News-Record.com

Think designing a newspaper is easy? Check out the typography critique of the candidates' (and now former candidates') logos.

These guys pick McCain and Obama based on typography, design and fairy dust.

Me, I'm just hoping for an NFC winner on Sunday.

(Thanks to Mel for the pointer.)

For the second straight month, this post has ranked among the top 10 most trafficked blog posts on our site. As you might note, it was written in October.

Why? I'd wager it's the perfectly Googlable headline: "Talk dirty to me."

Ahead of it last month were posts more specifically local: about Terry Grier and the sale of the paper.

As for this blog, these posts made the list.

We've hired Robert Lopez as a feature writer. He has been with the Beaumont Enterprise in Texas for the past two years. He's also worked for the Houston Chronicle and the Times Union in Albany. Some of his work in Beaumont is here.

My newspaper column

I first encountered the work of Jim Schlosser when I interviewed for a reporter's job at the News & Record in 1984.

An editor asked what I thought of that day's paper.

The best story in the paper, I responded, was on the front page of the local section. It was about an old Oshkosh advertisement painted on the side of the Belk department store downtown.

The editor smiled. "That's Jim Schlosser. He's the best we have."

I should have noted that Jim has left behind some stories for us, including today's column, that we will publish over the next several weeks. That he retired before Greensboro's bicentennial celebration is unfortunate, given his ability to write the city's history in such a personable way. But he stockpiled some pieces for us that we will publish over time.

We have transformed greensboro.com into our city bicentennial site. We're building it as we approach the bicentennial itself in March. You will note that some of the pages are still under construction, and we'll be adding more content to it as we complete it.

From the intro page: Turn to Greensboro.com throughout 2008 to find out about events scheduled to celebrate our fair city's 200th anniversary, learn about Greensboro's rich and colorful history, and connect with the people and places that make the city a wonderful place to call home.

On Sunday, 11 newspaper cartoonists will protest the lack of a greater number of cartoonists of color on newspaper comics pages.

But for one day -- this Sunday -- 11 cartoonists of color will be drawing essentially the same comic strip, using irony to literally illustrate that point. In each strip, the artists will portray a white reader grousing about a minority-drawn strip, complaining that it's a "Boondocks" rip-off and blaming it on "tokenism." "It's the one-minority rule," says Lalo Alcaraz ("La Cucaracha"). "We've got one black guy and we've got one Latino. There's not room for anything else."

On Sundays, we have two comic strips with dominant minority characters -- Curtis and Jump Start. That's out of 22 total strips. Pretty bad.

I can't imagine an editor saying "we already have a black strip." But it is true that we look at categories -- a few serials, a few single panels, a few family based strips, a few based around kids, a few with animals. And then there are those old boring standbys that you can't get rid of because your audience goes ballistic. Some readers just don't like new. Bottom line: we look for funny and clever.

I've made my sentiments about the comics pages known: don't actively mess with them. The pain isn't worth the gain.

But when one of the current strips ends its run as happens every so often, it's time to further diversify the page.

On Saturday, we published a story about a case of MRSA at Southeast High School. In that story, the parents of two wrestlers, one who has MRSA and another who has a staph infection, spoke on the record that they thought their sons contracted the staph through wrestling. The parents said the wrestling coach knew about it but encouraged the boys to wrestle anyway. School officials were unavailable for comment, although they knew we were working on the story.

On Tuesday, we published a story in which the wrestling coach said the two parents were disgruntled, but he declined to elaborate. He said school officials told him not to comment. The school principal and the school system's athletic director were unavailable for comment.

On Wednesday, we published a story in which the school principal said the complaints of the parents were investigated beginning in December and found no wrongdoing on the part of the school or coach.

We have heard from people who said we should not have published the original story with the claims of the parents. That we should have waited, gathered more information -- information that would have shown the parents as having a vendetta against the coach -- and, presumably, killed the story. I appreciate that position, I really do. But stories that have different "sides" rarely come out fully baked. People don't always tell everything they know. Government institutions rarely do, in my experience. Information comes out in dribs and drabs.

Here's what we knew Friday: A case of MRSA is reported at Southeast. It involved a wrestler, who said he thought he contracted a staph infection at a wrestling match. His parents said he was encouraged to keep wrestling anyway. We're not going to report that? It is a public health issue. Did we try to get response from the appropriate school officials. Oh yeah. They knew we were working on the story.

Finally, Tuesday, the principal responds with the school's version. This couldn't be told on Friday?

I've said it before, I'll say it again. When a reporter calls with questions, tell what you know even if you don't want to. If you stonewall, you put yourself at the mercy of those who WILL talk to the reporter. This could have been a one-day story, but it spun into, at least, a five-day story.

The school system is pretty bad at volunteering information on sensitive issues in a timely way. The city is becoming that way. Unfortunate, for many reasons.

A longtime reader sent me a copy of a Greensboro Daily News bill from 1922. At her request, I blocked out the name and address.

Six months for $3.50. Not bad. She wrote: "This is addressed to my father, who was a subscriber then and throughout his life. He saw newspapers as 'continuing education' and a necessary part of life."

I like the way he thought.

I have covered enough press conferences to know how hard it is to get quotes exactly right. Reporters and cameramen are jostling and talking, and the speaker is occasionally mumbling. Then you have reporters who unconsciously correctly grammatical slips and edit out a sentence that may not add anything. So it doesn't surprise me when quotes are slightly off. Disappoints, but doesn't surprise.

I noticed that in two separate stories we had slightly different versions of UNC Coach Roy Williams explaining his conversation with Ty Lawson about playing last night. We weren't alone. (It's possible these came from different conversations with Williams, but that seems unlikely.)

*******

Roy Williams asked Lawson before the game began if he could go.
"I don't know,"' Lawson said.
"Then we're not going to play," Williams said.
-- News & Record

*******

"It was really an easy decision," said UNC coach Roy Williams. "He came to me and said, 'I don't know. It doesn't feel good.' I said, 'Then you're not going to play.'"
-- News & Record

*******

"He came to me and he said, 'I don't know,'" Williams said. "He said, 'It doesn't feel good,' and I said, 'Well, we're not going to play.'"
-- Durham Morning Herald

*******

"It was an easy decision," Williams said. "I told him if he had doubts about it, I wasn't going to play him. I asked him, and he said: 'I don't know.'"
-- Winston-Salem Journal

*******

"It was an easy decision," coach Roy Williams said of the choice, made about 15 minutes before tipoff, not to play the Lawson. "I told him if we had doubts about it I wasn't going to play him. I asked and he said, 'I don't know' and the decision was that I wasn't going to play him. He came to me and said, 'I don't know,' and he said he didn't feel good. So I said he wasn't going to play."
-- The News & Observer

*******

"It was an easy decision. I told him if we had doubts about it I wasn't going to play him. I asked and he said, 'I don't know' and the decision was that I wasn't going to play him. So it was pretty easy. He came to me and said, 'I don't know' and he said he didn't feel good. So, I said he wasn't going to play."
-- Scout.com

It's common knowledge that the diet of news folk is more John Daly than, say, Lance Armstrong. Fast-food burgers, eating on the run, drinking too much...you know the drill. Heck, in my earlier reporting life, I lived off the sandwiches, honey buns and so-called fruit pies in the vending machines across the hall from the newsroom. Hey, make fun all you want, in those days we believed Wonder Bread helped build strong bodies 12 ways.

Which brings me to Cheesefry Nation, our latest blog. Proud eaters Joe Killian and Amanda Lehnert write about their efforts to clean up their act.

Joe writes: So Amanda and I are doing something about it -- taking the Get Healthy Guilford Challenge and launching a blog to chart our progress. In our typical fat, lazy fashion we're doing it a week late -- but I'm still determined to lose ten pounds in ten weeks. And, hopefully, a few inches off my waist. Those pants aren't getting any bigger.

Knowing the two of them, it'll be fun to watch.

Are there specific words you just hate?

I remember a discussion in high school English about examples of onomatopoeia. A girl offered "ugly." The teacher asked how that was an example, and the girl said, "Well, I think the word 'ugly' is ugly."

Anyway, some participants in the American Copy Editors Society forum have some they hate. How about utilize, spearhead, fruition, brandish and imprimatur?

Yeah, they don't bother me either. Do you have any?

Thanks, Pam, for the pointer.

City Manager Mitch Johnson released a statement today responding to our story this morning. It is disappointing.

Johnson's response seems to begin with blaming the newspaper.

His memo bullets nine points that he calls facts. I won't address any but the first, which is: The News and Record request did not match the document in question.

In her request, reporter Margaret Banks gave as many specifics as she could about a memo we had never seen. Had we known more, we would have included them. Specifically, the request asked for: "The two-page memo Tom Fox and Scott Sanders wrote summarizing the rationale behind the 'black book.'"

The city's initial response was: "We have researched and are not aware of the existence of the alleged two-page memo summarizing the rationale behind the black book.'

The memo itself, which the city has found but not released, provides a clear description of the rationale for creating the black book.

I will grant you that the request wasn't technically precise. But if the city staff were interested in transparency and were aware of the council's repeated interest in the black book, I would think that the legal team might have put two and two together. In fact, at least two people who aren't city employees -- Ben Holder and John Hammer -- had no trouble identifying the document we were requesting.

We ain't perfect, but this hot potato isn't ours.

Frequent commenter Beau Dure, who writes with insight even though you may not always agree, does it again on Poynter's E-Media Tidbits.

Beau writes about "beneficial elitism" and "harmful elitism" as it pertains to journalists and bloggers. It's an important and knowing distinction.

...On (the Online-News) list, as in all forums, we sometimes fall into the trap of harmful elitism. We assume others 'don't get it.' 'Oh, that Roy Peter Clark guy? Yeah, he's just a newspaper guy. I don't have to listen to him.' We're prone to offering up easy answers for newspapers' ills, conveniently forgetting how wrong this list's conventional wisdom has been in the past.

Whether or not you like my proposed harmful/beneficial dichotomy, I think it helps to look at things through new frames. The 'blogger vs. journalist' meme didn't die despite Jay Rosen's best efforts, but at least we can step outside it every once in a while. 'Liberal vs. conservative' is utterly meaningless, given the fluidity of the terms. Even 'old school vs. new school' isn't particularly helpful. If we weren't a little bit of both, why would we be on this list?

I know it's me, sometimes.

I'm responsible for the news in the newspaper and online. Allen is responsible for the editorial pages. Our ad director tends to the ads. Our online director has similar responsibilies. My point: We are responsible for every word and image in the paper and Web sites. On occasion, we make mistakes and publish stories that I wish we hadn't. The vast majority of the time, though, it is easily to justify publishing a story or photo, even as it may make some people squeamish.

I'm glad I'm not a local television network affiliate. They can't possibly want to claim ownership of some of the stuff broadcast on their stations.

I was out sick a day last week and spent too much of the day watching television. Programs on incest. Self-help baloney. Marital infidelity. Britney's breakdown minute-by-minute. Sexual dysfunction. And I didn't watch any soap operas.

I understand the difference in news and entertainment programming. I also understand about the different audiences during the different times of the day. Given the number of people who heap all journalism into the stew called "media," I wonder if most people know the difference.

I probably am reflecting this through a middle-aged newspaper editor's eyes. So I readily acknowledge being the wrong target audience. If there weren't money there, I know the programming wouldn't last. But I know what kinds of calls we get about some of our content. I can't imagine the calls TV officials get, even if they are from the wrong target audiences.

Margaret Banks at Scoop articulates what I've said several times recently.

This isn't a case of the media vs. the government, which is often how civic officials attempt to portray it. We are not the story. Margaret is not the story. This is a case of the public demanding to know what its government -- and its money -- is doing. Period.

I vote.

I don't know why you'd care about that, but the issue of journalists voting is being kicked around.

Some journalists don't vote. I respect their thinking, but I don't agree.

I have thoughts and opinions about issues of the day. To say that I don't and therefore won't vote would be wrong. Most of the journalists I know have been trained to report dispassionately and can keep their opinions out of their stories.

I don't know who I'm going to vote for yet; it's early for me to decide. But come May, I'll be ready.

We have a video entertainment report called Unwind. I haven't written about it before because it is still beta, but what the hey... you like to give us feedback.

This week's episode has reports on synerG, Molly McGinn, speed dating and some best bets for entertainment. And as I'm a big fan of Molly's and we have her playing and singing, it's worth a look for that alone.

I know that there is some sentiment that contentiousness on elected boards, councils and commissions is a negative and reflects poorly on the governmental agency. Some of the recent boards of county commissioners are examples of this.

But civil disagreement that results in a deeper examination of contentious issues often results in better government.

I've got no more insight in what occurred behind these closed doors than anyone else, but I'm not displeased to see a group of council members struggling with an issue that needs to be addressed and resolved. And while we may get painted with the negative brush for writing about the disagreements, the key is that they are discussing the public's business in public.

ReadWriteWeb mentions an email from Business Wire, a press release service, that claims it bypasses the blogosphere and traditional media and directly reaches its markets by showing up on aggregators and in search results.

I would never say that we don't want releases or get valuable information from them. In fact, news releases from local companies and agencies are invaluable. But if I could eliminate all the faxes and e-mails from PR firms and companies "not from round here," I'd save a ton on paper and my productivity would skyrocket. So I say more power to you Biz Wire.

Update: So, appropriately, the very next news release I get? What's Good for Your Heart Is Good for Your Brain from the Alzheimer's Association and the American Heart Association.

My newspaper column

It was an eventful week down at the Melvin Municipal Building, a.k.a. Greensboro City Hall.

The City Council held a special meeting to discuss the city manager's performance. The city manager keeps his job but gets a list of issues to fix. Citizens hear a bit -- just a bit -- about problems involving the Fire Department and Parks and Recreation Department.

Everything began coming to a head two weeks ago when the city told reporter Margaret Banks that a Police Department memo she asked for didn't exist. Two days later, blogger Ben Holder and The Rhinoceros Times published what they said was that very memo.

She then asked for another Police Department memo, which the city said it had but could not legally release. Holder and The Rhino published that memo, too.

There are many different ways to measure the vitality of the Web site -- traffic, unique visitors, interaction, time spent, among others.

With the newspaper, measures are quirkier, more arbitrary and wildly inaccurate. As retailer John Wanamaker said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."

So I use a variety of anecdotal measures: I watch what people read and don't read when I'm out and about; I note how long papers lay neglected on driveways; and I track e-mails, letters to the editor, phone calls, comments on Debatables.

I also watch my wife. In the world of categorizing the newspaper "consumer," there are readers, who approach the paper as if it were a book, and there are users, who go through the paper looking for information they can use to do something.

My wife is both. She reads the Sports section first, and I know it's a good section if I am finished with the front section before she's finished with Sports. If she moves to the features section too quickly, I know we've failed in her first course.

The other measure I use is the number of times a section comes to me transformed into a newsprint jigsaw puzzle. This morning, she clipped out three or four features in the Life section -- a couple recipes, an advice column and a household tips column. Information worth clipping, filing and using. Could she have gotten it online? Of course, but the point is that she didn't...and probably wouldn't have thought of looking for that specific recipe. It just came to her, sounded tasty and appeared simple to prepare.

Some days, in our household, disappointment is getting a complete, whole newspaper.

Alan Mutter, one of the more insightful journalism commentators out there, poses a provocative, confounding question that has been examined by every newspaper editor in the country over the past few years of contraction: How many editors can a newspaper afford?

While it would be heretical at most major news organizations to "railroad" stories from a reporter's keyboard directly into print, several publications, including a few surprisingly large ones, are allowing reporters to point, click and post words and images directly to the newspaper's website. If the work is good enough to slap on the web without further human intervention, why isn't it good enough to go directly on a web press?

On the other hand, a compelling case can be made that newspapers would debase themselves journalistically, commercially and, perhaps, even fatally by abandoning the disciplined reporting and professional editing that makes their content uniquely valuable in an age of frequently impulsive, often repulsive and usually unverified Twittering.

Does a story need to be edited by more than one person? (Sentence corrected after editing by reader in comments!) In fact, if the writer is good enough and understands his audience, does the story need to be edited at all? Most bloggers don't have editors, outside of their own inner compass, which is an argument both for and against independent editors, depending upon your point of view.

Here the typical story is edited two or three times. A sensitive or important story is edited by as many as five or six. Yes, and even then, typos and spelling errors sneak their way into print. Meanwhile, an online story is edited once, and bloggers aren't edited, unless they request it.

My experience is that publishers and process engineers question editors because it appears as if the service they perform is rework. If the writers did the job right, why would we need someone to check it? Of course, editors do much more than edit copy. They teach. We aren't the New York Times. Reporters don't come to us fully baked. (No one does, actually.) Editors help guide coverage. They listen to readers and act as the reader's advocate, questioning assumptions and plugging holes. They think about tomorrow and next week and next month, trying to see the forest rather than the trees.

We have also developed specialists. A good conceptual editor who can inspire reporters may not be a good technical editor who can find grammatical flaws or write pithy headlines. And with an operation that starts at 7 a.m. and ends after midnight, you need people who span two work shifts.

All of that is to say that the number of times a story is edited is only partially relevant to the number of editors needed. Personally, I take the traditional line. I think a typical print story should be read by two editors, the one who assigned the story and worked with the reporter in the pre-editing stage, and a copy editor.

Online stories are different. Print is permanent. Online, we can post-edit, and readers serve as editors, pointing out mistakes and asking questions. The record can be changed. The story in paper is static; the story online evolves.

Editors make up about 20% of our staff. Are we top heavy with editors? I don't think so, and I doubt the retired English teachers I hear from would either.

In some comments and blog posts, people have expressed surprise that we would give credit in print to Ben Holder and the Rhino for publishing the city memos in question.

If you buy the idea that bloggers can be investigative journalists -- and I do -- then it's natural that a blogger could obtain confidential documents. In the old days, said blogger might have taken his find to the newspaper. Now the blogger can publish them himself.

Because the actual existence of one of the documents became a major part of the story, its publication by anyone else makes it newsworthy. In the short term at least, the publication of the two memos became a bigger story than the actual content of the memos, thanks to the city's response. It would have been a journalistic mistake to leave Ben and the Rhino out of the story.

The tone of the comments suggests that we should be embarrassed that Ben got them and we didn't. Sure we would have liked to have had them -- that's why we asked for them. But in this business you learn quickly that stuff happens, and you move on pretty quickly. Consider what we did in print the equivalent of a link online.

In the new world of digital media, scoops don't last long and sometimes scarcely exist in people's minds. We report a scoop today, put it online and send it to AP tonight. AP puts it out on the wire at midnight. TV picks it up and broadcasts it beginning at 5 a.m. before most of our papers with the scoop have even hit a driveway. Who had it first? Doesn't mean that we don't try to get them, just that they don't mean what they used to.

At this meeting of the arts folks, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Greensboro Symphony Orchestra music director, bemoaned the lack of media coverage of the arts. Interestingly, our arts reporter, Dawn Kane, and someone from WFMY were covering the meeting.

For fun, I went to our archives to see what kind of coverage we gave the Symphony. These are rough numbers. In 2007, we mentioned the Symphony and its events 61 times in calendars, entertainment listings and the like. We wrote seven reviews of its performances, and we featured the Symphony, its performers and news about it in 13 bylined stories. Not all that shabby.

I won't review what I've written in the past. It still applies.

Robert Bell heard from a reader who, I guess, didn't care for our coverage of A&T basketball this morning:

"I am so sick and tired of the Greensboro Daily News' obvious bias when it comes to your so-called sports coverage. Whatever happened to objective reporting? And not just in the stories but in the placement of stories. Any journalism 101 class teaches that a newspaper should be fair to both sides. When will you learn that? There are more Carolina fans living in this area than any other team. Your bias should be toward Chapel Hill."

Another one of those lists. In this case, all 25 are true. Here are three:
2. Sources always call back well after the story has run.

4. Somebody somewhere will always be upset about any given story I've written.

On Monday, we published photos and information about the 10 most wanted fugitives in Guilford County.

Wednesday, Greensboro police announced two on the list are in now in custody and a third is in jail down east.

A direct result? Yes, according to a sergeant with the police department.

Pretty cool.

Our friend and colleague Jeff Carlton died today after a long and valiant fight with brain cancer.

Jeff was first diagnosed several years ago and went through surgery. He recovered and returned to work covering sports. The cancer returned and he's been battling it for months. He carried this horrible burden with grace. I never saw him down in the dumps. In fact, he was planning a bright future. Last Friday, we talked for an hour about his interest in becoming assistant sports editor. He was passionate and eager to lead the change in sports.

Two days later, though, he was admitted to the hospital and never left.

Jeff had been a copy editor and reporter here for 10 years, much of the time covering high school sports. He was a heckuva writer, broke his share of stories and won his share of awards. But his journalistic legacy -- one of his legacies, I guess -- is that he earned the trust and respect of coaches and players. He treated people fairly and got it right.

For us here, we lost a dear friend.

Update: A story here. And a nice piece at Greensboro Sports.

Update 2: Robert Bell's tribute this morning.

I hope others feel free to leave thoughts and memories here.

If you've ever wondered about the measure of the impact of a man, read the comments about Jeff Carlton. They inspire me to be better.

Jim Young describes a friendship:

His cubicle at the News & Record sat next to mine. In the long stretches between interviews, during the frequent bouts with writer's block or while trying to avoid tedious transcriptions, we'd engage in conversations that could drift any which way at any moment. Frequently they were about minutiae that would only interest the two of us -- what other movies was Yaphet Kotto in besides Live and Let Die? Was there a better villain than James Earl Jones in Conan the Barbarian? Was Sammy Khalifa the only Arab-American to play in the Major Leagues? -- but they were always entertaining. They were talks I looked forward to every time I'd walk into the office and he would spin around in his chair to greet me. Our boss, Joe Sirera, used to joke that we could create a radio show just by recording the random conversations Jeff and I had and putting them on the air.

I realize that doesn't sound like the storybook version of friendship. Jeff never pulled me from a run-away train. I never introduced him to the love of his life. But in the real world -- the one that now has a huge, unfillable void it in now that Jeff is gone -- this is the true way friendship works: two guys, sitting around, having a conversation about nothing, sharing moments that, when you look back on them, mean everything.

Update: Fox8 came over to talk about Jeff. Unfortunately, Jeff's co-workers who know him best were all out working. That left me.

His dearest friend, Alina Wilson, writes about Jeff in a way that no one else has or can.

We'll all read in the next few days about Jeff Carlton the writer, the reporter, the UVA alumnus, and the sports aficionado. But I have had a different experience with Jeff. I knew Jeff, the man, the friend, the devoted confidant, the loving son and brother. I will talk about things few people knew or maybe fewer people noticed.

And then she does just that. Read the whole thing. It is a wonderful, mournful, loving tribute.

Wednesday update: Jim Young posts his comments at the memorial service for Jeff.

The Order of the Long Leaf Pine is the highest civilian honor that can be granted in North Carolina.

Past recipients include Michael Jordan, Charles Kuralt, Maya Angelou, the Rev. Billy Graham, William C. Friday, Doug Marlette, Fred Chappell, and artist Bob Timberlake.

And now, Jim Schlosser, who got it last night.

Update: Seth Effron, a former colleague of mine and Jim's at the N&R, presented Jim with the award on behalf of the governor. His comments at the presentation ceremony -- which, regrettably I missed -- are here.

Thursday we published a story on the front page about Greensboro firefighters doing work at the fire chief's houses. It didn't take long on the Debatables blog for some commenters to see racial politics behind it.

Alas, a mention of race is nowhere to be found in Thursday's article or Friday's. But that hasn't stopped some readers from imagining it. (That, and for blaming us for writing about the story in the first place.) I don't know if there is a racial angle to the things happening at the fire department, but I know that we haven't reported on one. The chief, by the way, is white, for whatever that fact is worth.

At the same time, Skeet Club Savage, a frequent commenter on this blog and several others, started an interesting comment thread on my Sunday newspaper column post.

He (I'm assuming Skeet Club is male) and I spar in a long back-and-forth about our coverage of the police department issues. It is worth reading. If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you probably know that some people think this newspaper made the upheaval in the PD a racial issue. I've resisted that characterization because I think it's imprecise, if not inaccurate.

My newspaper column

You notice there isn't any color on the front page of this section, and that the weather page is in black and white.

If this were a construction site, we'd have a sign up that reads: "Excuse our dust. We're renovating to serve you better."

We're in the process of rebuilding our 32-year-old press. I won't bore you with the gory details but it is not unlike replacing a major appliance in your home part by part while still expecting it to operate day-in and day-out.

Essentially, it means that some of our press units will be offline periodically through June. Occasionally pages that are normally in color won't be. We hope to keep that to a minimum.

The result will be a cleaner look so we think the momentary "construction dust" will be worth it.

Our friend and columnist Glenn Chavis was featured on Fox8 last week talking about his special interest in black history in High Point. Check it out.

Margaret Banks, our city hall reporter and veteran Inside Scooper, is making the leap to the dark side. She's becoming our assistant sports editor. (Listen as editors across the country go screaming out into the night!)

Margaret is ready. She has covered city hall for nearly two years and has also been a religion reporter, a general assignment reporter and a reporter in Rockingham County. No direct sports coverage experience? We're in interesting times and that calls for interesting experiences. She's got 'em.

And for everyone who thinks we have a Tar Heel blue tint, she graduated from UNCG.

WIth apologies to Seth Godin, who inspired this post:

I often get asked by budding journalists how to break into the business. Here is my newest best advice: Don't.

The business is too tough. Do something else. Seriously. Go into PR. Go to grad school. You must be good at something else. Figure out what it is and do it.

Allen Johnson announced yesterday that you can now comment on newspaper editorials. It is worth repeating here.

While I'm not part of the editorial board, I know its process and people well enough to know that there are two parts to this. One is reactive: The editorial board writes and people respond. The other is proactive: Your responses are read and, when it comes time to revisit the editorial topic, considered. A well-reasoned response is helpful.

There are six sides to every argument. Voice yours.

We did well in the annual Associated Press Sports Editors contest.

In our circulation category:
* Jim Young is in the Top 10 in the Game Story category for his report on UNC's loss to Georgetown in the NCAA basketball tournament.

* Ed Hardin is in the Top 10 in the Projects category for his Changing Landscape series.

* Our Sunday section was an honorable-mention choice, meaning it was in the top 11-20.

It's a national contest and very competitive. We continue to try to do new, different things with our section. It's nice that the individual and section efforts are recognized.

People are suggesting that we should not have published a story about the claims of the ministers that files related to the Klan-Nazi shootings were destroyed.

These complaints come up every time we write about the tragic 1979 event. The idea is that we're continuing to open up a wound in the city's history that would heal and be consigned to the archives if we would just leave it alone. But if you read some of the comments you might conclude that people actually enjoy examining it in detail.

In any case, three prominent activist ministers hold a news conference to claim that police trashed boxes and boxes of files pertaining to an event that got worldwide attention when it occurred. They had already met with the mayor (at the time) and the city manager to ask the city to look into it. The police department is now talking with the DA's office to determine if any laws were broken.

By any definition, this is news. (Best I can tell, the four local television news teams agreed.) If it turns out that the ministers were wrong and that the files are safely gathering dust in a secure location, we'll report that, too.

It isn't part of a journalist's wiring to think "let's ignore this news because we don't like the messengers or because it's upsetting." Some commenters suggest that no one cares about it. But given the number of comments here, here, here, here and here, it seems as if there is a great deal of interest in it.

Visitors here have strong opinions on when to publish and when not to publish.

So if you're the editor who is asked not to publish Prince Harry's whereabouts in Afghanistan, what do you decide?

In a series of meetings at the Ministry of Defence late last year, British media and selected international outlets agreed not to report Harry's deployment in exchange for getting regular pictures, video and text of his day-to-day activities once the planned four-month assignment was completed.

Apparently, the Drudge Report wasn't one of the outlets.

He's coming home now.

Update: It's quiet. Too quiet. C'mon, it's not that hard.

A frequent correspondent sent me an e-mail this morning:

I had an epiphany whilst reading John Blust's letter on your editorial page this morning: The coverage you provide about the actions and antics of Greensboro and our county governments is worth far more than cost of my subscription. Too, I also have something in which to wrap fish when needed!

Thanks for all you do to make my life in Guilford County so entertaining.

Everyone I know agrees with me.

I hear that sentiment a lot, primarily from people who don't like something we have done. I have learned to discount it as an argument because while it could be true, it doesn't mean anything.

I mention that because we have just begun using a new measuring tool that asks people a variety of questions about specific items in the newspaper. This week, we asked about this story about police misconduct investigations. The group surveyed is small -- please join up! -- so I'm not drawing any conclusions yet. One result is interesting, nonetheless.

One hundred or so people who said they read the story were asked "Have you looked or will you look for more information as a result of the article?" 40 people answered no and 28 said yes. The rest were non-committal or did not answer.

Some of the no's explained:

No. Greensboro gets too tied up with items that are better left alone.

No. I'm tired of the topic. Even though I might agree with the information -- and though I know it's important to some people -- it's like beating a dead horse. Leave it alone for awhile.

And the yes's:

Yes. I like to be kept abreast of issues that relate to our daily lives in the Greensboro community.

Yes, there is so much going on with the Greensboro police & fire departments and also with city council. We want to know what is REALLY going on & the recent articles are shedding some light on the answers and briefly explains why they can't tell more.

Reader interest or lack of interest aren't the only thing we consider. Journalists keep reporting some issues despite the seeming lack of public interest because the issues are important. But I understand the sense of apathy/weariness with the story. It has been going on for nearly three years with no end in sight. For the casual follower, it is hard to know what is what and even harder to keep it all straight.

But I digress. On the police investigation, I've heard both "Nobody cares about that" and "This is the biggest story in the city." Both views come from passionate, engaged citizens who believe they are doing what's best for the city.