News-Record.com

Via local blogger Jay Ovittore comes word that some scammers are at work getting sensitive personal information out of people by posing as court officials and calling to tell people that they face arrest for having skipped jury duty.

Via the urban-legends online reference Snopes.com, we find that this is an actual scam, reported incidents of which date at least as far back as 2001.

In North Carolina, as in most other states and as in most federal court districts, communications with prospective jurors take place primarily by mail, and you will never be required to provide sensitive information over the phone.

And anytime you get a call from someone purporting to have a legitimate need for your private information, always refuse until you have had a chance to hang up and call the caller's ostensible employer to confirm what's going on. If the call is legitimate, the company or agency will be happy that you are security-conscious.

... is, at long last, up at http://www.gotriad.com/go/katrina. Use it for anything -- reports from friends/relatives in areas affected by the storm, discussion of planning/response, whether/how New Orleans ought to be rebuilt, missing/found people, whatever you see fit.

Thanks to Mike Fuchs for doing the actual work.

... I stumbled upon this Web site, which uses satellite imagery to compare the area flooded in New Orleans with similar areas in other large U.S. cities. The map for Charlotte, where I grew up and the only N.C. city on the list, is below:

Of course, this refers to area only, not topography (the area shown generally drains toward the southwest), so actual flooding may vary.

As JR mentioned (and as I should have mentioned yesterday), some members of the 44-person group of Christians, Jews and Muslims from Greensboro who are on a trip to the Holy Land are filing accounts of their experiences to YourNews. Part 1 is here; Part 2, here.

Members of the group are interested in a discussion and community dialogue about the issues raised by things they see and hear. So take a look at their dispatches and let them know what you think. I'll post notices here when subsequent dispatches are online.

This is the first extended use of YourNews by any local person or group to foster discussion on an issue. We'd like to see more, but we also want to make sure the experience works well for users. So tell me what you think about the forum: Does it work? How could it work better?

The third YourNews installment of the Greensboro Interfaith Mission's Holy Land trip is up here.

... and once you've killed it, what do its insides look like?

The brave folks at Ars Technica answer both questions.

(Please don't tell my friends Herb and the iHo about this testing. It will make them cry.)

Local contributing readers Jill Wilson and Jan Capps continue to file dispatches from the Holy Land as part of the Greensboro Interfaith Mission trip to Israel. I got a bit behind posting their dispatches while I was home sick the past two days, but we're caught up now and you can read their stories, and others, at the YourNews archive page.

I also failed to take timely note of a milestone regarding YourNews. One of the many questions we received when we began the Town Square initiative was: Would reader-contributed stories ever be published in the printed edition of the News & Record? We said yes, and that actually happened for the first time on Monday, as Jan and Jill shared a byline on a story that was published on page B9 of the Greensboro section. (The story comprised the first two installments they filed from the Holy Land.) I'd've pointed it out at the time if I'd been well.

But you don't have to travel to the Holy Land to contribute stories to YourNews. Just go here.

Just read the whole thing.

Members of the Greensboro Interfaith Mission to Israel have filed the ninth and final installment of their reporting on their trip. You can read it here.

Tomorrow and Monday, I'll be filling in for online-news editor Mike Fuchs, who's taking a well-deserved long weekend. (The fact that this long weekend coincides with the arrival of a Category 5 4 hurricane in the heart of the nation's oil-refinin' bidness is, I am certain, not something he factored into his plans.) The down side is that I am, um, somewhat less fluent in our Web publishing system than Mike is, so if y'all see some horrible problems on our home page, by all means let me know, but please be gentle, mmkay? Thanks.

The Houston Chronicle has created a blog on which several Houston-area folks are blogging their experiences as Hurricane Rita approaches. You can check it out here.

FWIW, I've read some Houston-area blogs that suggest the storm surge, although likely to be large, won't be as much of a problem as the flooding likely to occur if, as expected, the storm slows down after landfall. The whole region is pretty flat, and with a projected 10 to 30 inches of rain, there's going to be a lot of water without much place to go. Whether or not that's true, it's going to be a long, long weekend in east Texas and western Louisiana.

The New York Times has pictures! (Annoying free reg. req.)

Still yet to be photographed: the live nude colossal squid. (Language potentially NSFW)

Our launch of Hometown Hubs: Summerfield, our first community-based online site for reader-contributed news, is still on schedule for this Sunday.

The project will include both a section on our Web site, with content added as readers submit it, and a weekly portion of each Sunday's local-news section in the print edition, with selected content from the Web site.

On Monday evening, community editor Betsi Robinson, staff writer Tom Steadman and I had a good meeting with more than a dozen people in Summerfield who are interested in contributing to the hub. Yesterday afternoon, I met with our tech folks -- Charlie Stafford, Stephen Paschall and Kevin Lockamy -- who will be making the Web end of things happen, and we appear to be good to go.

Once the Summerfield hub is up and running, we'll be establishing Hometown Hubs for other communities. You also can post your news to our Web site anytime at YourNews.

You'll be able to find Hometown Hubs: Summerfield at http://www.news-record.com/hometowns/summerfield

(The link isn't live yet or I'd have hot-linked it.)

The BBC had been moderating public comments on its Web site, but that job has overwhelmed the staff. So they're ditching the moderation.

Our article comments, once activated, also will be unmoderated. Comments on our blogs already are, by and large, although blog owners can go in and edit or remove comments in extreme cases.

We've received a number of complaints about the tone of some comments in the Letters blog and, to a lesser extent, on The Chalkboard, but beyond that, comments on our blogs have been largely civil. That speaks well of the participants in the community we're trying to build. Yay, y'all! Let's keep it up.

... because Pennsylvania state Sen. Vincent Fumo, a politician who has been lit up by the Philadelphia papers, is now trying to prevent looming cuts in news jobs at those papers:

"I’d rather withstand the intensive media scrutiny and criticism that I have from the Fumo Desk at the Inquirer, than have that desk eliminated. I think if I would let my heart rule, I would probably be dancing around with glee [at the cuts]. But I truly believe what I say, that without a free press you don’t have a free society."

He's even contacting other politicians and trying to meet with the publisher in an attempt to save the jobs. "My doing this is like Nixon going to China," he said at a news conference. More like Alice going through the looking glass, I think -- and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Never mind that the papers seem intent on going ahead with the cuts, and never mind that the papers' accepting help from a politician to keep people employed (in News or any other department) would raise all kinds of ethical questions. I'm just stunned to find a politician left, particularly one who has been the subject of unflattering coverage, who a) understands the role of a free press in our society, b) thinks it's worth fighting for and c) isn't ashamed to say so. Well, OK, maybe not stunned. Maybe just refreshed. But still.

I'm never going to write the Great American Novel, but even I know that if you're running a newspaper that is losing audience and trying to gain some back by crafting hip writing to appeal to the youth market, you should not try stuff like this:

John G. Roberts Jr. is breathing the kind of air that the rest of us can only dream about, the air of kings and queens and one-name celebrities like Oprah.

He's got Mick Jagger juice now, baby.

Leaving aside the fact that the last Stones album that was anywhere near great was "Tattoo You," released almost a quarter-century ago, I'm pretty sure that if you were to poll 100 people who knew much about the Stones, upwards of 90 of them would say that having "Mick Jagger juice" would equate to having sold one's soul to the devil, a connotation I'm reasonably sure the reporter did not intend. (As for what the rest would say, I'm not even going there.)

In all fairness, the rest of the article isn't that hideous -- it's a light, and lightweight, piece about the benefits of actual or effective lifetime employment. But after reading the first two grafs, I had to force myself to read the rest to reach that conclusion. And that's a minute of my life I'm not ever going to get back.