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Greensboro City Council member Sandy Carmany has suggested that the News & Record put the council out of its self-imposed polygraph misery by publicly stating that we did not get the RMA report from a council member.

That could end the perceived need for councilmembers to undergo the polygraphs, remove a tremendous burden from the one who is having to endure council and public speculation, help us heal the mistrust among councilmembers, and redirect leak-detection efforts in the right direction. In other words, such a statement could put an end to this sideshow controversy that is distracting from the more troubling issues within the GPD.

Cutting to the chase, we won't issue any statement about the person who gave us the report. It has nothing to do with whether or not the person is on the council. It has to do with keeping our word. The report was given to us in confidence, and we intend to keep person's identity that way.

There is one more way for the council to put an end to "the sideshow controversy," as Sandy calls it. The council could say, "Upon reflection, we acted rashly with this polygraph business. Let's move onto the more troubling issues within the GPD."

Owen Davis, deputy sports editor at the Detroit Free Press, is joining our sports copy desk next month.

From Sports Editor Joe Sirera's announcement: Owen has been at the Detroit Free Press since 1984, the past 20 years as deputy sports editor. He's helped lead a section that consistently has won awards regionally and nationally during that time and also edited the Free Press' outdoors page.

I worked with Owen when he was business editor at the N&O, and I was a lowly reporter back in the early 80s. He's a good guy and a great editor. Glad we could get him.

Today's story about polygraph tests -- and the council members' aggressive and passive-aggressive behavior toward the newspaper -- again demonstrates the importance of fully airing controversial ideas in public.

Does the council really think that the public would have instructed council members to spend $5,000 in tax money to take polygraph tests to determine who's being untruthful? (Put aside for a moment city staff's seeming opacity, telling the news media that the tests had been moved.) I suspect that had the public been consulted, a different decision would have been made. And now, at least one council member has declined to say how he performed on the polygraph.

Bear in mind that this started with an investigation that resulted in the resignation of the police chief...and a desire by the public, the newspaper and bloggers for more information than the city was willing to release. Last night, the council decided that city staff must first get council approval to attend public meetings to talk about allegations that the police department secretly taped private citizens. These are the sorts of decisions that cause leaks.

Jack Shafer, editor at large and media critic at Slate, has an interesting take on leaks and information flow as it involves the White House. I have no intention of comparing City Council to the Bush Administration, but Shafer's observation about openness, I like. As information theory instructs us, it's never in the interests of a totalitarian regime to completely eliminate debate over -- and knowledge of -- controversial policies. Unless an administration is infallible -- and Pope George W.'s certainly isn't -- it benefits from testing its policy ideas in some fashion with its critics, or even its allies, before deploying them. Public debate helps an administration build support for its plans, permits it to see the weaknesses of and retrofit its strategies, and if need be, abandon the ideas.

My guess is that most citizens prefer the council deal with -- and spend money on -- matters of public policy -- public policy that actually affects their lives. And from what I'm hearing, they want the council to do it in the open.

At least one blogger and one print publication have stated that Greensboro City Council member Dianne Bellamy-Small "leaked" the RMA report. Today, Bellamy-Small faxed us a strong denial. I have stated I had no part in the leak of the report....I have never been the source of any leak.

She also asked us to state that she is not our source of the report. I'm sorry to disappoint her, but we're not playing that game. It's a shame that some people's suspicions have come to rest on her. But as with the earlier request from Sandy Carmany, we're not going to reveal any information about our sources.

Read Bellamy-Small's responses to our faxed questions here. Some strong words.

Tom Daning, the managing editor for syndicator United Media -- and, as such, the final arbiter over the strips United Media puts out -- says newspapers are caught "between a rock and a hard place."

"They're looking for something new and edgy, but many of their readers are over 35," he says. "The whole newspaper industry is antsy. Many are scared to do anything to hurt circulation." It's easier to drop a new comic, he says, than something like "Peanuts," which has an established following.

That's from a CNN piece on how staid newspaper comics pages are. During the first week of our redesign, readers called to tell us what they thought. Many of them took the opportunity to tell me about our comics page. Almost universally, their comments ran in this vein: I don't like the new comics: Get Fuzzy, Jump Start, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy. Bring back Mark Trail, Peanuts and Snuffy Smith.

If there is one consistent theme I've heard since I've had this job -- primarily from readers over, say, 60 -- it is that new comics aren't funny and that they miss the ones they grew up with. Two weeks ago, I heard from one man who asked us to bring back Li'l Abner, a strip that was discontinued by its creator in 1977.

We try to have a mix of comics that appeal to different sorts of people. We have no intent or expectation that every reader enjoy every comic. But every reader interested in comics should find something on the page worth looking at. (And, on the other hand, every reader should have a beef with something.)

My newspaper column

It's certainly been a long, strange week with Greensboro City Council, hasn't it?

Lots of people are talking about the value of council members submitting to polygraph tests to determine whether any of them leaked a police department investigative report to this newspaper.
Last week, several council members called upon us to eliminate them all as the leaker.

We respectfully declined to take them off the hook. Here's why:

Staff writer Taft Wireback's story on the front page provides most of the background on this controversy. Two points worth noting are these: Both the city manager and City Council have put credence in the investigative report, which was prepared by the city attorney;'s office and Risk Management Associates, a security consulting firm. But city officials have said they can't release the report because it contains protected personnel information and is part of an ongoing investigation into the practices of the police department.

We got the report, with the understanding that we would not identify the person who gave it to us. We read it and verified that it was an actual copy of the report. It was clear to us that it contained information about the operation of the police force that the public deserved to know.

The News & Observer changed the way it listed obituaries, and did they ever take a beating.

To recap: Last month, The N&O changed the obituary page layout to display paid notices alphabetically. That was intended as a reader service, to make individual notices easier to find. Problem was, alphabetizing necessarily resulted in some obituaries being "broken" from the bottom of one column to the top of the next.

So they're going to change it back.

As long as I can remember, we've alphabetized the paid obituary listings, and I doubt that readers would be happy if we changed that. Guess it's all what you're accustomed to.

I just banned the 100th and 101th IP address on this blog. Got nary a complaint about censorship, either.

Of course, the banned addresses represent blog spam, not real people -- or at least not the real people I care about -- you who might actually read stuff here.

Now, on to the most viewed stories of last week.** They are surprisingly "leak" heavy and weird crime light.

1. Polygraphs off to unusual start
2. 'I had no part in leak of report'
3. Guilford high schools make 'best' list again
4. 'Idol's' Daughtry survives
5. Old mill in new hands
6. Duke police investigate new rape allegation
7. Lane on 29 closed after truck wrecks
8. Belly up to the ballpark
9. Polygraph exams begin today for council members
10. Bellamy-Small responds to questions about leaked report

** Our site vendor had some "issues" last week when the site was down.

Our front page story last week about Thirsty Thursday -- cheap beer night at the Grasshoppers games -- chapped some of our readers. Too much beer, too much crass behavior, too much sexy talk. Watch the baseball game, for goodness sakes!

One letterwriter wrote: It seems with all the news happening in our world, there could have been a much more newsworthy article than a full front page devoted to twentysomethings getting drunk. Our children in grade school go through the DARE program to learn to stay off drugs and alcohol. The News & Record is in every school library and is used for current events in school. This article was the first thing they saw that day for news. How does that back up what they are learning? Instead it glorifies alcohol and makes it look like the cool thing to do.

And another:

We have attended games on Thirsty Thursdays and have enjoyed the party atmosphere there. However, a main thread of the article seemed to be to make light of overconsumption. While it is certainly appropriate for young and old alike to go to these games merely to socialize and pay no heed to the game, the article seemed to indicate that it is also appropriate and encouraged to overindulge. Not so. We believe the paper must be particularly careful of the impression it gives to readers.

Editors -- well, all newspaper folk, journalists and readers alike -- hate careless errors. Really, we hate all errors, but those avoidable ones are maddening. I occasionally get letters from pushed-to-the-brink readers who offer their services as proofreaders. I occasionally hear the complaint that we rely too much on spell-check, which is a fallible service. So, it's good to know that newspapers with twice the number of staffers have the same issues.

A recent goof in which we referred twice in the same paragraph to utility "polls" brought some barbs from readers, including my home copy editor (husband), who thinks we rely too much on spell check programs.

That's from Melanie Sill, editor at the N&O.

Been there. 'Course I smile inwardly when it occurs to the N&O, a paper that some readers -- the more liberal ones, I presume :) -- point to as far superior to the N&R. (Full disclosure for this tease: I used to work there and count many people there as friends.)

It was a crazy news night, which is the way we like it. The organized planner in us doesn't much care for it, but the newshound does.

It's coming; it's not. They're armed; they're not. It's like Nov. 3, 1979; it's not. It's coming to another place; it's not. At 6 p.m. last night we knew the Minuteman rally had been called off, but we went to the last known rally point anyway, just on a hunch. News happened. Joe Killian tells about tracking the elusive, ever-changing story. (Somehow we need to figure out how to get this sort of story in this sort of form into the paper, but that's a different post.)

Then came "American Idol." I don't know that "America stood stunned" when Chris Daughtry of McLeansville was booted, as FOX8's ticker proclaimed this morning, but it did surprise us. (Video report here.)

Mix in some aggravating computer-related problems within our publishing system that caused some pages to crash, and you had an eventful night. (I wasn't even here, a fact I'm sure the night folks appreciate.)

You know things are screwy when the one thing you can rely on is the State Legislature getting done on time!

The incredible jw decided to show off her poetry chops with a "Week in Review." (She said I could post it if I corrected the errors, so if there are errors in it, they're mine. She also told me to apologize to Mr. Sun for her, but I don't have that in me.)

"This paper is too liberal,"
Declared the vilified.
"'bout race it rails
Cares only for sales
And is on Kerry's side."

The Leaker was the story
We did not know the name
It was kept quiet
The mayor didn't buy it.
And got 15 more minutes of fame.

Council said we are not guilty
They'd prove it with a 'graph
They passed, they said,
And then played dead.
We all had really good laugh.

It couldn't get much weirder
Then Minutemen came to town
They dragged their feet
Finding a place to meet
Now they all are KKK bound.

And Hoggard said I'm sorry.
A little hard to believe.
Said he'd beg like a man
Just to talk to Dianne.
Wonder what HE'S got up his sleeve?

So if you find this place Greensboring
Just hang out for a while
City service is great
And the parks are first rate
Local government will make you smile.

OK, perhaps Fred Chappell has nothing to worry about, but jw's poem made me smile.

The saga of the Dudley High School physical plant just keeps getting stranger and stranger.

As Margaret Banks reports in Sunday's paper, one reason it was so cold at Dudley this past winter is that the pilot lights on the boilers were out. And no one noticed or bothered to check. Believe it. Not only that, the filters were so clogged with dust that some of them collapsed under the weight. School board member Amos Quick is on the warpath. Who can blame him?

All I'll say is that the public records law, when it works, is a sweet, sweet thing. Read it tomorrow. And believe me, this story will continue over the next few weeks.

Sunday update: Story is here.

Eric Swensen, who covers Greensboro City Hall, is headed to the University of Virginia to become a publications editor for the hospital system there. (No, Sandy, you didn't run him off.:)) He's done excellent work and is a bigtime Scoop contributor. It is sort of a return home; before he came to Greensboro, he was a reporter for the Charlottesville paper. Wish him luck.

American Idol is "celebrity" news. Frivolous. Not important in the scheme of things. A sign of the dumbing down of society.

Yes, there's that. And then there's this: Our story about Chris Daughtry being voted off got four times the number of page views as the typical No. 1.

Here's our own version of American Idol: last week's top 10:

1. Daughtry booted in 'Idol' shocker
2. Daughtry may sing Friday at Greensboro ballpark
3. Child found hanging on clothes line dies
4. Local fans shocked at Daughtry loss
5. Man killed in fall from parking deck
6. Dueling rallies draw crowds on High Point Road
7. Deputies investigating 7-year-old girl's death
8. Greensboro businessman faces felony tax charges
9. Man found shot, dying
10. 'Idol's' Daughtry gets job offer from Fuel

Me? I wanted more!

Dianne Bellamy-Small could not be reached for comment.

We've written those words or a version of them many times over the last several months. Earlier this month, as the pressure to talk about the leaked police report approached Mount St. Helens levels, our reporter approached her at a council meeting. She refused to answer questions but said, "My fax machine still works. Fax me (your questions) and I'll decide whether to answer."

She answered, but has clammed up since, including a "public" meeting she held in which any member of public could ask questions -- except members of the media.

Coincidentally, on Monday, we asked for an interview with Kevin Lear, the school system's chief operating officer, to talk about the conditions at Dudley High School. We thought that some of the information we needed might require him to pull records, so we e-mailed him a list of questions in advance.

Actually, the more appropriate cliche is that this is the other shoe:

Maggie Morrow Swensen, a sports copy desk editor, has resigned and is going to join her husband, Eric, in Charlottesville.

From sports editor Joe Sirera's announcement: Maggie has done a great job for us in an ever-expanding role -- first as a copy editor, then as a night editor and more recently as a regular designer of inside pages and special packages (All-Area and Olympic preview, just to name a couple). We will miss her skill and her attention to detail.

Indeed.

In February, I wrote about Robin Roger, a grad student at Chapel Hill who was using commenters on our blogs to research a thesis seeking "evidence that newspaper blogs build a sense of community, and whether that has an effect on reading behavior."

Her conclusion: Findings suggest that the effects of high levels of community are cumulative; therefore, creating a blogging community can draw new readers -- great news for newspaper marketers. Results from the study also suggest a virtuous cycle: frequent blog reading seems to lead to a sense of community, and vice versa.

These results confirm our belief that the blogs are one more way to build community -- we talk with readers, readers talk with us, readers talk with each other. Ideas and information are exchanged. Arguments break out; perhaps even understanding and acceptance occur. That's community. That's civic engagement. That helps build social capital.

The findings seem to support the thesis that those who have a high sense of community -- both on the blogs and in their physical community -- read the newspaper -- both online and off -- more than those who do not. Those who have a high sense of community on the blogs read the blogs more often, visit the website more often, and tend to subscribe to the print newspaper.

Seems intuitive. And, other than the subscription issue, I'd suggest a sense of community applies to other blogs. Roger couches her conclusions throughout the thesis; 76 people responded to the survey, which is a relatively small sample. And she suggests more research is needed.

Other excerpts:

I heard on CNN this morning that Over the Hedge is supposed to pull in $30 million or so this weekend at the box office. The movie is based on the Over the Hedge comic strip, which we run on the comics page. It is a strip that is usually on the "hated" comics lists that readers send to me. (The same readers who want Snuffy Smith and Mark Trail back.)

Given that the strip must appeal to some demographic, I find faith in my horoscope today: You see through the bad deals, half-truths and general media trickery (emphasis mine) you're faced with today. Though many have tried, none have succeeded in disturbing your unshakeable internal logic.

Yes, I do note that it says "unshakeable" not "inerrant."

Breaking news rarely happens at convenient times. Today was the exception. When the Grimsley/Kiser/Brooks lock-down occurred, Grimsley was holding a luncheon for parent volunteers. Betsi Robinson, our community editor, was there...and sequestered with the other parents inside the media center. Meanwhile, some folks here have kids at the schools and were feeding us information and rumors.

My daughter, also a Grimsley student, was away from campus working on a school project, but played reporter for me, calling her friends in school and relaying information and rumors.

Because it ended peacefully, I can relay my favorite detail gathered by my daughter: many of the Grimsley students were packed into the cafeteria. It was lunch time and, teenagers being teenager, a massive food fight broke out. No one was permanently injured.

Producing this morning's paper was different because of the series of screens our judgment passed through. I'd be interested in your take. (pdf of front page here.)

We chased the school lockdown story aggressively with several reporters and photographers. Once it was over without anyone being harmed, we talked about what we had and what stories we needed to write. Here's a story in which school was disrupted for several hours, parents were worried about the safety of their children, and traffic was rerouted. Thankfully, in the end, no one was harmed.

While it was an exciting story to chase and people hungered for accurate information in the early afternoon -- parents in the Grimsley media center during the lockdown went to our Web site to find out what was going on -- we knew that what was fresh at 2 p.m. Friday would be old by 6 a.m. Saturday. Television would report and report and report throughout the evening.

So we needed something different, something that advanced understanding.

My newspaper column

Oh, the places you'll go in today’s newspaper!

You can read about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report due out this week, learn about homelessness in Greensboro, follow the Grasshoppers, discover Basketdoodle, and perhaps find your child on the honor roll.

These are some of today's stories about people and places that help knit Greensboro together as a community.

A community is more than a collection of houses and businesses. Communities are made up of people who share common experiences, interests and values. As a newspaper, we try to help build community by publishing the news you make, the stories you tell and the commentary you give us to publish.

Now we know that our Web logs, accessible from anywhere in the world, build community, too.

Another take on newspapers revealing their sources, this time by the public editor of The Baltimore Sun.

Jeff Jarvis, in commenting on the discussion at Comment is Free about appropriate comment, points to this instructional post by Daniel Davies, a stockbroker in London.

It is not nice having complete strangers email you to tell you that you're an idiot and everything you've ever said is rubbish. Now imagine what it would be like if they also had your phone number so they could call you up and say the same thing. Now imagine that every time you make a mistake or the world turns out different from how you expected, you have to call them up and be nice to them, while they are still saying you're an idiot and your analysis is rubbish. Now imagine that there is a screen on your desk which shows a set of numbers that indicate whether you're right or wrong, and every time you're wrong it takes some money out of your bank balance.

What I'm trying to say here is that in ten years as a stockbroker, I have learned one or two things about dealing with negative feedback that other contributors to CiF might find useful.

He goes on to enumerate four strategies to follow with blog posts and comments:

I keep hearing that newspaper people lack imagination, and particularly that their marketing efforts are uninspired. Not so. For evidence to the contrary, look at what's been done recently by the Dayton Daily News and the Greensboro News & Record.

I'm normally reluctant to post this kind of thing because I don't like giving people who already think we are too big for our britches any more ammunition. However, I'm making an exception this time for two reasons. First, we owe a lot to Steve Duke and the Readership Institute for inspiring our changes. Second, the multimedia guide he refers to was done by Michael Grossman, who is in charge of our news department's online efforts and who doesn't get enough recognition.

I wish we had come up with the game Dayton did, but we have our hands full enough already.

We hosted a casual dinner at Presbyterian Church of the Cross on Phillips Avenue last night to recruit some contributing readers for our fourth Hometown Hub, this one in East Greensboro. About 30 people from the area came and broke bread -- delicious fried chicken, fried fish, ham biscuits and macaroni and cheese, actually.

It didn't take long before they were telling us about the stories that needed to be covered. And we told them about our thunk-on-the-side-of-the-head moment from Dan Gillmor: "My readers know more than I do. And if we can all take advantage of that, in the best sense of the expression, we will all be better informed."

We're hoping they will tell you their stories, from their efforts to get more retail development into the area and to close the White Street Landfill to what's happening at their churches and to their kids.

Introduction of the Hub will be in 4 to 6 weeks. Know someone from the neighborhood who might want to contribute? Send them here. (Thanks to community editors Betsi Robinson and Annette Ayers for organizing it.)

Just in case anyone thinks that everything I touch is stained with the evils of liberalism, I have always begged to differ with any such interpretation of my political preferences. And now I present the evidence. My wife received this letter from our President today, and it addresses her by name.

I am looking forward to seeing you on June 19th.

Please read the enclosed letter from Majority Leader Frist and Speaker Hastert -- it has all the details -- and then make arrangements to be with us on June 19.

The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called upon us "to host a citywide citizen group that would comment on news process, content, quality and ethics."

The absence of in-depth local news coverage of the context of Nov. 3, 1979, and its aftermath played a central role in the community misunderstanding of that event. As Greensboro community members struggle decades later to reconcile the competing views of why the tragedy occurred and what should be done now, the media can play an important role in helping community members move beyond contested facts, frames and claims to a common understanding. In addition to informing the public, media can and should play a role in fostering dialogue and exchange of views.

Also, a diverse citizen group could improve local journalism and the community-building role it can play. Citizen input should be solicited for: story development, source development, recognizing other perspectives, critique of news coverage, commentary on newspaper practices and suggestions for better addressing community concerns.

Actually, the commission recommends we do that alone or with other newspapers. Oddly, it doesn't mention television. I'm not entirely sure what the commission means by "host a citywide citizen group." An advisory panel that meets regularly? A community forum? A blog?

What's your advice to us? Something we should do?

(The report is here, but every time I click on it I get a message saying "The page cannot be displayed.")

Update: We also have it here.

Update: Lex is spending the day studying and writing about the summary. Visit him.

The day before a long holiday weekend, and some people are apparently making it an extra looooonnnng holiday weekend. We've spent the day trying to get reaction on the long-awaited Commission report from the various players, but we're not having as much luck as we'd like.

I suppose it is understandable that many city officials want to read and think through the commission's various calls for action. I'm doing it myself. Today, many City Council members are out of town or not returning our calls. Some we've talked to haven't read the report and aren't commenting until they do. We can't reach the acting police chief or Mayor Holliday. (It's a hard report to read online for people of my generation because it's so long. On the other hand, that the report is online means that public officials out of town could still have access to it.)

Tomorrow's story is going to have less red meat than we'd like. We've talked to Jim Melvin, mayor in 1979, and Nelson Johnson, a CWP member at the time. We got some folks involved in law enforcement at the time, but they didn't say much. We're going to keep trying.

Sunday's story will have more from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission members, more from Nelson Johnson, and more from more people.

My newspaper column

Emily Tennant lives on a small cattle farm where she helps feed, vaccinate and calve the livestock. She's also No. 1 in her senior class at Northwest High School.

During an internship last summer, Carlie Blake noticed some oncology patients struggled getting the necessary paperwork for insurance. As a result, she co-founded MedAssist to help patients handle the paperwork requirements. In the meantime, she's No. 3 in her class at High Point Central.

Brian Lester builds robots. That is, he builds them when he's not attending the Early College at Guilford, an innovative program that mixes high school students in the college environment.

I talked with these students last month -- their class ranks may have changed since then -- and continue to be inspired by their accomplishments. They were among 10 finalists in the News & Record Scholastic Achievement Program, which the paper started in 1990 to recognize the hard work -- the inspired work -- of teenagers in our area. This year, we granted $14,000 in scholarships.

Next Sunday, we will publish a scholastic achievement section that announces the winners of the scholarships and honors each of the 333 students in the program.

Part of me enjoys this discussion because it belies the oft-repeated notion that newspapers are irrelevant. But really, the first organized community discussion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's two-year efforts and the News & Record's coverage is the focal point?