News-Record.com

Change is always a tough thing for most newspaper readers to handle. Even if you think you're making an improvement, many people disapprove just because it is different.

So, I wasn't expecting too many "attaboys" when we asked our readers' advisory network their thoughts on our new organization. The results pleased me.

* 69 people said they liked it.
* 49 people didn't care for it.
* 57 people expressed ambivalence, which, to me, puts them in the positive camp.

So I'm calling it 126 (70%) like it or are OK with it; 49 (30) don't. I'll take that.

Some didn't like the smaller weather package and others wanted more national and world news on the front page. We expected that reaction. That's pretty much it when it comes to specific content. But there were general comments:

* "I don't feel like I get as much news since they have combined the sections. Feel a little short changed, but understand due to economic times. Hard to handle less news but price increase all at the same time."
* "Makes it hard to share and read with my husband at the same time."
* "Do not like the sports pages combined with the Life section."

The negative reaction to the consolidation of all the news in one section was tepid, which was a bit of a surprise. Also surprising was that few people were bothered by the combination of Sports and Life on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Some positive comments:
* "I like having local news on the front page"
* I like it! Easier to read and eye catching."
* "I am getting used to the new setup with sections being condensed and combined. It is a smart business move and as a reader, it organizes the paper in a better way. I love my paper and my breakfast coffee reading it. I could pay a little more."

Pay a little more? Now, that's what I'm talking about!

The people who were neutral mostly were supportive in our efforts to save money. Some seemed to think that because some newspapers are closing, we are in danger, too. We're not.

Other suggestions included using fewer photos, bringing back the TV Week, bringing back the book page, putting all crossword puzzles above the fold, and, my personal favorite, putting the score of the Hoppers game across the top of the front page.

Thanks to all. If you have an opinion, let me know.

Well, that was fun.

Seriously, we didn't get that many calls and, frankly, fewer complaints than I anticipated. Many callers, skipping my column on the front page, said they were missing a section.

A few wanted world and national news more prominent.

Surprising me, several wanted those weather maps and temperatures of cities around the world, which we dropped, thinking that information was readily available many other places. One person said the world temperatures were the only reason he took the paper.

Another person said that he hopes that we do this, get it out of our system and return the paper the way it was Tuesday. Sorry about that.

Several took the opportunity to request the return of the weekly TV book, which we eliminated months ago, and which had nothing to do with this latest change. Others requested we kill/add some comic strips; we made no changes to the comics related to this consolidation. Still others asked that we go back to the stock market report we had a couple years ago.

None of those requests were unusual. Whenever we have made a change, people ask us to revisit decisions made months and years before.

Other comments that came in via e-mail:

Have you considered two sections Monday to Saturday? I remember the national and business news being in Section 1 and local and sport news in Section 2. This is how I remember the Charlotte Observer of my youth and the N&R of my teen and following years. Two sections are easier to keep up with at home and on the go.

*****

Well done, but would prefer "The Good Stuff" to start on page 1; continue it to A7, if necessary. However well-intentioned, that bright yellow seal ("The Good Stuff") looked odd, and was certainly overwhelmed by surrounding headlines, "Teen pleads guilty to murder charge" and "More charges filed in fatal hit-and-run."

*****

At first glance, I’m pleased with today’s newly organized newspaper but do have one comment. In the weather report on page A7 I really don’t miss the maps and world temperatures but I do miss the highest and lowest temperatures for the US the day before. Since that info took up such a small amount of space could you reconsider including them?

In all, a good day. We're collecting the comments and suggestions to evaluate the paper's changes and determine where we go from here.

Say what you will about the recession and how consumers keeping a tight hold on their wallets. Statistics, schmatistics. Here's real evidence that people have disposable income.

More specifically, they dispose of it by sending me checks. Unsolicited. Unwarranted. Imminently cashable.

I'm up to $151 right now, and I've asked for none of it. Here's how:

For a month, we've solicited and published stories about people doing "Good stuff" for others.

One family was so inspired that they sent me a check for $51...made out to me with the notation, "donation," in the "for" line. When they were called, they said it was intended for the subject of a story, a young girl raising money for cancer patients. I returned the check and gave them the mailing address of the charity.

Yesterday, I got a blank check for $100. The sender -- who had been helped by a woman whose name he never got -- asked me to give the check to his "guardian angel" in case she responded to his "good stuff" story. I returned that, too. If she responds, we'll put them in touch with each other.

Seriously, that people trust us enough to send us money to give to someone else is a great compliment in these days when trust seems in such short supply.

Allen Johnson notes the topics newspaper letter writers are hot and bothered about. No big surprises, given that there isn't an election campaign going on right now.

Except his #4. that people may be royally upset about Time-Warner’s new metered broadbrand pricing, but they are not writing letters about it. They are burning up the blogs, however.

What does it mean that one group is abuzz and another is quiet? It is a different sort of digital divide. Naturally, bloggers would be upset by TW's tiered pricing plan. It socks them in the digital solar plexis. As Allen says, there is fierce discussion on the blogs and in the comments.

Letter writers to the newspaper? (Warning: This is an assumption, an informed assumption but an assumption nonetheless.) Many letter writers are primarily newspaper readers and seek the forum that the printed editorial page provides. They spend time online -- most of the submitted letters come via e-mail -- but they don't live online. They don't tend to be of the generation that watches video online or builds Web sites from home or measure time in gigabytes.

No big deal, you might say. Different audiences. Different ways to express opinion. Personally, I think that Time Warner's pricing plan should interest everyone who is a customer of the business. And that is most of the people around here. (I admit I was surprised by two council members who said they were not customers of Time Warner. Dish users? Rabbit ears? No TV?)

But it is a big deal. Is the conversation expanding into new places or, rather, splitting into more and different camps? People gravitate to the place where they think they will be heard and where they are comfortable. Yet, if decision makers read the papers and not the blogs, are they getting a fair representation of what their constituents are talking about? If they read blogs, but don't watch television, do they actually know what's going on? If they judge things only by people who call them, are they getting a true picture of the world?

On Sunday, we printed a column of brief items on page B-2. We do this every day, publishing a column filled with three- or four-paragraph stories that take note of events that happened yesterday or are going to happen today or tomorrow. But this column Sunday was problematic for at least one reader.

The first item was about a body being found near Westminster Gardens cemetery. (It turned out to be Russell Peck.) The third item was about the impending visit of children's book author Lemony Snicket. In between the two was a two-paragraph note about a Revolutionary War marker dedication.

A reader told us this was insensitive to have the Peck death so near the Lemony Snicket story.

At first, I thought she was just looking for a reason to get angry about something, and we happened to be in the way. After all, it is just a column of briefs and who knows how some reader will connect them because ... wait a minute... um, oops.

She's right.

Lemony Snicket is in town to sign his new book, a murder mystery called "The Composer is Dead." Peck was, of course, a prominent composer.

It is an unfortunate connection. I didn't catch it when I read the column Sunday morning. I'm sure the person pulling the column together was examining each individual item on its merits rather than how it would look as a whole.

It's been a while since I've written about reader reaction to stories concerning sex, but it's a slow blog week so what the heck.

Robert Bell's story about the lesbian fan base at the ACC women's tournament got some readers riled. One man told me that his 12-year-old granddaughter read the story in the newspaper and asked him what a lesbian is. Who says kids don't read the paper? Prompted by that discussion with his granddaughter, he was inspired to ask what the point of the article was.

A few weeks ago, I posed a similar question when we were talking about the story as a possibility for the front page. A lot of lesbians attend a basketball game. So what? That's pretty much the reason it didn't run on the front page. But I don't claim to know everything. I acknowledge the topic is somewhat interesting; in fairness, it wraps in ACC marketing efforts and community impact issues. In the end, we published the story on page 4 in the sports section.

Real questions: Should it have been on the front page? Was it buried too deeply inside? Was it worth publishing?

One of the great American pursuits in my lifetime has been to trash the local paper.

A columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that line in her column about the value of newspapers.* I don't know that it really qualifies as a "great American pursuit" but I learned the sentiment long ago, and the practice of trashing the local paper has been true in every market I've worked. As counter-intuitive as it might seem, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Good journalism often upsets people. The last few days provide plenty of examples why.
* Our coverage of Chancellor Battle's resignation will upset people because as we to try to get at the reasons for his departure, people will conclude we're hounding him.
* We reported that the National Ice Skating Championship is coming to Greensboro ahead of the scheduled announcement. That was not the way city fathers wanted the news to roll out.
* My guess, based on past experience, is that Virginia Tech fans think we short-changed their team this morning with our coverage of their victory over Clemson.
* Want an easy test? Ask people about our comic strip selection.

Bad journalism certainly upsets people, too. We're not perfect, and we try to correct our mistakes when we can. But the good far outnumbers the bad. When you're the only daily paper in town, you are a target because some people feel as if they don't have another choice. And when much of what you cover is based on conflict, people occasionally have reason to have conflict with you, too.

None of this is an excuse not to try to delight readers. It's a recognition that you can't please everyone and that ultimately you have to do what you think is right.

* I don't necessarily endorse the sentiments in the rest of her column.

In terms of readership annoynances, changing the standard features -- the comics, the games, bridge -- rank right up there with Tatiana on American Idol. So getting a notice from Tribune Media that it is going to change the crossword puzzle it supplies for Sundays is quite an annoyance.

I don't know if the new L.A. Times puzzle will be better than the current one supplied by Wayne Williams. I just know that people with a habit don't like forced change.

Our switch occurs with the March 29 edition. (No change in the two daily puzzles.)

TMS tells us: "One of the most entertaining puzzles around, the Los Angeles Times Crossword offers a broad range of vocabulary and cultural clues, along with a sprinkling of humor and wordplay."

As day desk chief Kim Stack Mills said with tongue in cheek when she alerted me to the change: "How can you go wrong with 'a sprinkling of humor and wordplay'?"

True. I'll tell that to anyone who complains.

Most viewed stories at News-Record.com for January:

1. Shooting erupts at 'Notorious' movie
2. N.C. A&T student killed by gunfire
3. High school student killed in Stoneville
4. Krispy Kreme to offer free doughnut on Inauguration Day
5. 1 killed after car wrecks into creek
6. Follow to N.C. A&T student killed by gunfire
7. Wreck of Lamborghini in Greensboro
8. Charles Davenport Jr.: An episode of intolerance at Elon
9. First homicide of '09 in Greensboro
10. 2 Greensboro firefighters hurt after driver hits them

I know he's busy and all, but this announcement in the Times amused me and, frankly, made me a little envious.

Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, is answering questions from readers Feb. 2-6, 2009. He previously answered questions in April 2006.

Once every three years or so seems about right.

We published an item on the front page of the local section Dec. 24 that invited people to send me their mugshots for use in a photographic mosaic on inauguration day. The solicitation run through Jan. 1, and we've received a huge response. My e-mail address was on the notice first and then we switched to a special address. (You can still send your mugshot for inclusion.)

But even though my address ran only that one day, I have received photographs ever since, including this morning, 10 days after the item ran in the paper. I'm assuming that people clipped the notice from the paper -- Christmas Eve is a busy time for most people -- and put it aside to tend to when they had a moment.

So often we journalists think people consume the paper the way we do. Read today; recycled today. It is always nice to be reminded how people actually use the newspaper.

I don't understand nanotechnology, particularly as it applies to clothes fighting deadly viruses.

I don't understand how GPS works.

I don't understand how some people confuse the laws of God with the laws of man.

And I don't understand why people harass a fellow human being who is hurting.

We published a brief item on Christmas day about what we call a domestic -- violence between loved ones. Because the police were involved and an arrest made, we published the details. They don't really matter here. But it was enough for people -- more than one -- to interrupt their own holiday celebration, look up the telephone number where the incident occurred, call the house and give their insight into the character of the people involved.

What is that about?

After years moments of pondering whether we should wish our readers "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" across the top of the Dec. 25 paper -- and hearing from readers when we make the wrong decision -- we finally have some data.

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Americans generally say "Merry Christmas" to greet people at this time of year, but 71% are not offended by others who say "Happy Holidays."

So sayeth the Rasmussen Reports.

I'm relieved. Last year, I wrote about the fight struggle discussion we had over the proper greeting for the Dec. 25 paper. Now that I know that 23% of the respondents -- nearly a quarter!!! -- are offended by the "Happy Holidays" greeting, it confirms that "Merry Christmas" is the way to go.

Except that, for some reason, the polling company didn't ask whether people were offended if they were wished a Merry Christmas, the idea of which is what started the whole "War against Christmas."

An e-mail from the city of Greensboro about the arrest of one of "Guilford County's Most Wanted":

Alamance County Sheriff's Department received information that Quinton Lamar Johnson was staying with a cousin in their jurisdiction. Deputies responded out to the address provided and Quinton was taken into custody. Greensboro Warrant Squad officers traveled to Alamance County on 12/09/08 to take custody of Quinton and transport him to the Guilford County Magistrate's Office for service of his papers.

Quinton informed the warrant squad officers that he went to Alamance County after being featured in Guilford County's Most Wanted in the Greensboro News & Record. Quinton Johnson is currently being held in the Greensboro Jail under a $100,000.00 secured bond.

Who knew that criminal suspects on the lam were newspaper readers?

By the way, he's the 66th suspect featured in the paper to have been caught since February.

Some people -- although fewer than I anticipated -- didn't like Jason Hardin's story Sunday about undocumented immigrants in the area. Jason said he got about a dozen complaints about the story. Here's what Jason told me: Many say they don't like reading "sob stories" about immigrants who chose to come here. Some asked why are we writing about this instead of citizens who are having hard times with the economy, or why we don't ever write about immigrants who come here and do bad things (I replied that we have done, and will do, plenty of stories on both). Several, including those from the previous categories, said they disliked the term "undocumented immigrants" as opposed to "illegal immigrants" or "illegal aliens."

The anger that people hold is almost palpable. One reader wrote me: For a Sunday December 7 edition you should have published a story with a line more like: "Imagine what it would be like to bang the iron hull on the inside of a cruiser at the bottom of Pearl Harbor while one consumed the last bit of oxygen from a three cubic yard air pocket." But instead you found the loss of a car stereo installation business belonging to an illegal alien a more dignified and horrifying proposition.

Another wrote: John, I actually appreciate "reporters" like yourself, because now I feeeeel better. With your help, hopefully more illegal aliens will subvert American sovereignty, steal our lavish welfare benefits, have numerous anchor babies (At tax payer expense), free schooling, free medical care, steal our jobs, speak a foreign language, wave their national flag, and most importantly, with the help of the ethnic pressure groups like Maldef, "The Race" (La Raza) and courageous propagandists, call us xenophobes "racist" and "hatemonger".

Our story wasn't an attempt to glorify or excuse the lives of the undocumented in the Triad. Rather, it was an exploration of a side of the community that few people see, but which causes problems for both the immigrants, law enforcement and social service agencies.

Too common assumptions/myths journalists hold about newspaper readers:

1. That holiday papers -- Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day in particular -- aren't read because people are looking at the ads and living their lives on special days.
2. That ads are a secondary reason -- after the news -- that people buy the paper.

Both are untrue if you believe the answers given by our reader advisory group, and I do. I asked them: "On a holiday like Thanksgiving, do you spend much time reading the news stories in the paper or are you busy with the advertisements and spending time doing holiday things?"

Some of their answers follow. Even though I'm not sure what it means, my favorite is the last one.

I am usually busy doing other things or looking at the ads. I usually look at the news briefly and go back to the paper later in the day.

**********
LOVE the Thanksgiving paper -- stories AND ads. Please try to find inspirational stories.

**********
On holidays I still spend time reading the news, I don't get to read it all at once, I read it for an hour or so, cook and come back to it. I read the news before the adv. flyers that come with it.

**********
I read Thanksgiving paper today -- Friday. Just too busy on Thanksgiving.

**********
We do not purchase the paper for the ads. We do use the Wednesday's ads. We do look for specific ads if we are interested in specific merchandise-cell phone, clothes, etc.

**********
I like to read how others spend their Thanksgiving -- which you do. I did spend most of my time looking for Black Friday sales and the day after I sought after the news about the sale results of the day to see how well businesses fared.

**********
I always read the top stories and then I spend time looking at all the advertisements to see what kinds of deals I can get the next day.

**********
There should be more news, everyday. The attention to the holiday is fine, but don't forget it's a newspaper.

**********
There is so much news that is depressing that I find myself avoiding it as much as possible just to save my sanity.

**********
Hard news does suffer by comparison with turkey and dressing and Black Friday forays. Really, there's not much that you can do short of doing full frontals of Victoria Secret models with thought balloons over their heads.

People can talk all they want about the death of newspapers, but they certainly haven't been at one to witness what happens when the paper is delivered late, as ours was this morning. Crashed the phone system as hungry readers wanted their morning fix.

We apologize for the late delivery.

P.S. Me and Andy Rooney. Can't beat it.

Mark Binker is one of the best political reporters in the state. So I had to laugh when I read this comment from one of our Reader Advisory Network members: Mark Binker is far too conservative. He has given short shrift to the Hagan and Bratton campaigns and to Obama. I was disgusted by the Life on October 21 with full color pictures of the Palin visit. Where were the photos of the huge Obama rally?

Of course, we published photos of the Obama rally, too.

Anyway, I asked the Network this question: Evaluate, in this the last week before the election, the N&R's election coverage in terms of completeness and fairness.

Most of the 102 respondents said they thought the coverage had been fair. That is affirming because our editors and reporters have been tenacious about being evenhanded. We weren't perfect by any means, but over the course of the loooong political season, the coverage should have been straight up.

What surprised me about the answers to my question was the number of people who said that because they had voted early, they had stopped following the campaigning. Here are two:

Just so tired of election coverage -- can't take it anymore, so I probably haven't looked very closely at any election stuff!

I've been hearing far too much for far too long about the election and I just want it to be over with.

The panel is made up of smart, passionate and opinionated readers. Sometimes their thinking converged; sometimes diverged. Normally, I hear from many people who think we and the rest of the media are too liberal. The eye of the beholder is pretty strong on this question.

This is N&R's banner year. The coverage this year is unsurpassed in your history for both completeness and fairness. The reportage and articles have been excellent for all levels of the campaigns..local, state, and national. Give yourselves an "A."

No, my mother didn't write that one...or the following one.

There is nothing fair about N&R's coverage. As with most newspapers there is a very deliberate liberal slant. There is no reporting of the news when it comes to politics and your paper. It has almost become an entirely editorial newspaper.

But maybe we should get that person together with the one below to see if we could weave together some common ground.

You lean toward McCain, and I do not. You hide his and Palin's lies, and tend to play up Obama's. McCain/Palin ticket is a nightmare, who could possibly want them to run our country.

Finally, although some respondents wanted less of the campaign frivolity and more depth on the issues, there is this:

I would like to see more about the clothes, hair, makeup that Sarah Palin has received. She has a bad track record and it is like the media won't touch her. Why is that?

Want to join the panel? We wish you would. Your comments are the best way to help us improve.

Do we write too much about minorities? Do we publish too many photos of minorities? Some readers tell me we do.

I asked members of our reader advisory panel what they thought. I got 105 responses.

* 58 said our coverage was fair; it was balanced and reflects the makeup of the city.
* 25 said we do write about minorities too much.
* The remainder were ambivalent or off topic.

It's an interesting concept, this notion that we publish too many stories and/or photos of minorities. Most of the photos we publish actually illustrate stories that are not race-centered at all; they are simply photos of people who happen to be black, which is really the minority people are talking about.

I've never heard a good explanation of why photos of African Americans in a daily paper that serves a city whose population was 37 percent black in the 2000 Census is bothersome or objectionable. And every time I've run a check on the front pages of each of our sections, I find that we publish many more photos of white people than any other race or nationality.

A selection of the comments:

Early returns are in: More people have written in about dropping "For Better or For Worse" than about the elimination of three Op-Ed pages per week.

Draw your own conclusions.

Wednesday update: The ever-competitive Allen Johnson now reports he is getting a steady flow about the Op-Ed page and has caught up. I hope he's right.

Bloomberg's accidental premature publication of Steve Jobs' obituary makes me wonder: Are obituaries obsolete?

...In the print world, with rare exceptions a person's death was the only occasion that would justify the publication of that person's life story. But the Internet has changed the way we deal with time, just as it has collapsed space. Everything is available now ... and that isnt limited to reports of recent events.

-- Steve Yelvington

The modern obit writer may serve the subject better by amassing a collection of suitable links: to a biography, video interviews, best writings, most famous quotes, etc. Yelvington may be right: The traditional obituary is already in the grave.

-- Steve Outing

I have great respect for Steve and Steve, but I think they're off target on this one.

Eventually, I suspect, an obit of links will do the trick. But we're not close to it yet.

If the Steves are talking about canned obits of celebrities and newsmakers, fine. But the other 99% of the people who die aren't Google-able. Or if they are, information on them and their life is hard to find and, once found, is incomplete. I know. I've tried it on the people on our obit page today. In addition, many of the people actually interested in reading obits are the core audience of newspaper readers.

These days, someone -- whether it is the newspaper or a family member -- needs to write up an obituary about a person's life.

Update: In a subsequent Twitter exchange, Yelvington suggests creating basically a people wiki of the area's population. The entries grow and mature as the people do. "Write 'em up while they can still enjoy it," he said. I like that.

A letter to the editor:

I am a faithful reader of the online version of your publication every day. I receive the "News & Record Update" via e-mail each day and enjoy feeling the most up-to-date in the fast-paced world of "right this minute" online news.

However, I was very disappointed when I opened my e-mail yesterday and saw a headline under sports that announced Shawn Johnson as the gold medalist in the balance beam, when the event would not air for the first time on television until later that night. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I have enjoyed being able to watch the Olympics with anticipation of what will happen despite the 12-hour time difference. I was extremely disappointed to have the result "spoiled" for me. Can we not act as though the event hasn't happened until it airs on television?

I don't think it was written by an NBC executive, but I suppose it's possible.

I suppose we could have posted a spoiler alert on the e-mail, but who would have thought of that, given that the e-mail news alert is designed to bring you the news?

Seth Godin writes about the wisdom of bullying someone into a sale. He finds, of course, little wisdom in it.

The flaw in thinking is this... the people you most want to sell to won't respond well to this. The people you most need to spread the word, the people who are the best partners, the most loyal customers -- they blanch in the face of bullying. They walk out.

I often have people try to bully me into this or that, pushing for news coverage or expressing dismay about something we've done. I listen and explain. Sometimes, when appropriate, I apologize. If the bullying persists, I wait for a pause and say, "Does this approach with people usually work for you, because, I gotta tell you, it ain't working for me."

That usually changes the direction of the discussion. (Unless it is an attorney and they redouble their efforts.)

Every week we ask a question of our Reader Panel to help us improve our journalism

This week we asked if they followed coverage of the Guilford school system and what stories we should be writing about education. The question was pegged to the school board hiring a new school superintendent.

Most of the respondents said they were very interested in school information and gave us a bunch of good ideas to pursue. But these two comments were my favorites:

I am deeply troubled over (school system) management and feel the new super is a joke. I hope the N&R will do more objective reporting on the system and not just parrot Guilford County Schools propoganda.

Followed by this from another person:

Give Mo Green a chance before skewering him in the paper, please.

Have a great weekend.

Report from Teresa Prout, our metro editor working a late shift:

I got a call at 10:30 Friday night from a guy asking whether Canada is a state. I was stunned and sort of busy so I said: Huh? Then he repeated the question, and I told him that it most certainly is not. He said something to a bunch of other people in the room and then he asked what the last states added were. I told him Alaska and Hawaii. He thanked me and hung up.

The best thing about this story -- well, no, not the best thing. The best thing is the story of these all-American men -- but one of the next best things about this story is how it ended up on the front page this morning.

John Appel, with whom I have traded e-mails and blog comments over the years -- it would be fair to say that he and I don't always see eye-to-eye -- sent me a link, recommending I read the Stars and Stripes story about the firefight that involved two of the Triad's fighting men. I did.

It was Saturday morning and I didn't think I had much chance of reaching anyone at Stars and Stripes, much less getting permission to reprint the story in today's paper. But I gave it a shot. Went to their Web site and shot an e-mail to about six different people telling them we wanted to reprint it and asking about the rights.

I got an immediate response from the editor of S&S, granting the rights. Knowing something about deadlines and press schedules, he said we could handle the paperwork later this week. I suspect it helped that the editor, Robb Grindstaff, is an alum of the Asheboro Courier-Tribune and knows where Haw River is. Update: Writer Steve Mraz is a 1998 UNC Journalism School grad so he knows where Haw River is, too.

Readers often ask us to reprint articles published elsewhere; they are usually columns that affirm the reader's position. Most of the time, they come from publications or writers that don't permit reprints or by the time they reach us, the columns are a bit moldy. Either that, or they are stories from the Internet with origins that are either obscure or impossible to track.

Maybe it was because everything fell together nicely, but I like how this worked. A reader alerted us to a good local story we were unaware of and it was on the front page of our next edition.

A side note: An editor working Saturday asked me if they should call the families of the two men from the Triad as a courtesy to let them know the story was being published in our paper. (Presumably they knew it was published Saturday by Stars and Stripes.) I said I didn't feel strongly either way, and I don't know if they did.

Jaycee makes a reference to an old newspaper joke in the comments here. It's gotta be at least 10 years old. (Joke below.)

Which started me thinking that it needs to be redone. After all, this was before Rupert bought the Journal. When the L.A. Times, Herald and Chronicle had different owners. It was before newspaper circulation went into a free fall. Before texting and maybe email alerts. It was before Yahoo News became the No. 1 Internet news site. Before Google, probably. Here's our chance to create a viral phenomenon. Let's do it. Make suggestions for the new list.

Here's the old one:

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country -- if they could find the time -- and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a poor job of it, thank you very much.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who is running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.
10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure if there is a country or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheists who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.
11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
12. The Atlanta Journal & Constitution is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something in which to wrap it.

Deborah Howell, ombudsman at the Washington Post, writes about a common "problem" newspapers have -- deciding which historical anniversaries to write about. We didn't publish a full story about D-Day on its anniversary earlier this month, and we heard about it. (We published a story of the commemorations the next day.)

I got nailed last weekend by a reader who was angry we didn't make a note of Flag Day. It is, he told me, an issue of education and an issue of respect. I suppose. I can't think of any event in which I would feel disrespected if an anniversary story didn't show up in the paper. But maybe that's just me.

Howell writes:

How long must a newspaper commemorate an event of historic proportions? Not forever. No one who lived through the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy will ever forget it, but The Post didn't have a story last Nov. 22, and no one complained to me.

It makes me wonder when will be the time, far away, when a Sept. 11 passes with only a brief -- or no -- mention.

I asked our Readers' Panel if they wanted more or fewer stories about crime on the front page. (It was pegged to this story June 7 about a hostage taking.)

Of 139 responses, 43 people said they wanted less, 38 said more, 13 said no change and the rest qualified their answers in some way.

Some didn't want crime news sensationalized. Some said that it becomes more important to them when it happens in or near their neighborhoods. Some wanted more good news. Some liked the "most wanted" Monday feature. A few didn't like the photograph of the victim with her torn shirt and sports bra showing.

A sampling of comments; be sure to read to the end:

Our friends at Greensboro Sports didn't like the beer company ad on our high school sports site. I wrote that sentence in the past tense because we removed the ad from the site.

The post -- "N&R selling beer to high schoolers?" -- says that we shouldn't market beer to high school students. Fair enough. The ad rotated through a number of our pages, and it was easy enough to rejigger to skip the high school page.

I wonder, though, about the responsibility any Web site has to police its advertising based on morality and expected page viewership. I don't know what would happen to televised sports -- watched, I presume, by a lot of people under 21 -- if they could not advertise beer. Personally, I find it hard to believe that a beer company ad on a Web page would be a contributor to underage drinking, given the saturation marketing beer companies do elsewhere.

But I do understand the point. In the paper, we try to not run strip gentlemen club ads on the high school page. I guess beer company ads, like those Joe Camel one's, fall into the same category.

I'm probably more ambivalent about it than I should be, but it all feels a little politically correct to me.

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.

Some 70 percent of editors surveyed said requiring commenters to disclose their identities would support good journalism, while only 45 percent of the public did. Similarly, 58 percent of editors said letting journalists join online conversations and give personal views would harm journalism, but only 36 percent of the public agreed.

The comes from the AP story about the latest survey comparing journalists' and readers' views of the Web. Almost predictably, the coverage of it makes journalists look silly. (Insert my known skepticism about the value of polls and surveys here.)

Aside from the fact that we are silly, there is some interesting stuff in it if you actually read the survey or, as I did, the executive summary. Journalists and Web readers are in step on many, many issues.

Cutting to the chase on this one. My feelings on anonymous comments are out there: Don't like 'em; will take 'em.

The second piece of the above survey result about journalists "joining the conversation online and giving personal views" is trickier because it is two questions in one: join the conversation and give personal views. And that queers the interpretation of the response.

Question 1: Journalists must join in the conversation with readers. It's no longer an option; it's part of the job. Readers are the people journalists are trying to serve. And we don't want staff members to engage with them? Of course, we do. It's about transparency, clarity and having civilized discussion about ideas. It's what people do. It's what journalists do. Conversation improves credibility, in real life and online.

Question 2: Journalists can comfortably give their personal views about topics on which they are knowledgeable. That said, I do have qualms about reporters giving an opinion on an issue they are writing about. Say City Council is deliberating over whether to reopen White Street Landfill. Should the City Hall reporter weigh in with her opinion? I'd say no. I think she can provide additional information and insight in her comments. She can "set the record straight" for other commenters if someone posts an inaccuracy. She can answer questions. But, honestly, who cares what she thinks about reopening the landfill?

The talking heads on television, I think, skew the public's perception of journalists. The fact is, in most cases, reporters I know rarely have opinions about what they write, either because they can see all the gray or they don't feel strongly one way or the other.

My favorite comment from the story about the survey:

The study was designed to help gauge the priorities and practices newspapers should be establishing as they increasingly blend their print and Web operations. It produced few answers on how editors can meet reader expectations online without compromising credibility.

If I read the last sentence correctly, it says that editors must compromise credibility to meet reader expectations. That's not the way I read the results of the survey, and it's not my perception on how journalists serve the public.

Update: In the comments, Michelle McClellan says what I wish I had said: As long as journalists think they have to sacrifice credibility to meet reader expectations, they will not embrace abundant opportunities to do both.

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.

What does it mean when you're the last commenter on a thread?

* Does it mean you quieted the crowd with such powerful wisdom that they are speechless before your inner-Einstein? That once you've spoken nothing else need be said?

* Does it mean that you've killed the conversation? That your comment was so off-point or so mean that everyone stares at you speechlessly as if you've accused the Pope of committing one of the seven deadly sins?

* Does it mean that everyone else has weighed in with everything there is to say that is remotely meaningful and you're late to the party? That you haven't bothered to read the other comments before yours to see what has already been said?

* Does it mean that you don't know when that an argument has reached its point of diminishing returns and you keep repeating the same thing? That the time has come to agree to disagree and move on?

Some bloggers noted this morning that they received an e-mail from us telling them why their newspapers were late. If you want to receive such information from us, not only about some of our problems, but also about our upcoming stories and events, please leave word in the comments or shoot me an e-mail.

We won't spam you or try to sell you anything. It's just a service, particularly aimed at active bloggers. If you want us to cease at anytime just let me know.

My daughter the younger just asked me if Stephen Colbert's presidential run is serious. This is a child who has been online since she was 10, who reads newspapers only when she's bored, watches TV news less often than that and who seems to know everything about whatever she's interested in, and is now a freshman at UNC.

Of course she knows who Colbert is. She's a bit unsure about who Romney and Thompson are, though. This is also a child of civically engaged parents she saw read the paper every morning and talk politics often.

The Pew Survey described this group early this year: They are somewhat more interested in keeping up with politics and national affairs than were young people a generation ago. Still, only a third say they follow what's going on in government and public affairs "most of the time."

My answer? "Yeah. Absolutely. But I think Jon Stewart is a better candidate."

Monday update: Here's why she asked.

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.