News-Record.com

Suggestions for a business model for distributed content number in the hundreds, maybe thousands. Following are three that have flown into my radar this week. I know we don't like to talk revenue here, but sometimes we must. Besides, it's April 1. What other day can I depart from thinking about journalism to thinking about my future paycheck?

Anyway, would they work?

From Editors Weblog: If newspapers want to earn revenue from their online readers by keeping online content unbundled, they need to bundle their businesses. They need to agree to adhere to one registration developed in a way that the reader subscribes for free, leaves a credit card number on a secure site and is allowed to browse the Internet as she wishes without the worry of running into inhibiting paid walls while simultaneously contributing a small amount for each article she reads, photo slideshow she views or multimedia feature she watches. The total of those miniscule sums should be tacked on to the reader's Internet bill and be automatically distributed between service provider and content producer.

From Terry Heaton: Meanwhile, everybody misses the point of slick 2.0 applications elsewhere pulling ad dollars from businesses more interested in doing business than propping up what used to be the only ad game in town. This should be viewed as a significant challenge to media companies and local investors across the country, because there is significantly more at stake than meets the eye. As that ad money drifts outside the local community, it will impact more than just the media businesses located there. Big cities don't build stadiums to make professional sports team owners happy; they do so, because a local pro sports team means far more to the community than ticket sales. Same with local advertising dollars.

And Simon Waldman: What we need is a business model for decentralised content. What we need is a swift, easy and unpunitive licensing structure to allow content creators to distribute content; and for aggregators to aggregate -- with value to each fairly represented.

Unworkable? Well, actually, this model has been cracked before. It's how record labels deal with radio stations - through a centralised rights agency. If we start to think of our stories as songs, our feeds as albums, and the new wave of aggregators as radio stations, you can sort of see how it makes sense.

Every year, Ann Morris, our managing editor, plays an April Fool's joke on me. She's gotten me with a couple good ones, including one in which she colluded with the publisher. Nothing so far this year so I've had to make do with this list of pranks at Wikipedia.

Good ones?
* '24's Jack Bauer is going to crash land on the island of 'Lost' and he and Sayid compete in a torture contest.
* Yahoo buys Web 2.0. All of it.
* Prince Charles with Barbra Streisand? Chuck Berry and Sylvia Plath? Condi Rice with a British satirist? Creepy but true...at least in The Independent on April 1.
* The Department of Justice is drafting a document giving President Bush authority to remain in office past 2008, according to The Register.

My newspaper column

Last month, we obtained a copy of an internal investigative report on the Greensboro Police Department under former Chief David Wray. The 75-page report, prepared partly by the city attorney's office, was compiled by Risk Management Associates of Raleigh, a security consulting firm.

Our story started this way: "Former police Chief David Wray 'crippled' his department with harsher discipline for black officers and threats to commanders who questioned his decisions, according to a confidential report obtained by the News & Record."

You might have thought we had shouted "hanging chad!" during a City Council election given the reaction the story -- and, more specifically, our possession of the report – evoked.

Wray's attorney asked us to give him the report. We declined. Mayor Keith Holliday and, later, an attorney representing the city asked us to identify who gave us the report and to give them our copy of it. We declined those requests, too.

The city is now investigating the leak, council member Sandy Carmany says. On her blog, she posed this question to us: "Why did you find it necessary to jeopardize our ability to uncover the truth and mete out justice in this case?"

Carmany is no loose cannon. She's thoughtful, diligent and, by all accounts, holds the city's best interests at heart. I will attempt to answer her question without getting too philosophical or holier than thou.

Ted Vaden, public editor at the N&O, writes this morning about the paper's coverage of the Duke men's lacrosse team. His summation, analysis and response to criticism of the paper reveals some of the ethical and journalistic minefields we negotiate. (The N&O interviewed the accuser.) And how intelligent, ethical people can look at the same information and come up with different conclusions.

Mess up one of the puzzles and you're in for a busy day on the phone. If there's anything that upsets readers more, then I don't know about it. Unless it is the cancellation of a comic strip.

Did one Sunday and the other today.

Sunday's crossword puzzle was all screwed up. The clues didn't fit the grid and the answers didn't fit the clues or the grid. We're running the right version tomorrow. Among the many calls we got: "I'm down about it but my mother's gone into seclusion."

We dropped Gil Thorp today. The comic strip has been running on the sports agate page. We're redesigning that page and decided we could use the space better. We did it now, rather than when we introduce the redesign because Milford High is about to switch from basketball to baseball and the story line is changing. By mid-day, we'd gotten about half-a-dozen calls. If you want to see what you're missing, go here.

No, not a Terry Grier replacement. We've hired Morgan Josey, a reporter at the Gaston Gazette, to cover local education. A graduate of Campbell, Morgan has been with Gaston for three years writing about East Gaston County, development and religion, among other things.

Given all the Grier-to-Charlotte stories, school redistricting debates and school fights to cover, Jennifer can use the help!

I got a card from the Nielsen people today informing me that my household had been chosen as a "Nielsen Family." (Their quotations, not mine.) Please be assured that we are not attempting to sell anything to you. Our only purpose is to learn which TV programs you and your household watch during the week of the survey.

Normally, I'd say no because I always presume that they are attempting to sell something to me. But the idea of having even a minuscule miniscule impact on the television ratings is intriguing. Could I save The West Wing? MTV's Real World? Outtahere!I got a card from the Nielsen people today informing me that my household had been chosen as a "Nielsen Family." (Their quotations, not mine.)

I had the honor yesterday to spend the afternoon with a group I expect to be among the future leadership of Guilford and the Triad. Sue Polinsky, Michael Dougherty and Joyce Gorham-Worsley were the judges for the News & Record's Scholastic Achievement program, in which we award a $6,000, a $4,000 and two $2,000 college scholarships to deserving public high school students.

Unlike previous years when most of the students were attending schools in state, these guys plan to attend MIT or CalTech, Yale and Cornell, in addition to Carolina, State and Duke. Also, this year the career aspirations are different. Most years, the majority of contestants were interested in medicine and scientific research. This year we had one student who raised livestock, one who is an artist, another a violinist and yet another a robotics expert, among the potential physicians. (The one who raised livestock wants to be a vet.) As Dougherty commented to one applicant, but it applied to every one: "You've faced a lot of choices in life, and at every fork, you chose the more challenging road. That's admirable."

I tried not to think back on my own choices.

An announcement of the winners will come closer to the end of the school year.

The Greensboro Times, which bills itself as "The African-American Voice," calls me a "master of deceit" in its April edition. If you read this blog much, you know that calling me names is hardly cause for a separate blog post. However, given that State Rep. Earl Jones is publisher and editor of the Times and that he's the one who called me that, it's worth a note.

Jones doesn't like our reporting on Project Homestead. He thinks, as John Hammer has written in The Rhino, that because the District Attorney said that he lacks evidence to charge anyone with criminal wrongdoing, that Homestead has been exonerated and that our stories have been lies. Note that Henderson distinguishes between unlawful and right. And why Henderson concluded what he did: Henderson blames the lack of evidence on Homestead's shoddy bookkeeping, commingled accounts, King's 2003 suicide and the bad memories of board members and former employees. Here's the statement.

Then Jones goes on to write: The N&R rather than being an objective, balance (sic) and fair publisher of the news, has over the past five years manufactured false and malicious and defaming articles regarding Homestead and has harassed, and bullied investigators, prosecutors and the Homestead organization.

No evidence given, which I regret because I really want to know who felt bullied by us. I've known both investigators and prosecutors and have yet to meet one who pushes easily. Jones even goes so far as to write that we solicited City Council member Tom Phillips "to aid and abet in their deception to the public...." I suspect Tom would read this as an insult on a variety of levels.

So much of the coverage is so transparently silly that I wasn't going to comment on it at all, but the idea that a public official ought to be accountable for his words still sticks with me, even in these times.

That, plus the fact that the photo of me on the front page is the old one with the mustache. So, I'm back to staying clean shaven.

Two News & Record teams competed in the Reading Connections Scrabble Challenge fundraiser last night at the Carolina Theatre. Kenwyn Caranna, Romy McGinnis and Janet Summers made up one, and Dawn Kane, Karen Arnold and Marie Pace were the other. The Caranna, McGinnis and Summers team won!

Here's Summers' report: Competitors and onlookers ate dinner together first in the lobby of the theatre. Then we were assigned to Scrabble tables. Kenwyn, Romy and I faced three bankers from BB&T in two games. By the end of our second game, the men begged us to report them as Wachovia bankers so that no one would know their identities. We beat them by 100 points in the first game and 190 points in the second.

Dawn, Karen and Marie faced a tough team of three women from Syngenta, who turned out to be the second-place winners. The scores of their games, unlike ours, were very close. The event also included a silent auction, a raffle and several door prizes. Both N&R teams celebrated at Natty Greene's afterward. We felt that postponing consumption of alcohol until after the games was a significant advantage we had over the BB&T bankers, who began drinking before the second game.

Bankers outdrinking newspaper journalists? What's the world coming to?

Jack Shafer at Slate must strike fear in every newspaper publisher's heart. His column is about canceling his New York Times subscription -- a $621 value -- because he no longer needs it. The redesigned Times Web site is all he needs. He payment for nytimes.com: $0.00.

As publishers try to find the best online business model that will support the journalism we want to produce, few of them are ready for this. We know people are leaving papers to read news on the Web. Most of us are improving our sites (some more than others and some faster than others). At the same time, people are still buying newspapers. We're shifting resources around, building the Web sites, working on improving the paper. All along we're trying to prepare for and even hasten the tipping point. I love the daily newspaper -- its feel, its serendipity, its influence, its permanence. I also love the versatility, the reach, the interactivity and the immediacy of the Web.

Advertisers go where the audience is, or rather, where the potential customer is. And, at least under the current newspaper business model, we need the advertiser to pay the freight. The best online business model could well be different. I'm not convinced we've found the best one yet.

Where's the readership tipping point? I don't know that Shafer is it. I wonder, though, as I watch my teenagers use the paper and the Web, whether they are. I know one thing: It's coming faster than many journalists and publishers think. (I'm fortunate. I have a publisher who understands that it's building speed every day.) Meanwhile, the journalists here are trying to make both the paper and the Web stronger and better, serving the different, shifting markets.

At their best, blogs can provide the mainstream media with competition, and pressure established organizations (to) bring their A-game and put out their best work. But the MSM will have little reason to fear competition from blogs, if enough of them embrace the growing trend of denounce-with-spittle-flicking-fury-first-and-get-the-answers-later. Some readers new to the blogosphere will make distinctions between blogs; others will look at the high-profile worst of the lot and say, "to hell with them."

That's the conclusion of a column -- a post, rather -- by Jim Geraghty at The Public Eye at CBSnews.com. I think most of the blogs that comment on civic affairs 'round here do exactly as Geraghty writes in his first sentence. Some of you compete with us, and you do make us bring our A-game. When we fall short, you let us know.

Some also swing first and report never, which is OK, I suppose, if venting is the only purpose. I admit that I don't pay much attention to those. (Commenters are a different story, mind you. While many comments seem to be vents, I don't know that anyone expects commenters to do much reporting.)

I worry about his last sentence: that some people will say to hell with the hellraisers. Friends of mine say that's already happening. The blogosphere isn't much different now than any other medium. Innumerable choices. I tell them to ignore the bloggers who are firing shotguns every which way. Thoughtfulness is out there if you look.

I got an e-mail from the wife of a teacher at Grimsley High School wondering why we had published the street addresses of the teenagers arrested at the school last week. She said students had asked him in class about it. The students thought it infringed on the teenagers' right to privacy.

The same day, our publisher took a call from a woman who wondered the same thing, saying that it set the students up for retaliation. She accused us of including the addresses only because the students are African American.

We publish the names and addresses of people arrested in every case we write about unless they are minors. (We have made exceptions when identifying someone arrested for a sex crime -- say, a father -- ends up identifying the victim as well.) We don't do this to embarrass those arrested, although I suppose it has that effect. The addresses of people arrested are part of the public record, and they aren't difficult to get. That is to say anyone interested can get them.

I ran into someone today who said -- and he wasn't sheepish about it -- that he didn't read. This had nothing to do with newspapers; he just didn't read -- no books, no magazines, no papers. "Don't have time," he said. This is, however, someone who said he watched the full 7 hours or so of Masters coverage on Sunday.

It reminded me of a friend who told me that he didn't read the newspaper. "You're too liberal," he said. "Without another paper, I'd rather not read anything." This is a smart, successful man. I knew he was getting in a good-natured dig. He told me that he isn't reading the news online. He's satisfied with what he sees on television or picks up in conversation.

I accept that some people don't read newspapers, the print or online product. (I don't like it, though.) There are dozens of reasons and I've heard them all. I can't fathom how they can feel that they know enough about what's going on around them without the local paper, but I understand it's possible. :)

But not reading, period? Not having a book on the nightstand? Not having one on the vacation trip to the beach or mountains? Not being entertained or letting your imagination off the leash? Not challenging or affirming your own thoughts? (I just finished a crime novel in which a reporter was the perp. Enjoyed it immensely.)

Don't get it.

I should have posted this earlier, but perhaps I was in denial.

Allison Perkins, who has been a news, community and features reporter for us, has resigned to move to Florida. (Her husband is being relocated.) Allison has done hundreds of wonderful stories for us, but she probably had the most impact when she took a leave to visit her husband in Kuwait and filed a series of stories about the war, which included video and audio reports. She was also responsible for one of our more unique front pages in which we features photos of local men and women in the war zone.

She has been a pioneer in our newspaper coverage and developing our online journalism. As her boss, Susan Ladd, said: "She has a Schlosser-like instinct for good stories and a work ethic to match. And she’s also just plain fun to work with."

The Tampa Trib would be lucky to get her. Meanwhile, Tina Firesheets, who has reported for us in High Point and in People & Places, will move to Allison's job on the Life team.

As Ed mentions, we're introducing a new design on Wednesday. (You can take a little tour here.) I'm writing about it in more detail in my Sunday column. We're excited about it because it is content-driven and based on what readers have told us about the paper.

Our goals were to modernize our look, to provide more breadth and depth to our report, to give readers meaningful information to help them plan their lives and to produce journalism with impact and consequence.

It isn't be anything like our last redesign in '93 when we took a USA Today approach. Most of the additions are being made to improve the content rather than dramatically change the paper's look. We hope it will be easier to find information of value.

Check back here Sunday, and then check out the paper Wednesday.

One of the allures of great writers is that they get things right -- they find the essential truth. Richard Price in "Freedomland" gets it right in his description of reporters, a description as loud and as true as any I've read. I say this with affection because, at heart, I'm a reporter before anything else. If the occasional coarse language bothers you, read no further or avert your eyes when you come upon it.

She thought of all reporters, but especially street reporters, as junkies. And although there was a universal undercurrent of adrenaline running through each of them, the true drug of choice varied from writer to writer. There were those addicted to the information race, the desire to get there first -- some of her colleagues lived crouched in the blocks round the clock, the pagers on their hips nothing more than starter's pistols.

My newspaper column

On Wednesday, we will introduce you to a new News & Record featuring smarter, more compelling content and a sharper, cleaner look.

Our goal is to produce a paper that is easier to read and filled with more news that will make a difference in your life and help you make a difference in the world.

At first blush, you may not notice much difference. The type size on stories will not change, although some lists and tabular matter should be easier to read. We continue to have a four-section paper every day except Sunday, when we offer more.

Yet there are many significant differences. Before I tell you about some of them, it's important to tell you that we based these improvements on you. We have studied national research on readership and conducted our own, hearing what readers want from their newspaper and how they want it.

As a result, here are some of the things you'll see Wednesday:

On Wednesday, we are joining the growing list of newspapers that is eliminating or abbreviating its stock listings. At the same time -- actually, sooner because you can do it right now -- we're introducing a new online tool to help you browse and manage your stocks.

We expect this will dismay some of our older readers, but we think that number is dwindling and that most people use the available information online. When we were pondering this decision, we consulted several financial brokers. They asked us the same thing: what took you so long? With this move, we papers in New York, L.A., Chicago and Denver, among others, in curtailing daily listings.

In place of the stock listings, we are providing a daily half-page summary of market activity, including charts tracking the Dow Jones Industrials, Nasdaq and the Standard & Poor's 500 indices. That summary also will include an expanded list of stocks of local interest.

The new online tool will allow you to customize your holdings, check stocks in real time, calculate investments and obtain detailed information about stock performance, among other things.

We don't want this change to overshadow everything else we've done to improve the paper, although it will to some. The fact is the daily newspapers is an excellent source of local information, local advertising and entertainment options. Keeping track of your stocks? Not so much anymore.

We get accused of being biased -- usually liberal -- pretty often. About just as often, I deny it, referring folks to the sturdy wall between our editorial positions -- usually liberal -- and our news reporting.

So, I enjoyed this piece by Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, on bias in today's New York Times.

A Princeton University research team asked people to estimate how susceptible they and "the average person" were to a long list of judgmental biases; the majority of people claimed to be less biased than the majority of people. A 2001 study of medical residents found that 84 percent thought that their colleagues were influenced by gifts from pharmaceutical companies, but only 16 percent thought that they were similarly influenced. Dozens of studies have shown that when people try to overcome their judgmental biases -- for example, when they are given information and told not to let it influence their judgment -- they simply can't comply, even when money is at stake.

And yet, if decision-makers are more biased than they realize, they are less biased than the rest of us suspect. Research shows that while people underestimate the influence of self-interest on their own judgments and decisions, they overestimate its influence on others.

Can we make a deal? I'll accept the possibility that what we're accused of could be true sometimes, if you accept the possibility that we're not as bad as you think?

Wanna know what our Top 11 most viewed stories online were last week? No surprise, but most are crime stories.

1. Man charged with killing his grandmother
2. Minor league stadium noise too much for neighbors
3. Chase ends with wreck
4. Police: High Point man killed someone in self defense
5. Photo gallery: Truck crashes following chase
6. Wreck yields cocaine; 4 charged
7. Hugh Hefner sends Rockingham class new TV
8. Story and video: N.C. contestant booted from 'Idol'
9. Apartment fire leaves residents homeless
10. (tie) Officer in Duke probe: 'She's just passed out drunk'
10. Wreck cuts power to parts of PTI

In the three days since we announced that we were changing/reducing our stock listings, we've gotten 17 phone calls, 16 of which were from people asking us to reconsider. (The other one said that stock listings were boring.) Not bad.

Tomorrow's feedback will be the real test, of course, when the two pages of listings are dropped down to one-half page. We don't want the stocks issue to over-shadow the rest of the content improvements, but we're prepared to hear mostly from folks who want the old stock pages back. (We're standing by to add in specific stocks people want.)

Check in with tomorrow's paper and stay awhile. Call me at 373-7051 or e-mail me or comment here. We'd like to hear from you.

With everything else going on, does the Greensboro City Council really want to do this? On the other hand, imagine the possibilities for topics to consider once the council opens itself up to polygraphs.

Some people didn't care for our news obit on Maurice Sabbah yesterday. Sue, and others who don't blog, but who telephone. Here's what we were thinking.

A reporter walks a tight rope when he writes an obituary about a controversial figure, particularly one who has a history of good works to go along with the controversy. We know that friends and family members prefer the community remembers the deceased fondly. Writing ill of the dead is seen as unseemly and unkind. We try to balance the good with the not so good, knowing that, in many cases, it's the bad news about a person's life that makes his death newsworthy. (Not saying that's necessarily the case with Sabbah.)

I asked reporter Jim Schlosser about his thoughts as he was preparing to write the Sabbah story.

We have written dozens of stories about Sabbah and Kenneth Kornfeld and their companies. I believe that is how the general public knew the two, beginning probably when I wrote a story about Sabbath's charitable foundation. Shortly after that, the scandal broke about Fortress Re and Carolina Re that resulted in the two paying a $400 million settlement, biggest in state history. All of that had to be in the obit.

Starting with the first paragraph, I tried to achieve a balance between good and bad. I think the good got its share of the story. I wrote of his service not only in Israeli Army, but U.S. Army; his charitable work, such as building the gym at Beth David, a hospital wing in Israel and, of course, the American Hebrew Academy. But to leave out the bad would have been journalistically irresponsible. Ironically, when I wrote the story about Sabbah's charitable foundation in 2000 or 1999, I received calls from Sabbah's friends angry that I had disclosed the existence of the foundation. Sabbah wanted it kept secret because of his religious beliefs.

We've hired Joe Killian to a full-time reporting position. Joe's been working for us part-time as he finishes his course work at UNCG. Welcome him. He's a good man.

Some newspaper provocateurs suggest eliminating "commodity" content from the paper. You know, those features that readers can get from, like, anywhere. The idea is that newspapers can replace commodity content with unique local content. It's the reason we've moved away from letting national and international news dominate our front page; that's news people get any and everywhere.

Now comes the daily stock listings. Under the heading, "Stock tables have to go," Jeff Jarvis makes the case: Consider the economics: What is the net profit per subscriber? How many of those subscribers need to cancel their subscriptions before you lose more money than you would if you killed the stock tables? The truth is that you'll likely lose only a handful of subscribers. But even if you lost hundreds, I have no doubt that the consequent loss of circulation revenue and audience to support your ad rates would be far less than the savings you'll recognize from killing the tables. That is the essential business calculation of this exercise.

I buy that, especially in academic arguments. Of course, on Wednesday we moved from academic discussion to cold, hard reality when we sharply reduced our stock listings. Since, I have listened to caller after caller upset with us and, worse, disappointed with us. (We upset readers often because we report news that provokes them in some fashion. But I hate disappointing them because we've failed to serve them.)

Putting aside the stocks issue for now, the newspaper redesign has been received well.

A sampling of some of the comments:

"With our last child out of the house and off to college, my final link to the collective consciousness vanished. Coupled with the hard truth that I am a blossoming curmudgeon, I realized the future of conversation around the ol' supper table was going to be grim. Not any more. My surprise and instant scowl when I first saw today's paper, gave way to a grudging respect and my eventual smile when I finally put the paper down. The N&R gets a nod of thanks for dragging me back from the brink of being a 'completely clueless old guy' before my time. Now just another full page of trendy comics and it would be perfect."

**********

"Well, I like some things and I HATE others. Mostly the paper now looks like a cheap tabloid. That I don't like.

We've hired Gerald Witt, a reporter with the Danville Register & Bee in Virginia to work in our Rockingham office. An Ap State grad, he has covered A&E, business, city government and night cops.

I'm tempted to make a dramatic change in the newspaper every six months or so just to provoke readers to call and talk with us. One pleasant offshoot of our redesign is that people have spoken loudly and clearly to us about what they want from the paper. Zounds!

I've heard about crossword puzzles and the bridge column. I've heard of columnists to add and to drop. Readers have called with story tips and story comments. While some of the feedback has been painful, it's been fruitful. Best of all, much of it has had nothing to do with the changes in the paper. People are telling us things they've wanted to tell us for a while; the redesign just inspired them. That, plus our front-page requests that they call. Hello? McFly? You learning anything from that?

A reporter for The New York Times interviewed me yesterday about the Michael Hiltzik/L.A. Times controversy. Hiltzik, a blogger for the paper, apparently posted comments on his blog and others using pseudonyms. Naturally, his pseudonymous comments supported his real persona. I think the Times reporter was searching a little bit for a point, suggesting that this incident illustrates how difficult it is to enforce journalistic ethics in an Internet age when anonymity, pseudonymity, name-calling and shouting are so widespread.

I said that I didn't think so. Journalism ethics haven't changed in the 30 years I've been practicing the trade, except to be codified and tightened. (Yes, we've had more ethical lapses exposed in the past five years, but I'd argue that has come with exposure and transparency rather some universal loose ethical values.)

Most viewed stories on news-record.com last week. Some death and mayhem, but some public affairs, too.

1. Woman walking in middle of road struck and killed
2. Nightclub patrons robbed at gunpoint
3. 2 Duke lacrosse players arrested; DA hopes to charge 3rd
4. Toyota reportedly looking at Triad
5. 'Idol' Watch: Triad's Chris Daughtry
6. Lawyer dies while arguing case in N.C. courtroom
7. Three babies in one day for family
8. Decision to be made soon on Wachovia Tower
9. Recordings by police uncovered
10. Hoots, jeers of teachers bristle Grier

Online staff thought this one would rank higher than No. 18. Given the clothing description, police suspect a blogger.

OK, not really.

Mark Sutter, the newspaper's city editor for the past seven years, has been named manager of our niche publications.

Mark has led our local news staff into emphasizing more investigative work. He's been a guiding force behind our efforts to emphasize local news throughout the news sections. He's the author of our Town Square initiative in the newspaper, writing a white paper that inspired us to ask Lex to do the same thing for our online presence.

Now he's moving from the news department to run the News & Record's publications aimed at specific niche audiences and to develop others. Mark's been with us for 16 years, beginning as a business reporter and working his way up through the editing ranks. I'm excited for him and have no doubt he'll lead the company well in this new job. But it will be strange not having him in the middle of things.

We added dozens of requested stocks to the financial page today, and we plan to add more tomorrow as we continue to respond to the calls from readers. Today, we've added many of the local stocks of interest that should have been there from the beginning: Dell, BB&T, Duke Energy, for instance. Others to come today include Wachovia, Sprint-Nextel, Syngenta, Tripath and United Healthcare. Perhaps not surprisingly, people requested many of the same stocks.

Over the past week, three high-profile bloggers have independently thrown down a gauntlet calling for a higher level of conversation and behavior in the blogosphere. While I know it is antithetical to try to hem in the discussion, I'd like to add my voice to theirs.

Like Chewie, I think we need to talk about the important things that bind us together, whether we like it or not. (Yes, I'm assuming she means as a blogging community as well as the community that is Greensboro.) Like Marcus, I long for discussion that works from a foundation of respect, open-mindedness and thoughtfulness. Like Sandy, I flirt with burnout as I struggle with making timely responses, working my day job and having some kind of life.

I'm not sure where that leaves us, and I wish I did. Blogs give everyone here the power to make a difference. We have so many distinct, active voices that I often feel as if we're missing opportunities to create something better. I think that in their own separate ways Chewie, Marcus and Sandy are attempting to do more than voice their own opinions. I think they, like many of us, are trying to make a difference even as we may disagree on where we want that to take us.

A lot of people have built a strong, dynamic community hereabouts. Chewie, Marcus and Sandy saying it can be even stronger and smarter. They're right.

Correspondent Samuel Spagnola asked about a profile of new White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, former editorial writer for the Greensboro Record (a predecessor of the News & Record). We'll have that tomorrow.

Meantime, here are some archived columns, editorials and stories from the old days selected entirely at random by new media content chief Michael Grossman. Apologies for the reproduction on some in the pdf. Newsprint from 25 years ago doesn't hold up as well as it should.

Thursday update: 10 more articles http://webcache.news-record.com/content/download/405/1852/version/1/file/tonysnow2.pdf">here.

Of all the feedback about the redesign we've gotten, this from a reader in Troy is unique:

Within the last couple of weeks, the News & Record has discontinued the good practice of publishing daily stock prices of all the New York Stock Exchange stocks, all mutual funds, etc. They only show "highlights" of a few stocks now.

This is absolutely terrible! No decent newspaper of a city the size of Greensboro would do this. If a person owns stock(s) or mutual fund(s), they need to be able to keep up with daily prices in the newspaper.

I am in prison and have no access to a computer to check on daily stock prices. Lots of us in here either own stock(s), or are trying to buy (or sell) stocks -- and we get this newspaper every day (the only one they distribute throughout the quads for us inmates to read) -- and we need the same thorough coverage of all the stocks and mutual funds the News & Record has been providing in the past until recently.

We are finally getting close to having the ability to enable comments on our stories. Our tech folks say we have four options:

1. Enable for all stories.
2. Enable for selected stories...a process that would be done manually.
3. Enable for a "category" of stories, such as Sports.
4. Not enable.

The idea that a story doesn't end with its newspaper publication is compelling. Readers perform a great public service on our blogs and in our letters adding information, correcting information and raising thoughtful questions. They move the story/idea forward because they bring so much discussion and perspective to it.

I've also watched them drive the conversation into the ground with a momentary stop in the gutter along the way. Other bloggers have complained about this as it regards the letters blog. Some commenters have complained about the rough-and-tumble world on The Chalkboard.

And I've read of horror stories at other papers. I've talked with some editors about having trouble with comments particularly on stories involving race, crime and sex. The conversation quickly degenerates into name-calling, epithet-throwing and potential libel. That doesn't seem to serve any real civic purpose.

So, we're trying to determine our next step. Introducing registration will help with accountability; at least it will give us a legitimate e-mail address of a commenter. (Registration is planned to be non-intrusive -- you can browse the site to your heart's content, but to comment, you'll need to complete a six- or seven-question form.) Unfortunately, we don't have someone who can moderate the comments as they come in.

Thoughts?

Several people have asked me why I'm not here. Putting aside the notion that their hidden agenda was to get me out of town, there was a lot of traditionally interesting stuff on the agenda of the American Society of Newspaper Editors annual convention.

But here's why I'm not there, from David Schribman's column in the New York Sun: SEATTLE -- Moan, moan, moan. Complain, complain, complain. Wallow, wallow, wallow. This could only be a national convention of newspaper editors in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century.

I'd have liked to have visited Seattle. I hear it's lovely country. But from my reading of the reports that have come out of the convention, it was more of the same. We're talking about anonymous sources? experiences in Iraq and Katrina? I dunno, but I'm pretty sure those aren't the pressing issues of our craft.

Oh, there were some good ones, to be sure. And perhaps editors need to hear the CEOs of newspaper chains say that things will be fine. Or that Microsoft has a cool new product -- I guess -- for newspapers.

But it's not what I need. About every presentation described in the daily ASNE reports, I already felt I knew.

My newspaper column

A week and a half into our new design and our readers have made two points clear.

First, generally speaking, you like the fresh look, the new features and the return of The New York Times columnists.

Second, speaking quite specifically, many of you don't like the loss of the extended stocks and mutual funds listings.

We’ve heard from hundreds of people and appreciated every call and note. Your suggestions were helpful. It's always risky to tinker with any of the traditional newspaper features. Readers get accustomed to them, and change for whatever reason doesn't sit well.