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Last month, I wrote a post about why journalists are journalists. I referred to journalists who want to change the world. Those who look for targets to shoot at took aim at that statement for various reasons that, honestly, didn't make much sense to me. It was almost as if they were trying not to understand my point.

Here's another run at it from someone better than I. Rick Reilly explains in this week's Sports Illustrated. (Can't find it online.)

My favorite column, though, was not about one person but millions -- the impoverished Africans who benefited from Nothing But Nets, the antimalaria campaign you and I started with the help of the United Nations Foundation. Every week I hear about another kid donating his bar mitzvah money, a Brownie troop sending its lemonade profits, a family choosing nets over Christmas gifts. We're at $16 million, and much of that has come in twenties and fives and even rolls of quarters.

Changing the world.

My newspaper column
Earlier post and later post.

I'm no language maven.

I think I'm like many people; I struggled through the spelling and grammar portions of English class, memorizing rules long enough for the test and then forgetting them to provide brain room for the next test.

I'm fortunate that we have crackerjack copy editors who read behind me and our other writers to clean up our grammatical and spelling mistakes, among other things.

Those editors help keep our style and usage consistent throughout the newspaper. As a result, they suffer the lashes of retired English teachers and self-taught grammarians everywhere when we misstep.

But I'll come right out and say it: We make many fewer mistakes in language usage than people think.

Whenever I write about language -- and I don't write about it much because, as I say, I'm no language maven -- it's always a popular one with readers. Primarily, judging by the feedback, because they can lord their language superiority over me.

Uncle! (Actually, they're pretty nice about it.)

A sampling:

I applauded everything said there, but most of all the intent. Usage matters. Communication requires precision in thought and accuracy in words. Bravo!

Can you send a message back to the newsroom that friends don't let friends use poor grammar? Thanks.

I'm impressed that he reads my column before the front page stories.

Hi, I read this with a smile, as sometime back I recall writing and asking about the paper's use of grammar and it was then I learned the press has a different "book" than we.

But I couldn't help but smile again, as had just read in section A about someone buying a $3 Million truffle and on page 1 of section B there was a discussion of the delicasies: (oops on spelling) triffles; but spelled truffles. Have to admit I always mix those up myself and I may have misspelled, but just woke up to a furnace turned too high and this thought came to me.

Actually, there were truffles.

One of my college professors addressed this very issue once in a communications class. A student was pointing out the spelling errors and the misuse of words and phrases made by another student. The professor asked the student to explain what she read. The student talked about the story as if she had written it herself. The professor told the student that the author may have made mistakes, but no matter because a message was communicated and understood. He was trying to get us to concentrate on getting our message down while the creative juices were flowing and not worry about those things that can be corrected later.

I hesitate to tip the canoe, but after all the trouble we have had with conversation that either devolves into something inane or escalates into an Ann Coulter shouting match, we've had a breakthrough.

On the Debatables blog, the discussion about the reassignment of the athletic director at A&T has carried on all weekend and commenters are sharing information with each other. Not just opinions, but actual usable information. And while most don't identify themselves by name, which is my strong preference, many indicate they are alums.

The way it's supposed to be.

Update: On the other hand....

Mark Sutter, who as much as anyone has helped shape our news report over the past decade, will become the editor of the Business Journal.

It doesn't come as a surprise. Nearly 18 years ago, Mark came here as a business reporter and later was business editor. If I were the publisher of the Biz Journal, I'd hire Mark. A short list of his accomplishments here:

* He was metro editor/Greensboro editor for seven years, smoothly steering our local news coverage through tremendous change, including a couple staff realignments and redesigns
* He has had a hand in every big news story in the Triad since the 90's
* He developed dozens of reporters and editors, many of whom have gone on to bigger jobs at bigger papers
* He was the author of our Town Square plan that has guided much of our recent innovation

When he left, he was i helping develop some new ventures for us and was in the middle of a updating Lex's Public Square white paper. We'll miss that, but I plan to continue to plumb his thinking on things, even as he is a competitor now.

We've hired Jayme Elrod as a designer on our night desk. Jayme was the lead designer at the newspaper in Grand Junction, Colo. Her name may be familiar because this is her second go-round here. She left us as part of the layoffs, and we're delighted to be able to get her back. She has a great eye for design.

Unlike most journalists I know, you would be hard-pressed to find much journalistic memorabilia or accoutrement in my house. That's pretty much because of my wife's good taste in home decor rather than any lack of stuff. It's a character trait that we're pack rats, and my newspaper junk has been relegated to one room away from the primarily traveled areas, which is fine because I use the word junk precisely.

But it's Christmas and it's important to help people stock their lists for Santa. Christine Tatum, once a N&R reporter and past prez of the Society of Professional Journalists, lends a hand.

I love Christine, but I'm wondering about my judgment when I read that the first thing she'd save in a house fire is her vase made of recycled paper, followed closely by her 1936 copy of Fortune. But to each her own.

I must say that retired publisher Van King has a working News & Record newspaper rack, refurbished to a high sheen, in his house that, oddly, doesn't look out of place.

Less than 24 hours ago, WFU Coach Jim Grobe was on the Two Guys Named Chris radio show. Chris Kelly asked him about offers he may have gotten to coach elsewhere.

"So far nothing's hit me over the head and told me I should be leaving," Grobe told them.

Twelve hours later, reports came out that Grobe had agreed to coach at the University of Arkansas.

Was he telling the truth Wednesday morning -- he apparently interviewed in Fayetteville, Ark., Tuesday -- or is it possible that sometime in those 12 hours he had suddenly gotten so interested in the Razorbacks that they produced a contract, notified everyone who needed to be told, and signed him?

We've gotten used to and even accepted politicians, entertainers and, I guess, coaches shading, spinning and neglecting the truth. I have written about Bob Dylan and his wonderfully open statement: "The press? I figured you lie to it."

The problem is that they aren't only lying to the press; they're lying to everyone who reads or views the report. I can't understand the upside. I can understand someone changing his mind; I do it with some regularity as I'm presented with more information or have the chance to think through an issue.

Perhaps all the speculation will be wrong, and Grobe will announce he's staying today. The spin will be interesting. But I am always surprised that there isn't more negative reaction to the outright falsehoods coming from the mouths of public figures.

Update: We're now hearing he is not going.

Related: Rob Daniels speculated yesterday morning about Grobe rumors at SportsExtra, as did the guys at Radio Free Sports.

These are the types of days newspaper people hate. We had some mechancial problems last night preventing us from getting the papers to the carriers until much later than normal. Because many of the carriers have other jobs, they aren't able to deliver the papers, which means we scramble.

And it means papers won't be delivered until mid-morning, which isn't what most people pay for.

The other reason we hate it is that it disrupts the newspaper habit. While you're eating your cereal, instead of reading the paper, you might watch the morning news. You might decide you like the idea of having an extra 20 minutes to get off to work.

On the other hand, I'm hoping that you miss us, knowing what happened out there, knowing who was born and who died, knowing all this stuff.

Some bloggers noted this morning that they received an e-mail from us telling them why their newspapers were late. If you want to receive such information from us, not only about some of our problems, but also about our upcoming stories and events, please leave word in the comments or shoot me an e-mail.

We won't spam you or try to sell you anything. It's just a service, particularly aimed at active bloggers. If you want us to cease at anytime just let me know.

Most of the time I write about newspapers and online journalism. This time, it's TV and online.

I was watching Fox8 news at 6 p.m. as I was getting ready for a party. I was waiting for the Dudley state championship score. At about 6:15, the sports guy came on and told me the Western Alamance score, which was great. And then he started flirting with the anchor and teased the audience by telling us that Mt. Tabor and Dudley scores were in and one won and the other lost. We'll need to stick around for the sports report 6:40 to find out, he said.

Here's what viewers do, TV: Annoyed, I immediately switched over to WFMY, which was just starting its newscast because a basketball game ran long. Then I walked to the computer and got the results. (Dudley won.) Of course, I didn't go to the Fox8 site.

They had the information. They did the lead-in with the Western Alamance score. But they wouldn't tell me the results of the other two games because they thought I would keep watching for another 25 minutes. Wrong. Pardon me for being cynical about their motives. I suppose they are in touch with their viewers. They just lost one.

And I should have gone online in the first place.

By the way, I went back to the television and WFMY told me the results of the Dudley game before 6:25.

My newspaper column

My mood was dark as I drove home that day in late September.

Eighteen months after the resignation of the police chief, some people were still arguing about what led to it and whose fault it was. Fifteen months after the report of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, some people were still talking about what to do with it. Mudslinging had started in the Greensboro City Council primary, an election that ultimately inspired 93 percent of the electorate to stay home.

Some people were feeling disenfranchised, while others were disengaged. It was as if the "Greensboro Disease" of negativity to change had reached epidemic proportions.

When I walked into the house, I saw a copy of the Oct. 1 edition of Newsweek with a cover story titled "How to Heal the World."

"The world?" I thought. "How about Greensboro?" The idea for this package was born. We didn't know what we were getting into -- and, honestly, we still don't -- but we believe this is a critical time for the city.

Washington Post Editor Leonard Downie takes a shot at Romenesko for not being discriminating enough in the sorts of stories it links to. You can read it all for yourself. It's one of those things that is a huge dust-up for 24 hours and then disappears because, really, who outside the Beltway cares?

Still, it's rare to see a big-league newspaper editor raise a question about Romenesko's judgment. And a fair question it is. Romenesko exerts outsized influence over the journalistic discussion because so many journalists read him. He's like everyone used to think the New York Times was -- whatever its editors put on A1 influenced news judgment at papers across the country. What Romenesko chooses to link to -- and chooses not to link to -- makes a difference, too. And these days, it's a constant drumbeat of bad news and press criticism.

Romenesko links to this blog often enough. Sometimes I solicit it because it means my traffic goes up. But I haven't figured out a rhyme or reason to when he does and when he doesn't. My guess is that Downie and editors everywhere wonder the same thing.

Here is Romenesko himself describing a day in the life (pdf, page 5).

I've come to the same conclusion as Doug Clifton, retired editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer: Its strength is breadth. Its flaw is indiscriminate selections. Third rate stuff from an alternative can be given equal weight to a serious piece in AJR or CJR....Because it is so widely read by journalists the echo effect can be overwhelming. I’m convinced Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd lost their jobs because they couldn’t escape the Romenesko undertow. That said, it provides an essential and immediate forum for discussion of important journalistic issues.

Romenesko is mostly a personal Web site and as such, he can post whatever he pleases. Sure his judgment is goofy sometimes. Sure it dwells more on the negative than the positive. But I'm sure Downie realized that he was acting just like the reader of the Washington Post who complains about that newspaper's judgment on a story about, say, Bush and Iraq.

It's a funny, even awkward, position for a newspaper editor to be in.

I've deleted more comments than usual lately on this blog and on Debatables, primarily because anonymous people make abusive and profane comments. It's a mystery to me why they do it. Does it make them feel good? Do they think they're being clever? If you're anonymous, how do you get credit? Odd.

Anyway, commenters have a big playing field, and we give them latitude to take the conversation off point, and to use grammatical constructions and misspellings that would make a dyslexic scream in horror. We don't count off for the irrational or just plain head-shaking silly. We figure the audience can tell what has value.

But we draw the line at abusing other commenters, at using profanity and racial and sexual epithets, and at making personal attacks. Those comments contribute nothing, and there's no reason to permit them. Yet, some people don't understand that. So I kill the comment -- no warning, no -- and leave a note explaining why. Frankly, it's fun to read the next outraged posting from the commenter.

While it's a matter of debate which comments deserves deletion and which are reasonable opinion, I do have an arbitrary latitude scale to help me sort through it:

Sign your real name and real e-mail address: 80% degree of latitude.
Use a pseudonymn but be a regular with a track record: 50%.
A drop-in anonymous comment: 20%
A drop-in anonymous comment with a silly sign-on: 10%

Not scientific, but it helps.

Is waterboarding torture? Steve Smith, editor of the Spokane paper, posed that question Monday, as part of trying to decide what was an appropriate reference for headlines. His alternative -- aggressive interrogation -- is long for a headline term.

Interesting discussion. Is it torture?

Today we had staff meetings at which we talked about the 10 things we plan to do in 2008. We're doing all of them right now to some degree. To the outsider, these may seem, like, duh. Everyone on the staff is at various places on each. Some are well along in their digital savvy, for instance; others aren't. Some are guided by traditional news judgment -- I suffer from this myself sometimes. Others have an impressive understanding of what resonates with the audience. Some learn something new every day; others maybe once a month.

In each case, we will ramp up significantly. We expect the rising tide to raise all boats.

In all, it's a team activity. Editors may direct, but everyone will drive; no one rides.

It will be challenging and fun.

* We will be audience-centric. Our decisions will be guided by our understanding of what the audience wants and needs. We will listen and interact with the audience. We will circulate audience information to the staff.

* We are smaller and we will act like it. That means we will make hard decisions about things we want to do and things we can't. We will move faster to stories and respond with flexibility. We will restructure for speed and mobility.

* Reporters will work on their best stories. We will emphasize enterprise and storytelling. (This isn't to the detriment of breaking news, as one person asked. We'll keep pushing hard on that. Rather, this will be to the detriment of those stories that have little impact on people -- those stories we do because we always have done them.)

Today is one of those good days in the newsroom. (Good having nothing to do with journalism.) We are having a small bake sale to raise money for Urban Ministry.

As designer Jennifer Burton, who organizes the fund-raiser, wrote:

On an average day at the Greensboro Urban Ministry:

* 150 people registered in the Emergency Assistance Program
* 26 emergency food orders filled from the Food Bank
* 332 people fed a hot meal at Potter's House Community Kitchen

We don't even have to leave the building to get home-baked sweets. And if there's anything we like better than eating, it's eating and raising money at the same time.

Update: We also had one of our in-house auctions yesterday in which we sell all the free stuff companies send us for promotions. We raised $1,023 for charity. That makes about $3,000 this year!

Breea Willingham was a reporter here about 10 years ago. She now teaches journalism at St, Bonaventure University. She published this piece in USA Today today.

People often ask me how I managed to get out of the neighborhood and not follow a similar destructive path. I don't really know. My brothers and I grew up in the same house, raised by the same mother. With little money, we all had temptations to go down the wrong path. I think my brothers, like many black people, fall into a self-defeatist mode and believe all they can be is a victim. The hopelessness and despair in the black community are ever present in the media, so is it any wonder so many young black men feel they can't get out? I know Josh wants a better life. But he, like many black men, feels stuck.

Worth a read. She shares some of the response, too, at her blog.

This is one of the things I worry about: mock story written for a departing staff member's going away party gets into print or pixels. In this case, a satirical farewell speech from a copy editor at the Santa Barbara News-Press was published on the paper's Web site.

Eventually someone got fired over it. (Thanks to Pam at Words at Work for the tip.)

It's a widespread newsroom tradition: departing employees get a mock front page that makes fun of them and some of the stories they've written and people they've covered. We have the same tradition.

Because newsrooms tend to attract some outsized, creative and occasionally dysfunctional personalities, we've had some pretty wild, creative and occasionally inappropriate pages. Some have been inappropriate enough that I have seen the need to tell the person in charge of our copy desk -- the people who are the ultimate safety net in a newsroom -- to make sure that the wrong photo or wrong batch of copy doesn't find its way into print. They look at me as if I'm an idiot, which is the correct response. (I'm pretty confident one of the eagle-eyed pressmen would catch if it slipped through to the press.)

Would I fire someone over it? It depends what happened, but I wouldn't be inclined to go that far.

Would I stop the tradition? No way. I still have mine from the day I left the News & Observer 20+ years ago. (It features a photo of me and Pope John Paul II. You had to be there.)

I don't recall the photo spread in the New York Times fashion magazine referenced by public editor Clark Hoyt in his column today. The magazine apparently has some photos of a 17-year-old model that were considered inappropriate by some, including Hoyt.

Whatever. I've commented on fashion photo spreads in the Times before.

To me, the more interesting point the column illustrates is the disagreement among top editors of the Times about what's publishable and what's not. The editor of the Times thinks the photos are OK. The editor in charge of standards at the Times does not. The editor of the magazine does. Hoyt does not.

Many people think newsrooms operate in lock-step -- a liberal conspiracy!!!??? -- and that decisions are simple and consensual. Hardly. While I don't know the Times hierarchy, my guess is that, like most newsrooms, such disagreements are considered healthy and part of the operating structure.

I know that all the cool kids are atwitter over Twitter. I want to be a cool kid, too, so I've been checking it out. At this writing, 46 people with a Greensboro, N.C., location come up in a Twitter search, including some online friends.

The potential value of a Twitter network for journalists is clear and striking. The ability to shoot out information to a network -- and to get information from the network-- during hot and heavy breaking news is a powerful incentive.

It will be a simple, even essential, tool for an experiment like this. Surely there are enough people interested in getting immediate, real-time updates on what the state legislators are doing and who would want to be able to talk back. Same with people interested in local government and business.

But given the speed with which new technology is adopted, are we ready yet? Have the Twitter people reached a tipping point, even for experimentation? Of the 46 people from Greensboro, the most recent updates range from an hour ago to 8 months ago. I asked my college-age daughters, who know their way around technology and use their phones for everything, about Twitter, and they looked at me blankly. (I'm used to that look; it is right next to the look of condescension I get when I show my ignorance. Had they known about Twitter that's the look I'd have gotten. The third look, by the way, is the one of shame, like when they discovered I have a Facebook account.)

I know from experience on our blogs that asking for help with a topic or judgment or interview subject gets spotty response at best. But Twitter is certainly more mobile and more immediate than blogging so it could be more successful. I've certainly watched enough people text during driving to know that if so inspired you can read and write anywhere.

More than a year ago, writing about something else, Jeff Jarvis said: The question is not, 'How do we get enough stuff to get people to come to us?' That is their old-media model. I think the question is, 'How do we go to where the people are with what they need and how do we enable them to do what they want to do?'

I believe that's exactly right. What I don't know is whether enough people are gathered at Twitter right now to make it much more than being a cool kid engaging with a cool new thing. Help.

What does it mean when you're the last commenter on a thread?

* Does it mean you quieted the crowd with such powerful wisdom that they are speechless before your inner-Einstein? That once you've spoken nothing else need be said?

* Does it mean that you've killed the conversation? That your comment was so off-point or so mean that everyone stares at you speechlessly as if you've accused the Pope of committing one of the seven deadly sins?

* Does it mean that everyone else has weighed in with everything there is to say that is remotely meaningful and you're late to the party? That you haven't bothered to read the other comments before yours to see what has already been said?

* Does it mean that you don't know when that an argument has reached its point of diminishing returns and you keep repeating the same thing? That the time has come to agree to disagree and move on?

For all of us old newspaper wretches, this will drive you to the liquor cabinet.

During the afternoon budget meeting, the photo chief mentions a story about George Dickel distillery trying to reduce its inventory.

Faces around the room went blank. Finally, someone asked "Who's George Dickel?"

More than half the people in the room hadn't heard of the Tennessee whisky, forcing me to pull a bottle out of my desk drawer to show them.*

The daily news about the digital revolution doesn't signal a new media world the way that story does.

For some reason it reminded me of this George Thorogood lyric:

Now, the other night I lay sleeping,
And I woke from a terrible dream.
So I called up my pal, Jack Daniels,
And his partner Jimmy Beam.

And we drank alone, yeah, with nobody else.
We drank alone, yeah, with nobody else.
Yeah, you know when I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself.

* For my friends in Human Resources, that actually didn't happen.

Here we go again, again. Official doesn't want to answer question -- answer he apparently knows or certainly should know -- so he defers to someone else, who doesn't return calls.

With the turmoil in the schools -- big fights at Page, Grimsley and Southern this year; teacher breakdowns at others -- you might think that openness and transparency would be the rule, especially to help parents and citizens concerned about the learning environment and what is being done to address the problems.

Yesterday our colleagues down I-85 at the Times-News in Burlington suffered a double dose of pain: two deaths in the family. Our prayers are with them and the families.

Top story of the year? Virginia Tech killings.
No. 2: Mortgage crisis
Iraq comes in at 3 and the presidential race slips into the top 10 at No. 9.

I didn't vote in the survey because I didn't see the point. While I see the value of such a ranking back in, say, the 80s, I can't imagine how relevant it is now when so many papers, big and small, are focusing on local stories. Seems to me as if it has outlived its usefulness.

In any case, I don't have a strong opinion of the rankings, although I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have voted Tech No. 1 so that the memory of Cho wouldn't get the satisfaction. Hmmm, Putin is Time's Man of the Year, but he doesn't scratch on the AP survey?

But I love this: Among stories about pop culture celebrities, the saga surrounding the death of Anna Nicole Smith got the most votes, finishing in 32nd place ahead of such stories as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the departure of Tony Blair as British prime minister, and the military crackdown in Myanmar.

"Anyone who picks the Anna Nicole Smith story in the Top Ten should be beaten with sticks," commented Mike Bailey, managing editor of The Courier News in Elgin, Ill.

He's right. Anyone who picks Anna Nicole over Britney is an idiot.

If you were the city of Greensboro and you were conducting a criminal investigation of some police officers, which would you fear more:
* Making the mistakes of the Duke lacrosse case in which students were falsely accused in a rush to judgment?
* Making the mistakes of the Wray resignation in which information was tightly protected and decisions were made behind closed doors?

Neither strategy was successful. In the Duke case, the university, the DA, the police and the media were splattered with shame and embarrassment. Lawsuits are pending. In the Wray case, new council members won after campaigning on platforms of transparency because of the previous council's secrecy. Lawsuits are pending.

The city seems more afraid of Duke model. But the Duke case and the current assault investigation are not similar. The accused officers are public employees; the Duke students were not. Releasing the information called for by state law -- time, location and nature of the incident -- will not bring the city remotely close to what happened in Durham. It would, however, put the city on par with what it provides in other criminal investigations.

I appreciate the city's desire to protect its employees. But the names of the officers have already been released. Because few other details have, the officers are under a cloud of uncertainty and suspicion. Releasing more information would help disperse some of that. If there are reasons that more information would further hurt the officers, the city hasn't provided them.

Obviously, our position is clear. As in the Wray case, the city's credibility -- and the council's credibility -- is at stake. Again.

Update: City Manager Mitch Johnson writes an OpEd piece for tomorrow's paper explaining the city's position. (Link fixed.)

Update II: More discussion here.

Update III: Meanwhile -- it's time to get a scorecard out -- another officer is suspended.

Update IV: Not making this up. Council decides to think about it for a week.

Wouldn't it be helpful if one of these Greensboro City Council members interested in transparency had an active blog? I wonder what that would be like.

While I fear it will get lost in the holiday rush away from the web, Decision 2008, our election blog hosted by the inexhaustable Mark Binker, is up and running.

My newspaper column

I am unsure when I finally realized that the true joy in Christmas was more about giving than getting.

I have always loved getting presents, so I may have been slower than most of you to understand how much fun it is to put something under the tree for someone else.

But I eventually got it. Even as I get distracted by the crowds at the mall, the Christmas lights that don't light, and the overall stress of the season, the joy of making someone else's day a little brighter carries me through.

I hope the newspaper reflects that, too.

It is a shame that today's paper isn't among the best read -- I can't imagine why -- because there's good stuff in it, including these two:

* This is our second year soliciting wrapping paper creations from readers. We got more than 100 entries -- you know, this isn't like shooting off an e-mail; this requires actual work. Additional entries here. As a special bonus, all of the submissions are on display through early January at the Greensboro Public Library's Central Branch.

* We publish our All-Area football, volleyball and boys soccer teams. This is a special issue for these athletes; more special for their parents.

Enjoy.

Sometimes discovering that what you thought was legitimate is actually bogus doesn't lessen the enjoyment. Pam at Words at Work provides a list of purported "actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays" except that they probably aren't. Still, I can see myself reading them in a story and laughing outloud. A few of my favorites:

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

After several years of "Seasons Greetings" and "Happy Holidays" at the top of the front page on Dec. 25, we stripped "Merry Christmas" across the front this morning.

I had been the holdout, believing that that phrasing wasn't as inclusive as the newspaper should be in this multi-cultural, multi-spiritual community. I suppose that lined me up on the wrong side of the "war on Christmas" crowd. But given how silly I think that faux "war" is, who cares?

After some subtle lobbying by a few staff members, I relented, deciding that I was being silly, too. Wishing our readers a Merry Christmas on Christmas Day seems warm, friendly and, I hope, inclusive.

Merry Christmas.

Update: Terry Heaton has a take.

Several times a year, the KKK litters people's driveways with its drivel, occasionally wrapped in pages of our newspaper to give it enough weight so that it doesn't blow away. (The racist organization has used the Rhino, too.)

The Klan is at it again. We have gotten complaints from people who think we actually delivered the bilge on Christmas morning. (Christmas is apparently a popular time.)

We didn't and wouldn't. On Christmas or any other day. My advice is to treat the Klan flier as you would any other piece of trash that blew up on your property.

Update: City Council votes to release some information. And I thank them.

We sued the city of Greensboro today seeking more information on the investigation of three police officers suspended with pay last week.*

We believe that state law considers the information public. We believe that the citizens of Greensboro deserve to know what their employees are doing. And we believe that releasing the information is a critical step to begin rebuilding public trust in City Hall and the police department.

I've said before that I appreciate the need to protect employees. I still do. But the city hasn't made the case that releasing more information will hurt the officers. Not releasing more information further forestalls the city council's oft-stated desires to put police department troubles behind it.

This will be an interesting test of the new council, which meets in a few hours to hear more about the investigation. Many of the council members campaigned on a platform of openness. Several pointedly said the city and police department had some credibility gaps. Will the council follow through with campaign promises or will it take the escape hatch of saying that it has released "all the law allows?"

Here are their most recent comments about releasing the info. Just to refresh your memory, in October, we published a Q&A with the candidates. These are some excerpts from their answers on how to heal rifts in the community caused by the ongoing controversy surrounding former Police chief David Wray's resignation. They seem to be relevant in this case, too.

Yvonne Johnson: To rebuild trust, the city should release information so citizens can make informed judgments about the city's actions.

Mary Rakestraw: There has been a lack of full disclosure, and recent attempts at providing bits and pieces should be replaced with truthfulness. If the public has the duty to pay taxes, it should be treated with respect and be able to handle the truth, good or bad.

Trudy Wade: The dissemination of information for public scrutiny is essential in restoring the public trust.

Robbie Perkins: The lesson learned is that the city must release information in a timely manner and dramatically improve its communication with the media and its citizens. In this situation, "business as usual" is not enough to heal our city. We need extra effort and full communication -- now.

Zach Matheny: It appears that one of the biggest sources of tension over this controversy is that the public doesn't think the city is providing them with all the information it should, and this notion breeds suspicion regarding our leaders at all levels. We need to be honest and forthcoming so that every citizen can form their own opinion on the events that occurred. We may even take affirmative steps to educate citizens as to what happened (e.g., neighborhood meetings). If there were mistakes made, we do our best to rectify them and make sure they are not repeated. Otherwise, I would hope we could move forward. Either way, by offering full disclosure, we would only be discussing something that happened in the past, rather than a continuing stigma of suspicion and frustration due to our inaction.

Goldie Wells: I think the rifts in the community created by the police controversy can only be healed by having the truth revealed and having discussions that will allow the citizens to vent and then make a decision to move on. There are some citizens who will always believe what they have heard and read from the unreliable sources no matter what the true facts are. But I believe we have citizens who will accept the truth and realize that we have to focus our attention on restoring trust in the Greensboro Police Department and city government. Then we can move on to the more important issues.

Sandra Anderson Groat: The public perceives elected officials as having secrets and hiding information. They are suspicious of the elected officials and of the state of public safety in our community. Restoring trust comes with openness and availability of the elected officials.

* We waited until today because courts were closed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Margaret Banks is continuing to pursue the City Council's reasoning behind releasing more information on the investigation of the police assault allegations. Along the way, a couple council members have offered unsolicited opinions about the status of our lawsuit.

Goldie Wells requested we drop it. Robbie Perkins suggested we pursue it and let the courts decide once and for all what is protected personnel information. (He also said we were making too big of a deal out of it and wasting people's time.)

I wouldn't suggest our lawsuit had anything to do with the council's decision. I prefer to think that the members decided to do the right thing for the right reasons.

For the record, we'll make a decision later on, but I'm inclined to drop the suit. We got the information we were seeking.

People are commenting on a couple of posts here, but, for some reason, the comments aren't being posted, which normally is an automatic process. I know that people are commenting because I get the automatic e-mail message of each new comment.

I have alerted the people who know about such things and hope the fix will be in sooner rather than later. If the aforementioned comments don't go up automatically, I will cut and paste from the e-mails so your sentiments won't be lost.

My apologies.

Monday update: We first lost the comments, then we lost the ability to post altogether. But we're back. I think I've posted the comments from you that I got, but if I missed some, have at it!

My newspaper column

Related posts.

We didn't want to end 2007 sparring with the City of Greensboro in Superior Court over what we considered public information.

But we were prepared to do just that on Thursday when we filed a lawsuit against the city and Police Chief Tim Bellamy seeking more information about an alleged assault involving three on-duty police officers.

Fortunately, on Thursday night, Greensboro City Council unanimously agreed to release more information about the case, and, as a result, we expect to drop the lawsuit this week.

No newspaper editor I know enjoys suing the government. We know too well the time and resources it takes to go to court. We don't relish being a factor in the expenditure of tax money.

Every year newspapers publish "the year in review" during the week between Christmas and New Year's. I rarely read them because they tell me things I already know, which pretty much makes them irrelevant. Do I need to remember that Virginia Tech was rocked by a massacre or that Anna Nicole died or that the Red Sox won the pennant?

Do you read them?

Would it have any more value if we wrote local year-in-review stories? If we reminded you that City Council told the police chief to do something about gangs, and that Skybus is coming here, and that while the Grimsley girls basketball team lost in the state championship game, the Dudley boys football team won?

I don't think so, but I'm probably too close to it.

Personally, I prefer the stories that tell me what's coming up, which are harder to do, but at least tell me something I don't know.

Psst...the dirty little secret is that newspapers write those stories to fill space during the one week of the year in which news takes breather -- unless you're in Pakistan -- and filling up the paper with quality content is tougher than getting a Hannah Montana ticket at face value.

*** I'm not counting the top 10 best stories: best movies, best books, best CDs and the like. Those have value to me.