News-Record.com

Our daily sports section received an honorable mention in the annual AP Sports Editors contest, and writers Ed Hardin and Robert Bell won Top 10 writing awards. That's in the nation for all papers our size.

Worth celebrating...not that they have time, given what is going on in town now.

North Carolina papers fared well, with Raleigh, Charlotte and Fayetteville all winning top awards.

I haven't written about this for a while, but as it has come up nationally.... From Dan Gillmor:

Should readers ever take seriously what people post under pseudonyms? In general, no: People who refuse to stand behind their own words deserve little if any credibility, with very rare exceptions. A reader should approach a pseudonymous comment with the assumption that it's false or without substance.

Christie Tatum is president of the Society of Professional Journalists. She started her professional career as a reporter at the News & Record. With the help of the inimitable Ed Williams, a longtime reporter and editor here -- you know him now as our wine columnist --she has compiled an 11-point list of lessons for journalists. (Via Mindy McAdams.)

Journalists and writers ought to dig into Christie's post and take its lessons to heart. I've learned from it. It is a wonderful foundation for a journalism course. Read it.

From Point 2, and I do this solely to embarrass Ed:

Ed is a great guy who can be a huge pain in the you-know-what when your copy is in his hands. I remember nights when he made me cry -- unintentionally, I'm sure -- and question my decision to enter this field. He poked, pushed and prodded me to do my best work. Always. No exceptions. No questions asked.

While none of this may sound like much fun to you, I look back at my days working with Ed as some of the most interesting and rewarding of my career. I grew and grew as a result. I have had the privilege of working with some of the nation's best editors, and I can assure you that Ed Williams is among them. Every journalist in the country would be lucky to have his or her copy sent even once through his wringer. I know I was.

Robert Niles at OJR has started a discussion with his post, "Are blogs a 'parasitic' medium?" (Via Howard Owens.) He was inspired to write it after hearing journalists complain about blogs at industry forums and the like.

I've heard the same thing ever since I started blogging two-and-a-half years ago. I addressed here nicely. I address it every time I'm asked about blogs by other mainstream media journalists. I'm tired of it.

Frankly, when a journalist complains about blogs, I must question their skills as a journalist. By trade, a journalist should be open-minded, inquisitive and withhold judgment until he does some reporting. I'm befuddled by some of the blanket condemnation that arises about blogs and bloggers and reporting standards. Are the complainers not doing their homework and reporting before they pass judgment? As with every other communication method, there are good bloggers and bad bloggers, interesting ones and boring ones, insightful ones and blowhards.

For all the reasons we got into the newspaper business, established journalists should have been among the first adopters of blog tools, not the last holdouts. I understand why some of us weren't....but the time is well past to acknowledge and appreciate the value of the tool. The debate is over.

My newspaper column

Friday before last, a Winston-Salem police officer was shot and killed while trying to break up a fight outside a bar. It was a senseless, tragic crime that was covered extensively by the Winston-Salem Journal and local television.

We didn't publish a story about Sgt. Howard Plouff's shooting in Saturday's paper, and only published a two-paragraph recap about it last Sunday.

That was a mistake. We should have had full stories both days.

Some readers let us know it, too.

The Sun's approach might never work in America, but Ponce de Leon envisions a day -- perhaps in the next few years -- when U.S. newspapers regularly report and comment on pornography, which generates $12 billion a year in revenue in this country. The most explicit stories might only appear on a paper's Web site, not in print, he said, but their presence would be publicized to the paper's wider readership.

That's from a column in the San Francisco Chronicle, headlined: "Newspapers turn to sex and celebs: Publications employ titillation in their pages and on their Web sites to lure back readers." (Via the Blogging Journalist.)

It uses the papers in Great Britain, with their Page 3 girls and lingerie models, as examples of a sexy future.

Is that what you want?

We've generally avoided the celeb culture because we know we can't compete with Entertainment Tonight and the Insider, to say nothing of all the Web sites devoted to it. We haven't tried to compete with the semi-nudes and topless models because, among many reasons, that's not what our subscribers are buying us for. (On the other hand, if we published those sorts of photos, we'd have a different subscriber base, that's for sure.)

How can we compete with/on the Internet on naked women?

The one important point the SFGate article doesn't address: Newspaper advertisers are traditionally conservative. The big ones, at least around here, shy away from the sorts of content that will be controversial. It is fun, though, to imagine the sorts of advertiser adjacencies we might sell.

From a piece by Stephanie in The Washington Post:

For the past 10 years, Awatif Ahmed Isshag has handwritten monthly dispatches and commentary about life in El Fasher and hung them on a short, wiry tree that scatters shade along the yellow-sand lane by her house.

Working in her new office -- a cement-floored, cracked-walled space in a building with faulty wiring -- Isshag dismissed the notion that she was doing anything unusual.

She estimated that 100 people a day stop to read the newspaper on the tree as they make their way through the neighborhood of dried-mud walls and painted steel doors. She refers to it casually as "the world paper."

A note from Mark Binker: "Next time I hear anyone in our business complaining about their job, I plan to send them that."

Journalists, complain?

If she attached a blank piece of paper beneath her dispatch and a pencil on a string to the tree, she'd have a 20th-century blog.

From Herb Everett, our web operations manager:

"The News & Record was awarded one of 14 SND.ies, honoring excellent multi-media journalism for the fourth quarter of 2006.

"From the Society for News Design press release:

An October feature award also went to The President Visits the Triad, a story on President George Bush's journeys locally by The News & Record of Greensboro, N.C.

Judges praised the Web video. "I love the level of detail here," said one, "and the fact that I don't have to dig into the stories to find out not only the basic details of what happened... but some of the intricate detail here, such as the fact that he ate hushpuppies and barbecue slaw on one of his stops."

"Other winners include: The Washington Post, Discovery.com, and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

"Special recognition goes to Feilding Cage for design and production, and Dave Parsons for video reporting and editing for the multimedia."

"Congrats to all who worked on this project including photographers Lynn Hey, Jerry Wolford, Nelson Kepley and Joe Rodriguez; reporters Jennifer Fernandez, Mark Binker, Jim Schlosser and Amy Dominello; and online editors Mike Fuchs and Mike Grossman."

I think editor John Nagy Nate DeGraff got that slaw detail when he was at Stamey's.

I've been away from the computer today and tomorrow and most of the evening. That said, I see via Dan Gillmor that the Center for Citizen Media has released its report, Frontiers of Innovation in Community Engagement. Full disclosure: I haven't read it beyond a scan of the executive summary and what it says about the News & Record.

But writer Lisa Williams is insightful as ever. I plan to dig into it with gusto as soon as I can.

So what's the advantage of the arm's length approach Greensboro has taken to blogging? For one thing, it allows all the participants in the conversation to have the maximum degree of freedom and control. Bloggers have the freedom to say what they wish on their own blogs, and control what gets said on their own Weblog or Weblog comment section, if they wish to; and the paper also enjoys the same freedom and control. The end result is a blogging community with a great deal of vibrancy and little of the hesitancy that comes from two groups of people who are still working out an uncertain set of rules.

And,

It's precisely this kind of intensity, cooperation, and competition that has created such a vital civic and news community in Greensboro. It's hard to imagine such vitality out of any "walled garden" community on a canned platform hosted by either a news organization or a Web startup. Having many independently controlled sites has led to a uniquely robust local blogosphere with dramatically different points of view, dense interlinking, and vivid, fast-moving conversation that in cases such as this one, actually changes the course of events. And by doing so, changes the news.

Read it. It says good things about Greensboro's blogging atmosphere.

My brother has made his living for 30 years as an artist and art critic in NYC. One of my sisters is an artist. I include that as full disclosure and a preface to this post about our coverage of the visual arts.

Last summer, Peter Plagens interviewed me via e-mail about newspaper coverage of art. I tried to be honest about our coverage, which, in an understatement, isn't among our strongest.

I had forgotten all about the interview until we received a letter from a Greensboro reader of the February issue of Art in America, which, incidentally, once employed my brother. I found the article, which was headlined: Contemporary art, uncovered: a survey of major newspapers and weekly magazines suggests that visual art is steadily losing ground in the popular press, even as its audience -- and market -- grows exponentially.

Plagens talked to art critics, academics, big-city journalists and smaller newspaper editors in the heartland. We heartland editors didn't come off so well. "Stonewalling" may be too strong a term for the editors' aggregate response, but suffice it to say that newsgathering organizations don't look good when they try to fend off the gathering of news.

We've gotten a news release about the latest Elon University poll about sunshine laws and open government. No big surprises or particularly bad news for open government advocates. The Sunshine Center of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition will present the poll data during Sunshine Day activities at Elon's School of Communications on March 15.

I can't find an online link so I've attached the poll data from the news release below.

One curious finding: Eighty-six percent of individuals polled felt that democracy works best when government operates openly. Nine percent disagreed and 5 percent didn't know. I can understand the "don't know" faction, but nearly 10 percent of those polls thinks that closed government operates best?

Ken Otterbourg of the Winston-Salem Journal writes about a photo in the Richmond Times-Dispatch of a sports event: Check out all those cell cameras in the bottom. This image -- or at least one approximating it -- will be sent and forwarded dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of time, published if you will, before the T-D hits the streets, the TV station goes live or the Web site story gets posted. The result, news is nearly instant. Just one more challenge for newspapers and television and, yes, even the Internet.

Same day a few hours earlier, our own Doug Clark writes about this morning's (12:51 a.m.) finish to the Wake-Georgia Tech game, which occurred well past what should have been our deadline. Newspapers aren't always first with the news anymore. Information moves at the speed of light and is instantly available at your fingertips. But in this case, because I didn't stay up to see the end of the game, I learned the outcome first from my morning paper.

Both are right.

Ever since measures entered the world of newspapers -- in our shop it was about 15 years ago -- I've thought that a telling metric would be the number of employees who subscribed to the paper. Measure the newspaper's penetration within the company against the penetration level in the circulation area. If you are not significantly higher, you've got some work to do. After all, if you can't get your own employees, people whose bread is buttered by the paper, to subscribe, what does that tell you about the rest of the readership, people who can take you or leave you?

I've never gotten very far; there's a personal intrusiveness to it. Now comes a circulation exec with the beleaguered L.A. Times who wonders why more Times employees aren't subscribing (via Romenesko). And getting ridiculed for it.

I don't know how many N&R employees or newsroom staffers subscribe. I know it is not 100 percent. We give employee discounts, but they can get the paper free when they come to work. Still, it's a loyalty thing. If you believe the paper has value, why wouldn't you be proud to be a subscriber? If you work in the newsroom and you believe you and co-workers produce good journalism -- well, you're great but everyone else is still pretty good -- isn't it worth showing them support?

I've occasionally advocated that when new employees fill out the first-day paperwork we also stick a subscription form in their hands, too. That hasn't gotten anywhere, either, and it probably shouldn't. Forced attraction never seems to work out. But it has mystified me over the years that employees wouldn't want to buy the product they work so hard to produce.

My newspaper column
Earlier blog post here.

Last summer, I was interviewed by Peter Plagens, longtime art critic for Newsweek. His story thesis: the decline of art criticism in mainstream newspapers.

That interview kick-started a series of exchanges with people that I hope results in a better newspaper. We'll see. Meantime, it is a good example of how ideas are birthed and adapted in this new media environment.

We do not have a fulltime art critic, and, to the best of my memory, we haven't had one in the 22 years I've worked here. I explained to Plagens that we did not publish much art criticism because we didn't sense a strong readership demand.

I make a distinction between art criticism -- reviews of art shows -- and art coverage. We publish a monthly column on the visual arts in Go Triad and often write feature stories about artists, galleries and shows.

Honestly, I forgot about the interview until last week, when a reader alerted me that Plagens's story was published in the February issue of "Art in America," a glossy magazine of the art world. My comments -- midway through a long article -- were met with some dismay by Weatherspoon Art Museum officials who wrote to encourage me to add more art coverage to the paper.

Shouldn't the N.C. High School Athletics Association change its basketball finals so that it wouldn't conflict with the ACC Tournament? Coverage of the college men overshadowed state championship games for Grimsley, Bishop McGuinness, Cummings, Thomasville and Graham.

State football championships routinely make the front page of the sports section, not just here but at papers across the state. We would have given equal play to the state basketball finals were it not for the effective counter-programming of the ACC Tournament. As a result, we devoted the first five pages of the sports section today to the ACC. Page 6 was what we called a "false front" where we used an open page to publish non-ACC sports news, including the results of the Grimsley game (the Whirlies lost) and the Bishop McGuinness game (the Villains won).

It would have been nice -- at least for newspapers that like to give the local amateur talent a few more moments in the sun -- to have staggered the schedules a bit.

Check this out about the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Or, if you prefer, the printed versions.

Every journalist should love history, given that we record it every day. Greensboro and Guilford County is rich in historical events that changed the nation. One of our initiatives is to use all the tools we can to tell that story. We will continue to build this site, as it stands along side the Sit-ins site.

N&O public editor Ted Vaden addresses a provocative -- and often posed -- question: Can the African American community be covered adequately by a reporter who is not black? His short and not-surprising answer is, yes. (Reg. req.)

That, also not surprisingly, is mine, too.

People who view the world narrowly through a single lens, be it race, politics, religion or morality, can't understand how anyone can see the world through multiple lenses. So we get into endless debates centered on the belief that if the journalist doesn't look like me or personally believe what I believe, he is biased and will get it wrong. But that is not the case. On the occasions that we do get it wrong, it's less likely an issue of bias and more likely a process problem, i.e., not enough time or space, lack of confirmation.

Ted's take: ...it is not journalistically sound to assign reporters based on race, or to assume that they can't cover a population because of their own ethnicity. Reporters are professionals who are trained to use their reporting and writing skills to cover a variety of topics under any set of conditions and circumstances.

And this point, which we've discussed many times here.

More important than the race of individual reporters, (deputy managing editor Linda) Williams said, is whether the newsroom is stocked with journalists of varying backgrounds who can bring cultural awareness and sensitivity to the reporting so that it avoids stereotypes and covers issues that affect different communities differently.

...like a Wildcat scorned! We make a simple mistake in a caption on the front page saying that Carolina and Duke are the state's only teams going to the NCAA, and you'd think that we had confused Stephen Curry with Stephon Marbury. All these Davidson fans have gone Bobby Knight on us!

OK, OK, we screwed up. If we needed a reminder -- we didn't -- that fans take their college allegiances dead seriously, this was it. We know that Davidson is in North Carolina. We even have Davidson grads working here. As dispensation, we've been asked to profile the team on the front page and to publish a poster of Curry, their leading scorer. Perhaps when the team gets to the Final Four....

Jeff Hahne, host of the Musical Garbage Can and reporter for the Guilford Record, is leaving us. He's not ready to announce where he's going, but he's staying in journalism. Jeff created the Rock Creek Record, which is a community paper we publish in Eastern Guilford-Western Alamance. He served as its editor, which meant that he was part reporter, part photographer, part layout artist and part janitor. His work has been huge.

The St. Petersburg Times waited until yesterday -- after two teams from North Carolina played in the ACC Tournament finals and left town -- to call us whiners.

Weekend whiners

The Greensboro News and Record led the charge of ACC traditionalists who spent last week obsessing and complaining about how the ACC tournament ventured outside of traditional ACC country by coming to Tampa Bay. That's understandable considering Greensboro, N.C., can't hang its hat on much else besides hosting the ACC basketball tournament. Yes, the tournament means more to the good folks of Greensboro, which is why the ACC consistently plays its tournament there. Tampa Bay isn't a threat to steal the event permanently. Who knows if it will ever come back again? So why not enjoy a little sunshine, some grouper sandwiches and your basketball, too, for one weekend?

Hey, we only whined because we weren't down there to buy the $10 tickets and take advantage of all those empty seats. We never get that opportunity up here.

From Go Triad editor Carla Kucinski: I'm thinking of doing a cover story in Go Triad about shop dogs (and shop cats), the cute furry friends that hang out at small businesses in the Triad, the ones we often see in the storefronts of local businesses while walking down the street. We thought it would make a fun story to write about the personalities and stories behind these critters. For example, Susan Ladd mentioned a big ol' fat cat that sleeps in the window at the art supply store next to the Green Bean. There's also, Esme, the boxer that hangs out at Mack & Mack on Elm St.

Do you know of any others?

Now, I know you readers like hard-core, tough-minded news, but one axiom of editing is that pets sell. So, help us out.

We're testing our ability to place 3'x3' 3''x3'' advertising stickers on the front page in some papers tomorrow and Saturday. Because it's a test, these weren't sold to an advertiser and therefore, the effect won't be quite the same. If you get one, let me know what you think.

I don't know if I should be surprised that we keep getting anti-participatory journalism reports out of the San Francisco paper, but I am, given the free-thinking cultural reputation the city has. Perhaps Craigslist has them thinking backward.

First, columnist David Lazarus proposes the positively 20th-century idea that newspapers should charge for their online content. His argument has been effectively skewered various places.

Now comes a front page story in the Chronicle, again posing old media and new media as enemies.

I understand the need to find a story hook. I understand the need to explain new concepts in ways that traditional audiences will understand. But this us-them characterization is getting tired. It exists primarily in the minds of some journalists, not readers. Besides being non-constructive, it's not even reality. Many newspapers have bloggers and post video on their sites now. Most are filing breaking news stories online before they're published in the paper.

Few of us are cutting edge, but we're slowly getting it. The new publishing tools available to everyone are helping us engage with people -- to say nothing of empowering and furthering democracy, which traditionally has been one of the purposes of newspapers. We can compete for news. We can compete for revenue. But we aren't enemies and characterizing the relationship that way comes off as a bit desperate.

Update: Former Greensborian Mike Orren at Pegasus News provides a stark description of how far we have to go.

Our publisher, Robin Saul, is quoted in a BusinessWeek media column by Jon Fine saying, "We have not been able to determine a revenue-generating stream from that traffic," referring, presumably, to our efforts at citizen journalism: blogs, forums, interactivity and the like.

It's more complicated than that, of course. Our efforts are first aimed at building a different, better relationship with the community, expanding our journalism and interacting with people in a way we're unable to with the printed product. I know that to business people that reads blah, blah, blah. So there is also this. It's early in the profit-making game. We -- I use this universally -- are building a business and business model as we go. Like all businesses, we have glitches in the system. We have software programs that don't work and vendors who overpromise. We hatch ideas that are good on paper but don't resonate with customers.

But have no doubt the Mark Pottses and the Backfences are the Magellan's of citizen media, and to mix my metaphors, we're still in the Jurassic period of citizen media online. It takes many failures to reach success. The newspaper is fortunate that we, like many other corporations, have other revenue streams. We can support exploration, experimentation and patience as we expand our business. We -- or someone else or several someone elses -- will find a good revenue stream.

Anyone suggesting -- and neither Robin nor Fine are -- that there ain't gold in them thar hills is in the wrong business. There is, as Ed says, money to be made. I hope we figure it out, and the sooner the better because we have things we want to do. But in the meanwhile, the journalists in the newsroom will enjoy, explore and expand how we get information to and from you.

Can you tell a story in six words? This is marvelous on a Saturday when you need a smile.

My favorite: Machine. Unexpectedly, I'd invented a time

(Via Etaoin Shrdlu.)

My newspaper column

Several years ago, a consultant surveyed a cross-section of our readership to determine the emotional connection people had with the newspaper. His conclusion:

"They love to hate you," he said. "I've never seen it so predominant in a market before."

I thought of that study last week as I read the results of the 2006 Social Capital Community survey. One of its major conclusions is that Greensboro residents are more distrustful of government, police and each other than other cities surveyed.

The study did not question residents about the newspaper, but national studies have documented a long-term decline in consumer trust of all news media. Fortunately, a study last year trust in newspapers remains relatively high -- about 75 of respondents in a national survey said they trust their local newspaper most of the time or just about always.

I've often encouraged people who comment anonymously to have the courage to use their real names. Taking responsibility for your words is an important part of being a member of a community. I also understand that anonymity is accepted on the Web.

But elected officials, presumably put into office to represent citizens, must understand the ramifications of the new media tools. The world has changed for citizens, media and public servants. In Summerfield, there's a problem. One council member is so agitated by comments on forums at the Northwest Observer that he is taking matters into his own hands. From the Northwest Observer story:

Councilwoman Becky Strickland has referred to them as "cowardly anonymous bloggers." Councilman Dwayne Crawford has been so agitated by these "bloggers" that he doesn't stop at just insulting them; in fact, he's made it his mission over the last several months to flush them out, and share their identities with others in conversation, in e-mails and on his Web site. And he's publicly addressed them by their screen names.

Public officials complain to me about some of the comments made by anonymous posters on our blogs. Irresponsible, they'd say. I encourage them to develop a thicker skin. I tell them that people are smart enough to make their own judgments about the officials' performance; they won't be swayed by someone named "Hotfoot71."

Crawford must know that what is being written about him on the forums is being said about him in the community. A better approach for him is to address the concerns rather than to go after the people he's supposed to represent. In the end, I know who I think looks silly as a result of these stories about his "investigation."

Did today's front page communicate an anti-war editorial stance? Did the word "sucks" offend?

Those are the two questions we considered when selecting the main photo to accompany the two-story package on the fourth anniversary of the war. We answered the first question with a conditional affirmative. The primary art is anti-war, complemented by a smaller photo of war supporters. It was justified because war protests throughout the weekend grabbed most of the news attention.

On the second question, we consider the term "sucks," using its slang definition, as offensive, and it isn't to be used in the paper unless approved by a top editor. (Yes, we are old-fashioned, as are many of our readers.) Still, I approved it. It's a strong photo and it reflected an actual event. Besides, if war doesn't suck, what does? (I say that believing that you can support our efforts in Iraq and still think war sucks.)

Best Front Design points to other papers that had A1 war anniversary centerpieces.

I've been reading the weekly PEJ News Coverage Index for two months now and am about ready to unsubscribe.

Developed by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, it's a tabulation of the main national and international stories in American news media "to identify what is being covered and not covered -- the media’s broad news agenda."

The initiative is an attempt to provide an empirical basis for cataloguing and understanding what a wide swath of media offer the American public at a time of growing debate about the press' influence, standards and economic foundation.

All very good. For someone. Problem is, the index rarely reflects what is on the front pages of our newspaper because we're emphasizing local news. And as the number of media outlets increases, I wonder if the index truly identifies the "media's broad news agenda."

For instance, last week, the Index of all media showed the firing of the U.S. attorneys was the top story, followed by the 2008 campaign, Iraq policy, domestic terrorism and Iraq homefront. Newspapers, a subset in the survey, were slightly different: the 2008 campaign dominated the news, followed by Iraq homefront, U.S. attorneys, Iraq policy and domestic terrorism.

The News & Record put a couple Iraq stories on the front page last week; it was a slow news week for us. We also had a presidential campaign story when John Edwards came to town. But, honestly, we don't put many articles about either topic on the front page very often. And the front page is what the PEJ index measures among newspapers.

We aren't one of the 14 newspapers used in the survey, so I don't suppose it matters much. But my bet is that most of the newspapers in the United States are local news oriented. Commodity national and world news is downplayed. So, what are we to make of it? Even though the index shows that the U.S. attorneys story is the big story of the week, I don't recall hearing anyone talk about it and we've published few letters about it. Same with the presidential campaign (except we have the usual debate over the president's performance in office on the letters page).

Judging from letters and comments and phone calls, more people around here are talking about the lost, now-found boy and Diane Bellamy-Small.

Still, there is this goofy idea out and about that the "news media" acts in lockstep on all issues, particularly those involving politics and the war. This just reinforces and exacerbates it.

The index is an interesting measure for the week, but it seems to be old-time thinking, which is unusual for the organization that produced this. I am not sure where its value lies or who uses it.

Some people think Greensboro is boring. I happen to live with an 18-year-old who does. If it is, this week must be the exception in the news biz. Lost Boy Scout found! New police chief named! Daughtry gives free concert! Tourneytown returns! Two homicides in one 24-hour period! (I didn't say it was all good news.)

* Apologies to Beth

From The New York Times to The Charlotte Observer, The News & Observer, The Fayetteville Observer and The Herald-Sun, newspapers centerpieced the John and Elizabeth Edwards story (yes, the story is about both). Each also used a different photo, interestingly enough. (In the Times, she's looking at him. In Fayetteville, he's looking at her. Charlotte's photo captures them close up and grinning. In Raleigh they are far off and pensive.)

We had our own happy couple on our front page, but it wasn't the Edwards. Police Chief Tim Bellamy and Mayor Keith Holliday grin as the long search for a new police chief is over. The Edwards story is on the right-hand side of the page.

Jack Scism writes a popular history column in the Guilford Record that is culled from pages of our archives. Here's one that is coming up:

From Greensboro Daily News
Apr. 8-14, 1982

Jay Reddick, a fifth grader at Colfax Elementary School, won the county school spelling bee, outlasting 28 other contestants in the annual event.

Jay is now one of our best copy editors.

And so the train continues:

Michael Robinson, son of Sunday editor Betsi Robinson, just won the Guilford County spelling bee for middle school. He represents the county in the regionals in Winston on Sunday. Reportedly, he wants to be a journalist.

(Credit Jay's wife, Janet, our national editor, for the above headline ripped off from the Fox show.)

Have you ever noticed the number of letter writers who think we're all asleep at the switch and want us to come on with them?

I don't give political advice to politicians. No serious journalist does; it erodes journalistic independence. I'll leave that to the editorial boys and girls. But, given that the city council election season is starting, I'm going to break that rule, briefly, right now. This advice is available to any candidate.

Campaign on a platform to cut down all the sweetgum trees in the city.

Yes, controversial, but, after spending the day outside tripping over, sweeping up and kicking aside gum balls, popular, I submit.

This idea doesn't originate with me. I resist cutting down anything alive. This came from a friend who is an arborist and who has bare-footed his share of the gumballs on his way to get his paper. "Dumb tree," he says. "It's not like they're oaks or elms. The city wouldn't miss them."

Take a stand and you'll get my vote.

Wednesday update: Council member resigns.

My newspaper column

On Jan. 10, 1776, Thomas Paine published "Common Sense," a pro-independence pamphlet that became one of the best-selling works in 18th-century America and inspired much of the thinking behind the Declaration of Independence.

It was also published anonymously.

I revisit that part of our country's history to establish an historical precedent for anonymous publishing. It adds a bit of perspective to the dust-up between some Summerfield Town Council members and anonymous people commenting online.

Two council members, Becky Strickland and Dwayne Crawford, are bristling with anger over some anonymous comments made on online forums sponsored by the Northwest Observer.

I haven't weighed into the discussion about Ben Holder's role wearing a wire as a police informant partly because I wanted to see how it played out, but mostly, because it shaped up to be another one of those "is-a-blogger-a-journalist?" sorts of debates that is so 1990s. (That there have been a run of beautiful days and I've had better things to do has nothing to do with it.)

But here I am.

Frankly, I'm surprised that anyone is surprised at Ben's activist role. If you read more than two posts on The Troublemaker, you would conclude that he doesn't follow the same ethical policies of traditional journalists.

* He writes with a clear point of view.
* He screams at those who disagree.
* He publishes only that which supports his point of view.
* Given the differences in writing styles that appear on his blog, it appears as if different writers contribute, but aren't acknowledged.
* He has an awful lot of anonymous commenters who tell him how good he is.
* He doesn't disclose possible conflicts of interest.

I would have preferred to know his relationship with the police as he's written about the police, but that's only to satisfy my own curiosity. It wouldn't have changed my thinking about what he writes. He wears his allegiances proudly. Would I have liked to know that he wasn't writing as a journalist but as an activist when he was published by The Peacemaker? Yes. But I suppose that is the Peacemaker's issue with its readers, not mine (even though I am a Peacemaker reader).

Ben's a blogger. I've always taken the position that bloggers are journalists. They just aren't traditional journalists. It is like everything else: Read everything with skepticism until you get to know who's writing it, how they support the information they're presenting, and how they take comments, criticism and corrections.

I should have done this earlier, but just in case you haven't gotten enough Chris Daughtry, here are a couple shows to tide you over until the next free downtown NCAA concert.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism wonders about the disconnect between journalists and the public on the story about the U.S. attorneys firings. (Via Romenesko.)

While journalists appear fascinated by this battle between Congress and the White House, the public has yet to evince great enthusiasm for it.

Well, hmmm. Wish I had told them that.

We published it on the front page of the sports section this morning four columns by 12 inches, illustrating the Rutgers victory over Arizona State (in Greensboro) last night. The cutline reads: Rutgers' Kia Vaughn, who had 17 points, 10 rebounds and two blocks, shows some emotion in the Scarlet Knights' victory over Arizona State. "They put up a fight, they put up a good one," said Vaughn, who at 6-foot-4 was at least two inches taller than any of the Sun Devils.

It bothered at least one reader, who reads the sports section with his 6-year-old and 8-year-old boys. (Great parenting skills, if you ask me!) He wondered why we show images of athletes who are "trying to bring attention to themselves?" Whether it's chest-thumping or, in this case, looking mad in their response to a good play.

"For certain athletes, this look has become the norm," he wrote."That doesn't make it right, or something the majority of your readers want to see. My 6- and 8-year-old boys play basketball, soccer and baseball. I do not want them screaming bloody murder, like the athlete on today's Sports front page, every time they make a decent play.

"Why couldn't you show that same athlete in action?

"And if you're going to show emotion, let's keep the emotion positive -- so that it's clearly understood by all your readers, especially your future subscribers."

He and I had a good exchange. He's a reader of the blog and I told him I would post it and open up the discussion. Have at it.

How many newspaper editors does it take to change a lightbulb? We do know how to say and do embarrassing things.

Full disclosure: I'm not there (or it'd be even worse).

Update: Good stuff happening there, too.

Last week's lost Boy Scout coverage spurred our news site's traffic to heights we hadn't seen since the Eastern Guilford fire.

Until today.

Last night's arrest of Sidney Lowe II and the subsequent coverage today kicked the numbers up another notch.

Both stories went national. Both tracked breaking news stories that changed throughout the day. Both involved males who are/were lost. There the similarities end. Insert your own metaphor for what it means.

The deluge of comment spam has gotten to the point that I am gradually disabling comments on earlier posts. I rarely get comments on posts older than two weeks so I'll probably keep comments enabled for about that long.

A few days ago, Jeff Jarvis asked for help with his speech: "The end of the mourning, mewling, and moaning about the future of journalism: Why I’m a cock-eyed optimist about news." I'm late to his speech, but not to the topic.

Tuesday update: Jeff's speech.
Tuesday update II: Bryan Murley of the exceptional Innovation in College Media site points to an outstanding interview with John Seigenthaler on the same topic. Thanks, Bryan.

I have three reasons:

1. The reporters are better. I'm speaking of reporters like this who are paid for their work and reporters like this who aren't. The professionals are smarter and quicker, and more fluid and more diverse than any in the 30+ years I've been in the business. They are innovative and open to change. We're in good hands. The widespread entry of non-pros is a splendid development, bring new eyes to old and new topics. When I was editorial page editor, it was a daunting challenge to write on complicated issues day after day, knowing that there were dozens of people in the community who knew the topic better than I. Now they have access to a megaphone to inform those of us who care. How can that be anything be a valuable complement to democracy?

2. The tools are better. You are reading me here. I can read voices as diverse as Jarvis, whom I've never met but corresponded with, to Gate City, whom I know and have spoken with. I can watch video from The Troublemaker or create my own. When newspapers can move into the world of radio and television with audio and video -- and radio, television and "citizens" can do that and enter the world of the written word -- how can that not be good for news? All it takes is a compelling story.

3. The stories are better. Well, perhaps not better, but with so many more people reporting and such simple and advanced tools, there are more to be told. I have 50 reporters on the streets. Add in countless bloggers, news aggregators and YouTubers, and more light is shining brightly in dark places. More watchdogs are unleashed. The stories are out there in abundance. All you have to do is talk to someone or record it yourself. The hunger for news is insatiable, but the stories must be compelling. It is the boring stuff that no one wants. (We continue to address that challenge.) There's always going to be a place for storytellers. We all just need to go to where the audience is.

I love newspapers. I love the way they feel. I love their mobility. I love their serendipity. I love the seriousness of their journalists. But that's just my morning habit. Now I love the ability to read English writers from around the world. I love watching video, whether it is news or it is the latest from Jib-Jab. I love writing here, at 7:54 p.m. while OSU and Georgetown are playing ball. I love talking to people who visit here, but hate the chore of deleting spam.

Cock-eyed optimist about the future of news? Oh, hell, yes. It's a wonderful time to be a journalist. If you can't serve the public and contribute to the health of the democracy in this environment, you might as well go back to typewriters, hot type and daguerreotype.