News-Record.com

I'm on a panel this afternoon speaking to the 2007 Conference on Public Administration in Chapel Hill. Here's the first sentence of the description of the topic: Saber-tooth tigers, oil, polar ice caps, and newspaper control of news -- all may be gone soon, if not forgotten. So how does a government handle overwhelming demands for information and participation on the new frontier of journalism?

Well. They got the verb tense wrong. "Newspaper control of news" is long gone.TV saw to that years ago. And you can make a strong argument that it never was. But that's another post.

Here is the list of questions the moderator is going to use to spark discussion, although I have no expectation that we'll need more than No. 2 to do that.

1. We have recently seen high profile conflicts between media and politicians/bureaucrats here in North Carolina. Many of these conflicts center around interpretations of the Public Records Laws. Where do you see these laws and their interpretations going in the future?

2. The blogging world has been referred to as the "fifth estate." This implies a certain level of importance in the balance of government branches and citizens. Do you think blogging has such a substantial role, and if so, is it a healthy or unhealthy influence?

3. Bloggers are sometimes accused of being less subject to laws and ethical restrictions than mainstream media, primarily because they do not have assets at risk. Please comment on this perception.

4. What suggestions would you offer government officials for dealing with inaccurate blog postings?

5. There is some pressure for professional government employees to create and maintain blogs. It may be hoped that this would shorten the time lag in government response to the people on issues. Given that the time lag is often the product of a need to review records laws, etc., what advice would you give to appointed government officials regarding this suggestion?

6. Most newspapers and television stations (according to recent reports have added blogs to their repertoire, including The News & Record. How do you see this merger affecting news coverage?

7. What are the implications, professionally and ethically, of government employees posting information to blogs? Given the ability to make such postings anonymous, an option generally not available in letters to the editor, what impacts might their ability to share inside information have? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

8. How do you see the speed and anonymity of web-based news ultimately affecting the democratic process?

Most of these questions are the wrong ones, it seems to me, coming at the topic from the wrong angle. As the world of news and information moves from the one-to-many model of mass communication to the two-way model of the Web, then hand-wringing about whether that move is good is irrelevant. It simply is.

I wrote about my initial talking points here. Now that I have the questions, anything else I should add?

The need for greater transparency in government will be a key addition. What I've learned is that when people aren't given full and complete information, they often fill in the blanks on their own, creating a version of reality based on some facts, some assumptions and some biases. It has little to do with "new forms of media," which is the title of the panel. People have always done that. The difference now is that the people have a voice of their own on the Web. As with everything else, some of the voices will be cranky, mean-spirited and off-point. Others will be relevant, insightful and helpful. It is what it is.

What else?

Wondering who to vote for? Wondering what the candidates look and sound like? Want to hear them without the filter -- or questions -- of the news media? Here they are.

Well, not all of them. All candidates were invited; some didn't take us up on it. Curiously, many challengers didn't come in, but most of the incumbents did. In any case, they are about what you'd think they'd be.

We have hired Amanda Lehmert of the Cape Cod Times to cover higher education. A graduate of Emerson College, she has covered Falmouth and the Mass. Military Reservation at the paper.

She participated in ConvergeSouth last month and still she decided to throw in with us. Here she is with her friend and now fellow N&R reporter Joe Killian.

Lanita Withers, who currently covers higher ed, is moving to write about business.

We are replacing our e-mail system today. As a result, electronic communication will be spotty.

In almost every newspaper I've worked in, the most close-minded person I've ever come across is the 23-year-old recent grad, Rob Curley said at the National College Media Convention.

I met a lot of students at the convention. And I'm afraid I must say the next crop of entry-level journalists is about as close-minded as the present set, wrote Paul Conley, who was at the same convention.

The kids right out of college, they're the ones most likely to cling to a romanticism about being the crusading print reporter. When I talk about web-first publishing, they're the ones most likely to say, "but won't we scoop ourselves?" Or when handed a video camera, they say, "but I got in this business to be a writer," wrote Howard Owens.

I have watched commentary ricochet across the blogosphere for a week now about young journalists and their desire and ability to operate in the digital world. The above is just a sampling.

As much as I admire the writers, our experience doesn't fit the bleak picture some of them paint.

While we don't hire often journalists directly out of college, those we do have been eager to leap into the "new" world of digital media. They are smart -- smarter than my generation when we started out -- and net savvy. They aren't afraid and they aren't close-minded. If they don't know about "scooping themselves," that's OK. That's an old media norm that they learned somewhere. It's not a fundamental principle. You fix it at the same time you teach them what the deadlines are, who to pay attention to and where the bathroom is.

Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill, told the audience at the annual Conference on Public Administration that the major newspapers in the state bore some responsibility for the scandal at the state Department of Transportation. (Doesn't matter which scandal; there have been enough to go around.)

Ferrell's point was that when newspapers stop assigning reporters specifically to cover the department and the Board of Transportation, then the shenanigans of corrupt and inept bureaucrats flourish in the darkness of neglect. Consistent coverage can shine a light into the darkness.

Disregard the fact that when Ferrell and I were at the News & Observer in the '80s, the paper had a staffer assigned to the DOT and one of the big stories he wrote about was a statewide highway bid-rigging scandal. But I hear Ferrell's point. (And I enjoy his assumption, proved true over the centuries, that money and corruption go hand-in-hand.)

It is not a new complaint. Ever since President Bush began making his WMD case, charges have been made about the news media's failures in reporting the truth. Truth be told, it wasn't that difficult even in 2002 to find dissenting opinions about the case for war. But the point still stands: More coverage means less monkey business.

Welcome to the world of hard choices. It's always been this way. We don't cover everything. We don't even cover what we used to. Newspaper staffs are getting smaller, yet the number of meetings and events, of commissions and government agencies grows. Partly as a result, newspapers are also moving away from devoting as much energy to covering "buildings." Not only are there fewer reporters, but there is evidence that readers aren't as interested in what traditionally is produced by that coverage: stories about meetings and bureaucracy. For every big scandal story, there are 100 smaller process stories required to get there.

And it gets harder and harder to devote the resources where they are needed, which, honestly, is about everywhere.

Even the scandal stories don't always strike readership gold. Case in point: Reporter Taft Wireback wrote about the wasted money spent by school systems on recycled school bus tires. It made for a potent combination: wasted tax money and child safety. But if it resonated with readers, we didn't hear from many of them.

So, we are forced to make decisions where to place our bets: What will benefit the audience the most? Is it important? What can we do that others aren't doing? Will it save tax money? WIll it prevent or right an injustice?

Do we do enough? No. Not even close.

How do you watch over things when the watchdog has to cover acres and acres of corruption and countless miscreants? Employ honest public servants? Well, that's a start, and most of them are. But it only takes one.

Journalistic options:

* Citizens? I like this social network idea by Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.Net.

Maybe a beat reporter could do a way better job if there was a "live" social network connected to the beat, made up of people who know the territory the beat covers, and want the reporting on that beat to be better.

It makes sense when you consider the potential of the two-way Web and the inevitable march of the thinking world online. We're trying to pull together a proposal to participate.

* Ryan Sholin has an interesting idea with ReportingOn, as I said here.

* Citizens can and do report independently on all sorts of issues and government agencies. But the research is time-consuming and occasionally expensive. And it is difficult for most people to get enough mass so that people will pay attention.

Yet, in the NewAssignment.Net mode, Douglas McGill describes what he has learned from teaching basic journalism skills to citizens.

The insistence on telling the absolute truth that journalism requires, often forces students to reveal personal knowledge beyond what they had ever dared to publicly share. One of my students, a retired business consultant, wrote an article decribing his inner struggle at becoming a peace activist while his son was serving in the Army in Iraq. His story created a sense of solidarity in the room that was mystically strong. This is perhaps a microcosm of how journalism could ideally work in society, creating community day by day. "My view of journalism has changed," one student emailed me after the course. "At its best, it serves like an amazing expansion of our personal experience, bringing truth into our consciousness." Bingo.

Encouraging and enabling that Bingo Moment is the challenge in this time of tight and tightening resources is one we must figure out. Our future depends upon it.

Chris Anderson blocks hundreds of PR e-mail addresses.

Lazy flacks send press releases to the Editor in Chief of Wired because they can't be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they're pitching....

Everything else gets banned on first abuse.

Speaking as an editor who gets his fair share of PR junk -- although not nearly as much as Anderson -- I love this. What strikes me in looking down his list is the amount of duplication of e-mail addresses that would be on mine. Perhaps there are more similarities in the content of Wired and the News & Record than I originally thought.

When Greensboro police charge you with violating the law, that record is public information. When Greensboro city cites you for violating its water restriction ordinance, that record is private.

Until last night. Greensboro City Council voted to open its books on water scofflaws. But this government transparency was harder than it should have been. Releasing the names of those who violated the water restrictions passed 5-4, with opposing council member Tom Phillips wondering if public stoning was next. (Who knew he was such a molly-coddling liberal?)

The issue came up when we, Yes! Weekly and NPR independently requested the records of those cited. The city initially took the stance that the information wasn't public because it was part of the person's water bill, which was exempted from public records law some years ago. The requests then came before the council.

I was surprised when we were denied the records last month. I had assumed the city -- struggling with its worse drought in years -- would have wanted to take every step possible to discourage people from wasting water. Letting the scofflaws' names be published -- a form of public shaming, yes -- is one way. The people cited had been warned once about their water usage....and the chance of them avoiding detection several times before being caught twice (warned once, cited on the second offense) was likely.

We haven't decided if we are going to publish the list of names. But as members of the public, we certainly want to decide for ourselves.

Thanks to Mike Barber, Sandy Carmany, Sandra Anderson Groat, Keith Holliday and Yvonne Johnson for their votes for openness.

Update: We got the list. Here is a brief story. The actual list is coming here.

Sue Polinsky and I have discussed story readability before. Now there's an easier tool. (I say "now" when I really mean "I just stumbled upon.")

Test the readability of your blog. Mine's at high school level, which should not surprise those of you who think that's about the way I think, too.

(Read this as if I were whispering.)

We have started a new blog called Debatables to create a place for people to talk about specific news stories. I'm whispering because this is a soft launch to work out the kinks.

Normally, we would do what many other Web sites do and enable comments on each story. Unfortunately, our Web publishing system doesn't allow it right now. We created a work around at one point, but it wasn't the most elegant of processes and not many people used it.

Our blog software provides an easier forum. I'm picking stories that may engender some discussion and some disagreement and posting them first thing in the morning. Most will be local, but not all. Most will be news oriented, but not all. We're looking for a public forum on issues of the day. We'll see how it goes.

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you will know that I want the debate to be civil and not to slide into personal attacks by anonymous commenters. There are plenty of sites that permit that; Debatables isn't the place for it and I'll be policing it there. One advantage of selecting the stories is that I can avoid those that have caused vicious and offensive comments on other sites. But, as I say, we'll see how it goes.

Suggestions welcome.

Growing up, I played in a park that had a seesaw. It was always a challenge to walk from one end of the seesaw to the center and balance the two sides. Once there, my friends would try to throw me off by tipping the ends. I'd lean one way, then the other, and move down the sides, just to stayed balance and on top of things.

It feels that way in the news business, too. The Mercury News in San Jose is in the process of reinventing itself. At its blog, Rethinking the Mercury News, Chris O'Brien describes the daily struggle of every editor whose eyes are open. He breaks down reader suggestions:

1. We’re angry that you moved the puzzles, and keep moving them. Put them back.

2. We're angry about the TV guide being changed from a book format to the new, large format. It's unwieldy and annoying. Put it back.

...But this feedback also goes to the heart of the most difficult part of the process. We know the current newspaper is becoming less and less useful to people. So we want to reinvent it. But how do you do that without further alienating the 200,000-plus people who currently subscribe?

He nails it. That is the most difficult part. To answer his question, the smart money is on marrying print and digital in a way that appeals to the niche users of both, hanging onto print as it "evolves" and riding digital as it grows. But I don't sense that is the answer he's looking for. His question is directed specifically to the morning paper. He has a couple choices, I think.

1. Reinvent the paper for the 200,000-plus people who currently subscribe. Make it what they want. Give 'em the puzzles and TV book they want. Problem is, people who subscribe do so for a specific reason. Start messing with it and you upset them. If you don't want to upset them, you end up trying to do everything, which in these times of contraction, is usually not an option.

So you do what San Jose is doing: ask and listen. Useful means a lot of things, but at its core it means finding out what people are trying to get done in their lives and how can you help them. (The Newspaper Next model.) Then, the hard part comes: eliminate the content that doesn't isn't mentioned often or that isn't your specialty. You will upset some, but that is the price of strategic reinvention.

2. Make subtle changes that will attract new readers and please current readers. Harder than it sounds. Much of your content can be tweaked to appeal to both groups: more photography, easier navigation, more interesting stories. But some can't and you have to add, which costs money and takes space. Again, in these times of contraction, you face a zero-sum game, at best. And there is probably a reason that non-readers are non-readers. Subtle changes may not be enough.

In any event, both subtle and dramatic moves tip the balance on the seesaw.

Before you start anything, your first decision is to decide your niche. With mass on its way out, reinvention won't work under the same assumptions. Everything is niche. Determining what readers you want will help determine how you upset the balance.

Margaret Banks wrote today of newly elected city council members Mike Barber, Trudy Wade and Mary Rakestraw: The three leaders -- along with Councilwoman Sandra Anderson Groat, who was re-elected Tuesday -- ran on platforms of increasing transparency in city government. They argued City Hall should bring controversial issues into the open, even if it means not portraying a unified front for the TV cameras.

Regardless of what you think of Sandy Carmany's politics, she is an impressively transparent and accessible council member. She loses her council seat -- let's pray not her blogging voice -- next month.

So, now, with their vows of transparency, who among the new council will start blogging the talk?

Do you think that Sandy's blog is one reason she didn't win?

A reader asked me that, fearing that rather than helping her, the council member's openness and accessibility essentially painted a target on her back.

My answer: No.

Her blog demonstrated to that she is reasonable, kind and cares deeply about Greensboro. It says that she was trying to navigate her role as a politician responsible to the public and a city official bound by commitments to confidentiality on some matters.

You might read her opinions on public matters, decide you disagree and vote for her opponent, but that's the result of her opinions, not her blog. I believe that the blog helps people get a sense of who Sandy is and enable them to connect with her.

Her accessibility did open her to disparagement from some bloggers, who took shots at her far and away more often than the other council members. But I can't imagine it cost her many votes.

In any case, who knows how many people in her district routinely read her blog -- and the others -- and who voted? (Only slightly more than 3,500 people voted in the district.)

I think the biggest contributor to her defeat was that she didn't get the Simkins PAC endorsement.

Other thoughts: Sandy's, David Wharton's, Cara Michele's and Samuel Spagnola's.

Update: I've just read her 10 Plus interview for the Sunday paper. She addresses several of the points above and in the comments.

I was pretty much through with Norman Mailer by the end of my 20s. But The Naked and the Dead helped inspire me to write, and Armies of the Night helped inspire me to take up journalism.

Given that he stabbed one of his six wives, ran for mayor of New York, fought Gore Vidal and William Buckley and knew everyone, I'm waiting for a good biographer to take him on.

Google the headline and, after you get links to a hip-hop artist, you get links to posts about the hit movie American Gangster, which stars Denzel Washington as the Harlem drug kingpin. The movie refers several times to his hometown as Greensboro.

Why would the scriptwriter falsify this factual detail?

Lucas was born in La Grange, N.C., and lived in Knoxville, Tenn., Lexington, Ky., and Wilson, N.C. before he was out of his teens. He says so himself in an interview with New York magazine. No evidence of a Greensboro connection that I can find. (If you liked the movie, you'll like the New York article.)

Still, it's unfortunate that Greensboro is mentioned so prominently in the movie. Because there are so many people who believe that the entertainment they see on television and at the movies is factually accurate, the last thing Greensboro needs to be known for is the birthplace of an American Gangster.

(Allen referred to the birthplace earlier, but I just saw the movie last night and needed to add my two cents.)

Today's story by Robert Bell about athletes transferring from one high school to another to get into a better athletic program has more angles than a Moravian star.

It's about students who love to win at sports. It's about parents who want to do what they think is best for their children. It's about fans who want winning teams. It's about fans of weaker teams watching their teams get even weaker. It's about a process that is designed to help students expand their academic options. It's about a school district with a more restrictive policy than other school systems that permit open enrollment.

Mostly, though, it's about a system that is clearly broken and being exploited.

The question is whether the school board will do anything about it.

Could Greensboro citizens have gotten potable water from Randleman Reservoir by now to serve us during this drought? Experts say no, but newly elected City Council member Trudy Wade campaigned that city incompetence is the reason we're not drawing Randleman water from our taps.

Allen Johnson dissects her campaign talk and matches it with facts and political reality.

Defeated incumbent Sandy Carmany wishes that Allen had written his column before last week's election. (Taft Wireback did write an article last month about why water wasn't coming from Randleman Reservoir.)

But imagine this unfolding another way, a way that portends the future:

On her blog, Trudy Wade posts her position on the use of Randleman water. Sandy responds with her own position. Allen Williams of the city water department explains the technical process of getting water from a clean lake into homes. Tom Phillips, the city's elected representative on the water authority, explains the political process on getting all the government bodies to agree on the use of the water. Arnold Koonce tells us about High Point's position. Others -- regular people like you and I -- read, ask questions, offer suggestions and learn from following the discussion of experts with information.

Allen's column did some of this, but it is restrained by the one-to-many delivery form which is delivered fresh once a day. Imagine this discussion done in real time in public.

We aren't there, of course. It would require more people to be online, more people with the direct knowledge to graduate from lurkers to contributors. And finally, either fewer trolls or participants with thick skins. (I first thought that it would require candidates who were seeking the best, correct solutions, but they are the least necessary. It is enough that citizens are informed. Presumably they would see through candidates who aren't acting in their best interests.)

Aside from the information citizens would get, but they also would be able to get to know the candidates in a way they couldn't in the newspaper or in television sound bites. You could see how candidates communicate, how they express themselves, whether they deal with the facts, and how open they are to other opinions.

Coincidentally, Dan Gillmor writes a column in the Boston Globe with a similar approach to political debates.

A debate that would unfold online over the course of days, or even weeks and months. Imagine that one candidate takes a position and poses a question. The opponent would answer with a written response of some predetermined length, but with the help of staff, experts, and the general public. Then the first candidate, again with the help of anyone who wants to join the process, would dissect the response and reply with (we'd hope) a truly nuanced update. Continue this process at length -- and repeat it with many other topics.

He recommends it be moderated, and he's probably right.

I doubt enough Greensboro citizens use online this way for this to take off yet. Greensboro public decisionmakers may not be ready for this yet. We certainly missed an opportunity during this municipal election season.

Still, there's nothing preventing us, the newspaper, from taking an issue, recruiting knowledgeable participants to actively contribute, and building an informed discussion that would help make good public policy.

What do you think? You must believe that this, or something like it, is the future. Let's get ahead of the curve.

We were one of the 150+ newspapers that published the photo of the dirty, bloody, exhausted Marine on our front page back in 2004. The powerful photo of James Blake Miller, soon dubbed the "Marlboro Marine," took on a life of its own.

Here's the rest of the sad story, three years later.

Robert Bell's high school free agent story evoked a lot of e-mails and some attention elsewhere.

Greensboro Sports includes some other cases of students transferring from one school to another for sports. I don't know the source of his information, but he names names.

The Prep Insiders at the Charlotte Observer uses the story to talk about Charlotte-Mecklenberg, "the transfer capital of the N.C. high school universe."

We have a story tomorrow today on the initial reaction of some school board members. Suffice it to say that it is unclear if the board is going to do anything about the apparent abuse of the system.

I try to treat the opinions of all readers with respect, but this one was tough. A caller today didn't like our front page promo directing readers to our page for kids where we are having a holiday coloring contest. Most of the page is a line drawing like you would see in a coloring book of an elf and a Christmas tree.

The promo reads "WHITE CHRISTMAS" with the underline "Kids, color our poster, and you could win a ride with Santa"

He said we insulted "the Caucasian race. This is a form of racism and we should print a retraction." Well, he said other stuff, but that quote really was his point.

Maybe a beat reporter could do a way better job if there was a "live" social network connected to the beat, made up of people who know the territory the beat covers, and want the reporting on that beat to be better.

That's Jay Rosen's brilliantly simple idea.

It feels like the future to me.

I wanted us to give it a shot. I'm frustrated and disappointed that we're not on the bus with the 13 participants. We tried. Not surprisingly, Jay was receptive and helpful to us. We just couldn't find the right combination of reporter and beat. We looked at health and medicine, at High Point and at Raleigh, but for various reasons, couldn't make it work by Jay's deadline.

A major issue for us is that we are playing a bit of musical chairs as reporters leave and others move from beat to beat. But that will settle out soon enough.

I'm hopeful that we try this on our own, watching Beatblogging.org from afar and learning as we go. I'm convinced that it would give us an edge in our reporting, improve the reporter and make us a better newspaper. I have in mind a couple other possibilities once the right people get into place. Jay said it's possible that we could join his initiative mid-stream.

So that's two innovation initiatives before us. It should be a busy next several months.

What a long, strange trip this is.

I read on Martin Stabe's blog a link to this post on Matt Frei's Washington Diary in which Ben Bradlee was quoted as saying: "You want citizen journalists? How about citizen surgeons?"

I thought, how long are we going to treat these sorts of pronouncements of editors from another age of newspapering as news? Then I saw that it didn't appear to be recent. So I googled it, thinking, geez, how long does a bad apples-and-oranges analogy follow you around. Hmmm....

OK, it looks like it came from a story that Charlie Gibson told and reported by the Louisville Courier. The quote is a bit different, too. He said he was on a panel with retired Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee when someone asked Bradlee what he thought about citizen reporters. Gibson said Bradlee replied, "I don't know. What do you think of citizen surgeons?" .

More suspicious, I googled Bradlee and citizen journalists and got a lot of links, but nothing relevant. Then I googled "citizen surgeons." In June 2005, Jemima Kiss refers to Simon Bucks: He didn't want to talk about the Sky website, but about his concerns that the public can't and shouldn't be encouraged to trundle around to news events with cameras imitating professional broadcast journalists.

He asked the audience what they'd decide to do if they needed a brain tumour removed: would they go to a professional brian surgeon, or a citizen brain surgeon? A compelling analogy, but it really is quite unsound for a number of reasons.

(This was on page 5 of the google search. There was a lot of references to citizens who performed surgery.)

A month later, Duct Tape Marketing Blog Channel, of all things, refers to it similarly. What about a citizen accountant, who rewrites the books if they don't like the way the numbers come up? (Oh, that's been done already, you say?) What about a citizen teacher, who rewrites the curriculum if they don't like what is offered up to students? Do you fancy the idea of a citizen surgeon who always wanted to try their hand at medicine?

I don't know whether Bradlee ever said what he's quoted as saying. I gave up the google search after 10 pages. (A Carolina game is on, you know.) But it's pretty bad if an arrogant, off-point quote is following you around and there's no direct evidence you even said it.

About using newspapers. Ignore that last one.

And about attracting visitors in the blogosphere.

We've gotten reports of layoffs at the High Point Enterprise. Not officially confirmed, but they're coming from people involved. Not sure how many.

We compete with the Enterprise for news, advertising and readers. Still, no one wants to see this. Been there. Sad times.

Amy Dominello, our reporter devoted entirely to reporting stories for our Web site, is joining Media General's D.C. bureau as a multi-media reporter covering federal government issues affecting the Deep South. No, she’s never covered the federal government or the Deep South, but she’s a helluva reporter and has the digital chops.

In her five years here, Amy has shown incredible range and depth in her writing and reporting. She traveled to Meridian, Miss., to volunteer with a hurricane relief effort and write about it. As part of the health beat, she hosted a blog, created to record her weight-loss challenge. She was part of a team that won a Society for News Design award. She filed live online reports from Blacksburg during the rampage at Va. Tech. She won first place in features in our annual in-house Landmark Awards.

Media General landed a good one.

Time was, newspapers in markets our size would lose reporters to larger newspapers looking for tenacious reporters and/or wonderfully talented writers. Now, there's been a shift in the marketplace. It's not seismic yet, but it soon will be.

Oh, the big news orgs still look for talented reporters and writers, and while those folks aren't a dime a dozen, there are a lot of them around. But that's no longer enough. Reporters with digital skills have the edge. My evidence:

Amy Dominello, our multi-media reporter since April, moves to a higher paying, bigger market in D.C. to be a multi-media reporter.

Katie Reetz, a features writer and multi-media star, goes to develop multi-media connections with students at Elon. OK, not a larger news org, but still.

Michelle Jarboe, a business writer, moves to the Plain Dealer to write business there. I don't know for a fact that her digital skills were a factor, but if they weren't -- she developed and contributed to two blogs here -- they should have been. (And clearly the PD could use some help.)

When we began emphasizing digital training here, we anticipated just such a talent drain. While I regret losing these folks, I'm proud that we've been able to prepare them for the future. Because the future is here. Anyone still out there -- and the group must be dwindling by now -- who doesn't see the value of learning to post, to link, to record audio and video and to join in the greater conversation is a stegosaurus in trouble.

I'm reading Eric Clapton's autobiography and came across Jamie Oldaker's name. Oldaker is a drummer who played with Clapton for 10 years or so (post-Layla).

He was a year ahead of me in high school in Tulsa. I knew he had played as a session man with Leon Russell there, but hadn't known he toured with Clapton. Then I read that Carl Radle, bass player on Layla, graduated from the same school -- Edison -- albeit many years before I was there. Impressive enough.

Drawn to the computer, I discovered a Wikipedia entry on the Tulsa Sound. It reminded me of Dwight Twilley, who we knew as an artist; he drew the cover of the student phone book at Edison. I think I knew he was in a band, but wouldn't have predicted he would become a Top 20 artist. (His bandmate Phil Seymour was at Edison, too, a year younger than me.)

That then led me to Tuck Andress, Scott Musick and David Tanner, all of whom were in my class.

Unfortunately, I played the clarinet, which did nothing wonders for my cool factor. (Thanks, Sue.) The rest is history.

My newspaper column

If all you read is the front page, you might think that last week was hard on Guilford County high schools.

* A teacher at Smith High School is suspended after insulting and cursing at students.
* A teacher at Dudley resigns after fighting with a student.
* Twelve students at Southern Guilford face suspensions and possible criminal charges for a fight at school.

But admittedly, the front page doesn't paint a true picture of what's happening in the high schools. Elsewhere we wrote about:

* The Dudley High School Thespians performed well enough to compete in the State High School Theater Festival last week.
* The National Honor Society of Northwest High School raised more than $1,500 for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
* The Early College at Guilford will raise money for the school at a book fair at Barnes & Noble at Friendly Center Dec. 14.

Those stories were shorter, and we published them in the Guilford Record and the Rock Creek Record, two publications we circulate in Guilford County.

So it is a fair question to ask why the bad news about the schools makes the front page so often.

...about the way things are.

Rex Smith of the Albany Times-Union explains why the paper isn't identifying the 24-year-old woman on the lap of a former U.S. representative when he was stopped for DWI. The editor almost taunts readers with the info he knows and they don't, and then invites them to use google.

James Vesely of the Seattle Times calls e-commerce the anti-newspaper because it takes money normally given to newsrooms.

Both show a poignancy for times gone by. Both seem are disappointed by things today. Both, I suspect, are really not liking the way the future looks.

(Both via Romenesko.)

Less than a month ago, we published some reader tips on dealing with the drought, conserving water and still keeping your plants alive. More than one reader suggested catching shower water and dishwater and using it in the garden. Makes sense.

This morning, after reading a similar story in The Charlotte Observer, we published a story saying that practice is illegal.

Hmmm. Our bad. But the idea has been around since at least the 2002 drought when we published handy Q&A with city water folks, including this answer:

If you want to water flower gardens or other landscaped areas around your house, you must recycle `"gray water" from inside.

"Use discretion," says Williams, coordinator of Greensboro's water conservation program. "Gray water can be dangerous.'"

And illegal. Who knew?

At the end of the Greensboro City Council meeting last night, City Manager Mitch Johnson announced that all public information requests of the city will be posted online so that the public will be aware of the city's efforts to fulfill them.

The precipitating cause was a request -- an alarming request, Mayor Holliday called it -- that will fill "boxes and boxes" of documents. It's apparently such a large request that it requires the city to move some one from the library staff part-time to help fill it.

The actual request wasn't mentioned at the meeting, but I'm guessing it was Samuel's.

Welcome to the world of citizen publishing. Anyone can request most of the paperwork and computer work produced by local government. The request doesn't have to be pretty or organized or narrow. It doesn't need to be brought by an attorney or a traditional news organization. And, actually, the person making the request doesn't need to be a citizen publisher. They only need to be a citizen, but I believe that as more citizens use the Web for their own purposes, the number of such oversight requests will multiply.

Consequently, staffing up to respond to more inquiries from the public is a good idea.

Mayor Holliday said the city is trying to be transparent. "The public needs to hear where we are these days. I want to make sure there is no doubt in anyone's mind of our intention to cooperate based on the law, but understanding the task at hand, the monumental task...."

I admit to the cynical thought that this isn't transparency so much as it is an attempt to discourage such requests, but I will take the city's action at face value.

But the action doesn't go far enough, if you ask me. Don't stop at the request. Put all the documentation online, too, so everyone can see it. That's transparency.

Listen to the council meeting here. The mayor begins the discussion at about the 6:18 mark.

Changing comic strips is in the news again. We newspapers love to write about this topic.

My advice: Leave the comics pages alone. Maybe back in our parents' days, comics sold newspapers, but I would like to see evidence from the 21st century supporting the notion that they do now. People have way too many other sources of amusement these days.

I used to buy the editor line that comics are the way to get kids into the paper habit. That argument made some sense 30 years ago. I doubt we get many new readers that way now.

Readers write to me about comics more than anything else. One sentiment is constant and dominant: Don't change any of the old standards.

Comics are geared to current readers. Unless you're adding space -- meaning you don't have to eliminate any you currently have -- I wouldn't mess with them.

You have more important things to worry about.

Of all the Happy Thanksgiving greetings I read on blogs yesterday, no one says it better than Seth Godin.

Every time you read something I write here, you're giving me a gift... attention. It's getting more precious all the time, you have more choices every day, and it's harder and harder to find the time. I know. I'm grateful. I'm doing my best to make your attention worth it.

So, have a great Thanksgiving. And thanks.

Wish I had said that.

I enjoyed reading this letter to the editor about what he calls the "feminization" of the English language. He bemoans the sad state of journalism as it uses and misuses language.

The idea that there is one and only one correct set of grammar rules is misguided. As a living, breathing language, English evolves, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. What you remember learning in school changes. I don't even know that the examples cited in the letter are taught in school; much of our language practices are picked up along the way.

For instance, I'm not aware of a punctuation rule that requires "president" to be capitalized when referring to the president of the United States. It may be a practice showing respect, but I have consulted a few grammar books and it's not listed.

Check the definition of actor and it makes no reference to gender. Turn to actress and it states: "a woman who is an actor." Same applies to comedian and comedienne. They both make a gender-based distinction where one is unnecessary. It's demeaning.

The AP stylebook, which we use as a guide, isn't a Bible, either. In fact, it instructs us not to capitalize the pronoun "he" when referring to God, a rule that irritates some readers everytime we follow it.

The AP Stylebook simply helps make newspaper usage consistent. Is it Osama or Usama? Is it Burma or Myanmar?

There are other stylebooks, too, including the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage and the Chicago Manual of Style.

Language doesn't always follow popular usage. Take email, for example. I spelled it the way just about everyone does. Not AP or the dictionary. (Insert a hyphen.) Everyone I know writes website; we and the dictionary write Web site.

My point is that we occasionally make mistakes on grammar, but less often than many people think.

My newspaper column

Nothing gets under the skin of an editor like publishing a mistake in a story. A mistake is worse than a missed story or getting beat by a competitor. Getting lectured by a windbag politician is even better than making a mistake in a story.

For the record, the big "important" errors are not the worst. Those are the small mistakes that have the greatest personal consequences: the misspelled names, the wrong dates, the transposition of digits in a phone number. They not only inconvenience people, they disrespect them, too.

That hit home last Sunday when we inadvertently substituted the name of Grimsley High School's second-string goalkeeper for the name of the starting keeper in a story about the boy's soccer team playing in the state championship.

I follow the Whirlies soccer team, and I know the first-string keeper, Will Curtis, and his parents. I opened the Sunday paper, hoping to read about a Grimsley victory, only to stop cold when the story referred to someone other than Will as the keeper.