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We've added Legacy.com to our online obituaries. It features daily searchable obits, with photos, video and audio.

If you sign up for "obit messenger" and register a keyword, it will notify you by e-mail if that keyword appears in any of more than 200 newspapers.

The most popular feature, I think, is the guest book, where you can write your own remembrances of the deceased. (At this writing, Coretta Scott King's guest book has 2,735 entries.) You can also put up a "moving tribute" with photos, audio and video.

In all, Kathy Lambeth, who is in charge of our online site, says its a better service across the board for our readers, promoting information and interactivity. I agree.

I just watched Bob Schieffer of CBS Evening News wish the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram a Happy 100th Birthday. That's where he got his start as a reporter. Well, dang! I protest. We passed the century mark 15 or so years ago, but I don't recall our television-oriented alums, Tony Snow or David Boul, making a big deal about it.

A couple days ago, Mark Toczak Tosczak of the Biz Journal called to ask about rumors that we had pulled Go Triad out of Winston-Salem and, if true, what that would mean for the name of the A&E tab.

I wasn't helpful. To steal whatever thunder he might have in this week's pub, here's the story. We have not pulled out of Winston. We have reduced the number of free copies we distribute on news racks there. Right now we give away about 1,000 copies, down from 6,000 a year ago.

A few months ago, we focused our circulation efforts and cherry-picked our best locations. We weren't getting a large response from advertisers in Winston and decided we could save some real money by distributing the freebies smarter. Still, thanks primarily to the efforts of editor Jeri Rowe, we are maintaining a vital presence there. Winston events and entertainers have and will continue to feed the news content. We know that many people think nothing of traveling from one city to the other in the Triad to feed their entertainment jones.

Many people who don't like UNC think that the newspaper has a Carolina Blue bias. That's not unusual; I know that readers of the News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer feel the same way about those papers. I can't explain the animosity toward the university in Chapel Hill but it's there. (Maybe because some think it is the state's bastion of liberalism? I dunno.)

I always point out a couple things when I hear the charge:
* In our coverage of the Big Four, we focus on winners and surprises. The team that is successful tends to get more ink. The team that isn't expected to do well, but does, also gets more ink. And when a team is winning and getting that ink, then supporters of the other teams look for scapegoats. That's where we come in.
* No one in the editing ranks with authority over sports attended UNC. I can safely say that light blue blood does not run through my heart or through the veins of the managing editor, the sports editor of the assistant sports editor. We have no alma mater loyalty to any ACC school.

That said the circulation folks swear that newspaper sales go up noticeably when Carolina wins. (We have more experience tracking that in basketball than in football.:)) Their theory: There are more Carolina fans in the Triad than fans of the other schools and they want to read about their team's success. When the Heels aren't having a good season, fans don't want to wallow in defeat and don't buy the paper. We don't see any similar blip when Duke, State or Wake wins.

That information really doesn't affect our coverage. (Circulation folks also say newspaper sales would go up if we featured a bloody crime at the top of A1 every day.)It does, however, correlate with some data we had several years ago: that UNC has more alumni in Guilford County than any other ACC school.

Technology has transformed and, by and large, improved our lives. Cooking is easier with microwaves. Many of us can't imagine life without the information available on the Internet. DVRs change the way people watch television.

But when good technology goes bad, watch out.

For much of last week, our e-mail server was down. We couldn't send or receive messages. If that wasn't bad enough, the people who sent us e-mail weren't aware that their messages had not gone through. They assumed we had received them even though we hadn't.

For a company that is rapidly opening up doors to readers and customers, this had the effect of slamming those same doors in their faces as they walked through.

Lorraine Ahearn, when she's not writing about the Greensboro Police Department, is our local columnist. She routinely writes about people in Greensboro who may not get their voices heard otherwise. Now Lorraine is a featured writer/voice for WFDD's "Real People, Real Stories" series.

From public radio station's description of the series: 88.5 WFDD brings you the thoughts and perspectives of North Carolinians who are in touch with their community and their world. (Frankly, we want that description to fit all of our writers.)

Listen in: Her three-minute piece, which is on Shirley Chisholm, is scheduled for re-airing at 8:30 a.m. Sunday. It is not posted online yet.

Meanwhile, Lorraine did some podcasts of her columns on our site last year. She's on hiatus and will get back to it after her column returns.

Update: Gina Katzmark at WFMY points to last night's on-air interview Greg Kerr did with our sports columnist Ed Hardin. Like him or not, Ed doesn't pull his punches. That's good TV.

Some of you might remember when the News & Record looked like this. We had this design for three or four years in the early 1990s. We moved away from it for a variety of reasons. (It was intensely difficult to do, and parts of it we didn't do well. It may have been too revolutionary for us then, even as it looks quaint now.)

Now the designer, Alan Jacobson, discusses readership and design with Mary Nesbitt of the Readership Institute. (Via Romenesko.) As I've said here many times, we've been using the Institute's research for a couple years. It jibes in many ways with what the bloggers who write about newspapers say, too.

I didn't agree with everything Alan recommended here 15 years ago -- I'm surprised and delighted he began this piece with a mea culpa -- but I think he and Nesbitt are on the money.

gets done" is a business cliche. We measure our performance in the newsroom to reinforce our goals. Here are some of our measures for January.

Number of local stories on the front page -- 110 (73%). I'm pretty happy with this number. We believe that local news is our franchise and that it should dominate our front page. So many variables go into front page news: its freshness, its local relevance, its drama, its competitiveness, its newsiness -- which isn't the same as truthiness -- but local and news and unique are the keys. While I know some readers disagree, we haven't watered down the gravity of the front page by going local.

Number of local centerpieces on the front -- 27 (87%). Because the reader's eye goes first to the dominant image on the page, we want that to be a local image. (Yes, today is an exception; Coretta Scott King was a historic figure and the photo of the four presidents together is powerful.)

Number of corrections -- 23. Ouch. Bad month.

Allen explained the position of the editorial department on the Danish cartoons. I've been asked several times about whether we would run the cartoons on the news pages to illustrate the stories about the riots in Europe.

At this point, we have no plans to publish them. As with many other newspapers, we believe we can cover the story sufficiently without them. I understand the arguments in favor of publishing. On an issue that strikes closer to home, I might well come down on that side. In this case, we know the cartoons are sensational and offensive to many at the same time their local import is faint. My sense is that rather than having a solid reason to publish, we'd be publishing simply because we could.

Spineless? Wait a minute. Let me check. Yep, I'm still sitting upright. We often do not publish content -- words and images -- that we think will grossly offend readers. In the typical paper, you won't read much graphic language or see dead, blood-covered bodies or lewd dress, for instance. In these cases, we believe we can cover the story fully with other images or with words.

We've hired Margaret Wimmer as a page designer on our night copy desk. Margaret comes to us from the Lynchburg News & Advance. A graduate of Point Park College in Pittsburgh, she also worked at the Danville Register & Bee. Welcome her if you run into her. (While she will work deep into the night, I know from the time many of you leave comments that you're night owls, too.)

I applaud the High Point City Council's initiative in seeking more information from the school system about redistricting. I'd bet council members wish they had done the same thing with the High Point ABC board. It's convenient that they were able to skirt the state law's open meeting requirements, dividing the council in half -- no quorum at either meeting -- and failing to give public notice of the meetings. Maybe they learned the wrong lesson from the ABC scandal.

I've been remiss in petitioning you to respond to our survey about our daily e-mail news alert. With so many similar services out there, we want ours to be useful.

Lex has all the details. Take a minute and help us out.

Before Christmas, I was getting calls, letters and e-mail -- at least one a day, sometimes several -- referring to our coverage of the war. We either didn't put enough emphasis on the country's progress or we needed to put a story on the front page whenever an American died or we should focus on the American heroism in Iraq or we should investigate the WMD issue. At least once a week, someone would forward me one of those e-mail letters listing "what you never read in the mainstream media" about the success of the war effort.

Since Christmas, nothing. It didn't gradually slow to a trickle. It has stopped. (The "letters to the editor" on the war continue.)

Have people lost interest? Can't imagine it. Have News & Record readers interested in Iraq given up on us? Wouldn't think so. They haven't on any other issue. Have we so satisfied them that they have no more requests? Uh, OK, sorry. I'm back to the real world now.

For more than a year, we've normally put wire stories about Iraq inside the paper. Because of the time difference, most of what we get for tomorrow's paper is the same story that is on the 6 p.m. news today so its news value is less (Iraq stories with a local connection usually run on the front page.) In fact, across the media recently, Iraq stories seem to be less visible, falling behind the Olympics and the Supreme Court nomination and domestic wiretaps and mine disasters. At this moment at Google News, the first story on Iraq is, is, um, not there. (There is a piece announcing that Elizabeth Vargas is expecting, though.)

What's going on?

Judging by the letters to the editor, many readers are troubled by the handling of the city's investigation into the actions of now-former police chief David Wray. They question the city's motives. They question the city's process. They question the way information has been presented and released.

Many of them support Wray, based on his long history of service to the department and community. They think he's been railroaded.

Unfortunately, trying to make judgments in this case is like trying to determine whether O.J. Simpson is innocent by watching his football highlights. The full story isn't available, and the few people who have it, aren't talking much.

I confess that I'm weary of the debate about publishing the Danish cartoons, but I suspect that some readers are enjoying themselves. In the spirit of civic discussion, coupled with my seeming failure to articulate why we have no plans to publish the cartoons, I offer links to ombudsmen and public editors at other newspapers around the country on the same topic.

Portland. Raleigh. Louisville. Minneapolis. Orlando. Seattle. Boston.

As we go through wave after interminable wave of technology burps, hisses and collapses -- e-mail is still flickering erratically -- I laughed out loud when I read this about "24" in The New Yorker over the weekend.

Serious as "24" is, it's a lot of fun, too; fans love to post body counts and implausibilities and share Jack talk online. There is also one element of high comedy in "24": the computers always work.

And they work faster than anything I've ever seen. CTU needs to promote its IT staff to field agent status.

Talk about a double whammy! Two reporters resigned today, and I can't even get mad about it because they are both pursuing their passions.

Alexis Gines, a general assignment reporter in High Point, is going to teach English at Dudley High School. Alexis interned with us during her summer break at UNC and joined us full time after graduation in 2004. She's been tutoring, likes working with young people -- in my world, she's pretty young herself -- and loves English.

Marta Hummel, a business reporter, is going to be the assistant editorial page editor at the Baltimore Examiner, a Monday-Saturday free tab. Marta also joined us in 2004 from the New York Sun. Marta has had editorial writing in her blood for long before she joined us, and now she'll really get to throw her weight around.

Both have been great contributors to the paper and, particularly in Biz Buzzard Marta Hummel's case, to our online expansion.

it drops unmentionables a foot deep.

Bruce Buchanan, who has covered local education for us for six years -- a job that should earn him honors in the journalism hall of fame -- has resigned. He's going to become a writer with Womble Carlyle, a law firm in Winston. He describes his new job as "writing articles on ongoing cases and profiles on attorneys for the company's Web site, newsletter and brochures."

Don't ask me.

Bruce is a great reporter. He knows his stuff and gets it right. He's also one of our better, more devoted bloggers over at The Chalkboard. I'm friendly with some school board members and school system folks, and they commend Bruce for his ability to sort through the crapola to get to the nut of the issue. We'll miss him.

We're going to redesign GoTriad.com, and if you have thoughts -- and I know you do -- we want to hear them. (I'm not sure that the audience for this blog is the audience of Go Triad, but, what the hey, let's give it a shot.) From now until Friday, March 3, we've got a survey up here. It's short and easy.

Our intent is to make the site easier to use, more interactive and more fun. We want to feature more reader-generated content and to use more multi-media. Jeri Rowe is heading up the news department's side of this redesign so it'll be good.

We've made a couple of improvements on the site. We have added a U.S./World news tab to the home page, elevating the presence of national and international news and making it easier to find.

We have also made strides in fixing one of my biggest complaints about the site: the search function for news. We're ironing out some bugs, but search finally works on www.news-record.com and on the blogs. Right now, it doesn't search by writer byline, but they're working on that. As you find other glitches in it or have other suggestions, please let us know.

So your plan is to go home, watch the Olympics and enjoy the wonders of sports that grab our attention only once every four years. And then what happens? The News & Record's e-mailed news alert ruins it for you. We tell you who won. We got this note from one e-mail subscriber Monday.

I refer to your e-mail everyday, and appreciate its timeliness and the information provided. However, I am very disappointed that I now know that Joey Cheek won the gold medal. I would hope there would be some sort of media courtesy, knowing that it is not televised until this evening. You are obviously not the only media outlet reporting this, but I wish I had known not to look.

It's no secret that Torino is 6 hours ahead of us, if I did my math correctly. That means that what NBC shows on television at night isn't live. They just dramatize it as if it were. The Today Show advises viewers to look away from their televisions when they were going to show results. Should we do the same thing on our e-mail alerts? Or is the purpose of the alert to tell you the headlines of the day, whatever they may be?

The Rhino published two of the Danish political cartoons that have provoked such violence overseas. The only reference to the cartoons is this caption: "These are two of the Danish cartoons that have caused Muslims to riot in Europe, the Middle East and Pakistan. There is so much about them in the news we thought our readers would want to see them for themselves."

Some local Muslim leaders responded by calling for a boycott of the weekly. They've also asked for an apology, which Publisher Willie Hammer says won't be coming. (We've got an article about this coming tomorrow.)

It's a story tailor-made for an alt-weekly; their mission is so different from a daily newspaper. Although if Hammer truly published the cartoons because this is such a huge international story, as he told us, I'd have thought he would have added some commentary about freedom of the press and played them more prominently than page 62.

Coincidentally, I received this e-mail today about the newspaper's headline over the story of Tyler Hansbrough's 40-point performance for UNC last night. The headline read: LORDY, LORDY, IT'S 40.

Why? I know this is a common rhyme, but why do you feel it is appropriate to use as front-page material. I am sure I will not be the only person to ask your paper for a public apology for using The Lord's name in vain. There are many things that bother me about the News & Record, but this is the one area that will cause me to take a stand. Any other religious figure or ethnic/indian reference has come under scrunity for improper use, but it seems that the loose use of God/Lord/Jesus must be tolerated or else we Christians are branded as judgmental. Please be careful in the future to use appropriate captions that don't offend race or religion. Thank you for your consideration.

Guess it goes to show you can't avoid offending people.

My newspaper column

Last week, The Rhinoceros Times printed two of the Danish editorial cartoons that have sparked riots and death across Europe, East Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In response, leaders of the local Muslim community have urged people to boycott the conservative tabloid.

I think I understand the Rhino's decision to publish. However, we, at the News & Record, decided not to print the cartoons. Allen Johnson, who chooses the cartoons for the editorial pages, explains his reasons in his column on page H2.

Apart from the Allen's decision not to use them, we considered publishing them in our news pages to help illustrate what caused such violence. It was carefully considered because, as a rule, we don't readily publish content that we know full well will offend many readers. When we do, there must be a compelling civic or journalistic reason.

We weighed these factors: Does it serve a civic purpose? Is it vital that our readers see the cartoon to understand what’s happening? Is the content so compelling that it overrides the objection that it is offensive to many of our readers?

David House, ombudsman of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, writes today about the angry reaction the paper got for reporting on a local businessman and the hunting skills of the vice president. He concludes by articulating a thought that I've had more and more recently.

But I'm left with a lingering visceral reaction to that strident opposition from readers whose intuitive grasp of news value seems to have been eroded by partisan stupor. Why oppose basic news coverage? Have parts of the public forgotten responsibilities of citizenship such as holding government accountable, not kissing its feet?

So much is viewed through the black-and-white prism of "if-you're-not-with-us-you're-against-us." As we've written about government action and inaction -- the police department investigation, government incentives, the High Point ABC board, the Las Vegas market, for instance -- we often hear that we are blowing the story out of proportion. They don't like the content or tone or angle of the story -- no argument with the basic facts -- so they criticize the story being published at all. You can see it in the letters to the editor and the comments to the letters. It's always been this way, I suppose, but it seems greater now than ever.

The raised decibel level is one reason I appreciate the expansion of more voices -- blogs, vlogs, forums, niche pubs. I know that this is optimistic, but there's a greater chance that people will encounter opinions that challenge their own.

I'm a Rotarian. Have been for eight years. It's a wonderful service organization. Members are supposed to follow The Four-Way Test in their business and professional lives.

Of the things we think, say or do:
* Is it the truth?
* Is it fair to all concerned?
* Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
* Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

So, when I got this e-mail from Jim Kennedy today, I had to come clean:

I applaud the News & Record's decision to NOT publish the Danish cartoons. Your reasoning, as expressed in your column February 19th, was sound. Freedom of the press needs to be tempered, as you state, with taste, tone and civic value. In addition, for me, as a Rotarian,
the decision not to publish also adheres to The Four-Way Test. Thank you.

Yikes!

If I were an editor or publisher of a broadsheet newspaper in any corner of the United States, I'd be paying close attention to a powerful trend affecting the future of newspapers around the world: big papers are converting to smaller formats.

That's the opening paragraph of an essay by Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute.

We currently publish Go Triad and People & Places as tabs. We've talked about the possibility of converting our daily sports section into a tab. Clark succinctly outlines the challenges and potential. What's your preference?

"Reporter" dropped from #4 on the list of Sexiest Jobs in 2005 to somewhere in the vicinity of janitor in 2006.

A number of job titles seem to have lost their sex appeal this year, including reporter, lawyer, teacher, and veterinarian, which all fell out of the Top Ten. The most surprising hot job collapse was that of the job title reporter, which was ranked as the #4 Sexiest Job of 2005 (see last year's list). Explanations for the fact that reporters are no longer sexy include the retirement of as-seen-on-TV reporter Carrie Bradshaw of "Sex and the City". Popular TV character jobs have always been sexy, but apparently not in reruns.

I can see falling behind firefighter and cop and flight attendant, but CEO?

On the other hand, reporter remains on the Most Glamorous list, under the heading, "High Glam, Low Pay." They got the pay right.

Maybe I shouldn't have shaved the mustache.

Several members of our staff went to Chapel Hill this evening to pick up our portion of the 2005 N.C. Press Association annual awards. We won 16 awards this year, much better than last year's 10 and one shy of our record in 2003.

* Staff -- 1st place in Sports Coverage
* Lynn Hey -- 1st in Feature Photography
* Doug Clark -- 2nd in editorials
* Joe Rodriguez -- 2nd in General News Photography
* Lynn Hey -- 2nd in Photo Illustration
* Lorraine Ahearn -- 2nd in Serious Columns
* Rob Daniels -- 2nd in Sports Columns
* Karen Arnold -- 2nd in Headline Writing
* Myla Barnhardt -- 2nd in Lighter Columns
* Katie Reetz -- 3rd in Lifestyle Feature Writing
* Scott Hoffmann - 3rd in General News Photography
* Maria Johnson -- 3rd in Profile Feature
* Staff -- 3rd in News Page/Section Design
* Staff -- 3rd in Sports News Reporting
* Staff -- 3rd Appearance and Design
* Staff -- 3rd in General Excellence for Web

We normally trail the Charlotte Observer and the N&O, papers that are nearly twice our size (and more). We don't pursue the awards the way some newspapers do. While it's a point of pride to win them, we don't consider awards a measure of our success because we know that readers care about good journalism, not prizes. Still, I'm proud of the staff for winning the acclaim of their peers, and I'm particularly proud that so much recognition went to staffwide entries.

Coming tomorrow: the results of the N.C. Associated Press contest.

Coming on the heels of yesterday's announcement about our N.C. Press Awards, today we picked up two-and-a-half of the four statewide prizes given by the N.C. Associated Press.

The winners:
* Mike Kernels, assistant features editor, the Carl K. Bell Award for editing
* Eric Collins, courts reporter, the Thomas Wolfe Award for writing
* Elyse Ashburn, environment and health reporter, honorable mention for the Walter Spearman Award for writing by a journalist with less than two years experience

The best thing about these awards is that the competition is intense and, aside from an honorable mention here and there, only one award is given per category. And, as with the N.C. Press Association Awards below, the competition is with papers across the state, including our much-larger sisters in Raleigh and Charlotte.

We had a debate here yesterday, and it has spilled over into today about the front page photo of the women's figure skating finals. Given the interest in this event, the plan Thursday afternoon was to capture in an image one of the highlights of the Olympics. Yesterday's discussion concerned how this fit into our emphasis on local news. Today's discussion centered on whether the image we chose was the correct one.

One reader has let us know already: I was just wondering whose choice it was to put such an unflattering photo of Sasha Cohen falling? The girl worked so hard to get to the big "O" and instead of praising her achievements you folks focus on her falling.

Just for fun, before I give my opinion, would any of you like to weigh in?

I told Jennifer at The Chalkboard that we needed to enforce a zero-tolerance policy on cursing, pseudo-cursing and personal attacks by and among commenters. Neither commenters nor school personnel you don't like or agree with should have to tolerate rude behavior.

Our expectation is that commenters express themselves with civility and passion. That excludes using profanity or pseudo-profanity -- using a curse word but substituting dashes or asterisks for letters. If you can't express your opinions without these crutches, go somewhere else. She will delete your comments without warning -- other than this and one she will post on The Chalkboard.

I've also told her to use active and aggressive discretion in deleting comments that personally attack others, particularly school officials. We know the debate can get animated and intense, but there must be limits and responsibility. Personal attacks serve no purpose other than to denigrate the person, corrode the discussion, make the accuser look like a childish bully and drive more articulate commenters away.

If you read comments that seem to violate this policy of intelligent civility, please message me or Jennifer. Thanks.

Big game today between Duke and Carolina women. Tomorrow Robert Bell looks into the cost of women's basketball programs on the eve of the Women's ACC Tournament in Greensboro.

Women's basketball, classified as a revenue sport by the NCAA, college athletics' governing body, is by far the biggest money-loser for the ACC's 12 schools, according to a News & Record analysis.

It comes out to the tune of more than a $1 million a year each for those two schools.

Eric Townsend writes about the investigation into the gunshot death of the late Richard "Trey" Michaud III, also known as Tre' Stylez, up-and-coming rapper. Suicide? Accident? Homicide? The family awaits answers three months after his untimely death.

Lorraine Ahearn's column returns with a bang: She interviews former immigration attorney Manlin Chee, back in town after a stint in prison for immigration fraud.

And if you want something a bit lighter, we drop by the open auditions for singers who want to belt out The Star-Spangled Banner at Hoppers games. Yikes!

Join us in the paper.

As a result of our former survey about the number of newspapers which published the Danish Mohammed cartoons, it appears that there were not two or three but twelve different ways to cover the story:

That's from the Editors Weblog, where they compile the ways newspapers around the world have handled the cartoons issue.

12) Impossible to finish this list with the most tragic solution: you publish and then you close the newspaper... It happened three times in Yemen and in Algeria, two times in Russia.

I link to this here not necessarily to restart the discussions we've had other times, but for information, given the apparent interest.

Elyse Ashburn, who did much of the reporting on our series about the ill effects of lead paint and was recently named the honorable mention winner of the Walter Spearman Award, has resigned to become a reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Bummer.

Elyse has done great work for us, both as a reporter and as an innovator inside the newsroom. Even though the last thing Washington needs is another reporter, the Chronicle gets a good one.

The News & Record is working with a grad student at UNC-Chapel Hill who is doing research on our blogs, who reads them, who comments on them, what blogs mean to them, etc. As part of that, some commenters with working e-mail addresses have been contacted and asked to complete an online survey.

I've met the student, Robin Roger, and have offered our help, although we haven't done anything yet. Robin doesn't work for us, and we aren't funding her study in any way. I have not seen the survey and don't know what's in it. We didn't provide her with the e-mail addresses; she gathered them herself.

All that said, if you got a message from her, help the kid out. I'm interested in seeing the results of her work.

In about two weeks, she's going to open up the survey to anyone. I'll let you know when that is and how to get to the web survey.

We're bringing aboard a new editor of The 'boro, our Thursday teen page. Jamie Kennedy, a 2004 graduate of the University of Maryland and most recently a reporter at The News Leader in Staunton, Va., will take the helm from Amy Joyner, who's actually way too busy writing books and having a life.

The 'boro's staff of teenagers conceives and creates the content of the page each week. They've done an excellent job filling it with interesting stuff and giving it a unique voice. I'm looking forward to Jamie's contributions.