News-Record.com

Broadcast newsrooms were also on July 4th skeleton staff when "Senator No" kicked it. Cowinky-dink?

Dear John:

First of all, I apologize for posting this comment under the unrelated Jesse Helms post, but I could not load the page with your comments about newspapers going digital. As if to illustrate my point about some of the things I am about to say, I received a "stack overflow" error from your site after trying to load it several times. Good luck fixing your "beta" website.

You will probably not reply to these questions and comments directly, but after reading your newspaper for literally decades, I feel I have a right to at least pose them.

--Why does the N&R have less local news now than it did 30 years ago? Don't believe me? Take a trip to your newspaper morgue (if you still have one) and look over issues of the Greensboro Record. Arguably, the staff in 1978 did more with less and reported on more local news here in GBO than you do now.

--Wire feature articles: Why do you post so many wire stories without even taking five minutes to make a local connection? An article you ran today about Baby Boomers reentering the workplace could have at least a local photo and caption. Granted, you can't do it everytime but if you're going to fill the news hole with fluff wire pieces at least try it for a few of them, especially in business stories, where you rarely have any local pieces anymore.

--AP articles: While we're on the subject, I realize that all daily newspapers have a dream of being USA Today or perhaps the NY Times in publishing national/international news, but perhaps the realization that much of what you publish in the "A" section was on the web about 30 hours ago or on TV news about 18 hours ago would be a good guide as to helping to make content choices. I just saw a "photos from around the world" section that was on Yahoo two days ago. If you'd like to keep losing subscribers, keep publishing items that are not local even to this continent, much less to Greensboro and Guilford County. The only news advantage you have over Google News, CNN, etc. is that you provide local content not found anywhere else.

--Competition: I was somewhat shocked that you mentioned the other day that you felt that the Rhino Times is not a competitor. I am not a big fan of their obviously biased coverage, but Rhino, Yes, and whatever else is out there is taking both readers and advertisers away from your base. In addition, they are both beating you on some exclusives and running longer articles on some of the investigative pieces. It doesn't take a newspaper editor to figure that out.

As libel lawsuits may demonstrate, you may not consider them as your "peers" and the breadth of coverage is vastly different, but I'm sure your bottom line would be better if you truly had no "competition." If your newspaper company truly considers them as NOT having an impact on your paper, then perhaps that explains some of your newspaper's recent layoffs. (Please feel free to insert your traditional "no, it's the Internet causing us problems" line here, while you bury your head in the sand.) Local papers are beating you on some levels of local coverage and they are certainly taking away from your revenues.

--Internet1: Speaking of the Internet, do you guys have a coherent plan for your website? After experiencing many many many problems over the last two years, I am still shocked that a daily newspaper can't seem to get it together in terms of back-end server issues. I mean, does it really take several days to switch over to a new website? I can't even find any of the old articles that I saved the URL's for previously. I've seen smaller papers that have sites with less functionality but at least they deliver the news in a quick-loading fashion that doesn't crash the computer 4 out of 10 times. Also, the Beta site doesn't seem much better than the old one, at least from what I can tell. I was trying to email today's Richard Petty piece to someone, but I couldn't even find out how to email an article. It's somewhat pathetic.

--Internet2: Why does the N&R (and every other newspaper) absolutely refuse to link to other news sources? Is it out of pride that you absolutely refuse to acknowledge that other sources of news exist? If the Winston-Salem Journal had a great story that you're not covering (and is of interest to GBO readers), why not link to it? For that matter, why not link to breaking news at Fox8 or WFMY if you don't have a story up yet? Become the portal and people will come to your site. Example: Google News. Or I guess you could continue to ignore other media outlets.

--Internet3: Lastly, where's your plan to monetize the web? I see one advertisement on your website -- that's it. Are you planning on running the website for free until the print edition just coughs and sputters to a slow decline in circulation? Where's your restaurant listings or list of car dealers? I didn't see them. Do you even have a plan for putting advertisers on the web? (Doubtful). Do you realize that it's probably key to your survival as a news entity?

--Last comment: Over many years, I have had the chance to say hello to some of the News & Record's reporters who have all been hard-working, dedicated folks, who honestly care about Greensboro, while getting paid meager wages. Jim Schlosser is a perfect example of this type of selfless dedication.

But in regards to running the business itself, I cannot tell if some of the missteps in recent years from the News & Record stem from actual incompetence in the higher levels of management or arrogance or both. Any newspaper in any town is a vital institution that is key to all of its citizens, so I hope that your management will someday realize that your paper needs to shape up. People have been grumbling for years, if not decades, as they watch the N&R decline.

If you choose to keep ignoring the problems, perhaps a competitor (or non-competitor, as you put it) will be glad to come along and show you what people want to see more often -- LOCAL NEWS. Good night and good luck...

PS: It took two tries before your website would post this comment without an error message.

Excuse me! The Rhino is bias? Do you know any newspaper that is not bias? The Rhino may be a little right of center. The rest of these newspapers are left of Berkeley.

I'm sorry you chose to be anonymous Greensboroite. Your topics cry for an oral discussion rather than written, but I'll give it a shot.

-- The Greensboro Record? You mean the afternoon paper that lost readers until it was shuttered in the mid-80s? A closer comparison for us now is the Daily News, and I would call you on your local news assertion had you made that one. The Record comparision is apt, though. It closed because of the changing of society and the market. Morning papers are facing a similar change.

-- We attempt to localize wire stories when it seems relevant, but localizing wire stories takes more time and effort -- to say nothing of causing us to have to hold the story for at least a day -- than you might think. On that baby boomers story you refer to, what is the real point of using the wire story but having a photo of a local person? It says it affects at least one person in town? I don't know that that delivers much value.

-- You're right about the national and world wire copy. We publish less of that than we did 20 years ago, that's for sure. Still, there are tens of thousands of our readers who don't use the Internet daily for news. I know, I hear from them every time I write about cutting that kind of "commodity" content. Almost daily in the feedback surveys we receive readers tell us that the front section should be reserved for national and world news. It's not our direction or our strategy, but it's clear that there are a great number of people out there who want it.

-- No question the Rhino is a competitor in terms of advertising, and to a lesser extent in terms of readers. We have many, many competitors. I don't think we're losing readers because of the Rhino.

-- Internet. Yes, we've had some problems. We're trying to get them fixed.

So, Jesse timed his clock-out to put it to the press? Hmmm...Okay.

John, we've seen this coming, maybe mentioned a thing or two here and there, but by and large, we've stood helplessly by, but, I'm just going to come out and say it; there are excellent meds now for the control of paranoid psychosis. If you hurry up, you may even be able to avail yourself of free samples at the shrink's office. Don't delay! Do it today!

Thanks for the advice, savage, but who are you to say it's paranoia?

Did anyone notice that the "Ann Landers" material on Sunday was an exact duplicate of what was published on Saturday. Did anyone see the missing piece in on Monday? Did anyone see a correction posted? It is hard to understand why you would run the same material twice. Unless someone tells me otherwise, I will chalk it up to employee(s) that just don't care.

Not sure what you're talking about, Joe. We don't have Ann Landers, but we do have Annie's Mailbox and there were different letters and answers both Saturday and Sunday.

Joe, now I got it. We sent out about 3,000 papers with one page that was not replaced from Saturday to Sunday. It apparently was an oversight in our pressroom.

There are, of course, many reasons mistakes happen other than not caring.

Thanks, I feel much better knowing the mistake
was in only a small portion of the run.