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Currently I'm seeking to contact the 70-odd groups and individuals who agreed to act as "receivers" for the report and foster group discussions of it. (For the purposes of this story, I'm not going to include groups such as the Beloved Community Center with close ties to the truth-commission process.)

I'm planning a story on what those discussions have involved to date, and I'm also hoping to sit in on one or two (and perhaps record audio for our Web site) before writing. I've already gotten one invitation but had to decline because it conflicted with a previously scheduled interview.

If you're on the list, I'll be getting to you at some point, or trying to, but if you want to get to me first, you can call me at 373-7088 or e-mail me.

Thanks!

As I continue work on an article examining the issues of conspiracy and intentionality raised by the Truth & Reconciliation report, a rigorous discussion -- 39 comments, as I type this -- of what should happen as a result of the report is going on over at Ed Cone's place. Like Ed, I think Mr. Sun's comment in that thread is of particular interest. In fact, it seems to be the one point anyone in the thread has made so far around which there has been much agreement, although the notion that p. 382 should be excised from the report may be coming up fast in the stretch.

Maybe it's because we play pirate as kids (at least here in North Carolina, we do), or maybe we just like holding a piece of paper with all the answers, but people really seem to love maps. Perhaps if I ever get around to reading "Longitude" or "The Island of Lost Maps," which has been sitting on my night table for about a year now, I'd have more insight into this phenomenon. All I know is that it's out there and it's real.

And what with Google Earth, Yahoo! Maps and more traditional forms of computerized mapping, maps are proliferating on the Internet. People are even creating "mashups," combinations of mapping applications and other data such as satellite photos, to create new, interesting content.

Duke Power has gotten into the game with this map showing where its power outages from Thursday's ice storm are located. I'm sure it's very helpful ... if you have power.

... 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.

After technical delays, for which I apologize, the N&R now has sound files from this past weekend's Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings up here in both downloadable and streaming formats. In addition to Ed Whitfield and Joya Wesley of the TRC, I'd like to thank our Kevin Lockamy and Mike Fuchs for making this happen.

The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission will hold its first hearings from 2 to 9 p.m. Friday and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Weaver Educational Center, 300 S. Spring St. in downtown Greensboro.

Those sessions will be recorded for later podcast/download from our site.

I don't know whether anyone local applied for one of the "New Voices" grants that were being given out by the Knight Foundation -- I know there had been some discussion locally -- but if anyone did, you didn't win. On the other hand, some of the projects that did win look pretty interesting and might serve as examples for this community's efforts.

The "J-Lab," the Institute for Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland, is sponsoring a competition for 20 grants to be awarded over the next two years by the Knight Foundation to start-up community-news ventures. Grantees get $12,000 the first year and $5,000 second-year matching grants. Charities, educational organizations and civic groups may apply. Information and links to guidelines, application forms and additional background info are here. Given Greensboro's growing blog community and growing interest in community news, I'd be extremely disappointed if we didn't have several applicants and very surprised if we didn't have at least one winner.

If you spend a lot of time reporting hard news for a newspaper, you'll make a few enemies if you do your job right. Most days, at most papers, that means nothing. In fact, compared to the outright threats to life and limb faced by reporters in some other countries, it means less than nothing.

But sometimes the danger gets a little too real even locally. That's what's alleged to have happened Tuesday in Alamance County, where a developer is charged with assaulting and threatening a reporter for the Times-News over a story the reporter had written in November. The reporter is pressing charges at the insistence of the executive editor, Lee Barnes.

I've known Lee for almost 20 years, and I trust his judgment. More than that, I wholeheartedly agree with his direction on this.

If you do reporting right, sooner or later you will have your intelligence, patriotism and sexual orientation questioned by people who could take lessons from linoleum, who would sell nukes to Osama bin Laden if the price were right and who would engage in adult relations with a snake if they could get someone to hold its head. That comes with the territory; as the old saying in this business goes, if you want friends, buy a dog.

And I certainly know how ill is my industry's repute -- and how many very good reasons there are for that illness.

But that doesn't give anyone the right to threaten a journalist. And if you assault one, don't be surprised if he or she hits back -- on a number of levels. Because you swallow a lot in this business, but there are some things even we won't eat.

When I read this morning that our minor-league baseball team, the Greensboro Bats, is changing its name to the Greensboro Grasshoppers (site not up yet), my first reaction was, "What were they thinking?"

But as I recall, I had the same reaction when the then-Hornets changed their name to the Bats a decade ago, and the name Bats grew on me. Maybe Grasshoppers will as well.

The N&R story indicates that marketing to kids was a significant consideration in the team's decision, so I checked with my kids. My son didn't really care. My daughter, a little older and ever tender-hearted, was much less concerned about what the team's mascot is than about whether the team would continue to employ the person who wore the Bats mascot costume last year.

The answer, it turns out, is no. Travis Trotter, who has portrayed Casey (as well as other teams' mascots), just told me he won't be working for the Grasshoppers next year. He called the decision primarily a personal one: The Bats/Grasshoppers play about 2 1/2 months' worth of home games each year, and "that's a lot of time away from my daughter," who is 2, he says. "I'm away too much as it is."

So on Wednesday, Greensboro Mayor Keith Holliday announces that he's got some kind of idea for a commission up his sleeve, but he's not going to tell any of us about where this idea came from until Monday.

The mayor has been at this gig long enough to know that telling a reporter something like that is kind of like throwing a big chunk of raw ground beef stuffed with Milk Bones at a starving, ill-mannered Doberman. Accordingly ... well, let's just say that the mayor's Circle of Trust already has escaped the Melvin Municipal Office Building to encompass two of the starving, if not ill-mannered, reporters temporarily entrusted to my professional care. (I didn't even tell 'em to pursue this. They just did. Kind of Pavlovian, don't you think?) Where the circle goes from there, I'm pretty sure you can guess. Hint: If you're not already a subscriber, we've got racks all over.

A fellow member of the N&R's enterprise/investigative team, Taft Wireback, has teamed with sports writer Jeff Carlton to produce a piece for Sunday's N&R examining the prevalance of steroid use among area prep athletes. Editor John Robinson talks a little about that story here.

If you think you've been reading an awful lot about school buses in the News & Record lately, you're right.

That's because the Guilford County Schools, in an effort to save money and reduce some lengthy bus rides endured last year by magnet-school students, introduced a new bus system this year that involved students' transferring from one bus to another at "hubs" in the mornings and afternoons. Problem was, almost everything that could go wrong did. The computer software (ancient by computer standards) couldn't do what was asked of it. Students' names were lost by the software, or were never entered in the first place. Students were stranded at stops. Buses ran way late. Parents couldn't get through on the phone to get information. And on and on. If you've read the N&R recently, you already know all this.

But has the N&R overplayed this story? A few readers have said so, as did Superintendent Terry Grier, who called twice -- the second time contacting one of our education reporters at home -- to complain about what he considered excessive coverage of the issue.

Well, I won't speak for the News & Record -- I'll leave that to Editor John Robinson. But as the editor who works with our education reporters (temporarily; some editors are out on special assignment or cross-training), and in the interest of engendering the kind of transparency I think newspapers need more of -- and that blogs can provide -- I'm happy to talk about why *I* think our coverage has been appropriate. (Full disclosure: I have a child at a magnet school. But we've always driven her to school because it's on the way to work, so I have no direct involvement in the issue.)

My reasons, in no particular order: