News-Record.com

What a week! First, Dumbledore is determined to be gay. Then, Jim Neal, a Senatorial candidate, confirms he is gay. Now, today, we publish a story about Bob Page, a recipient of this year's NCCJ Brotherhood Citation award, on the front page. Page is gay and has been out of the closet for years.

I guess sometimes it gets to be too much. One caller, who identified himself as Carl, let us know that he would no longer read the paper. He said, in so many words, that we shouldn't promote the homosexual lifestyle by writing about it without the appropriate condemnation.

When we wrote about Bob Page and his partner adopting a child in 2000 we were showered with cancellations. Not so much with today's story. Maybe times are changing. Then again, maybe we've already lost the readers who might complain along those lines. (We also got some positive comments in 2000.)

Anyway, I suspect that publishing stories like this is a reason some people consider us "liberal." If so, I plead guilty.

Two stories:

My friend Sam Zealy was killed last week in a traffic accident. I got a phone call about it late Thursday night from a friend of the family. We had a story about the accident online late Thursday and it was updated first thing Friday, but we didn't include his name either time because police had not released it.

Victims of the Ocean Isle fire tragedy are identified in today's story from The State newspaper. The State didn't get the information from the police, who hadn't released it. The paper credited "other officials, family members, friends and other sources."

Why identify one set of victims and not the other? The Ocean Isle fire has gotten national media coverage since it happened Sunday morning. There is intense public interest. Because the victims were identified only as attending South Carolina and Clemson, tens of thousands of people -- students, friends, parents, other relatives, alums -- were left wondering, who? The paper could answer that for those of us who didn't check Facebook and MySpace.

Sam's death, while tragic, was smaller in scope. The old-fashioned grapevine moved quickly. My guess is that lots of people knew Friday morning. I don't know why the police hesitated in releasing his name -- his family certainly knew -- but out of respect and caution, we waited, too. There didn't seem to be a public hunger for the identification.

But I could be wrong about that. Consistency in policy is something I like. It makes decisions easier, and it sets forth clarity when others are deliberating. This isn't consistency. On the other hand, it's a judgment call, which I also like.

Want to help clarify?

Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill, told the audience at the annual Conference on Public Administration that the major newspapers in the state bore some responsibility for the scandal at the state Department of Transportation. (Doesn't matter which scandal; there have been enough to go around.)

Ferrell's point was that when newspapers stop assigning reporters specifically to cover the department and the Board of Transportation, then the shenanigans of corrupt and inept bureaucrats flourish in the darkness of neglect. Consistent coverage can shine a light into the darkness.

Disregard the fact that when Ferrell and I were at the News & Observer in the '80s, the paper had a staffer assigned to the DOT and one of the big stories he wrote about was a statewide highway bid-rigging scandal. But I hear Ferrell's point. (And I enjoy his assumption, proved true over the centuries, that money and corruption go hand-in-hand.)

It is not a new complaint. Ever since President Bush began making his WMD case, charges have been made about the news media's failures in reporting the truth. Truth be told, it wasn't that difficult even in 2002 to find dissenting opinions about the case for war. But the point still stands: More coverage means less monkey business.

Welcome to the world of hard choices. It's always been this way. We don't cover everything. We don't even cover what we used to. Newspaper staffs are getting smaller, yet the number of meetings and events, of commissions and government agencies grows. Partly as a result, newspapers are also moving away from devoting as much energy to covering "buildings." Not only are there fewer reporters, but there is evidence that readers aren't as interested in what traditionally is produced by that coverage: stories about meetings and bureaucracy. For every big scandal story, there are 100 smaller process stories required to get there.

And it gets harder and harder to devote the resources where they are needed, which, honestly, is about everywhere.

Even the scandal stories don't always strike readership gold. Case in point: Reporter Taft Wireback wrote about the wasted money spent by school systems on recycled school bus tires. It made for a potent combination: wasted tax money and child safety. But if it resonated with readers, we didn't hear from many of them.

So, we are forced to make decisions where to place our bets: What will benefit the audience the most? Is it important? What can we do that others aren't doing? Will it save tax money? WIll it prevent or right an injustice?

Do we do enough? No. Not even close.

How do you watch over things when the watchdog has to cover acres and acres of corruption and countless miscreants? Employ honest public servants? Well, that's a start, and most of them are. But it only takes one.

Journalistic options:

* Citizens? I like this social network idea by Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.Net.

Maybe a beat reporter could do a way better job if there was a "live" social network connected to the beat, made up of people who know the territory the beat covers, and want the reporting on that beat to be better.

It makes sense when you consider the potential of the two-way Web and the inevitable march of the thinking world online. We're trying to pull together a proposal to participate.

* Ryan Sholin has an interesting idea with ReportingOn, as I said here.

* Citizens can and do report independently on all sorts of issues and government agencies. But the research is time-consuming and occasionally expensive. And it is difficult for most people to get enough mass so that people will pay attention.

Yet, in the NewAssignment.Net mode, Douglas McGill describes what he has learned from teaching basic journalism skills to citizens.

The insistence on telling the absolute truth that journalism requires, often forces students to reveal personal knowledge beyond what they had ever dared to publicly share. One of my students, a retired business consultant, wrote an article decribing his inner struggle at becoming a peace activist while his son was serving in the Army in Iraq. His story created a sense of solidarity in the room that was mystically strong. This is perhaps a microcosm of how journalism could ideally work in society, creating community day by day. "My view of journalism has changed," one student emailed me after the course. "At its best, it serves like an amazing expansion of our personal experience, bringing truth into our consciousness." Bingo.

Encouraging and enabling that Bingo Moment is the challenge in this time of tight and tightening resources is one we must figure out. Our future depends upon it.

Less than a month ago, we published some reader tips on dealing with the drought, conserving water and still keeping your plants alive. More than one reader suggested catching shower water and dishwater and using it in the garden. Makes sense.

This morning, after reading a similar story in The Charlotte Observer, we published a story saying that practice is illegal.

Hmmm. Our bad. But the idea has been around since at least the 2002 drought when we published handy Q&A with city water folks, including this answer:

If you want to water flower gardens or other landscaped areas around your house, you must recycle `"gray water" from inside.

"Use discretion," says Williams, coordinator of Greensboro's water conservation program. "Gray water can be dangerous.'"

And illegal. Who knew?

Boy, this is the kind of paper that makes community boosters cringe. A public school teacher had a criminal record. Toll roads are in our future. Man who may have scammed millions commits suicide. Investigation into embezzlement at the High Point Housing Authority. A&T reassigns its athletic director.

Of course, we have more positive stuff: cutting down a Christmas tree; getting a local Apple store; a family safe after a house fire.

But still today's emphasis on crime, corruption and cost sets a tone that boosters tell me hurts the image of the city to outsiders. It is certainly not the sort of city I see when I'm out and about, that's for sure. But bad things happened, and they are important for people to know about. (We weren't even the first to report some of them.) They don't define the community, by any means, but they are part of it. And tomorrow's paper will be different.

Could be worse. The top story on the Web site is "High Point man charged in Internet sex sting."

Washington Post Editor Leonard Downie takes a shot at Romenesko for not being discriminating enough in the sorts of stories it links to. You can read it all for yourself. It's one of those things that is a huge dust-up for 24 hours and then disappears because, really, who outside the Beltway cares?

Still, it's rare to see a big-league newspaper editor raise a question about Romenesko's judgment. And a fair question it is. Romenesko exerts outsized influence over the journalistic discussion because so many journalists read him. He's like everyone used to think the New York Times was -- whatever its editors put on A1 influenced news judgment at papers across the country. What Romenesko chooses to link to -- and chooses not to link to -- makes a difference, too. And these days, it's a constant drumbeat of bad news and press criticism.

Romenesko links to this blog often enough. Sometimes I solicit it because it means my traffic goes up. But I haven't figured out a rhyme or reason to when he does and when he doesn't. My guess is that Downie and editors everywhere wonder the same thing.

Here is Romenesko himself describing a day in the life (pdf, page 5).

I've come to the same conclusion as Doug Clifton, retired editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer: Its strength is breadth. Its flaw is indiscriminate selections. Third rate stuff from an alternative can be given equal weight to a serious piece in AJR or CJR....Because it is so widely read by journalists the echo effect can be overwhelming. I’m convinced Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd lost their jobs because they couldn’t escape the Romenesko undertow. That said, it provides an essential and immediate forum for discussion of important journalistic issues.

Romenesko is mostly a personal Web site and as such, he can post whatever he pleases. Sure his judgment is goofy sometimes. Sure it dwells more on the negative than the positive. But I'm sure Downie realized that he was acting just like the reader of the Washington Post who complains about that newspaper's judgment on a story about, say, Bush and Iraq.

It's a funny, even awkward, position for a newspaper editor to be in.

I don't recall the photo spread in the New York Times fashion magazine referenced by public editor Clark Hoyt in his column today. The magazine apparently has some photos of a 17-year-old model that were considered inappropriate by some, including Hoyt.

Whatever. I've commented on fashion photo spreads in the Times before.

To me, the more interesting point the column illustrates is the disagreement among top editors of the Times about what's publishable and what's not. The editor of the Times thinks the photos are OK. The editor in charge of standards at the Times does not. The editor of the magazine does. Hoyt does not.

Many people think newsrooms operate in lock-step -- a liberal conspiracy!!!??? -- and that decisions are simple and consensual. Hardly. While I don't know the Times hierarchy, my guess is that, like most newsrooms, such disagreements are considered healthy and part of the operating structure.

Top story of the year? Virginia Tech killings.
No. 2: Mortgage crisis
Iraq comes in at 3 and the presidential race slips into the top 10 at No. 9.

I didn't vote in the survey because I didn't see the point. While I see the value of such a ranking back in, say, the 80s, I can't imagine how relevant it is now when so many papers, big and small, are focusing on local stories. Seems to me as if it has outlived its usefulness.

In any case, I don't have a strong opinion of the rankings, although I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have voted Tech No. 1 so that the memory of Cho wouldn't get the satisfaction. Hmmm, Putin is Time's Man of the Year, but he doesn't scratch on the AP survey?

But I love this: Among stories about pop culture celebrities, the saga surrounding the death of Anna Nicole Smith got the most votes, finishing in 32nd place ahead of such stories as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the departure of Tony Blair as British prime minister, and the military crackdown in Myanmar.

"Anyone who picks the Anna Nicole Smith story in the Top Ten should be beaten with sticks," commented Mike Bailey, managing editor of The Courier News in Elgin, Ill.

He's right. Anyone who picks Anna Nicole over Britney is an idiot.

Every year newspapers publish "the year in review" during the week between Christmas and New Year's. I rarely read them because they tell me things I already know, which pretty much makes them irrelevant. Do I need to remember that Virginia Tech was rocked by a massacre or that Anna Nicole died or that the Red Sox won the pennant?

Do you read them?

Would it have any more value if we wrote local year-in-review stories? If we reminded you that City Council told the police chief to do something about gangs, and that Skybus is coming here, and that while the Grimsley girls basketball team lost in the state championship game, the Dudley boys football team won?

I don't think so, but I'm probably too close to it.

Personally, I prefer the stories that tell me what's coming up, which are harder to do, but at least tell me something I don't know.

Psst...the dirty little secret is that newspapers write those stories to fill space during the one week of the year in which news takes breather -- unless you're in Pakistan -- and filling up the paper with quality content is tougher than getting a Hannah Montana ticket at face value.

*** I'm not counting the top 10 best stories: best movies, best books, best CDs and the like. Those have value to me.

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

Some excerpts of e-mails I've gotten:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plus, we had photos.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leave comments there.

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

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

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

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

Besides, there are too many important stories.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that apparently still sticks in Skip's craw.

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

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

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

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

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

So, is the amount important to you?

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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?

A reader called today to give us grief us grief for the photos about gang tags that ran on our editorial page today. She thought we were promoting tagging in the sense that gang members would be motivated to paint gang symbols more often if they thought their work would be published.

I bring that up because one reason we don't write much about April Fool's pranks is for the same reason: they may reinforce the prankster and give them credit when they deserve, well, none. Riding to work this morning, I listened to one radio show doing an interview with a government official that sounded legitimate until you thought about the premise for about two seconds and remembered what day it is.

We aren't alone in our fuddyduddiness. Is that a sign of good sense or paternalistic news judgment? Wouldn't writing about the goofy pranks lend a bit of desperately needed humor to the paper? Or would it contribute to the "dumbing down" sentiment people sometimes have?

We don't pull the April Fool's wool over our readers' eyes with our own pranks because we don't want to contribute to the confusion. Besides, we've found it is hard to commit humor in the newspaper. The comics page is proof of that. (That's a little joke.) We aren't alone, either.

Of course, it could also be that most of the April Fool's pranks are not all that interesting or newsworthy. A good, public one -- say, getting a news release published that said President Bush endorsed Kay Hagan over Elizabeth Dole or that Terry Grier had changed his mind about leaving -- now that would be a different story.

I may be wrong, but it strikes me that the articles that appear in nearly every newspaper every day that describe a particular day's stock-market movements are pretty much worthless.

That's from a post at Freakonomics yesterday.

Howard Weaver piles on a bit: I think the honest answer is that collective ignorance about markets and economics leads the press to a herd mentality in which we all just repeat what a handful of business writers tell us.

I've thought the same thing recently as I've watched the talking heads at ESPN and CBS talk about the NCAA tournament. Three weeks ago they said (as did we) that we shouldn't count on all four No. 1 seeds making the Final Four because it's never happened. So what do we have? We heard that Carolina's weakness is defense. Hmmm, not the games I've watched. And the chances anyone gave Davidson? Ha!

You can add your own examples of "expert commentary."

OK, it's not exactly the same because one involves "explanations" for an occurrence and the other involves predictions of behavior. Still, there is a feel of herd mentality and worthlessness to both.

As part of our bicentennial coverage, we have digitized some of the more historically significant papers in our archives.

News librarian Diane Lamb explains:

This assignment was like going into a candy story that has all your favorites but you are told you can choose only 2 pieces.

Stay tuned -- we hope to scan more of our historical microfilm in the future.

We have looked into digitizing the total archives. Way too expensive...now.

It is interesting to wander around in these editions, looking at how news judgment, design and advertising styles have changed over the years.

When the various markets tumble as they've been doing lately, we often get calls from real estate agents concerned about housing market, politicians concerned about joblessness and members of the public concerned about the overall business climate. Their issue is that stories about the depressed economy are a self-fulfilling prophecy, scaring consumers who then won't spend.

Chris Roush at UNC and Talking Biz News points to some valuable information from Andrew Leckey, director of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University.

"Even though more depressing words have been written in the blogosphere, on other online sites and in print than were written in the Depression, it isn't changing the course of economic events.

“"Journalists don't make recessions," Leckey said.

At what point does covering the presidential candidates' visits become repetitive? How many times does Hillary come into the region before her visit doesn't make big news? Or, better still, how many times do Bill or Chelsea campaign here before they assume the mantle of "routine?" (Both are coming to N.C. again this week.)

We did not write a news story about Hillary's second visit to Winston-Salem Friday, although we have video of her appearance. For the paper, we opted instead for Columnist Lorraine Ahearn's take on Sunday.

Of course, we covered both Clinton(s) and Obama when they came to the region the first time a few weeks ago. And it is a wonderful thing for civic engagement for presidential candidates to care so deeply about North Carolina (democratic) voters for the first time in many seasons.

But unless the candidates come into the counties where we sell papers we are probably going to let the AP send us reports. Yes, we miss the possibility of some gaff. Yes, we miss something amiss occurring. Yes, we miss the possibility, however slim, slight and non-existent, that the candidate may make news.

But we can use our reporters for other stories, and the AP does send reports of the candidates' visits.

Is it wrong? Should we sent a reporter and photographer if Obama or Clinton skip Greensboro but return to Winston or, say, Durham?

An editor asked me this morning why we were not giving this homicide of the A&T student the same visibility in the newspaper we gave this homicide of the UNC student body president.

Stories about Eve Carson's murder in March were on the front page a couple times. Stories about Derek Hodge have been on the Local front.

Both deaths are tragic for all the reasons you can think of. But for both philosophical and procedural reasons, the two were not judged the same way when we're putting the paper together. At least, that's how I responded to the editor. Here's why the difference in the coverage:

* Eve Carson was student body president and held a variety of high-profile positions within the university community. She was a mover and shaker who made news often by the things she did well before her murder.
* Her murder went national quickly, creating an interest in the story well beyond the Triangle or even North Carolina.
* A murder in "idyllic Chapel Hill" seems less common and therefore more newsworthy than one in Greensboro.
* The Chapel Hill police held regular news conferences and were relatively forthcoming with details and progress. That's not how Greensboro police do things.
* The case moved fast. Homicide of student then photos of suspected perps then arrests...all over the course of a few days. The progress created a sense of momentum.

But Hodge was a student at a local university, which carries a lot of weight here. Should we raise the visibility of his case?

Traditionally, newspapers shy away from giving last-minute controversial political statements high visibility on Election Day. Certainly not on the front page; probably tucked inside the paper, if we publish at all. We're old fashioned that way. Several reasons:

* The statements often cannot be vetted in time
* Publishing on the day people vote risks giving the statement more influence that it deserves
* The "other side" doesn't have much time to respond to the "hot" story

If I could do it over again, this story would have been inside the paper today. (It was on the Local front.) A week ago, an article about two school board members urging voters to vote down school bonds would have been worth notice. Today, it violates at least two of the reasons above. Unfortunately, they successfully played us. It's not a mortal sin; more of a low-grade venial one. Still.

Allen has more. Right now this feels wrong, like a political sucker punch..

Charlotte, Raleigh, Winston-Salem and Asheville papers all put stories about the cyclone in Myanmar on their front pages this morning. So did many of the newspapers around the world. From the Newseum's front page analysis of the day's papers: Numbers make the difference. Yesterday, when the death toll stood at 350 for the cyclone in Burma (aka Myanmar), a few U.S. dailies carried the story on Page One. Today, with the guesstimated toll in the multiple thousands, it's Page One news on an international basis.

We published a promo on the front with a small photo, but put the story on page A9. A reader questioned that news judgment.

Certainly, playing the story on Page One was the safe bet. I know 10,000 deaths anywhere is tragic and big news. Yet I read about it online yesterday. The story was played prominently on the evening's network news programs yesterday. That story got even older -- and worse -- overnight and today as the death toll is now estimated to be more than 22,000.

We try to publish stories on Page One that are new to readers and/or have a direct connection to their lives. We want stories to be fresh and to avoid repeating what people have seen online or on television all day. Our election package today isn't necessarily fresh information, but it has a direct connection to citizens.

For the record, Myanmar isn't going to be on the front page tomorrow, either.

Wednesday update: Scott Karp has a somewhat related piece about redundant news stories that is well worth reading.

Seth Godin reminds us that William Randolph Hearst built his newspaper empire by understanding that the goal of newspapers is to sell newspapers, not to report the news. That was 110 years ago, but still....

Godin adapts that idea to news Web sites. The product they sell is drama. He makes the point effectively using a screen grab from CNN and big fat green check marks.

I'm not going to disagree with him, either. We do sell drama. We know what happens when all we give the people is spinach. (Those that eat it become strong like Popeye -- OK, a little misshapen, too. Those who don't, well, you have Bluto.) We want to grab attention. We have a bias in favor of drama, which is a nicer way of saying we have a bias in favor of conflict.

I don't see anything wrong with it either. Looking at the CNN example, the headlines don't pander. They don't link to nude celebrity photos or crash diets. As Seth notes, they simply emphasize drama on the political front.

For comparison purposes, our Web front. It probably doesn't market enough.

In the old days, when a tornado spun through the region at midnight or thereabouts, newspapers were a journalistic casualty. Because of deadlines, you can't get much of anything into the next day's paper. Your first real coverage comes 36 hours after the storm strikes. I've lived through those days, and I felt forlorn because of the missed opportunity. Big news happens in your town, and you are dead in the water.

No longer.

Now, the worst timing for a newspaper is the best timing for the newspaper Web site. When the tornado struck Guilford County Friday morning, we didn't get anything in the newspaper, but we posted what we knew until about 2 a.m. Friday and started up again at about 5:45 a.m. Reporters and photographers posted news updates, victims' stories, photos and maps throughout the day and into Friday evening. John Newsom, our main online reporter, Twittered.

Meanwhile, because so much had already been written and posted, we could plan the next day's newspaper with much more information than we usually have. We knew exactly what sort of information and visuals we had. We watched television to determine what people already knew and didn't know. We focused our newspaper coverage on giving them new information, providing perspective on how the storm formed and where it went, and showing photographs.

In the end -- now that we have more than one method of news distribution -- it worked out well for both the newspaper and the Web site. (Putting aside the death and destruction of the storm itself.) Had the storm hit an hour earlier, we would have gotten a story into the Friday newspaper and patted ourselves on the back for our hustle. I wish we could have. But, to be honest, I know it probably would have been out of date the moment it landed on driveways Friday morning.

If there are any journalists left out there who don't understand or appreciate the value of taking your journalism digital -- where people can get it even if the paper isn't scheduled to be delivered for 24 hours -- then our experience Friday should be a lesson to them. Readers seemed to appreciate it, too.