News-Record.com

Banning commenters isn't a bad thing.

Given that I'm among those who have done it recently, this position may not surprise anyone. Judging from the angry screams of outrage when a commenter is banned, you might think that an injustice has occurred.

Nah. Banning seems to be a last resort everywhere. Including here. But I am beginning to appreciate its value. And I wonder what took me so long.

I take the view that comments are pretty much open so long as commenters follow our terms of use. I have given commenters what I consider broad latitude to have their say. I have thought for a while that that practice has actually discouraged anyone but those with thick skins to enter the discussion. Shouldn't have to be that way.

Despite what some think and say, banning commenters has nothing to do with hostility toward opposing positions or arrogance or or fragile egos or cowardice. Anyone who reads this blog can easily determine that opposing positions are frequent and not feared. It's not a freedom of speech or censorship issue, either. There is no inalienable right to comment here.

Essentially, commenters need to treat me and others with respect. It is not an unreasonable rule. If you think it is, start your own blog and make your own rules.

My preference is that commenters discuss ideas and bring something to the table. Making assumptions about why I or others might say something, throwing out vague accusations, or stating opinion as fact without any back-up occur on the blog and in face-to-face conversation. But they don't add much. One of the potential values of written exchanges is that they allow for time and thought. So, presumably, the conversation could be conducted on a higher plane.

That's the goal. If some voices have to be banned to get there, so be it.

ConvergeSouth 2008 will be Oct. 16-17, followed by -- connected with -- a BlogHer Reach Out Tour on the 18th. It just keeps on growing!

More at Sue's.

I always thought ConvergeSouth was two words run together in that nifty Webby style. The nameplate for the site has the two words separated by a space. Starting a retro trend, Sue?

I have had people tell me that the newspaper stinks, but it was always metaphorical.

Until I got this e-mail: I don't know if it is the ink or the paper but the newspaper smells awful ! It about takes your breath when it is taken out of the plastic bag. If you can stand to read it, washing your hands must be next!

After a bit of inquiry, I discovered that the plastic bags occasionally develop an odor if they are particularly old.

Hmmm. If we can develop the right smell -- ocean breeze? pine forest? -- maybe that will help sell the paper.

We have moved some folks around. Amanda Lehmert is going to cover City Hall and Tom Keller will cover high school sports.

For those who feared we would assign a "rookie" to City Hall -- I've heard the whispers -- rest easy. She's been a full-time reporter for five years and won first place awards from the New England Press Association for investigative reporting, education reporting and environmental reporting.

You have to hand it to a city council member who knows how to mix sarcasm, humor and imagery all in one quote. Thank you, Mike Barber.

As the keeper of the Debatables blog, I had run out of ideas to generate discussion about the Klan-Nazi files story. I closed comments on the story yesterday because of unsupported accusations being tossed around about police officers. (Don't go looking; I deleted them as they were posted.) Today's story about the city council welcoming the FBI was promising, but would the conversation go straight into the libel gutter, too?

Mike Barber's intergalactic legal network rides to the rescue. Colleague Mike Fuchs suggested that we see if any commenters have a sense of humor and pose the question: Should the intergalactic legal network investigate the police department, too?

The discussion began with promise, but then reverted back to the same old, same old. When a council member riffs with more humor and bite than commenters out here, that's, that's, well, that's unheard of.

Is the city handling the Klan-Nazi shooting records "case" in the way that best serves the public?

It has taken on the typical drip-drip-drip cadence that stories like this take:
* denial
* hmmm, we'll investigate
* give us time to investigate

Meanwhile, bits and pieces of information leak out nearly every day. Some of them are disputed.

And the public -- divided on the import of the story -- is left to wait and wonder. Again. Some, of course, come to their own conclusions based on the little verifiable information out there.

My unsolicited counsel: There is still time to get in front of this story, show you're in charge and interested in rooting out the truth.

Here's what I'm thinking:

1) Someone from the city administration goes to the police chief and demands some answers by midday.
2) The chief goes to Officer Fulmore and Lt. McMinn and asks the sort of impertinent yes and no questions that police officers know how to ask...at least they do on Law and Order.
3) The chief reports back to his boss, the city manager, and to the mayor what he has discovered.
4) The city goes public and explains what did or did not happen by the end of the day.

I'm thinking it would move the story arc close to its conclusion and it would serve the public. What am I missing?

Everyone seems to be interested in open government...unless it is information you think shouldn't be made public.

Here's a chance to learn what's what with open government. On March 20, the Sunshine Center of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition is holding a seminar at Elon College that will feature information on where state candidates stand on open government; a preview a new publication by the Attorney General’s office and the N.C. Press Association on open government; and an overview of the successes and failures of open government during the last year.

Here's who they say should attend: Citizens, journalists, government employees, librarians, lawyers, historians, public officials, anyone and everyone. Notice who they listed first?

Here's the registration form.

I have not read the entire interview with Karen Crouse, a sportswriter with the New York Times. I am struck, though, by the blurb given it on Romenesko.

The headline reads: Why there aren't more women in sports journalism
The text reads: Perhaps it's because the pool of Superwomen isn't that deep, says New York Times NFL writer Karen Crouse. "Writing can be such a time-swallowing occupation if you let it. I know I struggle mightily to carve out nicely crafted stories and a life. If my husband had a dollar for every time we've had dinner plans and I've told him, 'I'm almost done, just a few more minutes,' only to emerge an hour later, he'd be Donald Trump."

I don't know about the Times. I know that what she describes is true of every reporter and editor I've ever known, regardless of gender and journalistic specialty.

When I was a reporter, the school superintendent told me, another reporter and two of his department heads an off-color joke that belittled African Americans and women. (This was not in Guilford County.) The reporter and I were in his office at the time, interviewing him and the aides about test scores. After he told the joke -- he saw me making a note -- he declared it off the record. I shook my head and said that we had made no such agreement. We argued about it briefly -- the department heads both looked horrified; they knew a faux pas when they heard one -- and I finally told him that he had been a public figure longer than I had been a reporter and he knew the rules: You don't declare something off the record after the fact.

I thought of that as I read about Samantha Power's statement about Hillary being a monster and her immediate declaration that that was off the record. Glenn Greenwald at Slate uses that example to write about one of the weaknesses of the American press.

It's extremely likely, though, that had Power been speaking to a typical reporter from the American establishment media, her request to keep her comments a secret would have been honored. In one of the ultimate paradoxes, for American journalists -- whose role in theory is to expose the secrets of the powerful -- secrecy is actually their central religious tenet, especially when it comes to dealing with the most powerful. Protecting, rather than exposing, the secrets of the powerful is the fuel of American journalism. That's how they maintain their access to and good relations with those in power.

And then he cites other persuasive examples.

I wonder if it is yet another one of those big city inside-the-beltway deals that those of us in the sticks don't get. Dan Gillmor describes his practice, which is precisely what I was taught 30 years ago and what we practice here.

We had press problems this morning, and the papers were delivered late on many routes, including mine. I spent part of the morning on the phone, answering calls from friends politely inquiring where the heck their paper is. The message from most of them boiled down to this: How do you expect me to eat my breakfast and drink my coffee without the paper? It is what I do!

These aren't octogenarians, computerless and clueless. These are people in their 40's and 50's, successful, intelligent people. They have the newspaper habit and aren't willing to give it up, even though getting it digitally may be cheaper and deeper. They may well be the last generation of any size to include a printed newspaper in their media consumption, but there are still an awful lot of them and they're going to live many more years.

I am a proponent of digital journalism. As I watch how the people born in the 80's use media, I know digital is not just the future, it is now. As an industry, we have been slow to respond. Subsequently, some of the more provocative thinkers in journalism suggest that newspapers sell their presses and go digital. And/or that papers eliminate all wire copy -- the commodity news -- and focus everything on local.

In principal, I can see it, at some point. But I think of the people who called me and those who overwhelmed our customer service folks this morning. That is not what they want. And that's a lot of people.

Newspapers are struggling and we are partially to blame. But the challenge is in making the evolution from print to digital while still trying to serve the different audiences and meeting the demands of capitalism all within a recessionary market. I don't have that answer -- boy, would I be rich if I did. But it'll come.

A reader thinks the current Dilbert series involving a character named Jesus is offensive. Here is today's.

Are you intentionally trying to see how many Christians read the comics? The Dilbert series that is running right now is so offensive during this season of Lent that I do not have ample words to express my dismay. The new employee Jesus (Hey-Zeus) turning coffee into wine, and giving Wally his normal sight back left me incredulous this morning.

Just wait until the sermons start rolling into your offices. Freedom of speech does not excuse a person from freedom of good judgment. I guess I found enough words to express my dismay.

What is it with cartoonists and religion? I readily admit that I don't understand why people get worked up over what cartoonists draw. When you make your living making fun of authority and institutions as Scott Adams does, religion is fair game. But it is just a comic strip, and it's meant to evoke a response. This series seems to be in questionable taste, but I don't find it offensive. Do you?

(I don't find it all that funny, either, but I know that humor takes all kinds.)

Thursday update: Other reactions here, here, here and here.

Lots of people write history, almost all of them in long tomes. Not us. We want you to do it in six words, no more, no fewer.

As of this writing, we have 14 submissions, and some of them are pretty clever. Join them.

Did anyone else read prostitution ring and conjure up one image and then read high-priced call girl and bring up another?

In a private e-mail about our very brief history of Greensboro reader participation thing, a reader sadly observes that one-third of the comments are about race in some way: Skip and Earl, the International Civil Rights Museum and the 1979 shootings.

And people say we make it all about race.

The reader's six-word comment: Your commenters lead bitter, miserable lives.

I scoff at such sentiment. I mock it. I deny it!

Your life isn't miserable, is it?

I was failing miserably at explaining to a friend why we published this story about reading -- or, rather, about the growing number of people who don't read much of anything -- as our Sunday A1 centerpiece. It's an important story, I said:

The trend has profound implications for our future work force, for the ability of people to make informed choices about the future of the country. Those who read less are more likely to be unemployed and less likely to vote and participate in civic affairs, the NEA finds.

But it's also a soft story. No bombs raining or bullets flying. No government corruption and no Spitzer sex. So why did it deserve big front page play, he asked.

I've been thinking about that conversation this week. That it has more resonance here than call-girl sex, money under the table or bullets became clear to me as I listened to the speakers at One Guilford this afternoon.

Here's the fact: Nearly 40 percent of the incoming students at GTCC do not read at the 8th grade level. That's what one panelist, Dr. Kathryn Baker Smith, vice president for educational support services at GTCC, said.

Nearly 40 percent read at the elementary or middle school level? Breathtaking.

Time was, people read the newspaper, and while they may not have thought much about it, they were reading, thinking, analyzing, expanding their horizons -- all that stuff. But the point is that they were reading every day. Not bills of lading. Not receipts. Not menus. Not the crawl on SportsCenter. Reading stories.

Perhaps I'm adding two plus two and coming up with 17, but I wonder how the decline of newspaper reading and the growing inability of a generation to read are connected. No, I'm not proposing some newspapers-as-medicine prescription. I know that train has left the station for this generation. But it is yet another cultural milepost that has just zipped past in the rear-view mirror.

At how high does the percentage need to get at GTCC before we as a community become alarmed enough to do something?

Sportswriter Jim Young predicts the ACC tournament results. I won't tell you his outcome, except to say that he doesn't seem to have the guts to drive the lane on Hansbrough.

But he welcomes your feedback.

So there you have it. And it's out in the cyberspace for eternity now. I expect to get emails mocking my picks up until the year 2045. After that, I'm closing out my account.

I don't even remember this guy, but some of our folks do. And as he made SI and Romenesko, I suppose he qualifies as an alum in the news.

Are there as many empty seats in the Coliseum when the ACC tournament is played in Greensboro?

It is interesting -- not funny, not amusing -- to read about the big papers adopting practices of smaller papers.

Jack Shafer at Slate writes about some changes in the editing process at The Washington Post: Removing layers of editing. Allowing flexibility in determining who edits stories and when. Creating collaboration among assignment editors, copy editors and photo and designers. Earlier decision-making. Wider spans of control. (Via Romenesko.)

As the market changes, the economy slumps and traditional news operations contract, such changes are mandatory. Smaller papers like us moved in this direction several years ago. Smaller papers than us have always operated this way because they have to.

To some extent, the changes follow the Innovator's Dilemma idea that good is good enough for many newspaper readers. Why edit a story four times when twice is good enough?

They work because communication and collaboration are simpler in small organizations. In the smallest of papers, everyone does everything. Editors also report and design. Reporters also take photos and edit. Everyone helps in the production. Collaboration is vital, and silos are impossible to erect. I know because I've worked at such newspapers. As the organization grows, it attracts and nurtures specialists.

And as it contracts, it becomes important to increase the span of control and to reduce the number of hands and eyes that touch the story or photo. Writing and editing for the Web throughout the day is the obvious course. Next comes reducing the geographic coverage area and tightly focusing coverage topics.

I've written about the number of editors before and won't repeat it. Our blogs aren't edited precisely because we want a voice of authority and a conversational style to come through. (Shafer's allusion to reporters who can't write used to be true; we have employed plenty of people who were great reporters and poor writers. Some years ago, we realized that we could no longer afford that luxury and that we needed to choose good reporters who could write their way out of a paper bag. Please withhold your comments about this writer.)

What I suspect is that the big papers are struggling to find the right balance between "feet on the street" and the receivers -- editors and designers. We are, too.

Just in case you think that control of news and opinion is the sole purview of the mainstream media, say hello to the NCAA.To quote Bryan Murley, "You can blog, but within stupid, irrational, idiotic limits." Bryan captures the ill-considered blogging policy pretty well at Innovation in College Media.

It serves no purpose but to highlight inane bureaucracy and heavy-handed greed (because at heart, the NCAA blogging policy is all about $$$$). Of course, I would change my mind if the NCAA could show me one credible scintilla of evidence that liveblogging somehow decreases viewership of their championship events. Or that they actually have something other than $$$$ in mind in crafting this stupid policy.

I don't know that our guys are planning to blog the game. I'm not convinced that blogging a game is worth it, given that if you care enough to read a game blog, you probably are watching the game itself. Of course, you watching at home -- or on computer -- aren't restricted by the blogging restrictions. Pretty crazy, huh?

Boy, I hope this post doesn't get our credentials rejected as if we had driven the lane on Roy Hibbert.

Tish Grier at Poynter E-Media Tidbits wonders how much the National Do Not Call Registry has affected newspaper circulation sales. The short answer is a ton.

I don't have the figures, but we saw an immediate drop off back in '03 when we couldn't call people at home and peddle the paper. It was harder to reach people who subscribed for three months at a time, let it drop and waited for the expected call to re-up. (Yes, there were a lot of those.) We had created a habit, fed it and then stopped cold turkey.

We responded with a greater presence at kiosks and grocery stores and public gatherings, but the sales were costlier at a time when we weren't all that interested in costly things.

I wouldn't say that the Do Not Call Registry is the industry's major problem when dealing with circulation declines, but it shut down a good sales option at a time when we needed all the sales options we could get. Hmmm...maybe we could get a registry of e-mail addresses of non-subscribers and....nah.

Full disclosure: My phone number is on the registry...but, of course, I wasn't getting calls from the newspaper as I am a seven-day subscriber.

A Greensboro City Council member is irritated that the city manager released a copy of his 10-page plan to fix some issues in the city operation to the public at the same time he gave it to the council. It is understandable; business people are used to conducting their business in private.

But the city isn't a private business. Far from it.

At a time when transparency in city operations is critical, strictly adhering to the requirements of state public records law is vital, to say nothing of politically astute.

If you missed the special section on Greensboro: 1808-2008 in yesterday's paper, go back to the recycling bin and get it. It's a keeper.

That's not just me talking, either. The Greensboro Historical Museum is going to display an enlargement of the 1808-2008 city map by Doug Cox in its lobby during the long bicentennial celebration.

A bunch of Greensboro bicentennial info here.

Credit for the bicentennial special section goes to editor Bob Williams; designer Jennifer Burton; copy editor Brenda Hiles, researchers David Bulgin and Diane Lamb, and, of course, Cox.

It always surprises me when a public figure chooses to say something to the effect of, "I want to tell you about this, but I can't right now. When everything comes out, you'll understand."

It is intended to imply that his position is perfectly sensible, but he won't tell you what it is. The effect is has, at least on me, is that he's hiding something and hopes you'll go away. I can't think of a time when that's the appropriate feeling to evoke in a listener or reader.

Normally we hear it from people in some kind of legal trouble. But this morning we heard it from the executive director of a youth soccer association: "There will be a time when we can discuss this, but that's for down the road," he said.

For my money, this response is almost always wrong.

Naturally, I prefer you come clean. But if you're not going to say what happened, you could talk around the edges, the way politicians do when they wax eloquently for 5 minutes without answering the question. (The politicians interviewed on morning television shows teach a master class in avoidance.) Most of the time reporters don't fall for it, but at least you're saying something.

Even "no comment" is better than, "it will all come out in due time."

I offer this as free advice for the future. Not surprisingly, the folks who are inclined to get a such call from a reporter don't ask my advice.

We editors in the rarified air of the ivory tower have a magical vision of how the newsroom works.

Back on Planet Earth, things work a bit differently.

Oh, editors expect stories to be well-written, at expected length and in by deadline. And some even meet those three expectations.

But some don't.

National editor Janet Brindle Reddick has applied her immense mathematical prowess to come up with the three-L rule. A story can be late, long or lousy, but can only fit one of those criteria. She explains:

* If it's late, but clean, and at budgeted length, we can get it through the system quickly.

* If it's on time and at length, we have time to rework it.

And by extension, if it's late and too long, then there's no time to cut a well-written piece deftly and it gets whacked with a dull ax. If it's lousy and late, lipstick is slapped on that pig. The best scenario is when it is lousy and long; readers unconsciously thank the editor who cuts it.

And if it is all three, someone gets a new one chewed.

These are the kinds of useful things I learn when I drift out of the tower. Scary, huh?

I've always been interested in the inherent conflict between politics and good government. Allen Johnson's interview with political handler Bill Burckley is the latest illustration that good politics doesn't beget good government. Burckley says about blogs:

I enjoy reading them but my advice to any potential candidate is don't ever blog.... People get sloppy when they blog.

The inference I draw is that constituents might be told something that is impolitic. If government is of the people, then shouldn't government and its policy makers be more transparent? Shouldn't they be proud of their actions and decisions and deliberations rather than veiled and quiet? Shouldn't they let their opinions and leanings be known so that constituents can give them feedback and vet their ideas?

Is it harder to get elected when voters know what you really think? I'm not so sure. Granted, it may be harder when political handlers twist what you say, but I'm not ready to restrict freedom of speech. But running government -- and politics -- is a rough business. You aren't going to make everyone happy, ever. So why not say openly what you are thinking?

From an important post by Jeff Jarvis: Why should we be asking for information about and from our government? The government should have to ask to keep things from us. Government information -- every act of government on our behalf -- should be free by default. We must insist on an aggressive ethic of openness. The exceptions should be rare: the personal business of citizens, national security, ongoing criminal investigations and court cases (while they are ongoing), and little else.

Imagine the possibilities.

Jarvis also writes about blogging.

Government officials and agencies should blog. This ethic of openness should go beyond official documents and files. Openness should be part of the work habit of government officials and conversation with constituents should be an ethic of government. The open blog is merely a tool and a symbol for this -- and a more efficient tool, I'll add, than individual letters and phone calls.

We had one city council member who blogged. She was defeated by a candidate handled by Burckley. Now we have no council member or city government official who actively blog. Many of us are awaiting the transparency pledged by candidates during last fall's election campaign to take root. With a few exceptions, closed meetings still seem to be the rule.

That may be good politics, but it's not good government.

Update: Ed's take.

The N&O's public editor, Ted Vaden, discussed that paper's coverage of a visit by Barack Obama to Fayetteville last week. He mentions that the N&O solicited questions for Obama from readers, three of which were posed to the candidate by the N&O's longtime political reporter.

I have mixed feelings about that. It's great to give readers more ownership of the coverage, and their questions were good ones. But that also meant that Christensen had less time to ask his own questions.

I don't know about you, but in a fly-by interview with the possible next president of the United States I want the questions asked by a 30-year political reporter.

I know this is preaching to the choir, but I was thinking/hoping we were beyond deferring to the superior question-asking of the 30-year vet. (Hmmm...I'm a 30-year vet.) Fortunately, the news leadership at the N&O is. Senior Editor Linda Williams said:

Why should the professional journalists be the only people who get to decide what questions are important? I think we're beyond the point where just journalists get to decide what the important questions are and who gets to ask them.

With that sentiment in mind, Obama is coming here on Wednesday. I don't know that we will get an interview with him, but if we are, what questions should we ask?

And given that Clinton is coming somewhere in North Carolina on Thursday -- her camp is not saying where -- the same goes for her if she comes around here.

From the Readership Institute last week: Celebrity news seldom pops up among the topics of local readership studies. The celebrity television shows are facing ratings issues, and the ratings for awards shows like the Oscars are a shadow of their former selves. While there is a flurry of questions from newspapers about celebrity news in newspapers, the celebrity magazines are in a death plunge.

From Women's Wear Daily today: Jennifer Lopez's twin babes helped people.com break records in terms of traffic to its Web site on Thursday, the day the issue hit newsstands. People.com hit an all-time high of four million daily unique visitors who viewed the first picture of babies Max and Emme online from the magazine's exclusive photo shoot with Lopez and husband Marc Anthony.

J-Lo's babies won't be on the front page of the paper or the Website; we agree with the Readership Institute that the daily newspaper (or its Website) isn't the place people looking for that sort of info go. Still, 4 million visitors provides a pretty good parachute from the death plunge. With Branjolina and Jessica pregnant, the future is bright!

Ned Cline, former managing editor of the News & Record, has been named by Gov. Easley to a panel to review of policies concerning the retention of e-mail messages.

Ned retired in 1998, I think, after a career as political reporter for us and the Charlotte Observer, editorial writer and editor -- he was M.E. when I was hired in 1985. Since then, he's written books about Joseph Bryan and former state Sen. Marshall Rauch.

I hope the governor knows what he is doing.

Short story here.

A reader called to complain that we didn't mark the 4,000th American death in Iraq on the front page yesterday. (Actually, we published a blurb on the front with the story on page A7.) There's a great deal of discussion about newspaper play of this story on media sites.

A number of factors go into decisions about the front page, and they vary in importance from day to day. They have also changed over the past 10 to 20 years.

On national stories -- stories that get big play from television and online -- a key question I ask is, what new can we add to readers' understanding? If the answer is not much, the story has a hard time climbing onto the front page.

Thank, among other things, the death of the 24-hour news cycle. The reports of the 4,000th American death were on the TV news and Internet throughout the day on Sunday. By the time our Monday paper hit the driveway, I'm thinking most people knew the story. (In Sunday's paper, we published a story saying the number of deaths had hit 3,996 and 4,000 was imminent.)

In addition, the days in which the front page is a record of the day's most momentous events have passed. We want the front page to add information/insight/value to people's lives. The number of times that the typical reader scans the front page and thinks, I know that already, should be minimal. That's one reason we emphasize local news over national and world news on the front. It doesn't mean we don't care, which the caller about the American death speculated. It simply means that telling you something you already know doesn't help you or us.

We watch television and know what stories they track. We know what stories are "most read" and "most e-mailed" online. Attention spans are short. When something has been out for much of the day, it loses its value quickly. Newspapers must be sensitive to that.

That is why we don't have Clinton's misspeaking about her time in Bosnia on the front page, and why we haven't given a great deal of high visibility to Obama's minister. (No, it's not a liberal bias.)

There are exceptions, of course. We're still old-fashioned enough to give good play to a world-altering event. We also understand the historical value of a front page. But with news as a commodity -- free just about everywhere -- then the newspaper must add value.

A writer wonders why we refer to the highway that is being constructed around Greensboro as the Outer Loop when it should be called Painter Boulevard.

Our electronic archives go back to Jan. 1, 1990. Not surprisingly, the first reference to Painter Boulevard is Jan. 3, 1990. The headline on the letter to the editor: "Let's get on with Painter Blvd." Since then, Painter Boulevard has been mentioned in the paper more than 600 times, although there are some duplicates in that total.

But Painter Boulevard is fading from use.

Reporter Taft Wireback wrote about it last year about this time:

Writer No. 2 also wondered what happened to the loop's original name, Painter Boulevard, after P.C. Painter , the first Greensboro city manager. "Urban Loop" or "Outer Loop" sound so prosaic, this writer suggested.

But for much of the road's course around Greensboro, people will know it as neither Painter nor loop; a lot of it will simply be Interstate 40 or I-85/40.

Does anyone call Four Seasons Town Centre anything but the mall? Is that tall building downtown the JP building or the Lincoln Financial tower? Brown Summit or Browns Summit? Phill G. McDonald Plaza or governmental plaza?

Should we call it Painter or the Loop?

What does this say about our Web visitors?

According to Michael Grossman, our Web content guru, stories about Obama's visit here have been among the most read headlines every day. (It's No. 2 today.) The news yesterday that Clinton is coming to Winston barely cracked the Top 20. (It's 19.)

Of course, her visit is to Winston, not Greensboro, and the story was posted in the afternoon, so it didn't get a full day's traffic.

Does that mean that Obama has more support here? More support among our Web users? Readers automatically went to the Journal's site? Maybe supporters who know how to get a story about their candidate on the "most viewed" list?

It'll be interesting to see if Bill Clinton's visit Friday gets more traffic that Hillary's.

Of course, putting it into perspective, the story that is No. 1 to Obama's No.2? Gibsonville Police are looking for a woman who shot and wounded her live-in boyfriend after an argument Monday night.

Do you think we did enough with Barack Obama's visit?

Update: And video.

Best story?

With NCAA tournament time upon us, the big question for Sen. Barack Obama was about basketball. Who won the basketball game he played in February against North Carolina's former Sen. John Edwards?

"(H)e's got an interesting game. He doesn't have much range, but from about 14 to 16 feet, he does not miss. So when I took it outside, beyond the 3-point line, he couldn't go out there. But he hit like eight in a row from 14 to 16 (feet), and that midrange jumper was tough."

On to Clinton! (But we probably won't have a piece about her basketball game.)

Journalists are on heightened alert this week. More on that in a moment.

We're late on the death of hall of fame radio disk jockey Jack Armstrong. And it is a good example of why sometimes it is more important to make sure you're not wrong than simply ending up right.

Reporter Joe Killian saw the note about Armstrong's death on Cone's blog Monday night. He began tracking it into Tuesday, interviewing those who knew Armstrong -- getting some good remembrances -- and putting together a news obit. Problem was, he couldn't find anyone with first-hand knowledge that the larger-than-life radio personality was dead. No funeral home. No family member. He saw the MySpace announcement and tributes but, you know, it was a MySpace message. Could have been true, could have been a hoax. An obituary is too important to take the chance.

With no verification, we wouldn't publish.

We finally got e-mail verification from Armstrong's daughter Wednesday afternoon, and published what we had online then, and in the paper this morning.

Tuesday is April Fool's Day. People often try to punk newspapers, with some success. Radio DJs are notorious for April Fool's pranks.

"I hate that we didn't have it the first day, but I wouldn't have wanted to run it without confirmation," Joe says. Exactly right.

His obituary, published today, is here.

Update: A colleague asked if I was suggesting that Ed should have checked before he published. Not at all. Ed told readers his source and linked to the MySpace page. Our publication standards are different than bloggers. If the obit had turned out to be bogus, Ed could have corrected it immediately. Published in the newspaper, of course, we would have been stuck in a 24-hour news cycle.

Is that being old-fashioned?

Andy Bechtel has a good post about the media's perpetuation of a cliche -- Tobacco Road.

Changing times aside, my main problem with "Tobacco Road" is that I have never heard it used in real life. In casual conversation, no one has ever asked me: "Did you see the game last night? That's how it goes on Tobacco Road." And believe me, the topic of "the game last night" comes up a lot.

I remember the first time I heard the reference, outside of the 1932 Erskine Caldwell novel. I was a reporter in Raleigh and an editor inserted it into the lead paragraph of an economy story I had written. Actually he rewrote the lead to refer to both Tobacco Road and King Cotton.

We can certainly grind a term into a cliche in no time.

I didn't save the clip.

Bill Walsh at Blogslot points to the first season of Lou Grant at Hulu. Lou Grant premiered in 1977 when I was on my first reporting job and it caught the magic of being a journalist. The reporters were self-absorbed idealists (as was I at the time). The photographer was aptly nicknamed "Animal." I especially enjoyed the depiction of the executive editor as a milquetoast yes man who sucked up to the publisher, which was my view of editors. At the time.

The opening montage is a classic in itself: A bird sitting on a tree branch chirps. The tree is cut down. A load of felled trees is taken to the mill. Newsprint is made. The newsroom characters are introduced. The newspaper comes off the press. A carrier tosses one in a puddle, another on a rooftop. A reader reads the paper with coffee, then tears a page out and slides it into the bottom of a bird cage. The last scene: The bird in the cage chirps.

Classic. Pretty much the way it works 30 years later.

Bill refers to a darker scene in episode 71:

Art Donovan: "Mrs. Pynchon is very interested in endangered species."
Lou Grant: "Yeah. That's why she owns a newspaper."

If the future of news is free, then why charge $20 to see its past?

That's what I was thinking when I read that it will cost a double sawbuck to visit the Newseum when it opens in Washington next month.

That could be a problem. I like history, I like museums and I love the news business. But in a city filled with history and museums -- am I going to visit one devoted to the history of news? Particularly when the Smithsonian is free? And if they aren't going to get someone like me....

The Newseum's VP says it's not aimed at me, which is probably good: "Our mission is helping the public understand how important a free press is to a functioning democracy," says Paul Sparrow.

I understand the importance of a free press. I just wish so many media organizations had not spent $435 million to do it. I know we're a self-absorbed lot, but doesn't this feel over the top?

At a time when the newspaper industry is in distress -- and newspaper companies paid big money to support the Newseum -- I question the priorities.

There's no reason that journalism shouldn't have a museum all its own. There are sure a lot of less important topics with their own museums. (Don't make fun of the Gopher Hole Museum, either.)

Understanding the past is fine, but it is the future that most of us are interested in understanding.

Update: Mark Potts smartly weighs in with more questions.

Photographer Jerry Wolford and editor Mike Kernels won a second place award in the National Press Photographers Association's Best of Photojournalism 2008 competition for their documentary video "The Dragon and the G-Man."

As you can tell by the caliber of entrants and entries, the NPPA contest is a biggie.