News-Record.com

A new analysis of minority hiring at newspapers across the country is here, and it includes breakdowns and historical data from individual newspapers including the News & Record. You can also compare newspapers across the state.

We don't show up too well. It's no surprise to us. Just continued recognition of the challenge before us. Previous posts about this here, here and here.

Thank you for the feedback on the new site. Some of it is attached here. Keep it coming!

We're paying attention and changes are moving apace. Remember it's beta. (Yes, the blogs and Town Square will get a more prominent place.)

In a related note, later this evening, we're taking the beta site down for an hour or so to move it to a new platform. If all goes well, it'll be back up by tomorrow, if not earlier.

Here are some of the comments:

I like the new appearance of the site a lot! It's much more visually appealing than the current site. Though I am a subscriber to the print version of the paper I often read the main stories on the web anyway just for the convenience of it. If I had one suggestion to make, it would be to consider a somewhat larger font. What you're using seems awfully small to me -- considerably smaller than that of the current site. Older eyes like mine would certainly appreciate it

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The top ad is very annoying. It draws the eyes away from the main part of the page, which is the N&R.

The tab formatting is great, but on the main site there are too many smaller categorical tabs. It becomes a mess.

Either use sidebar tabs, but not both, or do some major re-arrangements. No need for sidebar and drop-down. One or other.

Your issue right now is that there is too much going on. The design has to be clean and readable. Ads need to be placed so that they break articles via reading but doesn't take away from the page. Again, a print layout person needs to be brought in to work on how it would look via print (with ads). Then revolve your design around that. This will give the clean print feel.

Ed Cone correctly points out that the Rhino got something wrong about us. Again. This time on The New York Times decision. We are shocked! Shocked!

At least one California writer doesn't think this is totally half baked or a sign that we are dumbing down. Tim Porter begins his post about it this way: Change comes with a price. The more radical the shift, the higher the cost. For newspapers, the tariff to a different future must be the sacrifice of sacred cows, damage to some newsroom egos and even the loss of some of today's readers in the hopes of securing more of tomorrow's.

Of course, we are betting that we'll get more of tomorrow's than we might lose of today's.

Staff writer Margaret Moffett Banks talks about the story on non-profits that she writes about in our Sunday edition. In the audio file, she discusses how she came upon the story and the difficulties she encountered. Her storyline is this: Women leaders of nonprofits make 60 percent of what their male peers do.

This is the first of a new weekly podcast that staff tech guru Herb Everett is hosting called The Beat. Its purpose: We'll talk about the stories you see -- and don't see -- in the News & Record in order to demystify news gathering, allow our readers and listeners the chance to get to know us better and dig into the stories behind the stories.

"You know, you really took the cake with that misguided column of yours," my friend said.

"What, you didn't approve me writing about my daughter?" I responded.

"Not that one, you idiot. That one was fine, although it left my wife in tears," he said. "The one about dropping the New York Times."

Well, here we go. My friend occasionally gives me marketing advice that I usually consider and ignore. (This is pretty much how the conversation went, although I toned down his overbearing demeanor and I embellished my articulateness.)

"Why would you even write such a column? Most of the people who are complaining now wouldn't have noticed the difference. You yourself say that you scarcely publish Times stories. What they don't know won't hurt them. So why bother to stir them up?"

Some devoted readers drew the conclusion from my column two weeks ago about canceling The New York Times News Service that the News & Record is going to eliminate national and international news coverage.

Let me set your minds at ease. We aren't.

I apologize that my lack of clarity caused confusion and needless worry.

I'm going to be away from the computer for a few days. I invite you to start a thread and discuss among yourselves.

George Bernard Shaw said that youth is wasted on the young.
He never met the 13 finalists in the News & Record's annual Scholastic Achievement program.

After spending an afternoon with the teenagers, I don't think they have wasted a minute. In fact, all of their civic and charitable activities -- along with their academic prowess -- put me to shame.
They also inspire me.

Every year the News & Record awards a total of $14,000 in college scholarships to the area's academic superstars. In all, 331 students from 39 high schools participated this year.

They are students like Camorie Donnell, a Dudley graduate headed for UNC where he plans to major in medicine. "My mother said the first word I learned to spell was 'doctor,'" he said. "I don't know if that's true, but she always wanted me to be a doctor."

He'll be the first generation from his family to attend college.

All of the Deep Throat fond reminiscences aside, newspaper editors don't like anonymity. It gnaws at us. We don't like secrets. We're in the business of telling the news and letting people know where we got it. We've discussed that.

That said, this post by Chewie about Anna in California who was outed by her hometown newspaper is awful.

Anna is a frequent contributor to this blog. Her comments suggest that she's smart, open and thoughtful. She e-mailed me a couple weeks ago asking under what circumstances I would reveal the identity of pseudonymous bloggers in the newspaper. I told her that I couldn't imagine any, and then, I'm embarrassed to say, forgot all about it. I just figured she was planning on writing something about it. Old Stupid didn't think she was asking because she had trouble.

I still can't think of a reasonable circumstance in which we would publish a pseudonymous blogger's identity in the newspaper without his or her permission. I added the word reasonable above because I can conceive of such an instance. If a pseudonymous blogger threatened to shoot up a school on his blog and I knew his name, I would tell police. But aside from criminal activity, I can't.

P.S. Chewie is definitely doing some outstanding citizen journalism these days.

Dan Gillmor points to an L.A. Times column about changes to the California newspaper's editorial pages. I've referred it to Mr. Thinking Out Loud, who, as he notes, is not me. (Thankfully, Allen doesn't own the title "Thinking Out Loud" so we're in no risk that he'll sue for big bucks and bolt for the islands.)

The Lexster and I have had discussions about the wikitorial idea for news stories. It is an interesting idea that might engage citizens who are at news events to write in their perspectives and expand the community debate. On the other hand, it could produce results that are just too weird to ignore. In any case, it's an interesting experiment that we'll watch. We have too many things hanging fire now to jump in.

Steve Outing, senior editor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and a columnist for Editor & Publisher, pulls together an outstanding overview of citizen journalism. Citizen journalism isn't one simple concept that can be applied universally by all news organizations. It's much more complex, with many potential variations.

He does an excellent job explaining the possibilities and perils as journalists and newspapers explore new ways to practice their craft. And the perils he mentions are precisely on point. (His article mentions the News & Record's online efforts and Greensboro101.com.) I always learn something when I read Outing. We're doing some of his 11 layers. Want us to do others? Let me know.

In the old days, say, pre-2000, front-page news decisions were simple. If they were in place today, you'd start with an Iraq story, add in Michael Jackson, some Washington politics and finish off with a couple local stories. Every paper did pretty much the same thing, which is why every paper looked and read pretty much the same. Many papers still use the same formula.

Then there's today's front page.

Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson. What is this, Rolling Stone?

The first decision in our newsroom yesterday afternoon was how to play Jackson's acquittal. Big, as many papers did? It certainly is a story that everyone is talking about, and there wasn't much else going on in the nation. (Not that anyone would know about it given that, as Jeff Jarvis notes, 2,200 journalists awaited Jackson verdict, 2,199 of whom could have been out getting different, better stories for their readers/viewers.)

There was sentiment in our newsroom that the trial should be played large, but it didn't fall in our favor in the news cycle. The verdict was announced live on television, led many of the newscasts at 6 and 11 and was dissected ad nauseam on cable news shows. What could we bring new to the story when the paper hits the streets 12 hours later? Plus, while it was a story people were talking about, it certainly wasn't important or have much impact on the lives of our readers. (Although there was great headline fodder, including "Moonwalk" and "Beat it.")

You have to admire the gutsiness of Michael Kinsley and the L.A. Times with its editorial experimentation. Reviews are in after Day 1, and they ain't that great, but, heck, it's just Day 1.

I don't know if what they're doing at the Times is right. I doubt I would want this every day. But at least they are doing things to shake up the status quo and be provocative. As we're learning, using the new technology tools in a change-resistant business can lead to unexpected results, some good, some bad. But if newspapers are to survive the revolution going on around them, they need to experiment, learn, adapt and lead.

Of course, I may be biased because it was the Times that christened Greensboro "Blogsboro."

And I should add: Allen Johnson is running on the same playground: Meanwhile, more major changes are in the offing. The editorial staff is considering a variety of new features and approaches to make the opinion pages livelier, more topical and more incisive. We'll seek your input as we plan a major redesign of the section for the fall.

"Greensboro, N.C. -- It's been more than two centuries since this town last saw a revolution. In the last one, after tangling here with local militia commanded by Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene -- who became the city's namesake -- the dubiously victorious Redcoats limped away only to surrender seven months later in Yorktown, Va.

"Many believe that the state's third-largest city is once again ground for a revolution, albeit bloodless and virtually invisible, but still one of national consequence. If ultimately successful -- and revolutions have been known to fail -- the city might instead become Blogsboro."

That is the beginning of an article the Los Angeles Times published last month about Greensboro's burgeoning blogging community.

Gate City, make way for Blogsboro. (Not you, Gate.)

While the name remains clunky to my ear, it is gaining currency. On Saturday, a Google search for "Blogsboro" turned up 595 references that also mentioned Greensboro, an increase of 71 links since last Monday when I first searched.

Imagine stepping into Great Harvest Bread where they give you a free slice of bread to sample. You get your free slice and complain that you don't like the taste, but you buy a loaf anyway. Then imagine going in the next day, sampling the bread, complaining about the taste and buying another loaf. Then imagine going in a third time, sampling the bread and announcing that you'll never buy any bread there again. Fair enough. You don't like the bread so why buy it?

But there you are the next day, sampling the bread, pronouncing it bad and leaving the store without buying. The same thing the next day and the next. What should the bread store do?

There is an interesting discussion going on at the letters about people who have canceled their newspaper subscriptions in protest of something we've done, but still read the paper online. For free. Are they guilty of hypocrisy, as one commenter says, or are they simply gaming the system or both?

Feel free to answer that question. I won't. As an editor, my primary interest is reaching readers; whether they've paid is a lesser concern. (Which is good because I don't have to ponder the philosophical questions: "If they aren't buying anything, are they customers? And if they aren't customers, do I have to listen to their complaints?") Yet, the business model of newspapers is based on revenue generated from circulation and advertising. That pays my salary and the salaries of all the people who generate the content we publish online.

Putting newspaper stories online for free concerns the business people in our company, as it does in most newspaper companies. "Why would anyone buy the cow when we give them the milk for free?" they ask. We make money on our online site, but not nearly enough to support the reporting staff. And that's one of the reasons that all of our content is not posted online.

This isn't the beginning of an effort to charge for access to the Web site. We've reinforced the habit of providing the news online for free, and I don't believe there's any going back. But as we experiment with the content online, we're going to experiment with business models online, with forms of registration and advertising.

People have asked me why we publish letters from writers who freely acknowledge that they don't buy the paper. "I guess they get what they pay for," one woman said to me. And that brings us back to that philosophical question I posited above. To a journalist, readers are customers and need to be heard, payment or not.

A few weeks ago we asked readers to tell us what the loved about living in the Triad.

More than 150 people responded, which we think is pretty decent. A good writer will tackle the subject in our Life section on July 3. But here's a sneak peek at a few results leaked to me by a source close to the survey tabulation.

* People love the outdoors, the city's parks, the weather, the seasons and the area's proximity to the coast and mountains. While we're at it, they like canoeing, hiking, walking and cycling.
* They love the friendly people, the ability to get there from here, and the small-town appeal (except, presumably, those people who say there's nothing to do around here.)
* They love the new stadium and the vibrancy of downtown.
* They love the diverse population and culture.

Nothing especially shocking, but for us, sometimes it's worth taking a breath and considering the value of a place. Greensboro rates pretty high.

Some readers objected to the main photograph on our Life front this past Sunday. The photo was one of three on the page, and they accompanied short stories about fathers and their children. (It was Father's Day, after all.)

Here are two comments about it:

"WOW! How impressive that a dad and his daughter can sit and discuss less filling/better tasting beer. C'mon -- If you are going to do a tribute on dads, make your photos ones that show the wisdom and love of a parent. I have seen firsthand the disaster that has come from alcohol on the family structure and how it many times not only destroys the one participating, but destroys innocent bystanders. The next time you do a tribute on dad, moms or the family, please consider your viewers and use pictures that really represent what a family is supposed to be like. The Causey family picture was GREAT."

"Who had the final approval for the main picture contained in the Father's Day article? A dad and his daughter looking at their beer bottles? How is that a good influence? This is just one more reason I don't subscribe to the paper."

Simonne and Simon Ritchy are pictured. She runs M'Coul's Public House. He is her landlord. The photo is relevant to the story and to their relationship. Seems as if they have a pretty healthy family connection.

That's why we ran it.

Update: The person who designed the page, Penny Wofford, tells me that the Ritchys are actually looking at root beer bottles. Because the photos didn't have captions, that fact was missed, and our minds fill in the presumed details.

For those of you interested in public perceptions of the news business, here's a survey that is chock-full of information that, unlike some polls, just feels right. Conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, it takes a look at newspapers, local TV news, network news, cable news and Internet news, including blogs. It reviews political polarization, anonymous sources and media bias.

There's even some good news for newspapers in it, which is a rarity in these sorts of samplings.

Excerpts:

This is not the first time a Pew Research Center survey has shown the public to be broadly critical of the press, yet still favorable in its overall view of news organizations themselves. In fact, the public has long been two-minded in its views of the news media ­ faulting the press in a variety of ways, while still valuing the news and appreciating the product of news outlets.

Ain't that the truth?

Those who have a favorable view of newspapers also praise them for their local quality. But people most often cited various aspects to their content ­ sports scores, classifieds, community features, etc. Several respondents specifically cited the editorial pages as something that they liked about their newspaper, and others also cited a perceived lack of political bias in the paper.

The emphasis is mine.

Visitors to newspaper websites are starkly different from print newspaper readers in terms of their demographics, but not their politics. In addition to being much younger than readers of printed newspapers, the online newspaper audience is mostly male, wealthy, and highly educated. Nearly half of web-newspaper readers have college degrees, compared with 27% of those who rely on print, and one-in-five have household incomes of over $100,000.

That does suggest that we could do some online audience-building, doesn't it?

While there are deep differences about the press's power and performance, most Americans agree that news organizations, when deciding what stories to report, care more about attracting the biggest audience rather than about keeping the public informed.

Who'd thought that the county commissioners' pay raise, a piece on ministers' wives, a tax on movie tickets and the Triad's charitable giving would be such audience builders? And we thought they were public service articles.

For the second time in four years, the News & Record has been selected by Editor & Publisher as one of the "10 That Do It Right." Says the newspaper trade magazine's editor, Greg Mitchell: We are not honoring the "10 Best" newspapers, but 10 papers that can serve as a model for others in one (or several) important areas: Editorial. Community awareness. Marketing. Tech. Attractive design. Online innovations. Diversity in coverage and in hiring. Unfortunately the article is behind a subscription wall right now.

The magazine thought that our online Town Square initiative rates notice. I do, too. The best thing about it is that virtually everyone in the newsroom and the interactive department has contributed to its development. (And, of course, we'd be nowhere without the suggestions and comments of y'all.)

We're in there with the Chicago Sun-Times, the Star-Ledger of Newark, Columbia Missourian, Asbury Park Press, Centre Daily Times of State College, Pa., Willamette Week in Portland, Your Mom of Davenport, Iowa., Noblesville, Ind., Daily Times, and Reflejos of Chicago.

Update: Here's E&P's online story about the feature.

Hence the imperative for the newspaper industry: engage young adults on the Web.

That's the advice of Rich Gordon, an associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Gordon compares the newspaper industry's reaction to the Internet with the electronics industry's reaction to the transistor radio in the 1950s.

The transistor radio's portability also drove its popularity among a generation of young people who came of age in the 1960s. Foreshadowing today's earbud-wearing iPod users, teenagers and young adults in the 1950s and 1960s were able to take their music with them wherever they went.

Of course, they were wrong.

It's a powerful essay that confirms everything I've read and observed in my own house.

His conclusion: Rather than capitalize on the technology to serve a new consumer market, traditionally successful companies seek first to use it to enhance their services to their traditional customers.

Newspapers that take disruptive technologies seriously should, instead, be creating new interactive products geared to young people. And web sites are only part of the picture.

We've been experimenting with podcasts and mobility. Looks like we need to ratchet it up, at the same time we learn how to more actively engage with younger readers in the civic debate.

For 25 years, we've conducted a Minority Journalism Workshop to introduce high school students to newspaper journalism. Classes have varied in number and interest over the years, but the past several years, the students have come on strong.

In the session last week, the students interviewed radio show hosts, participated in a mock news conference with the federal security director of the Transportation Safety Administration at the airport, reviewed movies and books, shot photographs and illustrated an editorial cartoon.

One of our primary motivations is to seed some journalism aspirations in the teenagers, who, this year, were all African American. We hope they will graduate from college and seek work in the newspaper business, preferably here.

Chris Lea came to his first workshop in 2003. He came back in 2004. As a result, he wrote this: A classmate and I started a newspaper at my high school during our senior year. We did our best to make it a success and it was. We released four editions that year. That may not seem like much, but it was great considering our school never funded this and only four editions of a school newspaer were released in the five years prior to that.

It was great all right. Now a student at UNCG, Chris works part time in our sports department and is our lead reporter for the Carolina Dynamo. He's benefitted from the program; so have we.

They students also produced a 12-page tabloid. Here is a PDF. Take a look. It's very good.

Special thanks to staffers Tina Firesheets, Jennifer Fernandez, Herb Everett and Emily Harris for leading the group.

We billed the story about Wal-Mart buying land in East Greensboro despite the denial of city incentives as an exclusive this morning.

We designate stories as exclusive because we want readers to know that the story originates with this newspaper. Given the frequency with which some electronic media read our newspaper on the air it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate.

Ed Cone insightfully notes a new wrinkle in the exclusive discussion this morning.

This is it: Yesterday, staff writer Matt Williams called City Councilman Tom Phillips for a comment on the Wal-Mart purchase. After hearing about it from Williams -- and giving him a comment, thank you, Tom -- Phillips, a blogger, posts the news at 11:12 p.m. It's really just a tease to this morning's paper, but the news is still there.

As Ed says, "...when the sources have weblogs, exclusivity gets harder to define."

Me, given the way that Tom feels about us sometimes, I'm glad he took Matt at his word and felt confident enough to post the information we gave him.

And at least this exclusive doesn't involve the scary ingredients in cosmetics, as one TV station has been trumpeting as an undercover report.

Meredith Barkley, a reporter who retired last December to do mission work in Haiti, is back in Greensboro. It's not because he especially wants to be here; the civil unrest in Haiti forced the Haiti Fund to pull its missionaries out.

He looked great and said he'd lost 10 pounds thanks to a diet of beans and rice, and a regimen of hiking everywhere. He's not sure when he'll be able to return to Haiti, but he's eager to go back. The poverty is heart-breaking, he said, and the need is great.

As for his weeks in-country, he filed some updates on the Westminster Presbyterian Church blog.