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Allen describes it as "one of the ugliest commissioners meetings in recent memory." "Appalling," says Guarino. "Train wreck," says Hoggard.

Me, I think it was must-see TV, more captivating than "Lost" and more violent than "24."

It's not the video, but here's the audio of the commissioners meeting. It takes an hour if you listen to each segment, but it's worth it. It's more listenable than anything on the radio these days.

My newspaper column

In the past month, we've published three stories that have provoked intense reader reaction. Much of it, sorry to say, was negative.

The first was a humor column about dating that made an oblique reference to pre-marital sex, specifically that wearing socks to bed could kill the mood.

The second was a feature story about a group of men trying out for an HBO program modeled after its popular "Entourage" series. One of the men talks about driving "wasted."

The third was a front page story about an ad campaign sponsored by heterosexual people who support Greensboro's gay community. The ad featured the catch phrase, "We're straight, but not narrow."

I happily came across Kim McLarin's new novel, Jump at the Sun, as I was wandering the bookshelves looking for something new to read. Kim covered City Hall for us back in the day. She went on to work at the Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times before writing three novels.

I was her editor, but she didn't need me; she was already on her way. Now she's the writer in residence at Emerson College in Boston.

Dave Winer has some advice for John Edwards.

1. Start a program to help people in North Carolina who aren't blogging to start blogging. (It's just as important as voter registration.)

2. Help the elected officials in North Carolina (start with our old friend Howard Coble) learn how to read the blogs.

President Bush goes to Ft. Bragg on the Fourth of July. We don't.

Back in the day, we would have dispatched a reporter or two and a photographer or two. Dating back to at least the Reagan presidency -- which is when I arrived here -- our policy was that whenever the president touches down in North Carolina, we're there until wheels up. We followed that through Reagan and Bush 41 and at least some of the Clinton years.

Around the mid-90s, with 24-hour news channels popping up all over the dial, we started questioning exactly what our purpose was. We were one paper in a pack, closeted behind the press ropes, getting nothing more than anyone else, including the very wire services we subscribed to. The president almost never, ever, made news, other than being in North Carolina. What the heck were we wasting our time for? Was it regional pride? Was it a close brush with national politics? Was it a death watch?

So we stopped going outside the Piedmont Triad to cover a stump speech or a fund-raising appearance or a policy pronouncement or a cheering of the troops. What have we missed? I'd say nothing. Reporters from the Post, the Times and AP were there. They filed. We got it. Tomorrow, we plan to run one of their stories on our local front.

Instead, that's two or three staffers we can have doing something else, something that might be unique to our readers. Mistake? I don't think so -- I'd change it if I did -- but I'd be lying if I said I didn't hold my breath while he's on the ground in North Carolina, worrying that we might miss being at a big story. (Didn't this time, either.)

Got published novelists all over the place. Just heard from Bill Morris, former reporter and columnist here who is in Germany watching the World Cup and writing a novel. He reports: It's a love story about two obituary writers in near-future New York City. The subtexts include garbage, eco-terrorism and plastic surgery -- the great themes of our age.

Bill is a funny, charming, beautiful writer, which surprises those who only know him by his sloppy, disheveled look. I've read his All Soul's Day and Motor City. Outstanding.

We were in a long-term planning meeting today, talking about a story on Wendover Avenue. We heard the story pitch, talked about gathering archival documents to post online, about an interactive timeline, about linking to webcams and about a cool video drive down Wendover. After about 10 minutes of this, city editor Teresa Prout asked: "Thoughts about art as far as the print product goes?"

Ain't that the way it's supposed to work these days?

To see and hear how very versatile journalists are -- well, some of us anyway -- drop by Rioja! On Battleground Avenue after 8 p.m. Saturday and hear staff writer Taft Wireback croon a little Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. That’s right, Taft, who in an earlier life was a Golden Gloves boxer and is still one of the toughest, gutsiest reporters I know, is also a Big Band singer era. Pat King on keyboard. You, if you want, on wine and dessert.

Staff writer Joe Killian covered the anti-racism rally last night put on by many of Guilford County's black leaders. He blogs about his discomfort when the speakers started this: But, almost as soon as the many speakers began, one of the first launched into a tirade about how the "white media" would always smear them, misquote them, ignore the good things about the black community.

And

Afterward a couple of people I knew from other stories I had done came up to tell me they were glad I was there, that the "white media" thing was not for me, that I was, and I quote one person, "one of the good ones."

Which, strangely, did not really have the effect of making me feel better.

it's partly race-based, indicative of the continued schism in our society. But it's more than that. It's more like, your media isn't the media I want because it doesn't reflect the reality that I know. (Enter discussion about citizen media and blogs, but I'm not going there right now.)

My newspaper column

The war in Iraq is always on our minds and close to our hearts.

Many of us know people there, but even if we didn't, we're reminded of the war throughout the day when we review stories sent to us by our wire services.

We know that the war and our armed forces are on your minds and close to your hearts, too, because you tell us so.

Photographer Kim Walker is leaving us to pursue an master's degree in photojournalism at the Visual Communications School at Ohio University.

You're familiar with her work even if you don't recognize her name. She's shot just about everything in Randolph, Rockingham and Guilford counties. She's even traveled to China to shoot photos of the growing furniture trade there. She's won our in-house photo excellence award twice.

The judge in this year's contest said it best about her. What set Kim's portfolio apart was the picture story of the Mexican workers. It was beautifylly photographed with passion, dedication, and strong composition. I could feel that she really cared about the subjects that she photographed.

The folks who help create and maintain our Web sites are planning the future. OK, that's overly dramatic. They are in the process of setting strategic goals, determining where to focus, prioritizing problems to solve...that kind of stuff.

We have some ideas where things are broken (search, registration, navigability, for instance) and where we want to go, but only you can tell us if we're right. We are interested in the trifecta: doing good journalism, building the town square and making some money. Here are the questions that our Interactive leader sent out to some of us in the news operation. Please weigh in.

1. PLAYING CATCH-UP. Where are we sub-par? Fix what's broken. What are we behind on? What has to happen to get us on track? What do we have to accomplish in 2007?

2. KEEPING ON PACE. If we do nothing else to get ahead, and simply want to keep pace, what fundamentals do we need to do well? What are the daily, weekly, monthly SOP's we need to put in place to do our work well and improve our productivity? What do we have to accomplish in 2007?

3. BUILDING THE MARKET. What do we have to do to grow the audience, the business and the market? How do we define that goal more specifically? How do we become more innovative? What do we have to accomplish in 2007, and then over the next 2-3 years?

I'm no internationalist -- although the Internet is helping me to become more of one -- and I'd never heard of Mathias Döpfner or the company he leads, the Axel Springer media empire controlling over 150 newspapers in 32 countries. But I stumbled upon an article he wrote in May. (While I have a couple years of college German, the English translation is here.) It's sort of a response to Rupert Murdoch's well-circulated speech to newspaper editors last year.

I've tried to limit my links to newspaper commentary lately because so much of it is same old same old. But I liked Murdoch's speech, and I like this response.

In short, Döpfner outlines three characteristics that will always attract readers:

"Is it possible that anyone who might read your paper doesn't know that Guilford County is divided and has its own played-out racial politics. Give me a break. I've read it at least once a week in the paper for most of my life. Let's establish it as a given. What's next?"

This from a Greensboro native, younger than I, but old enough to be politically astute and weary at the same time.

"What do you mean, what's next?" I asked.

"If you start from the assumption that, yes, there is racial conflict, then your coverage changes. Rather than focusing on the commissioners calling each other liars and playing the race card, advance the discussion. Do something constructive."

Pam Robinson, an editoress in Long Island, sent out a questionairre to a bunch of journalist bloggers; I haven't a clue how she came up with the list, but somehow I was on it.

I resisted it at first because it seemed like so many other interviews. I sent her some links of my past blog posts that seemed most relevant and forgot about it. Then I saw what she was doing. She's in the process of collecting and publishing the comments of journalists on blogging, among other things. Some interesting stuff there.

So I submitted to her request and sent my own answers. But it's here first, below. But go visit Pam. The comments of the others are far more interesting and insightful than mine, which won't be up for a while there.

"See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s--- and it's over."

You know what letters the --- stand for, don't you? And that is why we're not publishing them in the newspaper tomorrow. Well, no, that's not right. We're not publishing that barnyard profanity because we're a family newspaper, welcome, we hope at breakfast tables, in classrooms and in public places.

That that word came from the president makes it more newsworthy than if it came from, say, you or me. (Elizabeth Dole, Howard Coble, Mike Easley, if you're reading this, you're more in the president's category.) That he was using it to discuss a public policy matter with another head of state makes a difference, too.

Still, we don't have to spell it out; our readers know what the shorthand means. Prudish, perhaps. Conservative, absolutely. Respectful of others, I believe so. So the story will be there. Right now we're publishing it on A2. The quote will be there. The word will be s---.

Other commentary here.

Tuesday update: And here.

Wednesday update: Irwin Smallwood, former managing editor at this paper, e-mailed me a note suggesting I look profanity up in the dictionary: I think there is a difference that the reader may well recognize more often than one might imagine. Profane remarks (profanity), in my reading of the definition, would properly refer to language taking God's name in vain, et al, which to some of us is a lot more objectionable than an occasional remark that is simply vulgar or tacky.

And to those of us who know Irwin, it doesn't come as a surprise that he's correct. Dictionary.com's No. 1 meaning of profane is "Marked by contempt or irreverence for what is sacred."

Bill Wolverton, formerly of the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star, has signed onto our sports desk. He has been the beat reporter for both the White Sox and the Bears, and stuns untold sports fans by saying that yes, covering major league sports gets old. That's good for us.

On Saturday, we published this photo on the front page. On Monday, we got a letter that expressed this sentiment: My immediate thought was -- Israel brace yourself, you're now in for the same above-the-fold skewed imagery from the liberal press that has plagued our military and the war effort for so many months.

Whenever the war hits a fever pitch as it has recently in the Middle East and it moves onto our front pages, readers see hidden agendas in our coverage. As in this case, we quickly get categorized as pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian based on a photograph.

Virtually every photograph worth publishing can be perceived to "take a side" because photographers are either assigned to be in Israel or in Lebanon. We choose photos that are compelling, tell a story by themselves and provide some context for the news of the day. Over the course of time, photos of "both sides" should be pretty even.

Thanks to Beth, we found Lina, a local woman and blogger who was evacuated from Lebanon. Well, we didn't find Lina; Beth did. Thanks, Beth.

But we did talk to her and she kindly gave Jonathan Jones an interview and some of her photos. It'll be in the paper tomorrow if all goes as planned.

Monday update: It did.

From Lina's blog: I had so many mini-emotional breakdowns as the reality of everything continued to hit me. Missing my family in Lebanon desperately and pray for their safety and the safety of Lebanon as a whole.

Yet another benefit of mixing in the blogosphere: an ever-expanding source network.

The other day I mentioned the way readers interpret our portrayal of the Middle East conflict. Now The Washington Post reports on a study -- an old one best I can tell -- that confirms what every editor knows instinctively by now.

Partisans, it turns out, don't just arrive at different conclusions; they see entirely different worlds. In one especially telling experiment, researchers showed 144 observers six television news segments about Israel's 1982 war with Lebanon.

Pro-Arab viewers heard 42 references that painted Israel in a positive light and 26 references that painted Israel unfavorably. Pro-Israeli viewers, who watched the very same clips, spotted 16 references that painted Israel positively and 57 references that painted Israel negatively.

Both groups were certain they were right and that the other side didn't know what it was talking about.

The tendency to see bias in the news -- now the raison d'etre of much of the blogosphere -- is such a reliable indicator of partisan thinking that researchers coined a term, "hostile media effect," to describe the sincere belief among partisans that news reports are painting them in the worst possible light.

Margaret Banks at Inside Scoop reports that Mayor Keith Holliday didn't like a headline over the story last week about the City Council's discussion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report.

I asked news editor Cathy Frail about it. She said: Mayor Holliday has a point: The word "finally" is a bit of editorializing, and we could have made the point without that word. I do believe, though, that the story backs up the headline. (In fact, the story credits Signe Waller, widow of a slain protester and former CWP leader, for "finally talking about the report.") It's hard to read the story without thinking exactly what the headline writer did.

Starting July 31, we're adding audio to our online obituaries as part of Legacy.com. This feature will be available in the online guest books of all paid obituaries appearing on the site.

According to Kathy Lambeth, who is in charge of our business development, "Audio entries can be up to 60 seconds in length and are submitted through an easy to use voicemail system, accessible via a toll-free number. After recording, the message can be played back, edited or re-recorded by the sender prior to submitting. The message is reviewed for appropriateness and then posted to the guest book where it can be heard by visitors. There is no charge to submit or listen to an audio entry."

Here's an example from Boston.com.

I spent about 30 seconds on Thursday thinking about some legitimate journalistic reason to write about the visit of the Girls Gone Wild tour bus in Greensboro. I wanted to get GGW into a headline so that my page views would go up, thanks to the gazillions around the world Googling "Girls Gone Wild."

I didn't come up with anything immediately and quickly moved on to thinking about other things, such as where I was going to take the "kindergarten-style nap in the middle of the day" my horoscope recommended. Then, this morning, Herb Everett sent me this Slate podcast. It tells the effects of The Long Tail, the phenomenon described by Chris Anderson. Part of the discussion is how a 2004 Slate series titled "Dispatches from Girls Gone Wild" by Ariel Levy comes up fourth in a Google search for "girls gone wild." It's a journalistic article and probably not what the 1,700 people who call up the two-year-old series every day are looking for.

Well, there you go. Ain't nothing boring about Greensboro. Heck, the 2005 Greensboro mayor's race was even a category on Jeopardy last night. Seriously.

Oh, my apologies to the Google searchers.

The Boston Globe. The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal. The Chicago Tribune. USA Today. All of them either sell advertising on the fronts of newspaper sections or are thinking seriously about it. Should we?

It's the sort of thing that concerns journalists to no end. But not so much to BusinessWeek's Jon Fine, who wrote:

Some time ago the publisher of a respected magazine grumbled to me that he had to compete for ads with these media "with ankle weights on." If this publisher wants to toss product placement into articles, well, that's stupid, because it hurts the product and, by extension, the value of the enterprise; it's putting sawdust in the corn flakes. But if this publisher can keep profits afloat by selling strangely shaped ads or clearly marked ads in unusual places -- what's the harm?

I don't like the Journal's move on aesthetic grounds. I would prefer that an ad not break up the elegance of the paper's front page, that pleasing expanse of print and pixel portraits. But I don't pretend that argument carries much weight, especially in stingy times like these. This isn't art. It's business.

He poses a rhetorical question that I'd pose to you hoping for a response: Does anyone beyond the most navel-gazing of journalists care in the slightest about a small ad appearing on the front page?

I had been working on a post about Jack Shafer's column in which he asserts that when The New York Times comes into a market, the local newspaper responds by becoming more local and therefore dumbs down.

Now I don't need to finish it. Thank goodness, too. Jeff Jarvis said it all better than I did. Shafer assumes that local is dumb, which is to say that national and foreign is smart. That is a coastal prejudice: What happens in Washington, New York, and maybe once a month in L.A. is important and everything in between, in the flyover, is just dumb.

Shafer is also revealing his assumption about journalism: that the big, national story is closer to real journalism; the rest is just dumb.

We've been focusing more and more on local news over the past two or three years, and as a result, have often been accused of "dumbing down." Best I can tell, that means that whenever we don't have the latest on Iraq or the Middle East or Washington politics on the front page, we're contributing to the ignorance of the populace.

Despite what you're going to read, there isn't all that much comfort for newspaper traditionalists in the latest report from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

The answer? Don't be a traditionalist.

To assume that it's good news for print when the growth of online news visitors slows is to neglect our future. For that matter, viewing newspapers and online as enemies is old thinking. The Internet opens up wonderful worlds of journalism to newspapers. Audio, video, interactivity, 24/7, and limitless space. We can take visitors places neither of us have been. Imagine helping visitors find information they're looking for one by one. Imagine different partnerships and learning we can have with the audience. Oh, the places you can go.

Newspapers should be as concerned by the slow growth online as we are about the health of newspapers. There is audience out there that isn't finding what it wants or needs on our Web sites or newspapers. (I admit I don't know what to make of the young adults who aren't visiting news sites. My teenagers aren't big news consumers either in print, TV or online but whenever I mention something to them that's in the news, they already know about it.)

The challenges, then, are still out there in a big way. But so are the answers, which are being discovered every day. We just need to join the explorers and discoverers and adopt and innovate. And we need to do it more quickly than we are.

A side note: The report confirms that readers come to newspapers for local news.

It's a deep report, and I'll have more later, but I like this from Editor & Publisher's report on the Pew survey: One advantage still held by the newspaper over fast-paced outlets such as radio, TV and the Internet is that a majority of people find it relaxing to read the newspaper.

Go figure.