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My newspaper column

If all you read is the front page, you might think that last week was hard on Guilford County high schools.

* A teacher at Smith High School is suspended after insulting and cursing at students.
* A teacher at Dudley resigns after fighting with a student.
* Twelve students at Southern Guilford face suspensions and possible criminal charges for a fight at school.

But admittedly, the front page doesn't paint a true picture of what's happening in the high schools. Elsewhere we wrote about:

* The Dudley High School Thespians performed well enough to compete in the State High School Theater Festival last week.
* The National Honor Society of Northwest High School raised more than $1,500 for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
* The Early College at Guilford will raise money for the school at a book fair at Barnes & Noble at Friendly Center Dec. 14.

Those stories were shorter, and we published them in the Guilford Record and the Rock Creek Record, two publications we circulate in Guilford County.

So it is a fair question to ask why the bad news about the schools makes the front page so often.

My newspaper column

Nothing gets under the skin of an editor like publishing a mistake in a story. A mistake is worse than a missed story or getting beat by a competitor. Getting lectured by a windbag politician is even better than making a mistake in a story.

For the record, the big "important" errors are not the worst. Those are the small mistakes that have the greatest personal consequences: the misspelled names, the wrong dates, the transposition of digits in a phone number. They not only inconvenience people, they disrespect them, too.

That hit home last Sunday when we inadvertently substituted the name of Grimsley High School's second-string goalkeeper for the name of the starting keeper in a story about the boy's soccer team playing in the state championship.

I follow the Whirlies soccer team, and I know the first-string keeper, Will Curtis, and his parents. I opened the Sunday paper, hoping to read about a Grimsley victory, only to stop cold when the story referred to someone other than Will as the keeper.

My newspaper column
Earlier post and later post.

I'm no language maven.

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

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

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

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

My newspaper column

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

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

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

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

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

My newspaper column

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

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

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

I hope the newspaper reflects that, too.

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."

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."

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.

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.

My newspaper column

On July 20, 1909, one of the headlines on the front page of the Greensboro Daily News was: "Milk and water proper drinks for children; Educational department issues bulletin for use in schools; intoxicants and tobacco are poison to them."

Before you roll your eyes, remember this: it took 56 more years before the legislators required the Surgeon General's warning on cigarette packs.

The headline across the top of the Greensboro Record on April 3, 1936, was "Storm death toll reaches 12; more than 100 suffer injuries in catastrophes." A powerful tornado devastated downtown the night before.

On Feb. 2, 1960, there are 18 stories that started on the Record's front page. None of them referred to one of the most famous acts in Greensboro history: the sit-ins at the local Woolworth's. That story appeared on the front page of the second section.

My newspaper column

"Who are you going to vote for?" is almost as common a question in my household as "What's for dinner?"

With the May 6 primary looming, it is a darned good question. Not only are dozens of presidential, state and local candidates vying for your attention, but Guilford County voters must decide whether to approve a total of $671.6 million in bonds.

It can be a daunting, frustrating time for even the most engaged citizen.

My newspaper column

Every other week, I gather the newspapers at home, slide them into a brown grocery bag and drop them in the recycling bin.

Thousands of you do the same. In fact, 9,493 tons of newsprint were processed through the city of Greensboro’s recycling center in 2007. While the News & Record didn’t make up the total tonnage, my guess is that we had the lion’s share.

That's good, too. Recycling is not only an easy habit to acquire, it is civically important.

There once was a time that environmental activism earned you the name "tree hugger," which was often used derisively.

My newspaper column

Last Tuesday was an exciting day.

Participatory democracy worked overtime as Guilford County Democrats overwhelmingly endorsed Sen. Barack Obama and the county's voters approved bond issues for schools and a new jail.

Consequently, election stories dominated Tuesday's and Wednesday's front pages.

Do you know what the most-viewed story at News-Record.com on Tuesday was? A murder-suicide out of Union County, which is 100 miles away from here.