News-Record.com

My newspaper column

The News & Record is:
a. Open
b. Predictable
c. Mature
d. Pretentious
e. All of the above
f. None of the above

Those are among the terms visitors to my blog listed when I asked them to describe the newspaper by personality traits.

Some others: local, chatty, semi-soft, mature, gray-haired, double-edged, self-righteous, square, thin, friendly, informed, active, familiar.

Identifying the personality of an inanimate object is a key part of company branding campaigns. The idea is that people connect emotionally with the product and assign it a human personality.
Some years ago, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel conducted research that showed its readers thought it would be a white, suburban, Republican male who was arrogant, opinionated and self-absorbed.

I hope that’s not how you see the News & Record.

As the GGO GGCC CCG heats up, it's worth your time to go here. All of our stories about the golf tournament are and will be there. Plus, you can take a virtual tour of Forest Oaks with panoramic video. Thanks to David Parsons, Feilding Cage and Doug Cox for making it happen.

Check back often, particularly when the tournament starts because we'll be updating with stories and photos. Now, go tee off.

Beau Dure, a regular commenter here, wrote this e-mail to Jay Rosen. With permission, I reprint part of it:

Jay --

Thanks for coming to visit us at USA TODAY. I was glad you were able to stop by the "blogger summit" in addition to your presentations in the auditorium.

The problem isn't what JR and Lex are bringing to the table. Take away the comments, and the Editor's Log is fantastic. It's transparency at its best. It's just a pity some readers don't want to meet him halfway. My hunch is that the readers who skip the comments get more out of it.

Putting aside the cranks observation, I hope you'll weigh in on Beau's question of Jay: What's the impact in the community itself?

(I have a few thoughts, but they are more about how being part of the blogging community has changed us. More on that later. I'm pretty sure I'm not the best person to draw conclusions about the community impact.)

A former journalist and friend sent me this e-mail. I include it here because of all the things I've heard about the new Guilford Records, this is different. And an interesting perspective. My thoughts at the end.

I read the new community section this Sunday with amazement. While I like the new font and point size, I don't like the idea of the zoned sections.

One of the complaints about this community is that people are too segmented.

I wasn't at the city's news conference this morning -- doing an WNAA radio show with Sue to promote ConvergeSouth -- but we had enough folks there as it was.

Coverage here, including audio so that you can judge for yourself. Also, the city has a handy site to help you sort through the facts and myths.

Margaret has filed at Inside Scoop. Don't know if they plan to file, but Hoggard, Holder and Roch were there, too.

What impact has the community had on us?

Five big ways, and countless smaller, individual ones. The big ones:

One: You've made us more responsive. You've always given us information, asked us questions, and complained to us and about us. But it's traditionally happened one-on-one. Now it's wide open and public. And it demands a response, with words, with action, or, yes, sometimes with neglect and rejection. We've followed your suggestions for stories. We've followed you on breaking news. We've argued about coverage and about news. In many ways, you've schooled us, just the way people discussing the issues of civic life learn from each other. Buying into the idea that news is a conversation is a key learning.

Two: You have stoked our competitive fires. When we're the only daily paper in town, life is easier and we can get a bit sloppy, putting off til tomorrow what we should have done 20 minutes ago. By becoming part of the new media, competition is all around us, challenging us to do better. The questions that bounce around our newroom now: Did you read Hoggard? Do you have anything on this Cone post? We chasing this story at 101? When so many people representing so many media outlets attended the city's news conference, we expected to be online with the first report but the best. No change there, except this one: We weren't competing with the local TV stations. We were competing with the half-dozen bloggers there. When seemingly everyone is a competitor, pursuing stories they're interested in and knowledgeable about, then that makes us better.

When covering hurricanes, dry socks trump the fanciest of sat-truck gadgets.

As usual, the trusty Lenslinger nails the journalism biz.

We have a few, too:

When a reporter comes into the newsroom crowing that he has a scoop, the story will be on the 6 o'clock news.

Take notes in pencil. Ink runs in the rain.

Carry a change of clothes -- and boots, especially boots -- in the trunk.

When you hold a story in the competition in front of a reporter's face and he says, "Oh, I knew about that," he didn't.

Now you play.

From our story on the police department investigation today:

Bellamy declined to comment on the suspension or on his letter to federal prosecutors. Though city officials acknowledge the letter is public information, the refused to provide a copy to the News & Record until federal prosecutors receive it in the mail.

A city spokeswoman cited "professional courtesy" to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

From our story last week:

Mayor Pro Tem Sandra Anderson Groat said she had grown increasingly frustrated that the city had released little or no information recently, and had asked for updates almost weekly.

Councilwoman Yvonne Johnson agreed. "We need to keep the public and the press up-to-date. There's a lot of stuff that's being printed that's not accurate. We need to say that."

I'm all about professional courtesy, but I'm not sure the city quite gets it yet.

I've been editor of this newspaper for nearly eight years. During that time, this newspaper and I have been mentioned probably hundreds of times in The Rhino, usually not in the best light. They've only asked me to comment on something they were working on once that I recall. So imagine my surprise this morning when John Hammer from that paper called me for a comment.

He asked if we gave a copy of the RMA report to WFMY, which reported last night that one of its reporters had seen the report. I wondered to myself why, during all the foofaraw about our having a copy of the RMA report, no one from the Rhino bothered to ask me about how we obtained it. But never mind.

No, I told John's voicemail, we didn't give a report to WFMY.

Kellie Dixon, who has covered high school sports for us for three years, is joining the St. Petersburg Times in a similar position. It's a tough loss for us because a good prep sports writer is hard to find, which is why St. Pete hired her. She helped created the Final Cut page on Fridays and our All-Area athletes packages.

High school sports fans will be in good hands, though. Jeff Carlton, who has already logged one stint on the prep sports beat, takes over. Jeff's a regular poster at SportsExtra. We're lucky to have him in the bullpen. For the record, he's 29-7 in his high school football predictions. Kellie is 26-10.

In the comments on this thread, Dr. Mary Johnson wrote: There is a smugness to this "community" ... a cliquishness worthy of high-schoolers. It's NOT "hip" and it's a problem that no one in the clique is really addressing ... they're just doing whatever they wanna do and throwing the party (Converge South) to celebrate. So if you're gonna talk about something, talk about that.

Frequent critic Jim Wilson responded: What I find most true about your post above is the snobbery that pervades this blog "community" -- be it from the Converge South stuff to the mutual admiration society among many of "professional" bloggers.

It's very much a two tiered world...

At first, I was going to let it go and move along, but

We have a new way to order photographs by our crack photographers.

Go here and click on "Buy Photos" down on the left navigation area or under the Marketplace tab. If there's a photo you've seen in the paper but it's not listed, you can ask for it by clicking on the "Photo request" link.

We'll also eventually offer photographs from the Associated Press.

Just because you read it here, there's a grand opening discount of $5 off. Type NR1006 in the discount field.

Last I heard from Justin Cord Hayes, he was leaving his reporting job in our High Point office to teach school. Now lo and behold, James Wolcott quotes Justin in the November issue of Vanity Fair in an article (not posted) entitled "Red State Babylon" about how red states lead the nation "in violent crime, divorce, illegitimacy, and incarceration."

"Red States cling to double standards like a drunk holds on to the last beer he can afford," writes Justin Cord Hayes in the semi-humorous survival guide Blue State/Red State.

Justin has written several quick-hit pop culture books.

The Amazon description of this one is: This funny, quirky flip book gives readers red and blue the lowdown on all 50 states: What if you're a Blue Stater-and now you find yourself in a Red State. Where will you watch films free from the taint of "traditional family values"? Or What if you're a Red Stater-and now you find yourself in a Blue State. Where will you find a "real" church?

Whichever "other country" readers wake up and find themselves in, Red State/Blue State will help them survive the nightmare. They'll learn about its leaders, its thoughts on hot-button issues, its political scandals, and its vestiges of "the other" long thought lost forever.

Stunned is the only way to describe how I reacted when I saw the classroom at A&T fill up during our session at ConvergeSouth. And people kept squeezing in. Co-leaders Allen Johnson and Stewart Pittman and A&T hostess-with-the-mostess Teresa Styles dragged in some more chairs. We were scheduled at the same time as the Scobles, which is a little like the WB counterprogramming against the Super Bowl. Or at least that's what I thought before about 80 people walked into the classroom.

For the discussion of "Creating a new media culture in a traditional newsroom," we expected a group of professional journalists from the MSM. What we got was a wonderful mix of traditional journalists, academics, citizen journalists, vbloggers, political types and even our incredibly transparent and open city councilmember, Sandy Carmany.

As a result, I'm not sure the unconference format worked as well as

What a wonderful weekend for new media and citizen journalism in Greensboro. Not only was ConvergeSouth a soaring success, but the confidential RMA report has splashed -- not leaked -- out into the hands of just about anyone who wants it.

Good. Gone are all those questions about whether we should have waited with our report on it until the city decided to release whatever information it decided was appropriate. Gone are the concerns that we were breaking the law by even being in possession of the report. No one seems so concerned about knowing the source of the leak now...unless city council is going to start up again with the lie detector tests. And all those people who wanted us to post the report have so many other bloggers to make the request of.

People who see political reasons behind its "release" shouldn't be surprised; this became a political story the moment the chief was locked out of his office.

What the RMA report really says is that the city manager lost confidence in his police chief, a point the city has made since the very beginning. And, my position all along: the city should release the report and let citizens decide.

Remember when I said we'd ask if we could get a few moments with the president when he comes to town? We asked and the administration's media folks said that we could sit down with him as soon as they find WMDs in Iraq. Well, no, that's not what they said, but it's not too far off. The Capital Beat explains.

With all the discussion going around about what we have and have not written about the police department and the RMA report, it's beyond me to address everything that people are alleging we wrote, didn't write and intended to hide or reveal.

Because I've read many comments saying that we didn't report this or that -- particularly over aspects of the case we have reported -- here is the link to most everything we've written since January. Here are stories specifically about the RMA report.

We're working now to get up everything pertaining to the case dating back to the first story we wrote on June 10, 2005, about the electronic tracking device found on Lt. Hinson's car. They'll go here.

I'm aware that people are all over the place on whether we should publish the report. (Isn't America wonderful?) Our concerns now that it's online remain the same as they did back in March when we first got it. They aren't changed by the fact that it has now been posted.

Both Lex and Joe from our staff have additional insight.

Every year we hold an internal auction of all the freebies companies send us in hopes that we'll promote them. The money we raise goes to charity. Most years we sponsor Salvation Army families at the holidays and contribute to the Empty Stocking Fund. We plan to do that this year, too.

With one extra contribution.

The organizers of our company United Way fund drive decided to engage us in a bit of internal warfare to raise even more money. A contest was staged to see which department could raise the most pennies. But only pennies counted. If you dropped any other currency into another department's penny jug, the value of that currency was deducted from their total.

Doesn't sound like the sort of United Way campaign Neil Belenky would approve of, does it?

all the time. Click on the link to the video and photo galleries. They're being updated throughout the day. (I'd link but the link changes every time we update.)

...must be barbecue. Stamey's is not only the president's choice for barbecue and slaw but is also the Triad's, or at least the people who voted in our annual Readers' Choice Awards. Dozens of categories. Many choices I personally agree with; many are as odd as a Texan enjoying pork barbecue.

By the way, two years ago, the best blog was Cone's. Last year, Hoggard. This year, Eugene Sims of Rock 92.

One of the most common arguments I hear from readers is "Everyone I talk to agrees with me." It doesn't matter if the person is calling about our doing something different on the front page, changing a columnist, reducing the stocks or replacing a comic strip. I also get its cousin: "No one I talk to likes it."

I've never understood how anyone could believe that to be true. But I've been wrong. Here's the explanation.

Homophily may help explain some of the bitter partisanship of our times -- when your friends are drawn exclusively from one half of the electorate, it is not surprising that you will find the views of the other half inexplicable.

"I often hear people say with absolute certainty that whoever they are in favor of is obviously going to do well because they haven't talked to 'anyone' who supports the other person" in the election, said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who has studied homophily. She rolled her eyes and said, "Oh yeah, sure! That is a good argument."

Local blogger spends day in newspaper newsroom in Knoxville.

If there's one thing that the left and right halves of the blogosphere agree on, it's that the mainstream media is biased.

Of course, we don't agree on the direction of the bias, but that's just a minor quibble, right?

So which side is right? Both? Neither? After spending a day at the Knoxville News Sentinel, I still don't know, although I suspect that the answer is "a little of both." What I did discover was that there are other factors that play a far larger role in determining A) which stories are followed, and B) how they are presented.

Wanna do this? E-mail me or leave a comment, but be forewarned newsrooms aren't much more interesting than your typical bank, except during our Penny Wars! :)

My newspaper column

It was fun having President Bush spend so much time in town last week. Eating pig at Stamey's, hanging out with the kids at Falkener and Victory Junction, fund-raising in private in Irving Park. All in all, a good seven or eight hours on the ground in the Triad.

And his name isn't even on the Nov. 7 ballot.

But there are an abundance of local candidates and bond referenda that are.

An old journalistic saw is that if both sides are complaining, you must be doing something right. I've never put much stock in it, even though I've said it myself on occasion. It's illogical; it could just as easily mean that you must be doing something wrong.

For a week or so, I've heard from callers and writers who accuse us and City Council of being afraid to deal directly with the police department issues for fear of being called racist. More bluntly, the idea is that a rogue African American cop is able to operate illicitly within the department and no one will do anything about it -- or write about it. It seems to be a current running beneath the surface in the storyline in the Rhino.

At the same time, County Commissioner Skip Alston, former head of the state NAACP, and State Rep. Earl Jones have called the paper and me racist. In brief, they think we never put positive stories about black people on the front page. And they think we unfairly vilified the Rev. Michael King of Project Homestead and the A&T football player convicted of sex crimes.

How has it gotten to the point that being called racist has become a defense against being accused of political correctness? It's not, of course. But it's a result of this name-calling, finger-pointing world where ad hominem attacks based on our own preconceptions take the place of reasoned discussion and fact finding.

Even though their leadership medals tarnish when they hear us say it, John Alexander and Stephen Martin used to work at the News & Record.

John is president of the Center for Creative Leadership and Stephen is global public relations manager there. John was editorial page editor here in the 80s and Stephen was a business reporter at the turn of the century.

Now they're writing in U.S. News & World Report about the leadership styles that helped the New Orleans Times-Picayune create the journalism the city needed during Hurricane Katrina.

I'm glad John and Stephen managed to land on their feet. :)

We've been playing around with video some. (By we, I mean, not me, but people on our Interactive staff) We've started a series of 60-second video vignettes called "Greensboro Minute." The purpose: "To provide a glimpse about some of the people, places and events that make Greensboro what it is," said Michael Grossman, director of new media content.

We have three up now -- on the Western Guilford marching band, Cheesecakes by Alex and rapper Ed E. Ruger. They were shot by different people; each has a different feel. (David Parsons, our video producer, is the key connection to all three.) We're going to keep shooting them to build a library of 60-second "small" films about things that make Greensboro special.

Again, just us feeling our way, learning a skill that hasn't yet come naturally to us print folk.

As we go along, citizen submissions will be welcome.

We chased rumors much of the day yesterday about Grimsley High School Principal Rob Gasparello being fired, resigning or being moved. We heard all sorts of things, as tends to happen with these kinds of stories. We could confirm few of them as true and didn't publish them. And by the end of the school day, he told his faculty that he was moving to a new position with the school system.

I have a child at Grimsley, as do some other editors here. I know some of the players involved. We had several discussions about whether we were overemphasizing the story because of that. I'm glad we did, too.

One argument was that principals are moved around with routine. We didn't have evidence that the move was anything more than they said it was. Why make a big deal about it? The other side held that Grimsley is a large school that one ranking says is the 67th best public high school out of more than 27,000. Parents had also recently complained to the school board about the school's leadership. And an immediate change mid-semester? Unusual, at least.

My call was that any time a high school principal moves unexpectedly like that, it causes a disturbance in the force of the community, whether it is Grimsley or Dudley, Northeast or Southern. We should treat it that way.

(As it was, the story was the most viewed local story of the day online.)

Have you read this story about Lauren Cole's struggle with cystic fibrosis? It has been up for less than a day but has more page views that any other all week.* A story about hope and friendship, it's an atypical traffic driver given that it doesn't pertain to sex, violence or human oddity. It's on track to rival the page views of the President Bush coverage.

I'm wondering why. It doesn't appear to be linked to any aggregator of any sort. Her guestbook does give you some sense of what she and her story meant to people.

By the way, the No. 2 story was a fatal accident in Winston. No. 3 was the Grimsley principal's move.

* The stories about John Bunting got more traffic but they are linked to all the college sports sites.

It's been a week since I invited you into the house. Got bupkes for interest. Is it my breath? (Don't answer that.) I'm surprised, given the seeming interest -- or at least opinions -- on how we do things.

We worry about a lot of things, and when we're deep in the election season, we worry about being used by political dirty tricksters. So when we get a story about a District Court judge in a tight election race who may have inappropriately involved himself in a case, our antenna goes up. What's the evidence? Is there a paper trail? Who has first-hand knowledge of the incident? What do the two people involved in the story say?

Obvious questions, election season or not. This story involving Judge Tom Jarrell gave us enough pause to hold it a day for more reporting.

The written record states that Jarrell set the initial bond in a case in which he's personally involved. The judge says he did not set the bond and did nothing improper. The magistrate involved says he doesn't remember the case. The attorney for the accused is crying foul. Jarrell's opponent, Susan O'Hale, says she has nothing to do with the complaint.

Take a look at this drawing. Does it offend?

We published it deep in the paper (D4) on Friday with a story about author Brad Meltzer. Apparently, a morning radio show spent some time discussing what they thought they saw. In the delicate words of an e-mail correspondent: "It seemed that Superman was not holding the piece of paper with his hand???"

No, Superman isn't holding the papers at all. An unattached hand in the foreground is. Admittedly, the distinction between the hand holding the Justice League papers and Superman's costume is much clearer in color than black & white, which is how we printed it. Still, you have to be looking for something, seems to me. Or as my mother would say, looking for trouble.

Still, as a fan of visual perceptions, I know that one's person's clarity can be another's optical illusion.

One person called and said that he expected an apology in the paper. I'm trying to imagine the wording of that: If you saw something that offended you, even though it wasn't what you thought it was, we apologize? That one would certainly qualify for Regret the Error.

Somehow I missed this story in the Winston-Salem Journal last week, but thanks to Citizen Media Blog, I found it.

Public radio station WFDD 88.5 is studying the possibility of creating a center devoted to public media and education and outreach for citizen journalists.

Preliminary plans call for the center to have and develop forums, Web sites, conferences and other training sessions for public-radio and television journalists, students of Wake Forest University and members of the community. The preliminary plan also calls for it to teach ethics, mechanics and responsibilities of digital media.

I certainly appreciate the role of the MSM in such a venture. But I wonder what's stopping our colleges and universities from taking the lead, too? Seems a natural for our free-thinking friends in communications, journalism and political science departments at A&T, UNCG, Guilford, GTCC....

I often get asked by students and job candidates about the best way to get hired. I give the usual sort of advice, and now, thanks to Mindy McAdams, I have one more item to add:

I don't want to go into detail about what I find when I Google students. In some cases, it's awful. I also look them up on Facebook and MySpace. It may be that an editor wouldn't reject you over a few drunken party photos. But what about that photo of you at a political rally, holding a sign in the air? Your integrity as a journalist immediately comes into question. I'm not inventing this -- editors have told me so.

We wouldn't reject a good candidate over a few drunken party photos. But there could be enough stuff reflecting on a candidate's judgment, behavior and personality that would tip the balance in the favor of another candidate.

More advice here.