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One of my resolutions, I think, is that I'm going to respond less frequently to the commenters on this blog who don't add much constructive to the discussion.

Before you pile on, hear me out.

I believe in the value of the conversation and exchange of ideas. I've tried to be active in the comment field here, talking with those who venture in. I don't back away from that. But some commenters sound the same theme over and over. I acknowledge those comments tend to be negative toward the paper, this site and me. That's not what this is about. I can take that and am not banning anyone, short of a violation of our terms of service. But I'm not interested in having the same conversations time and again, with little hope or expectation of minds changing.

Some commenters seem to be needy and interpret no response as rejection. It is sometimes, but not all. Your comments are read, but if I don't have anything to add and if I feel we're going down the same road we've been down before, I'm not going to waste my time. So don't read my silence as assent, either.

My thinking is that the bar will be even higher for anonymous commenters, too. It's easy to swing in and drop a bomb when you hide behind a pseudonym and fake e-mail address.

I don't want to discourage commenters. I want to raise the level of discussion and keep it moving forward. Constructive comments are helpful and result in informed conversation and learning. They have helped me and this site and this paper get better. Feel free to be critical, too. We're not anywhere close to perfect. But if we've beaten this horse before, don't expect me to join you.

Jay Matthews of The Washington Post and retired teacher Walt Gardner list their 10 favorite education blogs and The Chalkboard is No. 1. (The list is in alphabetical order, but still.)

Their comments:

Gardner: Comprehensive approach to "keeping an eye on public education." A watchdog on constant duty.

Matthews is a preeminent journalist writing about education, with several books to his name. His Newsweek list of 100 best high schools in the nation is debated annually.

In his general comments, he writes: One of the first things I learned was that some of the best bloggers have been judging me for some time, and finding me wanting in talent, perspective and depth. They are right, of course. The nastier they were, the higher I put them on my list.

There is a pugnacious quality to many of these blogs that connects with that 98-pound-weakling in my soul. I always stayed out of fights in school but dreamed about pounding the big guys.

Applies to the comment section of The Chalkboard, that's for sure.

Congratulations to Morgan and Jennifer.

(Thanks to The Blogging Journalist for the tip.)

The issue of interaction with journalists got a boost -- and a laugh -- when L.A. Times columnist Joel Stein wrote "Have something to say? I don't care." Stein, who is probably better known to people outside of Southern California as one of the guys cracking wise on VH1, is a wonderful provocateur. Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune comments on comments, too.

As a follow up on my Jan. 1 post about comments, I'm more interested in this from Journalistopia. Jimbo Wales: One of the things that I believe in passionately is genuine human communities, as opposed to 'crowdsourcing.' What do I mean by that? I mean, people who get to know each other, over time, as real human beings, and through that process, gain a sense of trust and responsibility for each other and for the task at hand. So for me, if we are to succeed here, this is the first place we need to focus attention....

Blog host Danny Sanchez adds: Sure, having a bunch of people hollering on a message board is a kind of community. Every message board has its regulars. But message boards become more of a cacophony, as opposed to a group of citizens working together toward a harmonious cause.

Steve Rubel has somewhat related thoughts. In 2007 our challenge, as bloggers, is to up our game. Let's skip the name calling and the back and forth cat-fighting. We should debate issues, of course. But the more that we treat each other like children, the more it brings down the entire credibility of the power of the digital citizen and their ability to shape online perceptions.

It's telling that I've received several private e-mails applauding my decision, but not so much in the comments to that post. They've not wanted to submit themselves to the crowd rip. There are real human beings here, as Wales says. Some cacophony is useful at times, but a reduction of the hollering is always beneficial.

Stephen A. Smith, a sports columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer and, more famously, a talk-show host for ESPN2, was an editorial assistant in our High Point office way back when. He didn't stay long, moving to reporting jobs at the Winston-Salem Journal and the New York Daily News. He's up there with Tony Snow as our best known alum.

I thought of it seeing this call for his resignation today.

Mark Binker profiles Matt Gross Sunday. Matt is the senior Internet strategist for the Edwards campaign. (Sorry, but a link to Matt's site gives this.)

The "Hey, Martha" paragraph for this old political junkie:

Carter Wrenn, a Republican strategist who once worked for N.C. Sen. Jesse Helms, says it was Gross who first illustrated to him the utility of the Internet in a campaign. He calls Gross "a lethal weapon" because of a mix of talents that include tech savvy and, echoing Schriock's phrase, gut political instinct.

For the uninitiated, Carter Wrenn was Karl Rove before Karl Rove.

And yes, the story tells newspaper readers what a blog is. Really, some people don't know.

Update: Binker has more.

Last month, reporter Dick Barron wrote an article about a Brookings Institution report on suburban poverty and the Triad. It was a significant national report to us in particular -- it ranked Guilford, Randolph and Rockingham counties among the 10 regions with the most suburban poverty in the nation.

During the holidays, CJR Daily took a critical look how media outlets covered it. We actually came out pretty well, comparatively speaking.

Yet there was one story that made the subject come alive more than the others: a thoughtful piece from the Greensboro News & Record which reported that its area's spike in suburban poverty "is the worst fallout yet from the region's battle with continual textile layoffs and a slow economic recovery. It underscores the fact that manufacturing built the region's small communities and that its loss is now squeezing the people who want to stay and build new lives."

The News & Record's skillfully written piece best explained why suburban poverty has risen in its area, and several closely observed, on-the-mark quotes ("We've got more and more of the character or the symptoms of a 'have not' county, and I think that's a hard thing to come to grips with") brought the issue home -- but if it had included a few of the stories of those Piedmont Triad residents struggling with poverty, it would have been even better.

Today a reporter with The Nation called Dick to ask about Rockingham County specifically.

Cole Campbell, dean of the journalism school at the University of Nevada, Reno, was killed today in a single-car rollover in southwest Reno.

No one influenced my career in journalism as much as Cole, who covered City Hall here and rose to become assistant managing editor here, until he went off to become managing editor at our sister paper, The Virginian Pilot.

He and I were reporters together at The News & Observer back in the 80s. He left to edit a magazine and then came to Greensboro. I left to work on a magazine and then came to Greensboro. He was my boss here and taught me to think about journalism as a sacred trust, but one that needed to be pushed and prodded and expanded in order to seek its ultimate service. He encouraged us all to be better, better in our reporting, our writing and, most of all, our public service.

He was a true innovator in a field that doesn't have enough of them. The seeds of his innovation were in all that we started here online. He hadn't been a newspaper editor for some years, and I often wished he still were because I'd have loved to watch what he'd do with Web 2.0. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have a paper sitting in his computer outlining Web 4.0.

Best of all, he was a charming, funny friend. His staff meetings were hilarious, and we suspected that stand-up comedy was his real calling. He also wrote a textbook on debate that is still being used. Made arguments with him difficult to win.

I just spoke with him a couple weeks ago to get advice. Hurts to even write this, knowing that I won't be able to call on him again.

More here, here, here and here.

Update: Allen Johnson remembers him, too.

Update: UN-Reno announcement:

My newspaper column

Original post here.
News story here.
For a true sense of his impact, go here.

Cole Campbell, who as assistant managing editor here in the 1980's was my boss, often preached that every death represented a tear in the fabric of society.

"Greensboro is not so large that each murder, each fatal accident shouldn’t get attention by the newspaper," he would say. "These deaths resonate through families and friends and impact the community in ways we don't even know. We must respect that and record that."

That was one of the first things I thought of when I learned that Cole died Friday in an automobile accident in Reno, Nev., where he was dean of the journalism school at the University of Nevada, Reno. He was 53.

We write about sudden, senseless death every day and must resist the pull to become inured to it. It's easy to forget the personal impact of each loss when you deal in multiple three- and four-paragraph death notices. As everyone who has experienced such close loss knows, breathtaking pain rushes in, followed immediately by the memories.

For me, the memories alleviated some of the pain. Cole was a dear friend who was larger than life, smarter than anyone I've ever known, funny and engaging and brave. He put himself out there. Aside from all that, he had a tremendous influence on this newspaper specifically and on journalism at large.

Ted Vaden, public editor of The N&O, writes today about the paper's coverage of John Edwards.

One of the certainties of publishing The News & Observer these days is that whenever a story on John Edwards runs, someone complains that the paper gives him too much attention.

Sound familiar?

Edwards does get a lot of coverage in The News & Observer. He should. He's a genuine presidential prospect, the first viable one in North Carolina since the late Gov. Terry Sanford in the 1970s. George W. Bush got a lot of attention from the Texas papers during his long runup to the 2000 campaign. So too, this year, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The question is: Is the Edwards coverage too much, and is it boosterish?

Ted answers for the N&O. I need to address it as well, as the campaign begins in earnest.

He is right when he concludes: As Christensen says, The N&O is never going to satisfy the hard-core anti-Edwards sentiment, which is virulent in a state that voted for Bush-Cheney over Kerry-Edwards in 2004. But you should look for more, not fewer, Edwards stories as the campaign cranks up. And The N&O, as the home-state newspaper, should lead in bringing to bear the scrutiny that this presidential candidate needs to face in a national campaign.

The key word is "scrutiny." We hear you want it and will try to provide it.

Melissa Marsh of WXII called an hour ago to interview me (or someone) about our front page Saturday in which we reproduced a photo of a real dollar bill and a five-dollar bill to illustrate a story about the increase in the minimum wage.

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! Federal statutes prohibit the reproduction of paper currency at its real size and color.

I admit I didn't know. I've been schooled now by our advertising department, which is much more familiar with this as advertisers seem to want to reprint bills in their ads on occasion.

The Treasury Department has not knocked on our doors yet, but as I told Melissa, we'll cooperate with the investigation. (I did understand what sources mean when they say to me, "Slow news day, huh?"

You're either boring or you stand out. You're either invisible or remarkable. And, all your life, everyone has been pushing you to fit in. All your life you're told to keep your head down, work hard, don't make waves and get it done. What rubbish.

That's Seth Godin, writing in the Guardian, providing 10 steps on how to stand out and make a difference. As our staff is setting goals for the new year, the list is one that is worth savoring. (And taping to the side of the computer.) Some good ones:

2. Remarkable doesn't mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then you're average, and average is for losers.

5. Remarkability lies in the edges. The biggest, fastest, slowest, richest, easiest, most difficult. It doesn't always matter which edge, more that you're at (or beyond) the edge.

6. Not everyone appreciates your efforts to be remarkable. In fact, most people don't. So what? Most people are ostriches, heads in the sand, unable to help you anyway. Your goal isn't to please everyone. Your goal is to please those that actually speak up, spread the word, buy new things or hire the talented.

Imagine the benefit newspapers would get if everyone tried to be remarkable! Fear of failure, fear of the new, fear of organizational disapproval and old-fashioned inertia are the roadblocks. My goal and my encouragement to our staff is to shake off those fears and do something remarkable this year. Put that in your performance and development plans for the year. Even if your efforts fail, we'll at least have fun along the way.

Our latest feature, The Joke's on You, debuted today. Stealing the idea from The New Yorker, we have commissioned artist/cartoonist Tim Rickard to create a one-panel cartoon every week without a caption. That's what we hope you will provide. (We aren't cool enough with our software yet to have a simple, elegant way to let you vote for the best, so this'll have to do for now.)

I know from your comments that there are some pretty funny people who come here. Try it.

by Hugh MacLeod (via Martin Stabe). Worth the read, even though it's longer than I'd like.

Some, but not all, I agree with:

20. Blogging will never be a mainstream activity so long as being able to write [A] well and [B] often and [C] about stuff THAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY CARE about remain the main barriers to entry.

21. Barely a week goes by without me contemplating permanently turning off the comments.

29. Sixty million blogs. Sixty million business models.

31. If you ever forget your manners, you will pay, and quickly.

I disagree with some, too, including #41.

The discussion of the value of ombudsmen and public editors is back on the table, thanks primarily to the New York Times' consideration of abolishing that position. Jeff Jarvis brings us up to date quickly and voices his always well-considered opinion.

I've always wanted an ombudsman here, but haven't figured out how to do it. We came close a year or two ago, but when push came to shove, we decided against it. The decision always comes down to whether to have a reporter on the street or an ombudsman, and I can't swallow losing another reporting position. They are precious in this day and time. Or rather, I would have had a full-time reporter writing about us, which, while intensely interesting to me, I didn't think it reflected the interest of the bulk of our readers.

Of course, readers who are Web-savvy can contact all of our reporters via e-mail. They can talk virtually with most of the reporters via our blogs, too. And, then, they can come straight to me, here. We say that every journalist is an ombudsman -- and they should be -- but I think we all know that that is just something we say. Like everyone else, each of us has varying degrees of defenses and defensivenesses.

Still, an independent voice representing readers and holding the organization to account has tremendous value. Bloggers here do it when a topic suits their fancy, but not often enough, frankly, and, in my opinion, not always on the "right" topics. (Yes, I know the loaded meanings of the word.) On occasion, I've asked about feedback options and insider reporting opportunities, but I haven't gotten much interest, which is curious to me.

My bottom line: Were I Bill Keller, I would continue the public editor's position. I realize this can be perceived as hypocritical. but I don't have 1,000 people in my newsroom, either.

While I was at it, I would also set up a series of editor blogs. The excuses for top editors not to blog has long ago fallen by the wayside.

Lots of discussion on some of the blogs I read about students in journalism schools and how (un)prepared they are for the real world of journalism.

Mindy McAdams writes: Tell the next generation that even though writing is not dead, it is not enough. They need to know more, they need to do more. And she lists a bunch of necessary Web skills.

Martin Stabe weighs in with this: Journalism isn't about printing newspapers or broadcasting television programmes. It's about stories -- and finding the best way to tell them. So I have no idea where this romantic attachment to the printed word comes from.

Kevin Anderson: Whenever I speak to students, instead of saying that they need to learn Flash, or Final Cut or Rails, I say you need to learn reporting, audio-visual storytelling and research. You don't need to know how to do everything on your own, but you need to know what is possible and doable in this digital age. The software will change. The technology will change so most importantly, you need to be nimble and curious.

Howard Owens addresses it here and here.

Rob Curley nails it: Skillset is important. But mindset is most important.

When you combine strong traditional journalism skills with a great mindset, you've got a journalist who's going to be fine regardless of what new things or technologies come our way.

It's true, best I can tell, that the j-schools are underserving aspiring journalists in terms of their multi-media knowledge. We get few here who know how to program or do video or build multi-media programs or blog. That said, our experience is that the student fresh out of journalism school or with one or two years of experience are hungry to experiment and learn new online skills. They view video online, listen to podcasts, read blogs and participate in communities in their personal lives. They understand where people are going and how they are spending their time because they do it themselves.

With this perspective, it's a short leap to learn how to do it for a living. After a year in which we essentially treaded water, our goal this year is to become a new media newsroom, with a room full of digitally savvy journalists. Everyone will learn new online tools, and we intend to teach them in-house. We're offering a smorgasbord of training, including audio, video, blogging and multi-media. We don't have everything we need in terms of equipment and software, but we'll make do. It's the mindset.

In the end, it's about the stories, as Martin Stabe says. And the visuals, I'd add. We tell great stories and we are going to tell them on newsprint and online, with words, video and sound.

Last week, during a lunch with business execs of two television stations, I asked them whether they would put their news video on YouTube. One station had had a bit of goofy video uploaded to YouTube by a viewer, which had resulted in some station embarrassment but ancillary traffic through the roof.

The response from both was basically the same. The page views primarily go to YouTube, and it doesn't add up to new revenue. (Local advertisers aren't buying a viewer from Peoria.) As a result, neither station does it.

Therein lies a difference between the business and news sides of media operations. We newsies say, "Let's put it all out there. Why not? It extends our journalism and allows an audience -- perhaps a different audience -- to find it. If it informs, helps or amuses one person online, it's got value." It is, in our limited view, the business side's role to figure out how to make money on (monetize!) that value. Makes for some tough decisions sometimes.

Meanwhile, a station in California has made the leap. (Via Matthew Ingram.) Posting on YouTube makes it easy for viewers to leave comments, pause and rewind, share videos with others, embed videos on their sites and easily watch highlights from local news if they are outside the area. It also makes it possible for people anywhere in the world to find and watch videos made by the production team of a small town station. That's very cool.

Reporter turned author Amy Joyner Buchanan has started a blog, the Online Millionaire, which, not coincidentally is the exact name of her latest book. The blog is about online entrepreneurship. (I don't think she's a millionaire. Yet.)

She told me, "I'm hoping to start a dialogue on the blog with people who are interested in selling on eBay and the other online channels, such as Amazon, Yahoo!, Overstock, etc."

Mike Orren, a once Greensboro guy and now Texas entrepreneur, has a nice piece at OJR about the launch of Pegasus News, a local citizens site in Dallas and beyond. His points:

* Launched is better than not. But not launched is better than launched and empty.
* People will display unreasonable loyalty and tenacity for a cause, particularly when that cause is media.
* The concept of "citizen journalism," at least in a pure dogmatic form, is a myth. Myths, however, are critical to our understanding our world.
* Panlocal.
* On the local level at least, data is what drives visitors.
* Local advertisers are hard to reach, but easily impressed.
* The more obscure the content, the better.
* Amateurs are bigger perfectionists than pros.
* Don't fear user comments.
* The rules of local are different.

We can learn from this.

From an Editor's Log reader:

I went to a Bible literature class at our church last night. The idea behind the lesson is to break down each chapter, each verse -- each clause and word even -- and examine what is being said. It's actually pretty interesting. Anyway, our first verse was Psalm 1:1.

"Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!"

So the first question the instructor posed was, "What does it mean to be blessed?"

Silence from the crowd.

His second question: "OK, then, tell me why this verse begins in the negative?"

A woman, maybe 65ish, raised her hand without missing a beat: "The media."

I'm thinking she's talking about the liberal Hollywood elite media, right?

Chris Anderson posits his Vanishing Point theory of news, which is correct, I think, but misses one point: community is more than geographically based.

There's nothing new about this (it's a truism of the American newsroom that Paris, Texas counts for more than Paris, France), but it bears repeating. The future of media is to stop boring us with news that doesn't relate to our lives. I'll start reading my "local" newspaper again when it covers my block.

I'm with him on the "boring" part. But I'm not sure that Paris, Texas, does count more than Paris, France, to those of us in North Carolina. I suspect more people have been to the Paris in France and have more of a connection to it.

In any case, with the stew of cultures, nationalities and people "not from here," there seems to be a higher than normal interest in news beyond the block. That's what I hear from people who want less from the neighborhood and more on Congress or what's happening overseas. At any given time, community may mean the neighborhood or your family back in Oklahoma or your friends from college who live all over the country.

Terry Heaton also makes a good point. To be the purveyor of hyperlocal news is a good thing, but our mission is more than simply providing information to smaller masses based on geography. Type of information that goes there is important, but our job is also about relating broader picture matters to the smaller groups as well.

My newspaper column

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," the Rev. Martin Luther King told a huge crowd in Washington back in 1963.

I heard and read that quote from his famous "I Have a Dream" speech several times last Monday, as the news media covered the national holiday celebrating his birth.

As we look forward to February and Black History Month, I'll repeat what others said in this paper and other places last week: We still have a ways to go to fulfill King's dream.

I admit that I'm still stunned that, in the seventh year of the 21st century, I routinely receive letters complaining that we publish too many photographs of African Americans, a claim that I suspect will make our black readers smile in disbelief.

I enjoyed reading a review in yesterday's New York Times Book Review of "The Race Beat, The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation."

No brief review can do justice to the varied cast of characters that populated the race beat during the 1950s and '60s. But readers should pay particular attention to...Claude Sitton, the Georgia-born journalist who served as The New York Times's chief Southern correspondent from 1958 to 1964. With considerable justification, the authors characterize Sitton as one of the unsung heroes of the Civil Rights movement. "Nobody in the news business," they insist, "would have as much impact as he would -- on the reporting of the civil rights movement, on the federal government's response or on the movement itself."

Claude was editor of the News & Observer when I was a reporter there in the 1980's. He was a formidable presence, as anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment as they come. He took guff from no one and seemed to define his power by working outside the traditional power structure, rather than from the inside where many editors of that time lived.

He was a tough boss. He once tore out a story I wrote and used a red grease pencil to write the questions I left unanswered. It was covered in red. But he encouraged us all to investigate the areas we covered to make sure that power was operating fairly and responsibly.

I'm writing this as if he's dead. Hardly. He's 81 and living in Georgia. The book is on my list.

Bill Hancock, who has been an editor here and at Triad Style for 18 years, has resigned. He wants to try new things while he's still young enough. Bad for us. Years ago, when Bill and I were both cogs in the editing machine, Bill suggested that we make a graphic out of the city's leaf collection schedule and put it on the front page. "More than anything else we publish tomorrow every homeowner will read this story because it directly affects them," he said.

He was right and we did it. That was the first lesson I got to look for stories that truly affect people's lives.

He's a good guy. In addition to bringing a sense of what the reader wants to our story assignment, he has a keen eye for journalistic "bumps" in stories, an even hand in dealing with reporters and a reasonable voice in a hectic newsroom.

Jury duty in High Point today. A lawyer friend offered to get me out of it, but I turned him down. It's my civic duty. Everyone seems to think that my craft will keep me from actually being put on a jury. Best I can tell, though, that is a myth.

Yesterday's New York Times describes the experience of a Washington Post reporter called to serve on the Lewis Libby jury. She said she didn't trust VP Cheney.

If that wasn't enough to disqualify her, she also said that she was not sure that she could resist yakking about the trial to her colleagues at The Post or to her boyfriend, who is also a Post reporter. "I'm a gossip," she said. Judge Walton dismissed her.

What journalist isn't a gossip? I just hope I get a good case.

Update: I was selected for a jury. (I can't talk about it.) My wife says this means the court system of the State of North Carolina has decreed that I can analyse and evaluate information, and render a decision impartially and without bias. I appreciate that endorsement.

When does a racial epithet become profanity? The Guilford College story about the attack on the students begged the question for us.

"They just began insulting us, calling us 'dirty,' 'terrorists' and 'sand niggers.' We tried not to fight them, we did not insult them back, but they beat the hell out of us."

The term "nigger" is one you rarely see in a family newspaper because it is so offensive. So should we have published "sand nigger?"

A definition: a person of Middle Eastern descent due to the various desert regions there. Usually meant in a disparaging and demeaning way.

Obviously, we published it after some discussion. (I wasn't there, but heard about it and agreed with it.) The ruling opinion: it helped explain what happened in a raw, but clear, way. Overly offensive?

Update: Lucas Grindley has a related post on profanity. As someone who has been called the f-word, I can tell you that newspapers should avoid being associated with the type of people who use it. Generally, these folks are narrow-minded or immature . . . not qualities to link with your brand.

I have heard from some people who think we've overblown the assault at Guilford College. (Yesterday's front page here. Today's front page hasn't been posted yet. The story is here.) Although I disagree, it's a reasonable position, particularly the way the Duke lacrosse case twisted and then turned bad.

Some have suggested to me via e-mail that we should have waited until the courts rule. This is actually a common suggestion whenever a crime makes headlines and supporters of the accused get upset. It's also impossible in today's news climate and a dereliction of a newspaper's responsibility.

Our initial coverage has kept pretty close to the police magistrate's blotter, court records and people who have been directly involved. We have gotten calls and e-mails from people blaming the victims, but we have not veered into rumors or conspiracy theories or implications, best I can tell. As I told one correspondent who asked: Yes, if three white students were beaten up by three black students who called them racial epithets, we would have displayed the story similarly. Yes, I'm mindful that some years ago, a student at Guilford played a hoax by posing as a victim of a hate crime. And yes, if the accused are exonerated, we'll display that story prominently, too.

In the early days of a story like this, our coverage is based on what we know at the time -- what law enforcement reveals, what the school does, what those involved say. Predictably, the story evolves as more information is discovered and revealed. We plan to stay with this story. An assault like this on a college campus should not be ignored, downplayed or dropped prematurely.

Higher Education reporter Lanita Withers is speaking to journalists at UNCG today on interviewing. (I do my thing on ethics later today.) She surveyed some of our staff members for tips. Here are some she compiled. (Although I eliminated duplicates, the most often recommended tip: Shut up and listen. These are a pretty good starter course on interviewing techniques.

* For a cold interview -- Do a Google search beforehand. Even if the stuff you find isn't pertinent to the story, it can lead to a little more context so you can ask more pointed questions.

* Feature interviewing -- it may not always be possible, but try to save the person that you're writing on as the last interview.

* In building a rapport with a somewhat new but frequently interviewed source, don't be afraid to let them know a little about yourself. Early on, reporters try to be all business, as if they're trying to crack the next Watergate.

Sunday update: As I listened to Lanita and Joe Killian talk with the journalists about interviewing, I had to make one point: If they learn about interviewing from watching interviews on television, they are learning bad habits. With due respect to my colleagues in video, who work hard and are pros, much of the interviewing we see broadcast is either fluffy and adoring or argumentative and interrupting. Much of that is because time and pith are governing factors. Print journalists don't have those issues so much -- we have other issues, but not those.

* Always, always, always ask for name spelling.

First, I must say that I'm not a judge for "The Joke's on You," our ripped off version of The New Yorker's cartoon caption contest. I say that because I don't know how Percy Walker scratched last week and this week.

A note to Greensboro's billionaire: there's no accounting for taste, as readers have often told me. You didn't get to where you are today by cutting and running. Keep on entering. You're funny.

My newspaper column

Beginning next Saturday, your Sports section will have an advertisement across the bottom of the front page on some days.

I mention this because publishing an ad on the front page of a section hasn't been done for many, many years in Greensboro. But it is not unheard of. I have an 1899 copy of The Greensboro Patriot, an ancestor of the News & Record, and it has 15 business card-sized ads down the left side of the front page.

Now, we join the The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and many other newspapers selling advertisements on the bottom of some section fronts -- in our case, Sports and Life.

A few people have asked about my lack of comment to Jerry Bledsoe as he writes his Black & White series. Back in October, he e-mailed me a request for an interview. I've included our exchange below. Before you read it, three bits of perspective on my state of mind:

1. Jerry and the Rhino have publicly expressed rancor toward the News & Record for years. Jerry has personally ripped me in print, calling me insulting names. As a newspaper editor, I'm used to that and pay it little mind. But I also believed that he wasn't going to approach the newspaper's role here with any sense of objectivity.

2. I've known Jerry for 22 years, including a brief period when I was his direct editor. He's reported books under the News & Record's umbrella and a book about the newspaper. I think we understand his reporting M.O. and narrative style. That added to my lack of confidence in being treated fairly.

3. Jerry's request for the interview with me was made after 11 episodes had been published. His storyline -- and our place in it -- was well-established before he had tried to get our side, at least from me. Traditionally, reporters gather the bulk of their information first before drawing the conclusions.

Here's our exchange, which took place over a couple days, complete with typos. (I've occasionally added salutations and sign-offs to denote more clearly who was writing.)

Forty years ago today, Jim Schlosser started at the Greensboro Record, the afternoon paper at the time. He has written countless stories, won numerous awards, influenced hundreds of journalists and shaped the way people in Guilford County understand the history, life and times of their city.

He has won accolades from readers, many of whom recognize his byline. He jumped into blogging, but is taking a break so that he can prepare a book for the city's bicentennial celebration.

And as you can see, he's still cranking it out. Jim, you're my hero.

The Joke's On You may just be the most popular new feature we've ever launched. Started three weeks ago, it got 32 submissions of captions the first week. Last week, submissions grew to 98. As of noon today, we've gotten 160. Artist Tim Rickard gets all the credit for drawing captionless cartoons that say something, which is harder than it looks.

Play on Friday.