News-Record.com

Editor Melanie Sill at the N&O discusses the video the Chapel Hill News received from the teenager arrested for shooting up a school in Hillsborough.

In our discussion, we asked many of the same questions we consider in deciding whether to publish any material that is powerful but also disturbing -- particularly photographs of dead people, strong language and graphic descriptions of violence, death or sexuality:

* What's the news value of the material?
* What do people gain from seeing/reading it?
* Is there an equally effective way to convey the same information with less down side?
* What negative consequences might follow from publication?
* What's the best way to present material?

This is what happens when you give the news organization the opportunity to publish. We first decide if we see the public good in publishing. I know this leaves control in MSM hands, a point upsetting to some and a power that is slipping away, mostly for the good, I think. (I'm reminded of the discussions we had here about publishing the Mohammad cartoons.)

Managing Editor Ann Morris is one of three correspondents in the latest issue of APME News to answer these questions: Should newspapers host blogs? If yes, then what must newspaper editors do to manage the ethical concerns surrounding blogs?

She gets it right.

Far be it from me to suggest that our (newspaper editors) obsession with ethics and blogs isn't important. I don't need to be painted as not being concerned about journalism ethics. But it seems as if we are looking for ethical reasons to justify ignoring what we don't understand.

Journalism ethics are journalism ethics. They apply to the work we do, not the system we use to distribute that work. Why would we need a different code of ethics? (Blogging actually raises the ethical bar by its demand for greater transparency, among other things.)

Granted, some blogs have different standards than we do. They seem to publish whatever they want. OK. Some newspapers have different standards, too. Kinda not my problem. Following our code of ethics allows us to be comfortable in our own skin, whether it is the newspaper, the blog or anything else we learn how to do.

Related: Chris Cobler of the Greeley Tribune, one of the original blogging newspaper editors, addresses why journalists should blog.

My newspaper column

Like most of you, I remember exactly where I was that horrendous Tuesday morning when I heard about the planes crashing into the World Trade Center. I was called out of a meeting and joined a crowd in front of a television. After the first tower collapsed, we began planning an afternoon "extra."

I'm less clear in pinpointing the moment I realized that Hurricane Katrina had devastated the Louisiana and Mississippi. News of the storm's deadly aftermath rolled out so gradually, yet relentlessly, that it was days, rather than moments, before the full tragedy had unfolded.

I mention this because last week we revisited the Gulf Coast a year after Katrina with a four-day series of articles and photos. Today, with our front page story on Sandy Bradshaw, a flight attendant on United Flight 93, we are beginning a week-long series remembering Sept. 11, 2001.

These types of stories on historical anniversaries are a staple of newspaper coverage. Every year, we, and most news media, note the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 and the Normandy invasion on June 6. We publish stories reflecting on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22 and Dr. Martin Luther King on April 4. Every once in a while, we have mistakenly ignored these anniversaries and suffered the wrath of readers with longer memories than ours.

To help us move faster with more focus and more emphasis on what we should be doing, we've made some personnel changes.

Michael Grossman, currently in charge of our online news content, is going to be in charge of all of our online content, adding Go Triad, our classifieds sites, and other stuff as we decide it.

Herb Everett, our tech guy, will be operations manager, maintaining our sites, providing support and making sure stuff gets done on time.

Exciting times, these.

Our columnist is that guy? Why isn't Rosenberg funny then?

Thursday update: Interesting take by a national Klan leader.

Our friends up the street at the Rhino have sued the KKK alleging unfair and deceptive trade practices when the hate group used the tabloid to weight down their racist leaflets when they toss them onto yards.

It's a despicable practice, and one of which we've been a victim. It hadn't occurred to me that we might have control over a paper after it has been sold to a reader, but who knows?

"We believe in freedom of the press, but when it comes to the stuff they're putting out there, and damaging legitimate publications, that's a whole other thing," Rhino publisher Willie Hammer said.

Personally, I hope the Rhino wins its suit. Not only might it stop the practice, but we'd have precedent for a legal action when we're called "The News & Fishwrap."

Steve Outing, a columnist at Editor & Publisher, has written about Seth Godin's book, "Small is the New Big" and applied its lessons to newspapers. I've always liked Steve's thinking and this essay is no different. It helps us know what road to take and how far along we are.

The reviews are mixed.

You see, newspapers are big. Sometimes they're truly big -- as in a New York Times or Washington Post. Sometimes they're not physically big but are institutionally big within their communities -- the small paper that's truly a small business but looms large in its hometown. In both those cases, they ACT big.

We're making some moves to become even more local. One of them begins Sunday, Oct. 1, when we introduce a new community publication for Guilford County featuring more information about people you know, news of your neighborhood and events you might want to attend.

Actually, we're introducing three publications: the Guilford Record (north) serving Greensboro, Stokesdale, Summerfield, Lake Jeanette and Oak Ridge; the Guilford Record (south) serving southern Greensboro, High Point, Pleasant Garden, Jamestown and Kernersville; and a new version of the Rock Creek Record, serving Gibsonville, Whitsett, McLeansville, Sedalia and Browns Summit. They will take the place of People & Places.

The publications are more targeted for readers and for advertisers. Each publication is tailored to bring you news stories and advertising that are closer to home. Plus, they'll incorporate the best of two old favorites: People & Places, with stories of personal and professional achievement, community announcements and honor rolls; and Hometown Hubs, where you and your neighbors are the reporters, submitting news and photos you'd like to share.

Scarcely a day goes by when one of us writes something ill-considered about blogging and the blogosphere. I haven't remarked on it before because there's a learning curve at work here with all this "new-fangled" stuff. I had to learn it -- still learning it, in fact. But blogging and citizen journalism are no longer new. In our business, we should be on top of this by now.

So, inspired by this piece in USA Today by Andrew Kantor (via Romenesko), I say it's time we got real. He writes:

Welcome to the blogosphere, where speculation becomes fact, and where self-proclaimed "experts" offer opinions about as worthwhile (but well spoken) as creation science. Where wild guesses are pitched as absolutes, and where small gaffes are blown into major affairs.

Substitute cable newstalk shows for the term "blogosphere" in that first sentence or newstalk radio or, gee, even some newspapers, and each fits perfectly.

Point is, there are good newspapers and lousy ones, good TV news programs and lousy ones, good news magazines and lousy ones. Why would anyone expect all bloggers to be good? Who says that they must adhere to the rules of newspaper journalism? I'm not excusing opinion being passed off as fact. But there are many bloggers who do know what they're talking about. Many of them have first-hand knowledge such as public officials or technical experts, for instance.

For those of us who hope to stay in the business for a while, school's not out, but we're well into the semester. We should know by now that broadbrush swipes at the blosophere are as legitimate (and helpful) as the blanket condemnation of the "liberal media." It makes us look as if we have our heads in the sand. And for someone in the news business, that's not the view to have. Citizen journalism is here to stay. We ignore it and deride it at our own peril.

The better option: embrace it, facilitate it and learn from it.

My newspaper column

I recently spent an afternoon reading articles and essays online about the dumbing down of the news business.

Seems as if everyone with access to an Internet site has weighed in. With all the emphasis on celebrity fluff over civic substance, it's not a pretty picture out there.

I decided to jump into the thicket because of persistent comments -- from what I hope is a minority of readers -- that this newspaper is dumbing down, and, presumably, taking its audience with it.

We aren't devoting much space or attention to celebrity hookups and pratfalls.

Jan Schaffer of J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism at the U. of Md., gave a speech that I just read, thanks to the Public Journalism Network.

It's good. She says journalism schools need to be focusing on five things:
* Skillset
* Mindset
* Entrepreneurship
* Reporting conventions
* Recruiting

It made me think of what I expect of students coming out of journalism school:

I don't do advance promotion for many stories, but Lorraine Ahearn has written one heckuva piece we're running Sunday about a nearly forgotten -- and never known to many of us -- chapter in Greensboro's history: A roundup in 1957 of 32 men accused of being homosexual and charged with crimes against nature.

Unlike sweeps of subsequent decades, involving raids on public parks and gay bars, Greensboro's 1957 trials focused on private acts behind closed doors.

The purpose, in the words of the police chief, was to "remove these individuals from society who would prey upon our youth," and to protect the town from what a presiding judge called 'a menace."

Most of them were sent to prison for years, perhaps based on false testimony. Check it out.

I've announced that we're introducing some new community news publications.

They are going to be edited by Cindy Loman, who has had various editing jobs here and was most recently in charge of training in our Human Resources Department until I begged her to come back.

The new reporters we've hired are:

* Adria Hairston, who has spent the last two years reporting for the Bluefield Daily Telegraph in West Virginia.

* Jamie Kennedy, our 'boro editor, will take on additional responsibilities writing for the news tabs. Jamie has several years of experience covering a variety of news for the News Leader in Staunton, Va.

* Tiffany Jones, an A&T grad who has worked at papers in Jackson, Tenn., and Lenoir.

* Ryan Seals, half of the blog, Ryan and Christy's Place, achieved a small piece of fame last year when he was on duty in the Gulf and girlfriend Christy was here (she works for us). Ryan returned safely, married Christy, and started work at The Thomasville Times until we got him.

* Chris Coletta, a former intern here and former managing editor and opinion editor of the Daily Tar Heel.

They join current staff members Jeff Hahne and Jennifer Brown.

My newspaper column

If you are reading this column, then you're probably interested in the newspaper and journalism. If you've been reading this column over time, then you've read about the online community for which Greensboro has justifiably gotten national publicity.

On Oct. 14, you have a chance to join in, when the second annual ConvergeSouth conference opens at N.C. A&T State University.
This year's theme is "creativity online for everyone."

The use of the word "everyone" is purposeful. Thanks to technology advances, everyone can have a voice that reaches around the world.

Sound dramatic? Good. It should.

Wednesday update: I should have mentioned that Lorraine explains why she was interested in the story in our podcast (part 2). "This was not a Google story."

Interesting conversation at Ed's place about why we published Lorraine Ahearn's story on the 1957 roundup of men accused of crimes against nature on the front page Sunday. Sorry I'm late to it; I was unaware the conversation was going on until I saw Hoggard last night and he asked why I hadn't weighed in.

Front page stories are debated every day inside our place as well as by our readers. So this discussion isn't unfamiliar. In a moment, I'll describe the factors that go into our decisions about the front page.

But the first question that must be addressed is whether this is even a legitimate story. As Samuel Spagnola notes, it happened 50 years ago.

Gary Goldhammer of Below the Fold e-mailed me with several questions about journalism and the media for a book he's writing about media trends. He's posted the exchange.

I wish I had cleaned up my syntax and written more thoughtfully and less on the fly. So, I did it a bit here. The additions since I e-mailed my responses are in ital.

Q. What constitutes "the media" today?
A. This is a question for the academics to debate. I'm not an academic. No offense, but I don't know any working journalist -- or citizen journalist -- who cares about a question like that. People work for newspapers, or for Web sites, or TV stations or they blog or vlog. Honestly, no one who works for "the media" calls it that, except for those pundits who criticize "the media" for a variety of ills.

If you had to describe the newspaper by personality traits, what words would you use? Experienced or amateurish? Energetic or flat? Creative or dull? Friendly or aloof? Resourceful or by the book? Trustworthy or conniving? Knowledgeable or clueless? Somewhere in between these?

This is a step companies go through as part of identifying a branding campaign. (We're not, but I think it is an interesting exercise.) The idea is that a product leaves a personal, often emotional, image in its users' minds. Naturally, companies want those images to be good ones.

For newspapers -- and in this case I'm talking about the actual newspaper, not this blog or our Web site -- we're invited into your homes every morning. But unlike some other products, such as soap or breakfast cereal, 100 percent satisfaction is beyond our reach. We bring tidings of an often unfriendly world. We state opinions you don't like. We affirm some of your assumptions but challenge others. We publish comments from dissatisfied customers.

I know it's risky to ask this question, leading with my chin and all, but no guts, no glory:

What are the News & Record's personality traits?

(Or, if you prefer, if we were a tree, what kind of tree would we be? Or what kind of ice cream best describes us?)

Normally he flies in, snarls traffic on his way to a private gathering in Irving Park, raises mucho green and flies out. This time, we're going to try to worm our way onto President Bush's schedule for an interview. (Our request probably has the same chance as a Tom DeLay comeback, but hey, Katie and Meredith have nothing on us.)

Just in case, rather than vying for Secret Service detention, how about helping us out. What should we ask the president?

My newspaper column

Next Sunday, we will introduce a new community publication to Guilford County readers featuring more information about people you know, news of your neighborhood and events you might want to attend.

Actually, we're introducing three publications: the Guilford Record (north) serving Greensboro, Stokesdale, Summerfield, Lake Jeanette and Oak Ridge; the Guilford Record (south) serving southern Greensboro, High Point, Pleasant Garden, Jamestown, Colfax and Kernersville; and a revamped edition of the Rock Creek Record for Gibsonville, Whitsett, Sedalia, McLeansville and Browns Summit. These will replace People & Places.

The publications, designed in a tabloid size, are tailored to bring you news and information that are closer to home. The contents of each will be divided into three distinct sections:

David Weinberger introduces me to one of his Daily Open-Ended Puzzles:

Headlines from USA Today with their evil twin reframing, as he calls it:

Original: Liquids not as risky as first feared: TSA will allow air travelers to carry items onto planes
Reframed: TSA challenges terrorists: Bet you can't bring down a plane with just 3-oz bottles of liquid!

Original: Do thin models warp girls' body image? Even the fashion industry concedes that gaunt is not good. But can an unhealthy trend be reversed?
Revised: Adding insult to injury: Fashion industry says to world's starving "And you're ugly, too"

Now you try:

Jonathan Jones wrote a story last week about Army Cpl. Bobby Callahan, who was killed in Iraq. The story, published on the front page Friday, was respectful, speaking more about his life than his death.

The headline read, "Wild teen found a home in Army, dies at 22 in Iraq." The first four paragraphs read:

Bobby Callahan wasn't always the best kid.

Callahan enlisted and found a home.

Some readers didn't like it.

Ben Feller, who covered Guilford County government and politics for us in the late 90's and early 00's and now covers education for the Associated Press, will be assigned to the White House beat for the AP after the November mid-terms. (That assumes he'll pass the Secret Service investigation, which, given his past here.... I'm not saying anything about the Girls Gone Wild taping.)

The Iraq war hasn't appeared on our front pages very often in the past year. I've addressed the reasoning many times before, including as recently as last month. Boiled down: Between television and the Internet, there is plenty of coverage of the war. Given our deadlines, our Baghdad coverage is often outpaced by morning TV. Can we add anything? No, so let's emphasize local news.

Now comes Eric Boehlert's Media Matters piece arguing that television is NOT covering the war. (Via Romenesko.)

There is, however, ample evidence that the American media, on the eve of the crucial midterm elections, have lost interest in the chaotic saga, with network news coverage in recent weeks plummeting and Page One newspaper dispatches from Iraq growing sparse. The media fade has come at a perfect time for the White House as it attempts to shift voters' attention away from Iraq and move it over to the war on terror.

And:

I've been watching the feeding frenzy on the Clinton-Wallace interview for a couple days now. I've not interviewed President Clinton, although I can't for a moment imagine that he didn't know exactly what he was doing. But that's neither here nor there.

My one observation: Sources go off on print journalists all the time. I can't speak for TV reporters, and it could be that a major difference is that we print types don't have cameras rolling. But when I was a reporter sources on my beats would complain, raise their voices, accuse me of some ulterior motive and tell me that they would no longer talk to me or the paper again. (They usually relented.) Even today, I often hear from people in high positions of power throwing conniptions about some perceived wrong the paper has done.

We rarely write about the discussions because, well, they aren't newsworthy. I mean: Politician angry about coverage! Civic leader rejects interview question! Pretty routine stuff inside newsrooms. And I suppose that's the big difference: when a former president does it and it's on camera, it's darned good TV.

Friday update: Dan Rather agrees, a day later.

Molly Bartels will join us as a photographer later this month.

She's been a shooter at the Vero Beach (Fla.) Press Journal since 2001. She's won awards from the National Press Photographers Association and the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. Molly has a master's in photojournalism from the University of Missouri, and a B.A. in history from Hillsdale College in Michigan.

Update: Also, Jayme Elrod will join us as a designer on the copy desk. Jayme comes to us from the Steamboat Pilot & Today in Steamboat Springs, Colo. A UNC grad, her honors paper was titled, "The Unreal World of Reality Dating: How Reality Television Influences Emerging Adults' Perceptions of Dating Norms." Sounds like a good fit!

Over at PCMag, John C. Dvorak takes a shot at citizen journalism: A number of hopeless citizen journalist initiatives are emerging, most of them promoted by idealistic professionals such as Jay Rosen, Dan Gillmor, and Jeff Jarvis, who are disappointed with the way things are going in the world of news reportage. The most notable is Backfence, a series of mundane, localized news sites that focus on reports submitted by citizen journalists. But in this instance, a citizen journalist is no more a journalist than someone who adds comments to a football forum -- it's laughable.

And,

Citizen journalism, to me, is like citizen professional baseball -- it's just not practical. You can't play professional baseball just because you think the Seattle Mariners stink. You're not a good enough ballplayer. Yes, bloggers have been breaking news stories here and there, but it's usually because they amplify something that media professionals have already written about but that was ignored by the major media. Bloggers, millions of gadflies, have been hounding Big Media.

The rest of the piece is pretty hard on both newspapers, bloggers and citizen journalism.

I think he's wrong.