News-Record.com

John,

I commend your stand, but it does cause me some wonder.

Perhaps you will recall that a few years ago you and Greensboro Library Director Sandy Neerman censored a chapter I had written for a round-robin novella by area writers that was to be published in the News & Record.

Indeed, you excised the entire chapter. But you had no qualms about appropriating the character and mystery-solving premise I had created and inserting them into the work of another writer without permission or acknowledgment.

Your readers might like to know when and how you finally came to realize that it is wrong to steal another’s work for your own purposes. Did you have a born-again experience?

Before you begin demanding accountability for “inventive borrowing” from others, shouldn’t you admit and apologize for your own identical sins? If you choose to do so, in the spirit of the season I stand willing to forgive.

Glad to have you back, Jerry. I don't believe this example and using copyrighted material are quite the same thing. There's been no born again experience, at least on my part.

I suppose we have different memories about what happened way back then. You were invited to write a chapter in a serial story. I chose not to publish your chapter, which is normally the decision of an editor. You can call it censorship if you like. That would simply mean that publishing houses all over the world employ an awful lot of "censors."

I don't recall inserting any character into the next chapter. I do recall that the effect of removing your chapter scarcely changed the storyline that took place in subsequent chapters, chapters that had been written before I even got the serial. Stealing your work? Hardly. I seem to remember that we paid you. But it's been several years and I don't have the manuscript in front of me so I could be wrong. I do remember that you found a publisher for the chapter in any case.

As usual, John, when confronted with facts, you simply deny reality and fall back on convenient memory. Not a good trait for a newspaper editor.

You were not the editor of that novella, “The Perpetual Motionist.” Fred Chappell was. He not only found the chapter I wrote acceptable but laudatory. You and Sandy Neerman excised it for personal and political reasons. That is censorship by definition, not editorial judgment.

I created a character named Seymour Albright, a reporter for the fictional newspaper The Blather and Advocate, along with another character named Rob Inskeep, an assistant district attorney. They became crucial to the story. You dropped my chapter, but you appropriated these characters, their attributes and the premise in which I involved them without permission or acknowledgement. They were my creation and intellectual property and remain so.

The N&R did send me a check. I returned it to Debbie Hayes, the N&R’s coordinator for the project well before the novella was published. A person is paid for something only if he accepts and cashes the check. Even if I had cashed it, using my characters and premise still would have been dishonest without acknowledgment. I did not copyright my chapter, but as you know there is an assumed copyright on any original written work. Stealing is stealing, John, whether there is an actual copyright or not.

Here is a piece I wrote in response to N&R op-ed column by Sandy Neerman that appeared about eight months after the novella. It might help readers understand what I mean about denial of reality. It was published in the Rhino Times in 2001.

Now and then I come upon a piece of writing so rank with audacity and hypocrisy that I find myself in as much awe and disbelief as I might if the Publishers Clearing House crew showed up at my door on Super Bowl Sunday with a $10,000,000 check. Such was the case with the essay about free expression in the January 21 issue of the News & Record by Sandy Neerman, director of the Greensboro Public Library.
If not for the First Amendment, which is the foundation of all libraries, Neerman wrote, we might never have been able to read Cinderella, or Little Red Riding Hood. I was beginning to feel very proud and grateful as I read this, even though I usually just skim through Little Red Riding Hood anymore.
But this was no sunny skies piece about the glories of free speech. Heavens no! Dark clouds were hovering on the horizon.
"...The threat of censorship is as real today as it has ever been," Neerman warned. Now censorship takes a "more subtle, insidious form," she went on, coming in the guise of protecting childhood innocence, common decency, law and order, national security, the "one true faith" or whatever other high cause.
The works that would-be censors often seek to ban, Neerman noted, are those that "encourage thoughtful dialogue...conflict with commonly held ideas...offend sensibilities...communicate in unexpected ways."
My, my, my, I hardly could have said it better myself. And what a better informed world it would be if only Neerman practiced what she preaches....
But that is not the case, alas. I offer as evidence the mysterious missing chapter of The Perpetual Motionist, the round-robin mystery novel by Greensboro area writers that appeared in installments in the News & Record last summer. This was a joint project of the library and the News & Record.
Most people who read this serial novel all the way through--and I have heard that there may be some--probably thought that they were reading the whole thing. But I can assure them they were not. Neerman's essay compels me to reveal that Chapter Nine as published was not the original Chapter Nine. The original was killed as dead as the poor victim in Chapter One with his O. Henry manuscript. The reason was that it had the temerity to do precisely some of the things Neerman mentioned above.
It was censored, in other words. And when it comes to the villains in this tale--Boo! Hiss!--count in Sandy Neerman.
I can speak with authority on this since I happened to write the original Chapter Nine. Indulge me, if you will, while I offer my own experience with Sandy Neerman, the Greensboro Public Library, the News & Record, and free expression.
The library asked me to participate in this project and I happily accepted. I love libraries and do for them what I can. My chapter was a satire of a fictional modern corporate newspaper, the Blather & Advocate, that just happened to be situated in Greensboro because that's where the story was set.
Okay, sure, I admit that I had a high ol' time writing it, taking jabs at the foibles of an imaginary newspaper with some uncanny similarities to the News & Record, my former employer. Rarely have I ever amused myself so thoroughly.
I suppose that upon reading this dubious work of art, a reasonable person might think that I deliberately devised it as a test of the News & Record's commitment to the First Amendment.
Not so. I knew from experience that the News & Record's view of the First Amendment is a very narrow and literal one: that only Congress is prohibited from abridging free speech. Everybody else is free to censor at will, something the News & Record does with great vigor and regularity, although, of course, it calls it "editorial judgment."
I knew that my chapter would never see print because it hit too close to home for News & Record bosses.
But I also knew that round-robin stories take unexpected turns. Some characters disappear, others step in and take control. No writer involved knows what might happen. Mayhem could ensue. I created a character that I thought to be capable of helping along the story, such as it was--an aging reporter. Then I sat back to see what happened.
After a long interval, I got a call from John Robinson, the executive editor of the News & Record. John is a very nice guy, and I like him, but since he never calls to check on my well being, I assumed this might have something to do with my chapter. It did. He had problems with it.
Oh? I said.
He could not publish the chapter as written, he told me in a very business-like manner.
I guess nobody picked up on my character, huh? I said.
Actually, he reluctantly acknowledged, somebody had. Indeed, it turned out, my character had become essential to the resolution of the story. Ah, just as I had hoped. Miracles happen for mischief makers after all. Wise writers, those from Chapter 10 on up. I made a note to commend them on their keen judgment and appreciation of twisted humor when next I encountered them.
So John had a dilemma. How about that?
He got right to the point. What he wanted to do was fix the chapter so it could be used.
What would fixing it entail? I inquired, not without an edge of suspicion.
Taking out everything about the newspaper, John said forthrightly.
But that would leave only about three short paragraphs, I pointed out, making for a rather truncated chapter. It would cause me to appear to be a writer of even more limited imagination than readers already suspect, while making me seem to have a far greater gift for brevity than I have been known to exhibit.
John got a little testy when I wouldn't acquiesce.
He guessed he'd just have to kill the whole thing, he said. And the blame, of course, would be all mine. He didn't bother to say goodbye, or have a nice day.
I called Fred Chappell, the poet, novelist and literature professor who had coordinated the project, to let him know about my conversation with John and to tell him that I didn't want the other writers to be denied seeing their work in print because of a problem I created out of my own demented need to make people in authority confront their hypocrisies. He had my permission to do whatever was necessary to my chapter to assure that the project continued, I told him. He said he had no problem with the chapter, thought it should appear as written, had told Robinson that, and it was now in his hands.
I heard no more for quite some time, and then I got word from what I will call well-placed sources that the project was ongoing but without my chapter. The character I had created was simply being appropriated and inserted into another writer's work. I was willing to let it go, make no fuss. I'd had my fun.
But not long afterward a person I will not name called with disturbing information: Sandy Neerman was saying that my chapter was not being used because it was racist.
I was dumbfounded. I had written nothing racist. But I was well aware that we are living in a strange and frightening time, not unlike a period nearly half a century ago when a crazed U.S. Senator destroyed careers, lives, and institutions with another destructive label: communist. That period of sheer lunacy was brought to an end by the courage of a single reporter, Guilford County's Edward R. Murrow at CBS.
Now people are regularly being accused of racism whether they ever had a racist thought or not, for no greater reason than that somebody disagrees with them, or doesn't like their looks, or isn't amused by something they have written. Once somebody is branded a racist, as we have seen all too many times, they can be denigrated, derided, dismissed, even denied free expression, the very ability to publicly defend themselves.
But unlike a half century ago, there seems to be no way out of this madness. It certainly won't come from the news media, because they are major participants in it, regularly digging up the flimsiest of evidence to paint people as racist. It won't come from government either, because major political figures, particularly of the Democratic Party, my party, also indulge regularly in this contemptible practice. So do leaders of numerous other institutions both big and small, some of whom seem to be consumed with their own racial hatreds.
I called Sandy Neerman to find out what was going on and found myself in a conversation so bizarre that I began to wonder if I had fallen into a rabbit hole.
Neerman told me she considered my chapter to be "racially and culturally insensitive"--spell that r-a-c-i-s-t in this age of euphemism--and that she had given it to her multicultural staff to read and they unanimously agreed with her evaluation.
The library had embraced diversity as a primary focus, she informed me. (I guess I had been fooled into thinking that a public library's only focus was the free and open dissemination of information of every kind to all people equally.) My chapter would be offensive to minority groups, Neerman said, and the library simply couldn't be associated with anything of that nature.
But my chapter was satire, I pointed out. It was supposed to be offensive. Satire is an equal-opportunity offender. It offends without regard to race, gender, religion, sexual preference, disability, ethnicity, nationality, political affiliation, appearance, size, strength, wealth and any other condition in which humans might find themselves. What I had written could even be considered offensive to whales and geese, and if I could have thought of a few more creatures to offend I might have included them, too.
She understood that, she said, but some minority people might not.
When I suggested that such an attitude might be considered elitist and condescending (not to mention racially and culturally insensitive) and that some minority people might like to make their own decisions about whether to be offended or not, and might not want to be protected by censorship, Neerman responded that unfortunately not everybody could be as enlightened as I and that if I were being censored, it was by the newspaper, not the library.
But wasn't the library a full partner in this project? Hadn't the library, not the newspaper, asked me to participate? Didn't she have some role in the publishing decision? She acknowledged that she had told John Robinson that the library could not be associated with what I had written and agreed with his decision. That was the library's official position, she said, but still insisted that it was not involved in censorship.
I could only conclude that Neerman must be a graduate of the Clinton School of Orwellian Doublespeak.
I heard no more about the racially offensive nature of my chapter until a few months later, well after the Perpetual Motionist had appeared in the paper to no great swell of public excitement. Then the library held a function at which the writers spoke. I wasn't invited and didn't attend.
A friend who was there told me that novelist Orson Scott Card raised a question about why my chapter hadn't appeared.
There was an awkward silence, my friend told me, until John Robinson rose in the audience and said that he was responsible for eliminating the chapter and had done so for three reasons: that it might offend minorities (whom the News & Record apparently believes are in need of a patriarchal protector, much as in old plantation days, I suppose); that it might offend his staff (maybe the News & Record should post a list of its reporters and editors who consider themselves to be of such delicate sensibilities that they cannot bear subjection to satire so that we all can beware); and finally that my chapter impeded the progress of the plot, as if this story had one, or that it mattered that a story of this type had been slowed or even, more mercifully, stopped dead (that John has developed literary judgment infinitely superior to that of Fred Chappell, whose reputation in such matters is international, no doubt comes as quite a surprise to anyone who has known him for very long). John, incidentally, had not mentioned these reasons to me.
Obviously, most of the people at that event, including many of the writers, couldn't make a judgment about what I had written, because the newspaper and the library had not allowed them that privilege. Heaven only knows what might be festering in their imaginations about it, or what they might be thinking or saying about me as a result.
Scott Card, I was told, responded that there was nothing racially offensive about my chapter, bless his heart, and John sat down without saying any more.
The trouble with censorship, of course, is that its victims never know that they are being victimized because they never know what they are being denied.
Sandy Neerman is exactly right. Censorship nowadays is indeed insidious and almost always done in pursuit of a good cause. Protecting minorities from viewpoints that might conflict with commonly held ideas, or that might offend sensibilities, to use Neerman's words, provides a perfect example.
After my experience with Neerman, I can't help but wonder what tests of diversity and multiculturalism are being applied to new materials that may or may not be added to the library's collections as a consequence, or to materials that may or may not be allowed to remain because of them.
That's the kind of thing that newspapers should be looking into, of course, because the public has a vital interest in knowing whether that's happening, but don't count on the library's partner in crime, the News & Record, to broach so sensitive a possibility. After all, it could offend somebody.

Here is the excised chapter for the convenience of any readers who might want to see why it was censored or compare it to the published novella to see how the characters were appropriated.

The message light on his telephone was blinking when Seymour Albright finally got to his desk, still shaking his head in wonder and disbelief at what he'd just witnessed.

Wednesday mornings were always other-worldly at the Blather and Advocate, Greensboro's daily newspaper, otherwise known to readers as The Daily Sedative, but this one had been even weirder than usual.

Prayer meeting, reporters called the obligatory weekly gathering. It was hard to describe to anybody who had not experienced it--a sort of combination high school pep rally, psycho-babble religious service, and Red Guard brainwashing ritual.

These excruciating sessions had been instituted nearly a decade earlier when the huge media conglomerate that owned the newspaper adopted a corporate religion called Perpetual Betterment.

Nobody knew what Perpetual Betterment meant, of course. It could mean anything--that was the point. But employees quickly learned that like most religions this one had one inviolate rule: it could not be questioned. Reporters who groused that the very role of a newspaper was to question were quickly summoned to private counseling sessions and warned that if such heresy continued they would question themselves right off the Blather & Advocate payroll.

It came as no surprise to employees that Perpetual Betterment, or PB, as it was known for short, was created by consultants. Indeed, the coming of PB had marked the beginning of an unending invasion of consultants dictating the newspaper's ever-changing and, in the eyes of most of the reporting staff, increasingly-insane policies.

The PB consultants were the most distracting. Relentlessly bouncy, fanatically cheery and enthusiastic, they were always prowling the newsroom looking for lapses in team spirit and signs of discontent. They literally were living smiley faces--round, empty heads with perpetual silly grins. The reporters even called them Smileys, although not to their faces, of course, or within earshot of editors or management types.

As insufferable as the Smileys were, the time management consultants were the most despised. They were as silent and grim-faced as morticians, and they were always lurking over reporters' shoulders, timers in hand, recording data in hand-held computers. Seymour even discovered one of these despicable characters timing his restroom visit one morning. "Little stove up today," he muttered apologetically to him through the stall door. "Wouldn't have any prunes on you, would you?"

The time management experts knew absolutely nothing about journalism, but that hadn't kept them from devising elaborate charts determining to the minute how much time should be allotted to the reporting and writing of every imaginable type of newspaper story. Reporters who went over the limit were required to produce detailed reports explaining why. Readers, unapprised of this, never quite understood why stories in the paper seemed to be getting shorter and shorter with less and less meaningful information.

Frightening though the time management types were, they weren't nearly as intimidating as the diversity consultants. These bruisers wore Armani suits and blue sunglasses and bore an uncanny resemblance to the bodyguards who always trailed along with boxer Mike Tyson and promoter Don King in TV shots. They arrived once a month in the back of a chauffeured limousine, spent 30 minutes haranguing the "majority" staff with racial epithets, then took their fees in cash, which they packed into a black satchel. Not even the most questioning of reporters had the temerity to challenge these guys.

It was the diversity consultants who had mandated that every story appearing in the paper had to contain at least one quote from a "minority" person. Whether or not the minority person quoted had anything to do with the story or knew anything about the subject was of no concern.

One brave reporter (not Seymour) finally found nerve enough to risk a question.

"We don't identify people by race in the paper," he said, his voice quaking. "Does this mean we'll be doing that from now on?"

"Absolutely not."

"Well, how will readers know we're quoting a minority?"

"Use subtlety, you stupid honky &%$#@*^#!" snapped the consultant.

Fortunately for the reporters, most of them knew Skip Alston, the outspoken county commissioner and NAACP president, a recognizable minority who was always available and willing to be quoted on anything. This familiarity soon resulted in Alston being quoted 47 times in 33 different stories in a single edition of the paper--and in 18 of them he managed to work in a plug for his hot dog stand. Even the diversity consultants agreed that this was a bit excessive, and a memo went out restricting any single minority person from being quoted in more than 12 stories daily.

Ironically, the minority quote mandate proved to be a boon for Seymour, winning him the only honors he had received at the paper in recent years.

One day Seymour received a call that he had visitors in the lobby. He went downstairs to find his old friend Billy Ray Chavis. Chavis was grinning from ear to ear and holding a 12-pound smoked salmon wrapped in butcher paper under one arm. He was accompanied by a short, smiling, parka-clad man with eyes permanently squinted, as if he were perpetually gazing over a sunbathed snowfield.

Chavis was a Native American from the Lumbee tribe, a former state representative from Guilford County who insisted on being called an Indian and wrote angry letters to the paper every time it referred to him as a Native American. He was angling for a high level job at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington at the time. This was while George Bush was president. He eventually got the job but held it only briefly, losing it as soon as the Clinton administration took office. He had failed to calculate that the Democratic Party's concern for minorities extended only to those who were not Republican.

"I told you you couldn't get away with being a Republican Indian," Seymour told him.

"Well," he said, "it was worth a try."

Chavis had gone on to become a consultant to Native American tribes, whom he still called Indians, helping to arrange several lucrative casino deals, allowing him to prosper almost as much as if he had remained in government and politics. He had just returned from a Pow-Wow in San Francisco.

"Who's your friend?" Seymour asked.

"Oh, this is Saunooke," Chavis said. "He claims he's an Indian but I think he's really an Eskimo. I met him in a bar at Fisherman's Wharf, and he followed me home. He don't say much, but he's good company. Sucker knows his salmon, I can tell you that. You want a bite?"

Seymour recognized opportunity when it squinted at him. His focus editor had just assigned him to produce a story about the availability of multi-cultural foods in Greensboro. Later, amidst his descriptions of pickled hyena feet, fresh piranha fillets, and dried Cambodian parrot tongues to be found in local markets, he worked in a lament from Saunooke about the total deficiency of whale blubber in the Triad.

This set off an unprecedented race between the Fresh Market and the Harris-Teeter on Friendly Road to be the first to fill that gap in upscale grocery marketing. Both took out ads in the paper promising Native American processed blubber flown in fresh daily from icy Alaskan waters.

Seymour had been taken by surprise when the publisher himself showed up at the next prayer meeting to honor him.

"That's just the kind of reporting we want to see more of," the publisher proclaimed, "the kind that produces revenue."

One of the Smileys placed a crown of plastic laurel on Seymour's head and he stood with a vacant smile on his face as the other reporters joined hands and danced around him, singing the company praise song.

To this day, Seymour remained the only reporter ever to get a minority quote from a suspected Eskimo into the paper.

Seymour had gotten through that embarrassing episode as he did all the PB sessions--with help from the self-hypnosis course he had taken in the New Age Studies program at UNC-G. It had been his salvation for years, perhaps the primary thing that kept him from "going postal," as he put it, and by that he didn't mean taking a new job as a mail carrier.

Indeed, Seymour would have taken a new job long before--even as a mail carrier--if that had been a possibility. But he was a 55-year-old reporter without technological skills or aptitude. The only other employment prospect for somebody in that situation was as greeter at Wal-Mart. But the waiting lists for those positions were hopelessly long, Seymour knew. He had checked.

In the beginning Seymour only had to hypnotize himself to get through the Wednesday morning prayer meetings, but now he sometimes spent entire work days in a self-imposed trance, especially on TM Days. TM was short for Team Management, which was another aspect of Perpetual Betterment. This concept had been created to give employees the illusion that they actually had some role in how the company was run. Some employees, however, suspected it really was a ploy to use employees themselves to come up with justification for eliminating their own jobs.

All employees had to spend half a day each week in team meetings, usually wracking their brains to find ways to save the company minute amounts of money.

Seymour once had served on the Paper Clip Reclamation Team, which after a year of struggle had produced the now infamous Mr. Clip report, written by his current clipped-brain focus editor, the team leader, a woman clearly destined for higher management. She personified the paper clip in the report, and in breathless prose described how heartbroken Mr. Clip was when he was tossed away after only a single use, or was linked together in useless chains, or straightened to serve as toothpick or fingernail cleaner, and how joyous he was when conscientious employees took care to remove him from paper bundles and put him into the proper slots in their desk drawers to be used again and again, just as Mr. Clip was meant to serve. For this, she not only was lauded at one of the Wednesday PB sessions, she also received a bonus in an amount that would have supplied the company with paper clips for years.

For the past two years, Seymour had been frustratingly serving on the Excess Newsprint Modification Team, which some reporters snidely referred to as the Sandpaper Imposition Team. This team had been charged with finding some way to recycle the leftover paper on newsprint reels into "tissue" for company restrooms. But after endless hours of study and debate, they still hadn't been able to figure out how to efficiently transfer the paper onto those tiny dispenser rollers.

Only in recent days had Seymour learned that he was being assigned to the newly formed Multi-cultural Insertion Team. He couldn't imagine what those duties might entail. It sounded like some ideological surgical unit, going around implanting multi-culturalism into unsuspecting people. "OK team, we've got him down. Hold him! All together now. Lift! Heave! Push! Push Hard!"

Nobody dared question their TM assignments. That was because of what ensued when the Future Prospects Team turned in a report suggesting that the company might be better served if reporters and editors actually spent their time reporting and editing instead of frittering it away in consultant-imposed team meetings and pep rallies. For this the team leader was demoted to the paid obituaries desk and all six team members were sentenced to attend six weeks of "management appreciation" classes. All were required to wear dunce hats at the Wednesday morning PB sessions during the rehabilitation period.

Employees never knew what they might have to endure at the weekly PB events. Sometimes they had to suffer a high-wattage motivational speaker with a brain-cell switch permanently set on dim. Other times they had to chant corporate mantras, channel the spirits of great corporate leaders back from corporate nirvana, sing corporate hymns, shout corporate cheers, or twist themselves into corporate yoga positions.

But at least they didn't have to do that balloon thing anymore. That had been dropped after bringing the paper a considerable fine and even more embarrassment.

In the early days, employees had to sit through PB sessions holding clusters of helium-filled balloons bearing the name and logo of The Blather & Advocate. At the end of each session, the outside door would swing open, and the Smileys would bounce happily into the parking lot in their Blather & Advocate cheerleader outfits, shaking pompons and shouting through megaphones. They were followed by their stumbling, reluctant charges feigning enthusiasm and clutching desperately to their gaily bouncing balloons. Once in the parking lot the group released the balloon clusters in unison with a joyous corporate shout.

This was supposed to represent the newspaper's soaring aspirations, as well as to inspire the employees to ever higher goals and efforts.

The problem arose when a frantic matron in Irving Park called 911 to report that somebody had strewn her spacious lawn with dead geese wearing green condoms, another first for the 911 record log.

"How do you know they're condoms?" the dispatcher asked.

"Young lady, I was not born yesterday," the matron responded haughtily.

"Somebody has covered her lawn with WHAT?" radioed the officer who was assigned to check out the call.

"Dead geese wearing green condoms," the dispatcher repeated without so much as a snicker.

"So much for safe sex," deadpanned the officer. "Did she say what made her check?"

Investigators found that the geese weren't wearing green condoms after all. Their beaks and heads were plastered instead with the remains of green Blather & Advocate balloons, which had blinded and smothered them, sending them crashing into the green, green grass of Irving Park.

After considerable questioning of reluctant newspaper executives, detectives finally learned about the weekly balloon release and theorized that a flock of innocent geese had happened along just as the balloons were let go and plowed right through the exultant swarm to their deaths. No criminal charges were filed, but the Irving Park matron, a major contributor to Ducks Unlimited and the SPCA, notified federal environmental authorities who levied a stiff fine and issued a stern warning about Perpetual Betterment overexuberance in the great outdoors.

Seymour had no idea what to expect when he arrived at the rally room on this particular Wednesday morning. He was prepared for anything. It turned out to be a party of sorts. A festive cake topped with green icing and the words "Seize Success!" adorned a table next to a bowl of green punch. There were little paper cups of green jellybeans, green party hats and paper whistles bearing the newspaper logo. The publisher, J. Fulton Teach, was even there, but he usually turned up whenever cake and punch were served.

Seymour slipped into his hypnotic safety zone, donned his party hat, accepted his cake and jelly beans, and sat with his fellow reporters to see what was up.

Teach had come to announce yet another total remake of the newspaper, yet another major initiative to spread its influence through the Piedmont and stem its persistently swan-diving circulation. This had to be at least the fifteenth total remake and major new expansion initiative Seymour had suffered through in his 25 years at the paper, but this one was to be launched in a little different manner.

After completing his statement, the publisher paused, walked to a nearby table, opened a big cardboard box, removed several items, lowered his head and began changing his appearance, like a comedian about to go into an impression.

The reporters looked from one to another, wondering what was next.

When Teach whirled back to face his audience, a red bandanna was tied around his head, he was wearing a fake black braided beard with a maniacal grin, a dagger in his mouth, and he held a glinting broadsword high above his head. Suddenly, he was leaping all about the room, waving the sword menacingly, shouting "Ahoy, mateys!" and "Raise the mizzen!" and "Man the gunnels! and "Loose the first volley!" although it all was a little garbled and hard to understand because the dagger in his teeth kept thwarting his lips and tongue.

This performance even startled Seymour out of his trance. Reporters were exchanging furtive glances, not knowing whether to laugh or to run for their lives

Everybody knew that Teach claimed to be a descendant of Edward Teach, a.k.a. Blackbeard the pirate, and that he was so obsessed with his supposed buccaneer heritage that the only major reporting project the newspaper had undertaken during his five-year reign as publisher had been a 12-part series on Blackbeard's life and travels--which still could be read on the paper's internet site, complete with treasure maps and animated drawings--but they hadn't expected him to become Blackbeard.

When Teach stopped his leaping and flailing, he removed the dagger from his mouth and threw his head back in a howling, evil laugh. Then he stuck the point of his sword into the floor, leaned forward on the handle, sweat pouring profusely, and looked earnestly from face to face. Surely a move he'd picked up in his classes at the Center for Creative Leadership.

"Now what am I trying to say here....? he asked somberly.

That you're even loonier than any of us ever imagined? Seymour thought, but did not speak.

"What I'm saying is that this newspaper is just like Blackbeard's old ship Queen Ann's Lace...uh...Revenge. If she goes down, we all go with her. But the treasure is out there, Mateys, ours to seize. We've just got to have the guile, and the gumption, and the ingenuity of Blackbeard (not to mention the ruthlessness, Seymour thought) and it's ours. Need I say anything more?"

With that, the Smileys broke into loud applause and bravos, and the rest of the staff joined in.

"An extra cup of grog for all hands!" Teach shouted, smiling broadly and lifting his sword high.

"Have you ever seen anything like that in your life?" another reporter whispered to Seymour as they made their way back to the newsroom.

"Wonder if he knows that Blackbeard ended up with his head on a stick?" Seymour said.

Seymour found twelve messages on his answering machine when he got to his desk. The third was from Rob Inskeep in the Guilford County DA's office.

"Sy, give me a call. I've got a good one for you."

Inskeep, an assistant prosecutor for more than 20 years, was an old drinking buddy. Utterly without political ambition, he was nonetheless a keen and witty observer of the local political scene. He had been Seymour's source for many good stories, including several award winners, back when the paper still bothered with that sort of thing.

"Rob, sorry it took so long to get back to you, but it's been a weird morning here," Seymour said when he finally got his old friend on the phone. "What's up?"

"You think things are weird over there?" Inskeep said. "Let me tell you weird. I take it you haven't heard about the murder in the library over at UNC-G."

"There's been a murder in the library at UNC-G? When?"

"Two days ago."

"Why haven't we had it in the paper?"

"You tell me."

"This damn worthless newspaper!" Seymour muttered with utter disgust, slamming his fist onto the desktop. His outburst prompted him to quickly scan the newsroom for management types, Smileys, or other consultants who might have overheard him and taken note.

"Who's the victim?" he asked after regaining control.

"Some old guy whose identity is still uncertain. Supposed to have been killed over an unpublished O. Henry manuscript, a novel, which the killers took with them. And there's something about a perpetual motion machine here in Greensboro. But that's just the beginning. Our star eye-witness, a young librarian, apparently has been kidnapped. And now the primary detective on the case has turned up missing. With all the weird stuff that's going on it wouldn't surprise me if subterranean monsters started popping out of manholes on Elm Street. I'm telling you, man, this one will make a movie."

"It would need to be a book before it became a movie," Seymour said, his head already swimming with the fantastic possibilities. If it panned it out, this story just might be the one he'd been long awaiting, his bestseller, his escape from all this corporate insanity, his ticket out of this miserable excuse for a newspaper.

"That's what I mean," Inskeep said. "You interested?"

"Am I interested?" Seymour said. "Am I interested? Does a goose wear green condoms?"

"Meet me at Robinson's Restaurant in ten minutes," Inskeep said, "and I'll give you what I've got."

As you've accused me of both lying and stealing and you've shown no inclination for civil discussion without falling back on name-calling and accusation, I'll pass on further discussion with you, Jerry, on this old and tired topic.

I will, however, clarify two things. First, Fred was the editor of the novel, but I'm the editor of the paper and the agreement was clear between Fred and me that I had the last word on publishing. We aren't in the business of letting someone not connected to the newspaper have the last word about publication in the newspaper. I'm sorry that Fred didn't communicate that to you, but I'd expect you to know that anyway.

Second, Sandy did not have any say on whether the newspaper published your chapter or any chapter. That decision was mine only.

Why wasn't Jerry's chapter published?

The serial was a project intended to promote literacy and reading. It had a Halloween theme and most of the writers treated it as great fun. I found Jerry's story to be a mean-spirited attack on the paper and some of its employees. I also thought it stopped the storyline cold because its tone and topic were so different from the preceding chapters.

Gee, Mr. Robinson, that sounds like censorship to me. But what do I know about hi-brow newspaper editing?

“You can do something about it, too, if you want. You just have to be persistent and an annoying thorn in their side“—John Robinson’s advice to bloggers about stopping illegal use of their work by others.

So I take your advice, John, and what happens? You not only falsely accuse me of resorting to name calling (anybody clearly can see that I didn’t call you or anybody else a name anywhere above) but claim that I have no inclination for civil discussion. This is your pretense to avoid having to deal with the facts.

Anybody who is willing to take the time to check the News & Record archives can see that the characters I created in the unpublished chapter above appear throughout the end of the novella, yet there is no mention of my involvement with it anywhere in the paper. You didn’t ask me for permission to use that material, yet you used it anyway. And now you take a self-righteous and hypocritical stance against the TV stations for doing nothing more than what you were perfectly willing to do.

You have indeed provided a lesson for bloggers here. No matter how persistent they are, or how willing they are to make themselves a thorn in the sides of authority, the powers that be, especially at the News & Record, will inevitably flee rather than face reality.

Good job, John

Wait one second here. Could be a semantics thing, but I swear Jerry just said, "John Robinson’s advice to bloggers about stopping illegal use of their work by others."

Did I miss something? Last I knew, Jerry didn't blog.

It seemed like the dropped chapter was a jab at N&R imho. Course what do I know... I'm not an author nor a former journalist.

Jerry, that was interesting. And some parts of the chapter were pretty funny.

But this whole exchange was, um, illuminating. There's a place for everything, and the place for your chapter was one click away from the N&R's site; you could have created a blogspot blog (free) and put it there, then posted a short excerpt here plus a link to the full chapter, rather than lodging the entire steaming mass here in JR's online living room.

It was nice to be able to see it though, to compare your account to JR's and calibrate credibility accordingly. And, whether it was mean-spirited or not, I have to agree with JR that it was certainly intended first and foremost as a jab at the N&R, which was presumably not the aim of the project thus resulted in a chapter that was sorely out of place.

Message from pot to kettle: please consider the impact of your actions and whether the end result is constructive. Please (please!) correct me, with links, if you think I'm wrong, but AFAIK, JR is the most transparent and progressive editor in this country if not galaxy. You want to see what newspaper blogging can look like, see this. See the openness, see the community conversation in the comments.

Then reflect on what you have here in Greensboro and how it compares, and whether you want to help it along or help stomp it out.

p.s. Just for the record, I am not JR's Mary Rosh; I'm just more familiar with the alternatives than most of you.

(having trouble submitting this; groveling apologies if you're reading it for the 5th time)

John, will you make a new post when you get a reply? This one is sinking fast.