News-Record.com

Some readers think that my posts and comments should be grammatically perfect -- no typos, no dangling participles, no misspellings, no ill punctuations. They aren't, and I'm not anal-retentive enough to demand it of myself here. (My staff, yes; me, no.) I came up through the reporting ranks, not the copy editing ranks, and anyone who has been in newspapers knows the difference.

With that perspective, I pass along this list of the 10 most misspelled words in blogs. I agree with the first one -- your and you're -- but would add an addenda that I see an awful lot of "you" when "your" is intended.

Anna Haynes, a blogger and occasional commenter here, sends Lex and me some love over at Online Journalism Review in a piece about common mistakes that cripple reader interactivity.

From Robert Niles: If you want readers to talk on your website, you need to offer them the one unique feature that no other blog or discussion board can -- the opportunity to talk to you (or your writers).

Anna's quote: Of the more well read blogs, Jay Rosen at PressThink is excellent about responding to my and others' comments -- likewise Lex Alexander and John Robinson of the Greensboro News & Record, and of course, Dan Gillmor. With them, it *is* a dialog. (Links mine.)

In general, it seems like the smaller the blog's readership, the greater should be the obligation to respond to the readers, but typically the initially-small-readership blogs from offline-culture organizations are the least responsive (which is behavior that will tend to *keep* their readership small).

Thank you, Anna. Unfortunately, I don't do all that hot on two of the three common mistakes. We have forums, but they aren't used much. And sometimes, I respond too quickly and frequently to comments. Tell you what, I'll try to do a better job on that. :)

Amy Dominello, who covers health, among other things, for us, is blogging about her weight-loss challenge.

You all can follow along as I try to shed some pounds and pick up some better habits.

But I'd also like to hear from those of you out there. Are you trying to get healthy? What are your challenges? What are your successes?

It's all related to this.

Now, I've told her that if she's going to do this right, she's going to have to reveal more of herself and tell us her height and weight, among other things. We need to get a picture of her and how far she has to go. (Not all that far, if you ask me, but what do I know.) She's working up to it so encourage her.

1. CHASE YOUR DREAM: Stop living for others, avoid temptation, life is not all about money. Let your reputation never be under question. It's true -- it's possible to earn decently and live honourably as a journalist.

That's No. 1 in sans serif's 12-and-a-half rules to be a good journalist. (Via Howard Owens.)

I've preached on all of them, and have failed to follow every one but No. 10 at one time or another. But they are all worth striving for.

That half one? I did the best thing. Married a journalist who left the business. She understands the lousy hours, the obsessive focus and the unreasonable demands, but she's not part of it.

In one of those interminable discussions about racial politics we seem to have on this blog, I made a comment about how some words mean different things to black people and to white people. It's beyond mere political correctness, I said. It has to do with history, experience and intent. I used the word "articulate" as an example. I was unconvincing and, I suspect, inarticulate. Here is a better explanation from The New York Times of how words can have different meanings based on one's race. The topic, of course, is the word inarticulate.

But here is a pointer. Do not use it as the primary attribute of note for a black person if you would not use it for a similarly talented, skilled or eloquent white person. Do not make it an outsized distinction for Brown University's president, Ruth Simmons, if you would not for the University of Michigan's president, Mary Sue Coleman. Do not make it the sole basis for your praise of the actor Forest Whitaker if it would never cross your mind to utter it about the expressive Peter O'Toole.

Scott Kirsner in the San Jose Merc: Though most bloggers don't consider themselves journalists, and lustily criticize what they see as the hidebound "mainstream media," they need to consider adapting some of the ethics and disclosure practices that guide traditional print and broadcast outlets. Ultimately, cultivating those practices may enable them to develop a more transparent and accountable relationship with their readers than the mainstream media have ever had. (Via Romenesko.)

The News & Record's code of ethics is below. We developed it with generous from The Roanoke Times, The Virginian-Pilot and ASNE codes.

Juan Antonio Giner at Innovations in Newspapers has been publishing historical photos of newsrooms.

Here are three I pulled from our archives. Most interesting thing to me? No obvious signs of cigarettes anywhere.

Taken circa 1939: Charles Long, Jay Huskins and Irwin Lemons at the copy desk of the Greensboro Daily News.

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Taken circa 1939: City Editor Granberry Dixon taking a story over the phone. At the far right is a glue pot and the proverbial spike.

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This photo is undated, but after consulting with staff historian Jim Schlosser, we're guessing it was taken in the early 70s. Part of the newsroom was walled off while renovation was going on. The red grease pencil marks show where the photo was cropped.

You can't tell from these reproductions, but I'd swear the typewriters are the same in all three photos. (A typewriter, sonny, was what we used before computers.)

In January, I took a break from the blog and realized life was a lot less frantic. I wasn't worried about my next blogging topic. I wasn't obsessed with getting photos or video to illustrate each post.

Then a rare moment of reason hit. Who was I kidding?

From Confessions of a failed mommyblogger by Kathryn Hopper, former business reporter here, writing in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. (Via the Blogging Journalist.)

Thank god she wrote that so I would have something to post today.

We've hired Jonnelle Davis, a reporter with the Danvile Register & Bee, to join our staff in Rockingham County. A graduate of UNC, Jonnelle has a good amount of community journalism experience, having also worked at the Fuquay-Varina Independent, Apex Herald the Chapel Hill News and Wake Tech.

Dan Gillmor cites the astronaut arrest story being broken online by the Orlando Sentinel with this question: When, oh when, will it stop being journalism-business news that a newspaper breaks a story on the Web?

And he answers, too: The real news would have been if the paper had done anything else with a scoop of this kind.

It's ridiculous -- and telling of an industry that remains impossibly hidebound -- that anyone would offer the paper a pat on the back for doing the obvious.

We, too, have moved to putting every news story online as soon as we have the information nailed down. We don't expect pats on the back, and I doubt Orlando did either.

We don't have it down completely yet. Knowing something and being able to publish it aren't the same things. Sometimes we report too long when we should get the news up first and resume reporting. Sometimes we even forget that we can publish immediately. We're all getting better at it, though.

We occasionally get tangled up in a argument about television -- if we post breaking news, they'll take the "exclusive" information from our site and broadcast it on the six o'clock news. Because they aren't the best at providing viewers with the source of their information, we had tended to hold back our "best" stuff.

We know that's the wrong discussion, of course. Just describing it now makes me think of how egocentric it is. Our obligation is to damn the competitive one-upmanship and get the news out to readers as fast as we can.

By the way, for people who decry the lack of serendipity when viewing news online vs. a newspaper, I offer these web headlines from our site listed in this order right now:

Pregnant woman dies in wreck (1:18 p.m.)
Little Debbie Nutty Bars recalled (1:17 p.m.)
Bill would allow oaths using non-Christian texts (1:16 p.m.)
Cummings' Jones signs with UNC (11:36 a.m.)

The big breaking story of the day, which went up about 12:45 p.m., is about the two men shot here.

If you watch television or listen to the radio, the biggest story of the day, both yesterday and today, is Anna Nicole's death. So why didn't more newspapers play it like this? (Our front page here.)

Every time a news event like this occurs, we think through our coverage plan. She's captured attention from some portion of the public in that gossipy, larger-than-life, guilty-pleasure sort of way. Her death was unexpected, untimely and newsworthy (though hardly as shocking as some reports say, given her lifestyle).

But what seems exciting and fresh to us at 3 in the afternoon may well be tired and old in the paper at 6 a.m. the next day, thanks to the saturation television coverage. She's not local, she's not important, and her passing doesn't seem to have any direct affect on the people who read our paper. But she is sexy and people are talking about her.

Update: Baltimore Sun story about coverage. (Via Romenesko.)
Saturday update: Other views here and here.

A big front page photo of her would probably sell papers.

That's the question posed at Media Bistro.

Let's take nominations for the longest hours and most grueling job you've held in journalism or publishing. I bet there are some real horror stories out there. Was it worth it? Was there anything you learned from it, some way you benefited by eating and sleeping your job? How did you handle the work?

Share -- it might make someone else feel better ...

Have at it.

The Klan deposited a present "In Recognition of Black History Month" on my driveway this morning. Wrapped in the Rhino again. The message: the liberal media and the government have misled you, but you already know that.

As more mainstream media types venture into the blogosphere, more journalists are surprised by the vitriol here. It's doesn't lend itself to a civil discussion, they might well say. Heck, I've said the same.

From Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice:

If someone disagrees with someone a common response across party or ideological lines is "fury" rather than calm counter points of discussion. Just read comments on most blogs (ours here are more civil than many). Or posts. After you read blogs after a while you start to wonder: is there ANY day when there is NO outrage over an issue, a person or another blog?

The journalistic cringe over reader comments is an odd thing, too, because it's not as if newspaper folk don't get this sort of feedback all the time.

Martin Stabe quotes a British columnist who says that blogging, "is the equivalent of going to the pub and listening to complete bores sounding off."

Well, sort of. In the spirit of the comments, let's examine what you'll find if you wandered into that bar. Frankly, my experience is that some you'd share a beer with, some you'd not share so much as a men's room with.

They are:

I've been talking with Lisa Williams of H2otown, a citizen journalism site that is incredible enough to recommend you visit it yourself. She was asking me about our experience with comments and citizen journalism contributions.

We haven't been all that successful with the contributions, but the conversations on blogs, letters and stories have been compelling and dynamic. I told her that commenters and citizen journalists occasionally are one and the same, but more often are different animals. Commenters are more inclined to discuss and challenge. Their response tends to be a shot from the hip. Citizen journalists have a specific story to tell and take more thought and time -- it's harder to write original work than to respond to someone else's work. For some reason, while it seems as if everyone thinks they can write poetry, many are hesitant to write journalism. And then there is the issue of pay.

She responded:

I discovered something recently that really changed my thinking about what our thresholds for success are in community building: many popular sites that feature user-submitted content from a nationwide or even global audience -- like Wikipedia and Digg -- have tiny numbers of core contributors that are really running the show.

This means that the whole storyline of "thousands of faceless internet users swarming to a site and making it a thriving magnet for traffic" is completely wrong. In reality, there's a core group of people -- about the same number as in an urban high school -- who are consistent contributors, and their efforts keep the site fresh and make the contributions of casual "once in a great while" contributors possible.

If true, this has huge implications for local sites planning for
user-submitted content. One, it means that even if you get a small
number of contributors, you may be doing better, on a percentage basis, than some famous "people driven" sites. My guess is that in a local context, the staff of the paper IS that core group of committed
contributors.

That certainly jibes with my experience at H2otown. I generally post three items a day, and that seems to be enough to keep the machine going. And many more people want to kibitz in the comments section than want to post stories. But I think Watertown's population just isn't big enough to contain enough people who want to do the "post a story" thing for the site to run on its own. I'm beginning to suspect that that's true of almost all but the largest cities. I also think visitors are basically using the comments section as a low-tech social networking service -- "read stories" and "submit stories" is not as compelling as "talk to peers." (Which can be loud and abrasive at times). I think newspapers can use their content and talent to draw people -- and then work on becoming (again) the central place where conversation happens in their community.

Update: Rich Skrenta imparts tough love to participatory media sites.

Game Buzz, a new staff-produced video for gamers, is here. Not being a gamer, I can't speak to the opinions of the hosts. But it's the logical outgrowth of the Game Buzz podcast, of which Mike Fuchs did, like, 76 of the things. He knows his stuff.

I know that I'm not supposed to say this, but, honestly, the newsroom breathed a collective sigh of relief when the 24 finalists in American Idol were announced last night. Not a single one hails from North Carolina. After Fantasia, Bucky, Kellie and Chris -- among others --we had had enough of tracking their progress week after week.

Update: The most-viewed story on our site today? This one.

'Course, we still have those four to follow.

Mark Binker has some great audio from the Jim Black's attorney outside the courthouse in Raleigh.

A reporter asked why Black accepted "illegal gratuities: "That's a great mystery to me," attorney Ken Bell responds. "It's a great shame that he did this to himself."

A reader and I have been sparing over Jim Rosenberg's column last Sunday in which Rosenberg describe's the mayor's day. The reader thought some of the language and imagery was over-the-top crude. Like what, I asked.

9:00: Watch crane at Wachovia Building renovation move up and down and think about sex.

11:30: Send someone to get Part 119 of Jerry Bledsoe's "Cops in Black & White," a chart graphing the regularity of David Wray's bowel movements against the phases of the moon.

2:18: Watch jackhammers at Painter Boulevard construction go up and down and think about sex.

Yeah, well, Rosenberg is an acquired taste, sorta like Scotch whisky or pig knuckles.

Someone else, hearing me talk about this exchange, suggested that we label stories the way television does certain programming: "Content may not be suitable for all readers." I fear we'd have to put it at the top of every page.

Atlanta, Dayton, Knoxville, Gannett. We're pretty much all doing the same things.

Among them:
* Putting readers -- knowing them, interacting with them, learning from them -- first in everything
* Emphasizing local enterprise and exclusivity; cutting back on commodity news
* Building new media expertise across the organization, expanding well beyond the newsprint-centric publication that comes out once a day
* Devoting more time and resources to watchdog journalism; ramping up the urgency and aggressiveness of the report
* Displaying more personality -- both our own and the community's
* Creating a different sort of paper; we're going to do that first with Sunday's edition for which we're building a new plan

Doug Fisher, a J-school prof at University of South Carolina and who came to ConvergeSouth last fall, addresses the phases newspapers are going through. We are well into Phase four.

We're reading the same tea leaves.

Yesterday a friend asked me what I was writing about today. He was referring to my newspaper column. I said I didn't have a column this week.

"It's been a while since you've written one," he responded.

"Three weeks," I said.

"Not doing anything?" he asked.

"No, just nothing to say," I answered.

Of course, that's not true. I've posted more than a dozen entries here in that period. So why am I posting items big and small nearly every day, but don't have material for a newspaper column?

Gregory S. Miller, a Harvard Business School professor, studied how the news media performs its watchdog function on accounting malfeasance. His remarks apply across the reporting spectrum. (Via Romenesko.)

He concluded three things:
* The press is an early source of reporting on accounting malfeasance. And people often ignore the early warnings.
* Reporters do more than repeat info that's already out there. They often provide new and original information.
* The role of the news media is important, but there is a bias.

The pursue big companies everybody cares about or small companies if they can tell the story in an interesting way. And of course the jackpot is if it's a big company about which they can tell the story in an interesting way.

This point is dead on the mark and is universal. All stories are not created equal. We don't have the time, space or interest to write about everything. So a filter we use is this: If many people are going to be impacted by a story, let's do it. If the impact is small, the storyline needs to be particularly compelling. Otherwise, why would the average reader read it?

He also addresses the influence of advertisers on news coverage:

You have an hour or three of audio tape involving an investigation of an assistant police chief. Some people who have heard it say it is newsworthy.

Question: Assuming it is newsworthy, do you put the entire tape(s) up or do you edit it down so that it's easier to download and listen to?

At this point, we don't know what we're going to get -- and frankly, it's easier to put the whole thing up and let the good times roll -- but our current plan is to edit it. We do that mostly for user ease, but also to protect the innocent. (We don't know that there are innocents to protect, but we figure it is likely that the names of some people may pop up on the tape for no legitimate reason.) It falls into the category of just because you can publish doesn't mean you should.

Still, we know how some of you feel about our editing. :) Thoughts?

Update: What we have is here, including audio and the city manager's statement. We'll continue to update as we report.

Wednesday update: More tapes and statements here.

After two years as a session leader at ConvergeSouth, I suggested to Sue that I wanted to be elevated to an attendee only in Year III. She's found a pretty fair replacement.

Right about now, reporter Nancy McLaughlin and editor Betsi Robinson will be accepting statewide awards from the Associated Press at a luncheon in Raleigh.

Nancy won the Thomas Wolfe Award, which honors the single best newspaper story in 2006 by a paper with circulation of 30,000 or more. Nancy also won this award in 2002.

Betsi won the Carl K. Bell Award, which honors excellence in editing in any AP member across the state. An N&R editor has won this award each of the last five years.

Staffers here won both awards last year, too.

Update: Runners up for the writing award were our own Lorraine Ahearn and Liz Leland of the Charlotte Observer.

PR does not have a duty to tell the truth according to an audience of over 260 public relations executives (and me). 138 voted against the motion in last night's PR Week sponsored debate that "PR has a duty to tell the truth", vs 124 for. (Via Martin Stabe.)

That gem comes from across the pond, but I wonder how close the results would be from PR professionals here. I'm surprised the vote is as close as it was. The argument that a public relations professional's first duty is to his/her client and their message makes rings true to me, based on my dealings with PR firms and political spinners.

Not surprisingly, the primary reason that PR folk in the room gave for not telling the truth is, well, the media. Journalists were to blame, they said, because journalists constantly sought out tension, discord and disruption. PR executives had to protect their clients from them and, when necessary, fib/be economical with the truth/lie.

I'm not sure they are protecting their clients from us so much as they are protecting their clients from revealing too much. It is true that we have a bias in favor of conflict, but so much of "news" is rooted in conflict between people. Much of the time we're dealing with PR execs it is because they are promoting a product, person or event, and we're trying to get questions answered about it....occasionally about information they don't want to reveal.

Chris Roush at Talking Biz News interviews a PR officials that sheds some light on the relationship between PR and journalism.

One of the primary motivations for me to begin blogging back in 2004 was a sense of frustration when reading what was being said about the newspaper in the blogosphere. Some of it was insightful and instructive, but much was wrongheaded and unfair. I realized I needed to get into the game so that I could address, respond and talk.

Hello, Mitch.

I wasn't at the meeting yesterday of the bloggers and the city manager. Two things struck me as I read the coverage of it.

1. The meeting is another example of how the worlds of media and authority have changed. The administrative leader of a mid-sized city, reads blogs and agrees to a meeting to speak with his critics and answer questions. In one sense, it is like any other meeting of concerned citizens, but in a larger sense, it's nothing like it. The participants are all reporters representing themselves. Each is expected to publish a take on the meeting. (My suspicion is that each will be quite different, too.) The blogosphere regulars will read and draw their own conclusions. Non-regulars will do the same, perhaps driven by the box listing the bloggers urls that we ran in the paper. Has this happened before? A high-ranking official sitting down specifically with a diverse group of bloggers -- not the traditional media -- because of what the bloggers were reporting/opining?

I'm not sure Mitch is getting enough credit for reading the blogs, respecting the comments and commenters, and agreeing to a meeting. To me, it has the potential to be another big step in Greensboro's reputation of being a modern new media city.

2. The next step is for Mitch to blog. It's time-consuming, yes. But the benefits are significant. You learn things, gain respect from skeptics and get your message out unfiltered by outlets such as, well, mine. You will still be frustrated by misinterpretations and purposeful distortions. But the best you can do it put your views and facts out here and trust the people to be smart enough to decide the truth for themselves. Plus, you will become more accessible through the conversation, which is only good. You don't have to be the sole host; everyone knows you have a huge, time-consuming job. The others in your office can be contributing hosts, too. So that when someone asks about, say, excavated dirt, the city's engineering manager can address it.

As someone who blogs and represents an institution, I can anticipate your reluctance. But this is the only way to fly. Step in. There is no downside.

Mark Glaser at MediaShift wonders how "newspapers can take their goodness -- the award-winning investigative reports, the service journalism, the knowledge of the community -- and combine that with new technology and the Internet to reach and interact with an enlightened, empowered audience." And then he starts answering it with a series of "The-way-is, The-way-it-will-be statements." It's a great post. Read them all.

We're at various stages on each.

Some we're moving steadily toward:
The way it is: A story runs in the newspaper and is posted online on the newspaper website. Perhaps another day, the reporter files a follow-up story.
The way it will be: The story runs in the newspaper and is posted online, and then is constantly updated by editors, the reporter and the readers in the community.

Some we started and realized we weren't ready to pull off effectively:
The way it is: Editors assign stories to reporters.
The way it will be: The community helps with story generation through special online forums, blogs and other interactive mechanisms.

Some we've made little headway on:
The way it is: Breaking news happens in a community, and a reporter is sent to the scene.
The way it will be: Breaking news happens, and the editors and reporter scour the neighborhood for people on-the-scene who might have taken photos, videos or can write up a citizen reports on what happened.

His list accurately points the path we're following. We're developing mobile alerts, training a staff to move seamlessly from platform to platform, learning the value of video and audio, and reducing our attention to commodity content. Old practices die hard, though. Not because the journalists are holding on to them tightly, but because many readers are. You should read the notes I get from readers who resent our elimination of stock tables and contraction of national wire coverage. Whenever we send newspaper readers to the computer for more information, we get calls saying, "Everyone doesn't have a computer! Put it in the paper."

Some of my adds:

The way it is: Newspapers focus on pleasing their current subscribers.
The way it will be:: Newspapers build new media organizations that serve print readers, online consumers and wireless customers differently.

The way it is: Newspapers communicate with readers through individual e-mail and phone calls.
The way it will be: All reporters, editors and content contributors have blogs -- and stories enable comments -- and conduct daily discussions in the comment sections with citizens.

The way it is: Newspapers and television are the dominant media.
The way it will (is) be: Bloggers and aggregators will be a news media force within the community.
The way it will be: Newspaper Web sites become the place to go for video reports of what's happening in town.

The way it is: Newspapers develop immense data banks of information -- on marriages, divorces, births, home sales, property values, test scores, crime stats, etc. -- that are published in pieces on newsprint every day or once a week or whenever they want to.
The way it will be: All that is aggregated and accessible 24/7 through search on the web site.

The way it is: The newspaper controls its content and the discussion it permits in the paper.
The way it will be: The newspaper facilitates the discussion, bringing in all voices and video -- dissenting and otherwise -- on its web site. Networks rule.

The way it is: Newspapers are courageous.
The way it will be: Newspapers are courageous and bold.

The way it is: Newspapers are PCs.
The way it will be: Newspapers are Macs.

Monday update: Not surprisingly, Jeff Jarvis has his own innovative take.

I spoke with a veteran Greensboro police officer this morning about our coverage -- our lack of coverage, really -- of the shooting death of Sgt. Howard J. Plouff, the Winston-Salem officer killed in the line of duty early Friday morning.

We didn't publish anything in Saturday's paper and published a two-paragraph item Sunday.

He said we should have written about the officer's death as a tribute to Plouff and a sign of respect to the public servants who put their lives on the line every day.

"Officers care and do an incredible job day in and day out," he said. "What we're going through now is not making it any easier, but we carry on because of our sense of duty."

A Stokesdale resident wrote a letter to the editor, expressing similar sentiments.

While it sounds cold, we didn't write much about the tragedy because it occurred in Winston-Salem, which is outside our primary coverage area and where we have no reporters stationed. (It was well-covered by television throughout the day Friday and through the weekend.) Had the officer been from Guilford County we would have responded differently -- more like the Journal. (Winston's officer profile here; all details here.) We should have published a wire story about the shooting in Saturday's paper, but we had an abundance of local stories and space was scarce.

We would, of course, welcome such a personal tribute written by someone who knew the officer and could tell his story in a personal way that we couldn't.

I asked the officer I spoke with how we can do a better job getting stories about public safety officers -- not just police, but fire and rescue, too -- making a difference in people's lives....and when the officer is alive to read it. A major impediment, he said, is officer modesty. Police reports tend to reflect that Joe Friday emotionless "just-the-facts-ma'am staccato. But we want more of those types of stories, so if you hear of them, tell us.

Meanwhile, we'll try to do better with his funeral tomorrow.

I know this may make me appear out of touch, but that won't surprise you, will it? When I visit other news sites, I rarely (read never) click on the "most viewed stories" links. For some serendipitous reason today, I did at the Winston-Salem Journal's.

There I found not only the most read but also the least read. I discovered that the least read story in the past month is by a local columnist, followed by a column about an art fair, the NBA roundup and the New York Times bestseller list. (The page is incomplete; providing only items listed under the heading "Past Month." "Yesterday" and "Past Week" are blank.)

Still for me, it's fascinating to see what people are not reading. I see the list of most viewed stories on our site every day. It is heavy on crime and news of the weird, as you might expect. But the least viewed? We don't compile that. On the Journal's site, most are wire news stories and lists such as Farmer's Market prices and the community bulletin board. Ask Amy, in particular, didn't fare well.

I have no great insight -- see first sentence of this post -- except that commodity news is prevalent everywhere so it's no surprise it doesn't draw much interest on a local news Web site. And, there is an smattering data suggesting affirmation of the intuitive assumption that lists play more effectively online than in print. (Interest is low for everyone except those intensely involved.)

In a perverse sort of way, I'm proud of newspaper editors today. I came in this morning expecting to write about the latest example of our pandering to circulation numbers -- including myself -- with the big play given to the story of the tomb of Jesus.

Then a strange thing happened. We didn't really pander much. Many front pages I looked at didn't banner the story. Most promo'd it with headlines only as we did. Atlanta and Norfolk were exceptions.

We were skeptical -- you might say cynical -- that the story was a promotion for James Cameron's documentary. We certainly aren't adverse to promotions masquerading as news. We do it more than we'd like. A typical example is Winston-Salem's front page today in which they write about a new donut at Krispy Kreme. (I think the play is justified, too, given that WS is the home of KK.)

This Jesus bones story is a ratings grabber. Take a core Christian belief, turn it on its head, link it to an international bestseller, and you've got a reader. As a former religion reporter, I was tempted to run it big on the front page. But some of the smarter minds here raised a good question: Is it real?

Perhaps this is just Anna Nicole for serious-minded people. We debate the moving line between promotion and truth every day as we evaluate stories to publish. In our case today, we straddled the line, promoting it more than many papers. Not sure it was right....not sure it was wrong, either.

We know the revolution will be televised, but is historical and scientific research going to be documented first by movie producers (and YouTube)?

Based on the most-searched terms on our site so far this year, visitors to News-Record.com are a hungry bunch. And I don't mean hungry for news.

1. Restaurant
2. Restaurant Italian
3. Obituaries
4. Movies
5. Guilford College
6. Restaurant Seafood
7. Shannon Crawley
8. Restaurant Steak
9. Restaurant Chinese
10. Denita Smith

My guess is that only Guilford College, Shannan Crawley and Denita Smith are related to news stories. Guilford College, for the fight there in January; Crawley is the 911 police dispatcher arrested in the shooting death of an N.C. Central student; and Smith is that student.

Don't try this at home. As many visitors to the site know, the search is, well, a bit lost at times. Nonetheless, it's interesting. Here's the rest of the top 20 list.

Sue Schultz is leaving the News & Record after more than six years to join the reporting staff of the Baltimore Business Journal. Sue has juggled many balls in High Point for us, from City Hall to business to housing to the furniture industry. We'll miss her.

I've been in newspapers for 30 years and have heard complaints from editors throughout that time that stories are just too @#$%^&*! long. Heck, I've been the one complaining for many of those years. We vastly overestimate the willingness and patience of readers to stay with a story of any length unless it is particularly compelling.

Just last week, during our monthly staff meeting, I told the assembled journalists that we are embarking on a concerted effort to ensure that "short stories are short and long stories are long." We publish too short stories that are long.

Most everyone knows it except the writer.

But I didn't do this, which sets specific length guidelines by story type at The Washington Post, a paper that has much more space than ours. They aren't out of line with our unofficial story lengths. (Other discussion at Romenesko.)

Many quotable writers have mentioned that it is harder and more time-consuming to write short. No question about that. But space is at a premium, and readers don't have time or desire to wander through extraneous information to get what's necessary.

Writers and editors get too close to stories sometimes. In a way, that's good because you like writers writing about topics they're interested in. Generally, they can write with more authorative and passion. But it can also resemble the adage about asking a watchmaker the time and he tells you how to make a clock. Unless the story is a well-told narrative or profile, most readers just want to know the time.

Every writer knows that even a three-paragraph story can be too long if the content doesn't command attention. Imagine how tough it is to get through, say, 20 inches on some government action that doesn't immediately explain why the reader should care. Yikes! So, we must get better disciplined at evaluating how much a story is worth to the reader.

Full disclosure: I've been known to violate this dictum myself with my own newspaper column.)

The Post's memo is worth reading for the writing advice alone. A couple, edited: