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Well, I got tied up on stuff yesterday afternoon and tied up on more stuff this morning, so I'm only now getting around to blogging the meeting at which we were going to discuss how partnering N&R news staffers with interested readers to produce stories for print and online might work in the real world.

The meeting was called by my immediate supervisor, Mike Grossman, and also included the next three steps up the News Department food chain: City Editor Mark Sutter, Managing Editor Ann Morris and the department head, Editor John Robinson. We had a list of issues to discuss.

We didn't discuss them, much, however. We did a little, but the bulk of the meeting was a kind of free-flowing airing of our hopes and fears for this part of our Town Square initiative.

Some participants said their fears -- or, perhaps more accurately, their concerns -- about this experiment outweighed their hopes about the good it might do. (Interestingly, in the 15 or so months we've been pursuing the Town Square model, this is the first time I've heard someone say that.) And there are, for sure, some risks -- ranging from wasting staff time in an era of reduced staffing and resources to serious legal repercussions and damage to the paper's reputation. But the five of us ultimately agreed that this was an experiment worth pursuing.

You can't report well on a meeting you're an active part of, so I didn't really try. I did scribble some notes, some of which I reproduce below. Comments attributed to specific individuals should be understood as paraphrases, not necessarily direct quotes.

JR: Because we'll be working with people who may or may not come in understanding how we work, we'll need to be flexible and patient. But we'll also need to be steadfast enough to say "Let's back out" if something isn't working, or if someone is pushing us in a direction in which we can't ethically go.

Me: (I think it was around here that I said that what little research there is on this subject suggests that a lot of people want to contribute to the journalism of their community but don't necessarily want, or feel able, to report and write a story on their own. So I would hope we'd be flexible and open enough to meet would-be contributors at whatever their individual comfort points might be and work from there.)

Ann Morris suggested that there might be some initiatives already ongoing in the community -- not necessarily journalistic initiatives, as journalism is commonly understood, but efforts aimed at gaining knowledge -- that we could form partnerships with, rather than just waiting for ideas to come in over the transom from individuals.

I questioned whether such efforts would be understood by the community as "open-source journalism" -- i.e., something driven by the community rather than by the N&R. I pointed out that to the extent our efforts have been welcomed thus far by the online community, it has been because we have tried to be, and to appear, respectful of that community and have not tried to bigfoot it. But I also said I thought that that question was separate from the question of whether such stories would be worth pursuing.

JR suggested another hypothetical example: Suppose we knew that some professors at N.C. A&T had done some research on the conditions of North Carolina's highways and we approached them to work with us on an examination of that issue.

JR pitched a question to the group: Do we cast a net (for stories suggested by readers) or choose our own? Both, Ann said -- let's cast a net AND pick out one or two to experiment.

We agreed that Mike, Mark and I would compile some ideas and meet next Thursday. So if you have an idea, you're interested in working with the N&R to get that story reported and written and published, get in touch with me so we can get your idea on the list that will be discussed at that meeting.

UPDATE (5:05 p.m. Friday): After a conversation with JR this afternoon and an e-mailed comment from a reader, I realized this post might unintentionally be understating our commitment to this experiment. Short version: He was saying yesterday that he, too, understands the risks, some sizable, that we will be taking -- but that at his point, his attitude is "no guts, no glory."

So to the extent that this post might have led anyone to think we were having second thoughts, that'd be a big ol' "no." We're charging boldly into the fog. Come join us.