled a bear for a story. It was never published, a fact that remains a sore spot for Meredith. So I told him to write it up, and I'd publish it here to make up for our mistake 20-some years ago. Here it is:

"It all started innocently enough, the way most stories do -- with an assignment. Cole Campbell, one of our editors at the time, tells me to go out to Spring Garden Street and cover a bear wrestling promotion at 84 Lumber.

"'And Meredith, don't come back unless you've wrestled the bear,' he says.

I attended my first meeting with the Mosaic partnership last week, and one participant explained her newspaper reading habit this way: "It's like working out. It's right down there with working out. It's good for you, but it's work. You should do it, but you really don't want to. And, like going to the gym, I don't do it much."

Ouch. And now comes The Wall Street Journal today (subscription required) which quoted an ad agency big wig as saying that reading the newspaper is like doing homework. The story is more about newspapers as a vehicle for advertising, but the point remains for those of us on the news side, too. We're making a variety of efforts to make the News & Record easier to navigate and more interesting to read, without losing our sense of mission.

On the other hand, the article notes: "Some publishers are trying to project a hipper image. San Francisco Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein appears in artsy, black-and-white spots from Interpublic Group's Foote Cone & Belding for the Hearst newspaper. Some ads for Gannett's USA Today, crafted with Interpublic's McCann Erickson, feature actresses Pamela Anderson and Carmen Electra."

If we want to convey a hip image, I doubt artsy photos of me would cut it.

Throughout the year, companies send us their products in the hopes -- usually vain -- that we'll promote them in the newspaper. Books, CDs, baseball caps, calendars, wine, toys and games -- you name it, we seem to get it. Rather than give the stuff away or keep it for personal use, we auction it off to our staff to raise money for charity.

This year, we raised more than $1,000, the highest total ever. The money is being split between the Empty Stocking Fund and a program that allows us to sponsor Christmas for some families.

Our staff does many things I'm proud of, not the least of which is to put out a good newspaper, often under trying conditions. But every year at this time, its generosity to help others in need overwhelms me.

Chewie of Chewie World Order fame suggested that the News & Record give "column space to a blogger once a week. More than just an op-ed or guest column, this would be a weekly featured blog where a Greensboro blogger is chosen to submit either one of their best posts or writes one specifically for the paper.

"The goals would be 1)for the N&R to make headlines by 'making nice' with the citizens media in a creative cooperative effort; 2)for local bloggers to have a chance to showcase their writing and publicize their sites; 3)to draw those valuable young professional readers to both blog and paper."

I know that some of you are nervous about being co-opted in some way by the mainstream media. But it works for Ed Cone, the blogger and the newspaper columnist. In full disclosure, the anonymity that some bloggers choose is an obstacle for us in the paper as we strive for greater transparency. Still, it's an intriguing idea for all the reasons Chewie suggests. What do you think?

We try to keep writer/editor Lex Alexander busy. Mainly it is to keep the boy out of trouble. However, this time, we have asked him to do some research and some thinking about where we should be going with content online. Here's his assignment. Help him out.

Major thanks to Jay Rosen for taking national our solicitation to help us plot our online course.

"Adapt or disappear." It definitely focuses the mind. For a journalist, it shouldn't be a hard choice. Most of us go into the business to make a difference in the world. "I have something to say so shouldn't I go to where people will hear it? And shouldn't I listen to their responses because they will help me refine my work?" Blogging, talking to readers online, making the Web site more useful and dynamic, learning from others...I can't come up with any reasonable explanation that a journalist wouldn't embrace the potential. So why are so many of us resisting its obvious allure?

Tim Porter addresses the problem with newspapers and change. "In order to survive, newspapers must change their form -- form, not standard -- of journalism (not to mention their means of advertising delivery), but, as radical as those new forms may seem in most newsrooms, I no longer think that is enough. Many news executives know what to do, but they still don't do it. They are handcuffed by cultures that not only inhibit change, but frequently punish those who champion it. What's needed is a fundamental organizational makeover. The current newsroom structure -- segregated departments, hierarchical decision-making processes, platform specific (instead of agnostic) content, and strict producer-consumer division -- does not permit change on a large enough scale to break newspapers free from the traditions that bind them."

While we still have some of these issues, we've been encouraged by our corporate bosses to break free.

Rosen suggests that we may have been radicalized and are ready to rebel here. I don't call it rebellion. More like common sense. My still-evolving observation is that bloggers and newspapers want basically the same thing: to tell people the news. Some blogs are seasoned with more opinion than ours. Some are more personal than ours. But they all want to share information with others. It's not threatening; it's invigorating. And it feeds one of our fundamental purposes, which is to help build a strong community through the free exchange of information and ideas.

Keep the suggestions coming. We know we haven't cornered the market on innovation or brain power or reporting or knowledge. Many of you who have advised us in your blogs and in your comments are teaching us. Keep it up. We need your help.

I just watched a rerun of "The West Wing" and listened to Sam tell Leo's daughter whose name I forget that he thought schools should be palaces, teachers should get paid six figures, all education should be exemplary and attendance at any school should be free. "That's what I believe," he said. "I just haven't figured out how to do it yet."

After reading the discussion at Ed Cone's and at theShu's about the role of the newspaper in this burgeoning blogosphere, I'm moved to say that I believe the newspaper's web presence should be open and inclusive, should include lots of voices and commentary and news, should feature so many blogs on so many topics that everyone wants to be a part of the community and, better yet, everyone wants to visit here, should generate revenue that we can plow into the site to make it better, should be dynamic so that it takes its lead from the market, and should engender the civic-oriented discussion of ideas that makes Greensboro such an interesting place.

I just haven't figured out how to do it. Yet.

As we continue the discussion about the coexistence of traditional journalists and bloggers, Steve Outing of the Poynter Institute weighs in with some help for us mainstream media types. "I'm not suggesting that newspapers and TV news operations mimic blogs, only that they experiment with some of the ideas that blogs present."

And this: "And if you really want to get a sense of how blogs and mainstream journalists are coming together, (Choire) Sicha offers this: 'Here's a little peek behind the curtain over here at Gawker Media HQ: I just had a two-hour meeting with a blogger who edits one of our sites. We discussed new staffing assignments and rotations, some feature ideas, and six-month goals. Sound familiar, print people? Sound boring, bloggers?'"

Jay Rosen writes more about our efforts here to improve our Web presence, tear down the walls between the newspaper and the community, listen to and learn from our readers, and get more voices in the paper and online. If you've not gone there, go.

Read more discussion at Ed Cone, Greensboro is Talking, Billy the Blogging Poet, Chewie, Patrick Eakes, Gate City, and David Hoggard, among others. (Hogg gave the best advice in a comment on a site where the debate was getting testy: "Let's all go have a beer.")

I worry about the heightened expectations implied in all the discussion and the subsequent smackdown if we fall short. We will inevitably disappoint some who want us to go further or who think our resources are unlimited.

We aren't looking to change the world. We simply want to get better. I wrote about it Dec. 1 when I paraphrased Mark Glaser in stating the sort of newspaper we strive to be: "Creating new content. Serving the public and allowing the public to serve journalism. Building a new way of doing smart, citizen journalism. More transparency. News as a conversation."

OK. I got that out of my system. It's time to support the Guilford County economy and buy some Christmas presents. Meanwhile, go to The Lex Files to read his charge and leave a suggestion.

Read Part 2 of Steve Outing's post on newspapers and blogging. This is titled "What Bloggers Can Learn from Journalists." Part One is called, "What Journalists Can Learn from Bloggers."

Outing has lots of good advice. My favorite line: "But having an editor involved -- even if it's immediately after hitting the Publish button, a.k.a. back-editing -- is a brilliant idea, even for solo bloggers." But that may just be because I'm an editor.

It didn't take long after this story appeared at Romenesko for one of my staff members to ask if he'd get punished if he wrote the "wrong" (quotations mine) thing on a blog. Like any good manager, I avoided giving a clear answer. (I am on vacation this week, after all.)

I've always thought of myself as a hard-core believer in the First Amendment protections. Even as other people and publications have written wrong-headed, mean-spirited and laughably goofy stuff about me and the paper, I've let it go. The First Amendment makes us fair game.

But the St. Louis Post-Dispatch case makes me think that there are scenarios in which I can imagine suspending or firing an employee for what he wrote on a blog. The issue comes down to trust. The entire structure of a newspaper is built upon covenants of trust. Readers trust the paper to get it right. Editors trust reporters to get it right. Reporters trust editors to make relevant news judgments and assignments.

If a staff member pops the paper or his supervisors anonymously, I have to wonder: Is the criticism true? Why is he afraid to speak directly to me or the supervisor? (A journalistic truism is that we speak truth to power, and we don't hide behind anonymity to do it.) But more important: Does the content of the blog betray something said or done in confidence? And does the post cause readers to mistrust the newspaper?

I haven't had to ask these questions yet, and I hope I never have to. But if the answers to the last two questions are positive, I can't promise that he'll get a free pass.

Merry Christmas everyone. Tomorrow is the one day of the year I'll forgive you for not reading your newspaper first thing. :)

What a way to come back. We published a story on the front page in the final edition today about the death of "Bus Driver Bob," a former Greensboro police captain who truly left his mark on the city when he retired and became a beloved school bus driver. I know because both my daughters rode his bus long after it wasn't cool to ride the school bus. They did it because he made the ride fun.

Unfortunately, we did Bob, his family and his admirers a tremendous disservice. The story was supposed to be continued on an inside page. Instead, the continuation of another story was there. This problem happens occasionally, and I hate it every time. We had run another story in that spot on the front page in an earlier edition and swapped it out for the story on Bob Steele. But the continuation didn't get changed. The article will be printed in full in tomorrow's edition. Here's his obituary, while I'm at it.

Our apologies to the family and our readers.

A mere two weeks ago, we asked Lex Alexander to research and advise us on how we could enhance the News & Record's relationship with our readers and the community through our Web sites. Specifically, we wanted to know the best ways to make our online presence a true town square with lots of news, commentary and voices being heard, debated and acted upon. True to fashion, Lex asked the world for help.

We certainly got it, and I thank everyone who played. Dan Gillmor's mantra of readers knowing more than we do certainly resonated.

Lex submitted his memo and then skipped town. (He'd probably argue that he's simply taking a well-deserved vacation.) Before he left he asked if he should post the report. I told him I wanted to read it first. (What can I say? I'm an editor. That's what I do.) I've read it now. I'm still thinking through his conclusions and have some questions, but I like it. I think we can pull much of it off.

In any case, as soon as the Lexster returns next week, he'll post his report on his site. And, of course, we welcome comments and suggestions.