News-Record.com

Last week, Howard Owens posted a wonderful list of objectives for today's non-wired journalists. Inspired, our editors pulled together our own challenge to our more-or-less wired journalists. I sent this out yesterday to our staff:

Last week, I sent you all information about Howard Owens' challenge to journalists. We liked Howard's idea so much that we want to offer you a similar challenge that will help you in your career and help us achieve our 2008 top 10 list, which includes:

* Everyone will stretch themselves, improving their work, learning new skills, becoming better.
* We will innovate constantly, experimenting with new forms of journalism and new publishing methods. We will be quick to drop what doesn't work.
* We will publish news digitally -- big and small -- when we verify it and update it as often as necessary to serve the audience. Everyone will get training; everyone will play.

We didn't replicate Howard's challenge entirely. Like Howard, we will give you a $100 gift certificate (to Friendly Shopping Center). Unlike Howard, we only ask that you do eight of the 10, and it is your choice which eight. Also unlike him, we will give it to the first 10 of you who complete and maintain these for three months.

A few of these are geared more to reporters, although we've tried to be inclusive. If you aren't a reporter, go to Howard's list and select from there to fill out your 10. If you're interested in customizing an approach with a few that aren't on either list, let's hear it.

Sound like a lot of work for a small payout? Perhaps, but consider it an investment in your own development. And I'd bet it will be fun. My guess is that your PIP will have some of these as actions, too, so you'll have a head start. Let your editor, Ann and me know you're giving it a shot.

Here they are:

1. If you have a news beat, file at least five updates a week. This isn't hard. If you're working a story, file updates throughout the day. File the briefs you get from news releases. If a story is breaking file every time you have a snippet more of news. Remember, we must publish every chance we get; we are no longer a once-a-day-delivery newspaper. For editors and designers: Learn about types of headlines that grab online readers. Rewrite headlines on our Web site to make them more interesting for online. Do this for at least three stories per week.

2. From Owens: Become a blogger. Start with a favorite topic. For example, if you're a baseball fan, start with baseball. Find all of the baseball-related blogs you can and become a regular reader of five or six of the best of these blogs. Participate -- leave comments; follow links. After three months of blog reading, start your own blog on that topic. Try to post daily for at least six months. For blog topics, avoid anything related to your beat or politics. First, you need to blog about something you are passionate about; second, there are too many political bloggers already (except maybe for local politics, if you see that need in your community and it won't conflict with your day job).

From me: We have plenty of blogs you can contribute to. If you don't want to blog for us, start one on your own.

3. Learn to post and edit online. And do it often enough to keep the skill up-to-date. In addition to stories, learn how to post any type of file -- maps, charts, photos, PDFs. For editors: Post online at least once a week, and edit at least 10 stories per week online (that's only two per shift). For designers: Learn how to create photo galleries. Create at least one per month. Learn how to add extra features. The Mikes can help with training.

4. Use the digital camera. Shoot the neighborhood sign or street when you are doing a story on a rezoning fight. Shoot people you interview. Shoot a crime scene or a new store. Take photos of spot news if you see it or of anything interesting going on around you. Look for ways we can use your work -- an online gallery, blog, etc. The photos will help us online, and they will help you become comfortable shooting for publication. Do it at least once a week; more often is better. The Mikes can upload the photos.

And Owens is worth adding: Buy a small digital camera that can take both stills and video. Open an account with a photo sharing site such as Flickr or Buzznet. Take photos and post them. If necessary, use some online tutorials for digital photography.

5. Use the audio recorder. We want the three-minute interviews that you do more than the 60-minute conversation. A few snippets so that people can hear the interviewee in person will help bring your story to life. Do it twice a month. The Mikes can help with the upload. For non-reporters, learn about audio. Work with a reporter or videographer to see how it's done. Help edit and post at least one audio project.

6. Subscribe:
* To an RSS feed. Use RSS to keep up with the news of the day and the blogs you are now reading every day. Make sure your blog has an RSS feed. Here's Marc Glaser's guide to RSS. (From Owens)
* To our free products: daily news updates via e-mail and breaking news alerts. Text alerts on your phone. Find them on the home page.
* To our competitor's alerts. A decent number of stories that go online each week originated from an e-mail alert from someone else.

7. From Owens: Join a social networking site. Every professional should have a profile on LinkedIn, so make sure you do, also. Facebook has been hot in 2007, but I think you'l get more out of MySpace, which still remains popular with your future readers. You will get more DIY (the backbone of modern media) experience with MySpace, if you take full advantage of the site features (which, admittedly, I have not). Do Facebook, too, but don' neglect MySpace.

8. Understand and learn video. You don' need to shoot it, although it would be a nice complement to your skills. Learn from Andy Dickinson and Mindy McAdams. Learn from other news sites -- not just newspapers -- that feature video. Then hook up with videographer Michael McQueen at least once to create video for a story. For designers: Team up with a reporter and/or videographer to produce an online project. Even better: Think of a project yourself and then do it. For editors: Team up with a reporter, photographer or videographer to edit the script for an online project. Even better: Write the script yourself.

9. From Owens: Learn to twitter. I'm not a big Twitter user myself, but Ryan Sholin and Jack Lail swear by it. I think there is something to be said for learning how this technology may change information dissemination. Another view is Matthew Ingram's.

10. Innovate. Become a beatblogger. Take an issue on your beat and create a give-and-take online with experts. Create a new form of journalism. You're smart enough. Do it.

I had not heard of the "curse of knowledge" until I read this nifty post by Maurreen Skowran, a copy editor at the News & Observer and host of News Atoms.

It's a curse, indeed.

From a story on our Web site:An announcement is scheduled Thursday that the Batten family which owns Landmark Communications Inc. has hired national investment advisers to sell the Norfolk-based company, including the News & Record.

Another from the Times.

Don't know what this means for us, yet. More tomorrow.

Thursday a.m. update: I see our link is broken. Go here to the Pilot's story until it's fixed.

We have employee meetings throughout the day pertaining to the possible sale of Landmark. Dick Barron is working on the ongoing story. Check for updates.

The immediate bottom line, though, for the community and our folks is this: Our strategy isn't changing. We're still pursuing growth. We're still expanding into online. We're still hiring. We're still investing $$ for good works in the community. We're still pursuing excellent journalism.

More as this develops. If you have questions, ask 'em here.

Relevant to maybe something or probably nothing, I don't know: I understand from the publisher that TV and radio stations were calling for comment on the possible sale of the paper. I know he was pretty occupied all day reassuring employees that it was not apocalypse now. I don't know if or how many news inquiries he ended up handling.

Meanwhile, no one asked me any intelligent questions on the blog post below, at least as of this writing. So, does that mean the news media didn't know about this blog, that they didn't care to ask me, that they didn't need information but needed a talking head, or something else entirely?

It isn't particularly important, but it is curious to me. As more and more people are online, isn't that where the news media goes, to where the people -- including us -- are?

(I know Neill McNeill of Fox knows about blogs. He comments here.)

Online News Squared takes notice of the possible sale of Landmark Communications and made me smile.

Interesting discussion on tomorrow's Benazir Bhutto cover story in Parade magazine. Parade interviewed the Pakistani leader and printed the issue before she was assassinated Dec. 27 (obviously, duh). The quickest they could get it into print is this Sunday.

Parade is touting it: In light of the tragic news of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, we have released Parade's January 6 cover story on Bhutto to the media. Parade is proud to publish one of the last person-to-person interviews with the former Pakistani Prime Minister, directly from Pakistan, where PARADE Contributing Editor Gail Sheehy followed Bhutto on the campaign trail earlier this last month.

At the Editor's Desk, Andy Bechtel says: Parade magazine, that Sunday staple of hundreds of U.S. newspapers, isn't known for its timeliness. ...Parade issued a statement to editors of newspapers that include the magazine in Sunday editions, arguing that the interview with Bhutto is even more relevant now.

Perhaps, but the motivation behind sticking with the out-of-date cover story probably has more to do with the fact that 32 million copies of Parade had already gone out the door.

I would add that Parade isn't known for its news content; you can't when you have a publishing schedule weeks in advance of distribution. This might teach them to stick to celebrity cover stories, which is why people read it.

Rex Hammock refers to the thrill of seeing one's name in print. Actually, he links to the design director of nytimes.com who is thrilled by it.

Newspapers grew up on putting people's names in print. That's why we run honor rolls and achievements and business promotions and the "chicken dinner news." We got away from it in the 70s and 80s when we got drunk on power and thought we were all going to take down a president. We returned to seeing the value of "refrigerator journalism" in the 90's but it may have been too late. In an area our size, it's next to impossible to do it right in print. There's way more community news than we have space for. But we have pushed community stories onto section fronts, often to the dismay of hard-news junkies.

Like so much in media consumption, I think it's generational. I still hear from people in my generation who thrill to see their names in print. But, really, they thrill more by seeing their children's and grandchildren's names.

Yet, as I watch my college-age kids, they are so accustomed to social networking sites, being able to read and be read by thousands or millions of people online, that getting their names on paper doesn't overly jazz them. They glance at it -- even stuff about their friends -- and move on, content in the knowledge that Mom and Dad will clip it and file it away.

The newfound thrill is being linked to. With search, it's easy to find, and it means that you're being noticed. Because it's interactive, it feels electric. You are somebody.

My newspaper column

In 1964, Frank Batten Sr. owned two newspapers in Norfolk, Va., and was focused on buying the Greensboro Daily News, The Greensboro Record and WFMY from the Jeffress family.

Batten, who went on to build a billion-dollar media company -- Landmark Communications, which now includes dozens of newspapers, two television stations and the Weather Channel -- said it wasn't exactly a standard transaction.

As he recounts in his 2002 book, "The Weather Channel: the Improbable Rise of a Media Phenomenon," the deal hinged more on personal values than market values.

"We reached a verbal understanding with the owners, and both parties signed their names to a one-page agreement. About a week later, another qualified buyer offered to pay several million dollars more than our agreed-upon price.

"Even though our one-page agreement would never have survived in court, the owners honored it, and we acquired the papers and station at the original price. I like to think that Landmark would have behaved in exactly the same way had our roles been reversed."

In the two months the Debatables blog has been up, no story has gotten more comments than the reassignment of A&T athletic director Dee Todd, which got 39. But last week's possible News & Record sale comes close, with 34.

Next comes a discussion about school fights; actually you could argue that this topic is the biggest one. We had two debates about it, one day apart. One got 33 comments; the other 7.

Tied for third with 33 comments was a story about Schools Superintendent Terry Grier in the running for a job in San Diego.

I guess you could say that A&T sports trumps the dismay with the paper, fights and the super. Of course, the topic is John Edwards and his campaign today so he could fight his way to the top.

Tuesday update: As of this writing Tuesday morning, Edwards got 13 comments, respectable but moderate in turnout. I don't know if that's a good or bad sign for his candidacy. If you read the responses to the stories with the most comments, they are dominated by people passionate in their distaste of the topic. If you're a political candidate, you don't want the dislike, but you want the passion.

Allen Johnson talks with Poynter Institute about why the paper does and doesn't endorse.

Perhaps one way to make endorsements more effective is to change the way they are presented. "Editorial pages are trying to get away from the voice of God and not sound so pompous and self important. Endorsements can be funny, creative, and I think they can be informative," Johnson said. "They don't always have to be done by the same strict template."

Andy Bechtel at The Editor's Desk on the continuing power of newspapers. (I'm sure the player's covering of the word Picayune was inadvertent.)

Juan Santos, who covered Alamance County and the Guilford County commissioners while he worked here in the late 1980s, passed away Sunday. Cancer. Juan moved to Raleigh and served for years as communication director with the state Department of Labor, but while he was here, he was a crackerjack investigative reporter.

He and I didn't have any interaction while he worked with the state, but my guess is that he told it like it was in a way that reporters covering the department weren't familiar with. He'll be missed.

Normally, we get complaints that we expend too much space on the presidential candidacy of John Edwards. Just to let you know that we hear all sides:

On Jan. 3, we published a package on the upcoming Iowa caucuses and used photos of Obama, Clinton, Romney and Huckabee on the front page to illustrate it. We got this e-mail:

Regardless of your political affiliation and regardless of your candidate preference in the Iowa presidential caucas, why would you publish on the front page photos of Democrats Obama and Clinton and not that of Edwards? Polls then showed Edwards even with the other two.

John Edwards is a respectable North Carolina citizen. N&R's omission raises questions as to its fairness. Democrats and Repubicans expect that in their local newspaper.

John Newsom started this week as a fulltime online reporter. He replaces Amy Dominello, who was snapped up by Media General's D.C. bureau.

Newsom has been with us since 1995, when he joined our Rockingham County operation. A year later, he was in Greensboro covering education. For the past three years, he's been assistant sports editor and resident gearhead. Expect some cool stuff.

Andy Bechtel noticed the "time stamp" on the elections results on the front page of the paper today. (We published mug shots of the second, third and fourth place finishers with their percentages of the vote totals. Above that the hed says, "Other top finishers, as of 11:53 p.m."

I asked Melissa Umbarger, who designed the front page, about it. She said, "We went with a time stamp because trying to get both the percentage of GOP and Dems precincts reporting was messy and could have been confusing (without a longer explanation) with everything else that was out there. I think it's also because we are reporting, in effect, partial scores, something that sports doesn't do."

In fact, it allows us to tell readers precisely what we knew when we knew it. Because the newspaper slaps onto driveways five or six hours later, it signals to readers that it's possible that the percentages could have changed overnight. (Wish we had done it back on election night in 2000.)

Almost immediate update: Andy writes back: I haven't seen a paper do that before. On the one hand, it's honest, detailed and straightforward, and it /looks/ cool. On the other hand, it exposes how much lag there is between the final touches in the newsroom and delivery to the reader.

I'm guessing most readers understand that.

The "In and Out" list this morning required knowledge of pop culture, a sense of humor and, in some cases, a thick skin. As these things go, then, we got some quick and negative feedback.

Some excerpts of e-mails I've gotten:

When "16 and pregnant" is considered IN, it is no longer fun. It is in fact thoughtless, irresponsible, glamorizes teen pregnancy, and certainly sends the wrong message to families in general and teens specifically.

I cannot share this article with my daughter because it is hard enough to explain why a girl (emphasis on girl, not woman) should not get pregnant, nor should she be experimenting with sex, at 16. It may be a fact of our society that this happens, but that is not the lesson in our family.

Further down your list you write that FedEx is OUT and HondaJet is IN. While this is certainly less harmful than the reference to a pregnant 16 year old, it is an irresponsible comment probably done for cheap shock value. At least the people at FedEx are adults and will recognize the comment for what it is -- one person's uninformed opinion. FedEx will bring many sorely needed jobs and much revenue to the Triad. It may even have influenced, in some way, HondaJet's decision to settle here. To do anything short of welcoming FedEx with open arms is short-sighted and, once again, irresponsible. This goes for any company coming to the Triad.

The "16 and pregnant," obviously referring to the Spears' sisters, came from the original Washington Post list. We added the offensive FedEx-HondaJet item.

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I am Mormon and am very disappointed in what you published on D1 today in the "Out or In" article. I am referring to the second item in the vertical column, which notes that "Mormon undergarments" are "out" and "Spanx" are "in."

I am hurt that you have blasphemed such a private, sacred matter and am disappointed that religious bigotry is alive and well in my hometown newspaper.

This one also came from The Washington Post's original list. I admit I don't even know what Spanx are.

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I see your team couldn't resist another shot at cheering for a move of the tourney to Sedgefield as part of the "In/Out list." Of course, according to their story last week there has been no decision made. I don't really expect your reporters to do much work in digging out facts but it isn’t hard to find out what is going on at Forest Oaks.

Because we continue to track the efforts to move the Wyndham from Forest Oaks to Sedgefield, everytime we write about it we get letters saying that we're biased.

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These lists are designed to engender debate and discussion and maybe a few laughs. They aren't editorial policy, endorsements or words to live by. (I know they aren't all funny. Written word humor is always a matter of taste.) Not surprisingly, Ed gets it and gives the list all the respect it deserves.

Editor & Publisher writes about the new Media General Washington bureau that includes former N&R reporter Amy Dominello. I'm not sure why it took them until today to announce Amy's hiring as we announced it two months ago, but whatever.

Interesting to see how it works.

I ask job applicants if they have a blog. Most of them don't. Then I ask them if they read my blog. About half of them haven't.

The two questions tell me a lot about the candidates. First, if they have a blog, it gives me an indication of their passion for writing and communicating. It also allows me to see how their unedited writing reads. I rarely pay attention to submitted clips; I know how good editing can make a mediocre writer appear positively Halberstamian. Finally, in answering the question, they usually let on what they think of blogging and digital. Believe it, some trash blogs.

Second, if they haven't read my blog, it tells me they haven't done their homework. That makes the candidate a non-starter.

Actually, it helps winnow down the candidates pretty quickly.

My newspaper column

Over the Christmas holidays, some people in Guilford County awoke to find a rolled paper wrapped in blue plastic on their driveways.

I would say it looked suspiciously somewhat like a newspaper, but I don't want to equate what was lying there with what we produce every day.

Inside the plastic bag was an advertising circular of the type you might find in the News & Record and a one-page hate message that confused and upset some newspaper readers. I don't blame them.

The flyer came from the Knights Party of the Ku Klux Klan, which delivers its toxic message in this way a few times a year, often around holidays. Last February, the group delivered one "in recognition of Black History Month." Nice.

We've hired Tom Keller, who interned with us during the summer of 2006, to join our sports copy desk. He replaces Jeff Mills, who is becoming a reporter.

Tom was most recently a reporter for MLB.com, helping to cover the Florida Marlins. He's won his share of journalism awards, but his biggest asset is his humor. He was voted best stand-up comedian at Michigan State in 2005. His act.

Special sympathy for Robbie Perkins. He's reliving a moment -- and soon surgery -- that I had back in September. Both bicycle falls. Both less than spectacular. Both landed wrong. Both undergoing surgery to insert plate. I'm hoping his goes better than mine. I'm still in physical therapy.

While I'm at it, I should announce, too, that we've hired Brian Ewing as a reporter. Brian's from around here, graduating from UNCG. A former Guilford schools teacher, he is now a staff writer for the Eden Daily News and Reidsville Review.

Some of his work.

I admit that I brought this upon myself. I watched Entertainment Tonight last night.

Item: 600 press people at the pseudo Golden Globes. 600 press people at a glorified news conference? (One of them was ET anchor Mary Hart covering Globes presenter Mary Hart.) What are assigning editors thinking? 600 people covering an event in which there were no stars? In which they could have swung by, picked up a news release of the winners and done something else?

Item: Local L.A. TV station helicopter following the SUV in which Britney Spears may have been a passenger when she was thought to be at the courthouse. The video of the SUV from above was compelling television.

Item: 14 minutes into the program the host tease a photo of Britney in something that looks like a wedding dress and says something like: "Coming up, Britney in a wedding dress! Did she elope?" My wife says, "Oh, right, they are waiting halfway into the program to tell us that they are going to answer the question of whether Britney Spears has eloped."

And we changed to a rerun of "Everybody Loves Raymond" before we could find out if Anna Nicole's daughter is going blind.

And journalists wonder why people hate the media.

Update: Terry Heaton tells why.

Was this homicide overplayed in today's newspaper? That was a question discussed last night.

We don't play every potential murder in the centerpiece position on the front page, although we publish many of them on A1. But editors raised some prickly questions about the victim's race (white) and the neighborhood (pretty darned nice). Specifically, are we giving the story more prominence because of the demographics?

We gave the story that kind of prominence because it occurred in a region of the city where violent crime is rare, and homicides rarer still. This doesn't appear to be the "typical" homicide involving two drunks or a drug deal gone bad, which makes it even more rare. All of those factors make this news.

Plus, we had photos.

And it's one day in which the difference -- good and bad -- between the morning newspaper and the morning television news is obvious. Weather is monopolizing morning TV, as it probably should. (And our Web site.) Because we can't compete in the paper on weather, we focus on three other stories on the front page.

There's this nice little blogosphere discussion going on that makes the blogosphere so much fun. Alan Mutter of Newsosaur talks about a conversation with a journalism student who doesn't know who Mike Royko is...or was.

Mindy McAdams of Teaching Online Journalism turns the table on Alan with a "do you know who these people are" new media list of her own.

Then Meranda of Meranda Writes puts them both in their place, I think. (And I am a loyal devotee of them both.)

I'm 22. I didn't take a "journalism history" course in college. Those lessons were interspersed among my Intro to Mass Comm, Law, Ethics, Magazine Publishing, Beat Reporting, etc. courses. And the famous journalists I did and do know are probably more happenstance than concentrated effort.

But therein also lies the problem. I'll memorize it. Like it's for a test, which I guess it could be. But who knows if the names I'm given would be the right ones. It's kind of subjective.

Or is it more important that my classes in j-school taught me and emphasized tangible things. I remember and use every day the practical skills that allow me to do this job competently not necessarily the names of those journalists before me. I can understand knowing important rulings like Times v. Sullivan. I can understand needing to know when newspapers started to mass publish and the impact cable had on broadcast TV. I can even understand and appreciate reading great journalists of the past to make my own work stronger.

But in the end, if I had to choose, I choose real-world application over historical context. That's just me.

Something was nagging me as I was writing the last post but I couldn't make it out. Now I have.

The day that Hillary choked up in New Hampshire, I mentioned to a group of younger journalists the Muskie "crying" incident in New Hampshire during the 1972 presidential primary season. ("Younger" cuts a broad path in my aged world; I should be more specific and say journalists in their 20s.)

They didn't know who Muskie was. Do I think any less of them? No. Should they know the former governor of Maine, U.S. senator and Secretary of State in the Carter Administration? It would be nice, but not mandatory. For comparison, I didn't know much about Nixon's Checkers speech in 1952, and the only reason I ended up learning about it was because he became president.

History is important. Knowing that Muskie might have cried -- he said the moisure came from melted snowflakes -- adds texture to the Hillary chokes up story. Knowing that Mike Royko was an exceptional reporter is important if you use that information to learn from his writing.

Or his processes. Here's an observation from Paul O'Connor who worked for him: Mike was an excruciating writer. Meaning the columns -- when I worked for him -- came out verrrry slowly. Part of the reason for that was that he invested all of his considerable ego in each one.... Mike also liked to have the last word, or at least a complete grasp of the competitive editorial context into which he was writing. He would spend all day and into the night reading the wires and everything he could get his hands on written by his peers, to see if he could get a view into their take on stuff and thereby ensure he would not be writing a dreaded 'me too' piece. (Via Romenesko.)

Inside Scooper Margaret Banks asked me to post a note about the Linda Miles letter. (I'm near a computer; she ain't.) We aren't entirely sure what it means, but as we pursue her contract, we'll figure it out. Meanwhile, here's the Yes! take. Remember: links don't imply endorsement.

Jim Schlosser is retiring.

Let that sink in for a moment, and let me compose myself.

Jim has been a reporter here for 41 years. No, that's not precise enough. Jim has been one of the best and often the best reporter we've had for 41 years. He's been the first reporter in the newsroom every morning, and often one of the last to leave. He's done as much as anyone to educate people about the history of Greensboro. He was one of our early bloggers. He's our institutional memory. Better than that, he's an institution.

He has a few more weeks, and he's not gone even then. He has written some stories that we've saved to publish during the run-up to Greensboro's bicentennial, and then he will return as a weekly columnist.

More later.

Do you know the difference between God and an editor?

God doesn't think he's an editor.

How about this one:

An editor should have a pimp for a brother, so he'd have someone to look up to.

Courtesy of Steve Smith's blog.

For a couple years now, I've been half-heartedly discouraging editors from doing much in the newspaper with stories about impending weather. Are we telling readers anything they don't already know? TV and online have won that battle and newspapers have lost. I doubt many people look to the paper for a prediction about an approaching storm when the blanket "team" coverage is ubiquitous -- and more timely -- on television and the Internet.

Ever since I've been in this business, reporters have hated writing weather stories, primarily because they seem so silly and predictable. When we were at the News & Observer, Howard Troxler wrote an "impending storm" story as if it were an investigative piece, full of skulduggery and secret sources at the weather bureau. It was bounced back to him by a dour and unappreciative editor. Twenty five years later, here comes Meranda: Raise your hand if you hate writing weather stories....It's like writing about traffic lights changing colors. Everyone knows it's going to happen, and they can kind of figure out for themselves what comes next.

We try to write them compellingly, but there are only so many ways to write an interesting weather story and an armless man can count them on his fingers. No, that's harsh. There are a couple ways, but not many. To put it another way, how many times do you need to see a TV reporter standing by the side of the road with a yardstick preparing to measure the inch of snow that's fallen and hear her tell you not to drive if you don't have to?

Deepening the issue is that, despite meteorologists' boasts about accuracy, weather predictions are notoriously wrong. Last night the forecast was for it to be snowing right at this minute. Not happening. It's 38 degrees.

But it's a newspaper tradition that's hard to shake. As the storm approaches, it becomes what people talk about. Schools let out. Businesses close. How can a newspaper not write about it? Besides, with everything focused on a snow storm there isn't much else going on to write about.

* We need to log the coming storm in the paper in a small way somewhere, but it's an online story. Now, after the storm hits and power is knocked out, schools are closed and life is changed, then that's a different story.

With Terry Grier outta here, I remember a joke he told before a speech at a Rotary meeting: "What's the difference between a dead possum on the road and a dead school superintendent on the road?" he asked, and paused. "There are skid marks in front of the possum."

It got a lot of laughs. I went up to him after the meeting and thanked him for being in Guilford County. I said that as long as he was here, I wouldn't be the most hated man in town. He laughed. (I'm pretty sure it was no contest.)

The San Diego school board frustrated us on this end. The board met, deliberated and adjourned several times over the past few weeks without taking any action. We had no sources among board members, for obvious reasons, and apparently neither did the San Diego paper. (Its Web site has nothing about the new superintendent yet.)

Reporter Amanda Lehmert, new to the paper and filling in for our schools reporter Morgan Josey Glover while she is on maternity leave, dogged that board night after night. running down countless leads and rumors. "No, nothing yet," she told editors about 1,000 times. Sometimes more colorfully. I know she's happy he's going. It's nothing personal; she can move onto a new story that will be happening here, not 2,473 miles away.

As long as I've been here, superintendents have left with a sizable -- though I'd bet still a minority -- population of people happy to see them go. I'm not one of them. The man made news.

Sunday update: The Chalkboard is looking to help in the search for a replacement.

What kind of leader do you want at the helm of the Guilford County school system? Do we hire from within, or recruit someone new? What should the new superintendent's top priorities be?

Leave comments there.

This morning, picking up the N&R and the New York Times off my driveway, I noticed that the papers felt different. That is, it felt as if the News & Record were bigger in size and weight. So I weighed them. The N&R was nearly 3 pounds to 2 pounds for the Times.

Practical and philosophical explanations abound, but what does it mean? Nothing.

I continue to be impressed at how the different media tell stories in different ways. The latest case is this written story, this photo/audio slide show and sound, and this video, all about Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. And they are all really about Martin Luther King Jr.

Each presentation is both informative and moving in its own way. Listening to and comparing these should put to rest the old media types who keep popping up with complaints that they didn't get into journalism to take video or record sound. I defy anyone to listen to Dr. King's words and the gospel music (on the slide show) and not be inspired. That's a message that even the most powerful words on paper can't replicate.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that many newspapers are dropping their full-time higher education reporters. Charlotte, Providence, Memphis, Montgomery and Savannah are mentioned. (Via Romenesko.)

Coverage of elementary and secondary schools is closer to readers' hearts, editors argue. Higher education, by contrast, generally operates better and involves lots of out-of-town students. So out goes the higher-education coverage. At many papers, the only reporters covering colleges and universities write about basketball and football.

We have cut back some coverage areas, and the decisions were tough. But we're not going to cut higher ed. With seven colleges or universities in Guilford County alone, how could we? Right now, we've shuffled some people around, and our new higher education reporter, Amanda Lehmert, has been preoccupied with Terry Grier's departure. She's been on that because our elementary and secondary education reporter has been on maternity leave, and we -- that is the stupid universal me -- thought that Christmas holidays would be slow on both the school beats.

But the reporter on maternity leave -- Morgan Josey Glover -- is back next week so we'll be at full steam.

Besides, there are too many important stories.

Inspired by Ryan Sholin's post at Invisible Inkling, in which he is wearying of the "business of chasing after curmudgeons with a laptop in my hand, shouting 'But you got it all wrong!'" I want to pose the question in a different way.

Isn't it time that we just let the curmudgeons go, treating them as if they are the equivalent of newspaper trolls?

Hardly a day passes without Romenesko linking to someone bemoaning the loss of the good old days, how dumb newspaper owners are and how stupid the audience is? I grant you things were easier when we had more money and more control. But were they better for readers? No. Could we tell our stories in new, helpful ways? No.

Unless you're looking at history to learn for the future, you're wasting your time. Move on. Complaining about the present won't bring the past back.

A reader writes:

With the world looking at ways to stop using plastic bags, don't you think the newspaper should also look into it? My suggestion is to return to the pole-mounted newspaper boxes that used to be used. I am sure they can be made of a plastic that is recyclable. Even if you charge a nominal fee, it would definitely save on plastic bag use.

We still use pole-mounted newspaper tubes in some places and the tubes are made of recycled plastic. Problem is, there aren't many people in the city, at least, who really want a newspaper tube on their property by the side of the road. And I can't imagine what it costs to the pocketbook or the environment to produce the plastic and metal for 60.000 or 70,000 tubes. Then there's the gas consumption caused by a carrier's car stopping and starting at every tube, rather than slowly cruising by and tossing the paper.

Still, she poses an interesting green question: How do you keep papers dry? By and large, those bags do it, but are they the most cost-effective green solution? They are made, by the way, from recycled plastic, too.

(I know that people can read the news online and not worry about getting a wet paper. But tens of thousands of people still want news on newsprint, and I'm glad about that.)

Inspired by Howard Owens' list for non-wired journalists, I challenged the staff here to become more wired with a list of our own.

There's now a support group/social network that I hope journalists here and elsewhere check out and join: Wired Journalists. Repeat for emphasis: It's not just for professionals; it's for journalists.

I have. (Note to self: Get new photo. That one large makes you look like a big dork.)

Good explanations here and here.

Thanks to Ryan, Howard and Zac for pulling it all together.

I was watching sports on a local news channel. They did a segment on the UNC-Miami basketball game, but they didn't tell me that it is on television. They also didn't tell me the Georgia Tech-State game is televised either.

Like, duh, neither of the games are on that station, that's why. No big deal; none of the local stations help their listeners out if a game is on another station. I understand their desire not to encourage viewers to tune in to a competitor. Back in the 1980s, we referred to competing newspapers only when we had to and even then saying something awkward such as "a newspaper in High Point."

But we've entered the 21st century. People have choices and know how to use them.

If the TV stations truly want to help people -- which is part of the branding slogans of most stations around here -- they would tell them that the Carolina game is on WMYV-48. They might also realize that this viewer is going to find the game, regardless of whether they tell me where it is, so why not help me?

How did I know the game I wanted to watch wasn't on one of the big networks? I looked in the paper.

As reported by PhillyMag.com, Stephen A. Smith of ESPN longs to be back writing for a newspaper. His column in the Philadelphia Inquirer bit the dust last year.

"I’ve been a journalist for 15 years," he says. "Newspapers are my foundation. That's what it's all about. Having a newspaper column makes me feel credible and good about what I do. It's what made me feel whole." (Via Romenesko.)

He used to work on our High Point office...maybe he'd like to write for us!

I like the New York Times as much as the next guy but I'm surprised that its non-endorsement of Rudy G. is a lead story on the morning news shows. I know that the Times remains a powerful determinant of what's news. But its endorsement in a presidential primary? A top story? Is it that slow of a news day?

And without having read the Times coverage of Rudy -- it's been pretty tough lately, looking at his lucrative business partnerships after 9/11, among other things -- how are listeners of TV news to put the non-endorsement into any sort of perspective?

One of the myths of journalism is the concept that everyone aspires to work for the Washington Post or the New York Times and cover the White House or go overseas. It's a glamorous dream, not unlike the idea that every high school baskeball player dreams of playing for the Tarheels and the Lakers.

Like most high school players, we journalists grow up, too. We realize that life outside the Beltway can be fulfilling. We learn that covering local government has a tremendous, immediate impact on the community. We learn that the fun and camaraderie in a smaller newsroom matches the fun and camaraderie in a huge newsroom. We learn the value of local journalism is as powerful as the value of "big-league" journalism.

I mention all that because Will Bunch's essay in the Nieman Reports is featured on Romenesko, which means that it perpetuates the myth that everyone is an ambitious reporter eager to get to the top....the top being the White House reporter for the Post or an international correspondent of the Times.

Not one of us wanted to be covering local news at our age (or, for that matter, at any age.) But we've been there, done that. To be brutally honest: For an ambitious journalist, the only way to get through a four-hour suburban school board meeting -- even at age 22 -- is to keep repeating the mantra "this, too, shall pass."

...For the past couple of years, a number of change-minded journalists, academics and engaged citizens have been discussing a lot of great ideas for saving the news business: Teaching reporters how to wield video cameras on assignment, to file breaking news for the Web, to use a blog to cover a local beat like mass transit, or work as moderators with engaged citizen journalists.

What's almost never mentioned in these discussions is the human factor. After all, one of the underlying tenets of saving newspapers is supposed to be rescuing the livelihood of working journalists. But do the rank-and-file of most metro newspapers in 2007, people in their 30's, 40's, and 50's, actually want to do these things -- cover local news for life, with no chance of parole?

I actually know a lot of journalists who don't see the world through the rose-colored glasses of a White House beat. My guess is that there are thousands of them at newspapers all over the country who haven't applied at the Times or the Post and who have no intention of doing so because, well, that's not what they got into the business to do. They got into the business to write and to make a difference, and that's just what they're doing.

That said, I agree with his conclusion -- that the incentives for local reporting need to be reconsidered -- but I don't think that it's adding another Pulitzer Prize. We have enough project journalism based on awards as it is. My incentives are more traditional: more money, more resources and making sure they can make a difference.

Pat Yack, my predecessor in this job who left to be editor of the Jacksonville Times-Union, resigned from that job today. (Via Romenesko.)

I haven't talked with Pat yet so I don't know anything more than this story, but its looks bad. I hope I'm wrong.

Pat was here for nearly five years and had an impact on many of us. He helped me get this job, and I consider him a friend. I'm not worried about him, though. He's a smart, inventive leader who will succeed in whatever he does next.

A journalism student doing research for a paper asked me why more editors didn't have active blogs. I said more do than she thinks and I mentioned a few around here.

But like a good reporter, she had done her homework. "I haven't read those, but I've read others. They either aren't active or they are thinly veiled newspaper promotions or they don't encourage much give and take. You see more editors writing columns for their newspapers than blogging. Why is that?"

I talked about the amount of time a blog can take and the restrictions that some papers have with publishing platforms. Then I said, "Some editors still think of themselves as newspaper editors rather than as editors."

After all this time, it still surprises me that so many editors consider themselves only as newspaper editors. That may have been what we were 10 years ago, but it can't be what we are now, not if we want to serve our audience and have a future.

The truth is, newspaper columns take more time to write than blog posts. While the columns are read by more people -- at least mine are -- they reach only part of the audience. All newspaper editors know that some people who visit the Web site don't read the newspaper. So why would an editor cut off part of the audience?

Newspaper editors get plenty of feedback over the phone, in letters and in e-mails. But it's one way -- reader to editor -- or it is two way -- editor responds to reader. A blog lets a reader or an editor start the discussion. It's in the open for everyone to see. It's immediate, generally, and it's helpful to the editor. The interactivity can be rough, but it's no rougher than an angry phone call or publishing a letter to the editor that is critical of the paper. So why would an editor not want to join the conversation and get the immediate feedback?

I told her I couldn't answer those questions for her. Well, I could have, but I didn't like the answers. She hung up, on her way to call other editors.

Ken Otterbourg at the Winston-Salem Journal writes about a not uncommon occurrence at newspapers: Photo subjects messing with you.

We've had high school students give us fake names to go into captions or, worse, give us a real name of one of their pals as a prank on us and their friend. Those are hard to prevent short of demanding a photo ID of everyone in a photograph.

I don't recall a photo we took with someone inconspicuously or inadvertently giving the camera the finger, but I've seen it in other photographs. Otterbourg tells of a picture they published that inspired one reader to complain about the coarse gesture. (Unfortunately, Otterbourg printed the letter from the reader verbatim, an action with no discernible purpose except to embarrass the writer.)

I'll end as he has: You be the editor. Would you have run the photograph?

Slate raises the question, based on this week's episode of The Wire, whether anyone has seriously been dressed down for cussing in the newsroom. And it was promptly answered. (Via Romenesko.)

Umm, OK. I'll say it: I've asked a reporters to tone down their language in the newsroom.

Before I'm drummed out of the two-fisted-drinkers, "Front-Page" journalism clubhouse, let me explain. Two reasons:

* Loud cursing in the newsroom does offend some employees who weren't brought up that way. It's a matter of respect for others. While it seems daintier than some journalists prefer, managers have to worry about everyone. I put the emphasis on loud because my experience is that newsroom staffers are more tolerant of language than most places this side of construction sites. Cursing among friends around the water cooler or in the cubicle hasn't elicited any complaint here.

* We have school groups tour the newspaper a couple times a week. Teachers and parents don't want their children to hear that. If memory serves, a middle school kid's vocabulary can shame the most hardened reporter, but that's almost irrelevant when the word gets home what they heard at the newspaper.

Because I've been known to curse as part of daily conversation, it's really not all that hard to ask others to tone it down a bit. Now, when I got a call from our human resources department several years ago that someone had complained about a female worker not wearing a bra, that was a conversation that was uncomfortable.

By the way, we don't allow smoking or drinking in the newsroom, either, although we drew the line at an IT demand we not place our cups of coffee near computer keyboards.

Ok, let my beating begin. But keep the language clean.

Ryan at Greensboro Politics pointed me to an interview that he did with County Commissioner Skip Alston about the International Civil Rights Museum. He references some comments made on the Debatables blog.

Skip answers: They are misinformed and not involved in the process and are ignorant to the facts of what are taking place with the museum. They are likely reading the News & Record which is full of misinformation and no facts at all who has proven to be an enemy to this project from the very beginning.

Ryan: Skip the News & Record is a donor correct?

Skip: Yes, you keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.

Ryan was surprised that Skip took such a shot at a donor. I wasn't. It's par for the course.

We have been aggressive in our reporting about the status of the museum since the late '90s. Skip has been equally aggressive in criticizing our reporting. We believe our stories have been on the money and that the numbers speak for themselves.

The News & Record contributed $150,000 to the effort in 2002. At the time, our article about the gift quoted then president and publisher Van King as saying: We've long thought the museum is a wonderful community asset that must be done well. We've been impressed by the progress and from our standpoint of corporate giving, the timing is right for us to add our dollars.

I really applaud the leadership of Earl Jones and Skip Alston and others who were persistent from the very beginning.

I don't know why an "enemy of this project from the very beginning" would donate such a sum to help it get built. But Van also said, correctly, that the newsroom would continue to ask tough questions about where the money is going and the progress of the museum.

And that apparently still sticks in Skip's craw.

Howard Weaver at Etaoin Shrdlu points to this fun widget that will become an addictive game if you start.

He's interactive director with McClatchy so he connects it vaguely to online media company possibilities. Not me. It's just a fun brainteaser keeping me from doing real work.

All stories are not created equal. In Sports coverage, games, teams and sports are not created equal.

That's what I would have told this letterwriter (second on the page) had he asked. He was upset that during one eight-day period, we published stories about men's college basketball games on the front page of the Sports section, but not women's games.

It would be easy to dismiss this inconsistency as trivial. But sexism, in any form, is not trivial. It diminishes our understanding and appreciation for the hard work women do in our society, at every level, and perpetuates ideas of inequality that cannot be a part of the N&R mission. Your trained journalists know better.

We weigh a number of factors as we decide where to play stories. We know that there is greater interest by our readers in college basketball and football than, say, baseball or soccer. We know there is greater interest by our readers in male sports. We know there is greater interest in teams that are closer to Greensboro. We know there is greater interest in teams that are winning. We know that some days there is intense competition for space on the front page; on others a scissors, rock, paper contest is the best we have.

There are exceptions. For instance, this season we are giving more ink to the Grimsley girls basketball team than the boys because the girls are undefeated. Same with Wake Forest's men's national soccer championship despite some complaints. As the UNC women marched through the NCAA tournament to the championship game last year, we increased our coverage.

I live in a house with three female athletes. I understand the issue of equality in the gyms and the playing field. But requiring equality in news coverage based on gender? Sorry.

In case anyone is wondering, we aren't planning to do this.

Uh-oh: The best laid plans...: NEW DELHI (AP) -- India's lucrative outsourcing industry struggled Thursday to overcome Internet slowdowns and outages after cuts in two undersea cables sliced the country's bandwidth in half.

Whenever someone robs a bank, are you interested in knowing how much they took? Do you notice that the newspaper doesn't usually tell you that information? (The police department usually doesn't release it.)

Earlier this week, we published the amount stolen in a series of bank robberies. (The information was on the arrest warrant.) As a result, I've had conversations with a banker who has politely objected. The banking industry's position is that we should never publish the amount of money taken in a heist. It gives would-be robbers too much information, which could be enough to tip them from "would be" to "actual." In addition, that so-called encouragement would mean more robberies and more banking personnel put in danger.

Now, I think people know that a great deal of money is stored in banks, and that people rob banks because that's where the money is. While we have no desire to harm the innocent, it's hard for me to buy that by publishing the amount of money taken in a robbery, it encourages other robberies.

But I could be wrong. I checked with a couple other newspaper editors in the state. Both said they would publish the info if they had it.

Then the banker said that the reader doesn't care about the amount of money taken anyway. They just care the bank was robbed.

So, is the amount important to you?