News-Record.com

... of nonalcoholic cider or something, since we're still in the office, to N&R reporter Jim Schlosser. Today he celebrates his 40th anniversary with the N&R and its predecessor papers.

More than anyone else here, Jim has held a mirror up to this community, yet he also from time to time shows us how what we have been can point the way to what we could be. His source network here is second to none. His story count would overshadow that of a reporter with 20 years' less experience (although it will dwindle soon as he works on a history of Greensboro pegged to the city's 2008 bicentennial ... or maybe it won't), and his storytelling, full of fun details and quirks, sometimes in the oddest places, is a joy.

I would be saying all this even if his cube wasn't catty-corner from mine, by the way. The only thing that bugs me about him is that I look older than he does.

Just a few minutes ago we had a brief celebration here in the newsroom to mark the occasion. I wish we could have recorded it for a podcast; the stories were hilarious. As it is, this excerpt must suffice:

Regular readers know about Jim's fascination with older buildings, (and architecture and architects in particular). This is not a recent hobby. In his first story here, published on Jan. 30, 1967, his lede, or beginning paragraph, not only reported that a woman had jumped from the Jefferson-Standard (now Lincoln Financial) building downtown, it also named the "renowned architect" who had designed the building.

"That's the most important detail," Jim said today, deadpan, after Margaret Banks read from the clipping. And although he was joking, in so many ways important to Greensboro and the South, he's kind of right.

(UPDATE, 7:26 p.m.: Margaret just strolled in here and disclosed that she totally made that lede up. Shows what happens when you don't check the documentary evidence. And does she apologize? Sort of, if, by "apologize," you mean, "says, 'Well, now you know I am a convincing liar.'")

Congratulations, Jim, and thank you for spending so much time with us.

My colleague Joe Killian had an excellent story in Friday's paper on the arrest of antiwar protesters Thursday evening. He followed it with an even better post on his blog.

As I said in his comments, and several local bloggers have said as well, I wish we ran more blog posts like that in the N&R. I almost said, "wish there were a way we could run more blog posts like that," but the fact is that we could start doing it tomorrow.

That's not a criticism of JR. (When he wants my criticism, he can, and no doubt will, beat it out of me.) It is, rather, an acknowledgment that the quality of the writing isn't the only factor that must be considered in running blog posts of this type. Such decisions, to put it a slightly different way, aren't made in a vacuum. Having been an editor, I know a lot of the factors that must be considered. But not having been an editor lately, I wouldn't dare presume I know them all.

Besides that, Joe's blog is a personal one, not affiliated with the N&R. I haven't discussed this issue with him, but for all I know, he likes it that way because it gives him a kind of freedom that he wouldn't have here (and I'm not just talking about dropping the F-bomb).

I'm not sure there's any larger point here, other than that I continue to marvel at what an outstanding hire he has been and how much he adds to the paper and Web site.

UPDATE: Joe, having read some of the same comments I have, has some thoughts on the subject of getting blog-style writing into print that are worth reading. And just as some of us have been wrestling with these questions for a while, so has he -- literally from the day he came to work for us.

Cole Campbell, who was AME here at the News & Record when I began work here in April 1987, died earlier today of injuries from a wreck. I just happened to see the story on the wire while here at home testing a new Web interface for Associated Press material.

Cole was the smartest person I've ever worked with, in or out of newspapers. And that's saying something. He was always looking over the horizon, and he frequently could see what was out there sooner and better than anyone else.

He also was an incredibly nice guy, at least to me.

He left the N&R in '89 for a Knight fellowship at Stanford. Following that, he worked for our mothership in Norfolk, then at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I kind of lost touch with him for a few years after that, but then I heard from him a couple of years ago. He had become dean of the journalism school at Nevada-Reno. We exchanged e-mails during my work with the N&R's citizen-journalism initiative. His gifts were a big part of what our hidebound industry needed, and as bad as I feel for his family, I also feel bad for the students, and other faculty, at Nevada-Reno who won't be able to benefit from working with him.

Damn. What a shame.

I was a bit surprised to open my News & Record Ideas section yesterday morning and see that freelance columnist Charles Davenport was accusing me of making stuff up. (The N&R doesn't generally post freelancers' columns, but you can read this one on Davenport's site.)

The full column has a host of problems, but to save time I'll address only the part where Davenport lies about my work (specifically, my review of Michelle Goldberg's book "Kingdom Coming"). Fortunately for those of us who are busy, he wastes no time, offering up this opening paragraph:

A recent spate of articles in these pages is a collective cry of "Wolf!" over the specter of a lamb. The reviewers and reporters in question -- their judgment evidently impaired by ideology -- desire that the rest of us furrow our brows, wring our hands and dialogue feverishly about a new menace rising in our midst: the evangelical Christian.

For those of you who are less attuned to Western culture than my 5-year-old son, the fable of the boy who cried "Wolf!" is about a kid who lied. Whether he did so to amuse himself or because he was just practicing or because he was lonely and wanted a little company isn't exactly clear. But he definitely lied.

Now, unless I'm mistaken, there are only two possible interpretations of what Davenport has written. Either he didn't understand that "crying wolf" means lying, or he has accused me of lying. For the record, he's wrong either way.

UPDATE (10/24): Davenport's response arrives. It says:

Mr. Alexander,

It takes a very active imagination to conclude, based on my opening
paragraph, that I accused you of lying. In common usage, "crying wolf"
simply means creating undue alarm and hysteria--which is precisely what your review did. "Crying wolf" is a vernacular expression that I'm quite sure most N&R readers understood.

Although I believe you misrepresented Christian conservatives, I did not accuse you of lying. Therefore, no apology is forthcoming.

Cordially,

Charles

Let's unpack that, shall we?

It takes a very active imagination to conclude, based on my opening paragraph, that I accused you of lying. (That paragraph is reproduced higher up in this post for those of you following alone at home.)

He falsely accuses me of crying wolf -- more on the "falsely" in a moment. He implies, although in fairness he does not explicitly claim, that crying wolf and lying are different. He claims, on the basis of exactly zero evidence and without any sort of explanation, that my ideology has impaired my judgment. (He never actually says what he thinks that ideology is, either.) And, finally, he claims that I have cast "the evangelical Christian" as a "new menace," rather than a specific subset of evangelical Christians -- whom I clearly identify in the review as adhering to a specific and identifiable piece of ideology with respect to the U.S. Constitution. (More on this last point in a moment, as well.)

In common usage, "crying wolf" simply means creating undue alarm and hysteria -- which is precisely what your review did. "Crying wolf" is a vernacular expression that I'm quite sure most N&R readers understood.

Indeed, "crying wolf" is understood as raising unnecessary alarm, and I'm quite sure that most N&R readers understood it in that way. But it is also properly understood as lying to do so. Follow the links to the various versions of the fable in my original post; you'll see that point made repeatedly. The only variation is the reason for the lie.

I'm quite sure most N&R readers understood that, too. (Indeed, in the comments to this post, Jim Wilson, who agrees with me about nothing and believes I'm an arrogant ass besides, grants me this point.)

I would also invite Davenport to point to any examples of "alarm" or "hysteria," due or undue, that my review "created."

Although I believe you misrepresented Christian conservatives, I did not accuse you of lying.

The fact that you believe I misrepresented "Christian conservatives" does not make it true. As my review clearly shows, and as I demonstrated above, I did no such thing. I didn't "misrepresent Christian conservatives," I accurately represented a particular subset of them (and more on THAT, as well, in just a bit). Perhaps that's what's really bothering Davenport. I don't know.

Therefore, no apology is forthcoming.

Translation: "Even though, if one examines the evidence in the light most favorable to me, I have been caught misunderstanding and thus misusing an expression in a way that unfairly casts Alexander's work in a bad light, I'm not going to apologize."

Thus, on the basis of the available evidence we may logically conclude 1) that I have correctly interpreted Davenport's writing; 2) that I'm not imagining squat; and 3) that Davenport, in defending the indefensible, goes so far as to repeat one of his original mischaracterizations of my work.

It is a particularly noxious type of mischaracterization known as the straw-man argument. In a straw-man argument, Person A accuses Person B of saying something B never actually said, then criticizes him for it. In this particular case, among other problems, Davenport accused me of inaccurately describing all evangelical Christians, when, as noted above, I accurately described a specific subset of evangelical Christians.

This type of argument is bad enough when it's inadvertent. But it's particularly noxious when it's intentional because of the contempt it shows for both the person with whom one is arguing and any audience to the argument: It is saying, in effect, I'm going to lie about what this guy said because I think both he and the audience are too stupid to catch me. I think Davenport's use of the technique is intentional, inasmuch as even when called out on it, he refuses to disavow, let alone apologize for, his use of it.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Now, then, to elaborate just a bit on the points I raised above.

Spagnola denies that the problems identified, and documented, in the book exist. He's factually, objectively wrong (but would that wishing made it so). Having followed the trend myself for a decade or so, having read almost all her publicly available original sources myself and having independent knowledge of some of the events described in the book, I am confident that the individual events recorded in the book happened pretty much as Goldberg describes them.

Does that prove that she is correct in her conclusions? I believe that it does, and here's why.

Like Gaul, all journalism can be divided into three parts: event stories; pattern stories, which examine connections between events; and system stories, which examine conditions that give rise to patterns. Into each reporter's life a few event stories must fall, some of them quite entertaining, inspiring, enlightening, enriching and/or important. But for most of the past quarter-century, pattern stories and system stories are where I've eaten, professionally speaking. I am logical and analytical by nature, and that's the approach I've taken to much of my journalism, whether it involved crunching numbers from government databases or discerning patterns among otherwise-apparently-unrelated traffic accidents.

And, although pattern and system stories tend to carry a higher degree of difficulty than event stories, I'm good at them. I'm occasionally wrong, but not often and not by much. I wouldn't have lasted this long in this business had it been otherwise.

On the basis, then, of my independent knowledge and research regarding much of what Goldberg writes about, and on the basis of my confidence in my analytical abilities, I have concluded that Goldberg has, if anything, understated the threat posted by the trend about which she writes.

You can disagree with my review of Goldberg's book all you like. It's still a free country. But if you're going to expect me to take your criticsm seriously, you are obliged to consider the same data she did and then explain exactly how my analysis is flawed or create your own analysis that is demonstrably superior. Simply crying "undue hysteria" don't feed the bulldog. Claiming that you don't have to read the book to "know" that it is hysterical is laughable. And if my saying so leads you to think me arrogant and one of the worst parts of the N&R, to paraphrase Spagnola, I can live with that.

I take being correct seriously, and if I really am wrong, I welcome correction. I realize that some commenters doubt this, but it's true.
But if you're going to come onto the pages of my newspaper or my blog and call me wrong, and be personally insulting while doing so, then, as the kids say, you had better come correct or you can expect pushback, to put it politely.

One final point: Commenter Jim Wilson claims that the problems in the book differ, in degree and in kind, from the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. In degree, at least to this point, that's absolutely true, and thank God for it. But in kind? I'm with Goldberg on that question, so I'll give her the last word on it. From the book's afterword, titled "Solidarity":

One way to understand the hatreds tearing up the world today is as a war between East and West, Christianity and Dar El Islam. But the schema ignores the civil wars within both houses, and the alliances across spiritual and geographic lines. At a time when religious extremists seem everywhere ascendant, I see a different struggle, one between modernity, humanism, reason, and progress on one hand, and fundamentalism, tribalism, Puritanism and obscurantism on the other. Liberals the world over are fighting religious tyranny.

In the summer of 2005, I interviewed Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian graphic novelist whose books, Persepolis and Persepolis 2, chronicle her childhood during the revolution that instituted religious rule. Part of a cosmopolitan, politically engaged family, Satrapi captures their terrified disbelief as theocrats obsessed with sex and death took over Iran. I thought secularists in America might be feeling some faint shadow of that same horror, but I was reluctant to make comparisons between Iran's despotic mullahs and our Christian nationalists, because I didn't want to trivialize her country's exponentially greater suffering. Satrapi had no such qualms. "They are the same!" she said over the phone from Paris, before spontaneously launching into a plea for solidarity among all enemies of dundamentalism. "The secular people, we have no country. We the people -- all the secular people who are looking for freedom -- we have to keep together. We are international as they" -- the zealots of all religions -- "are international."

Indeed they are. The alliance between Christian Zionists and the most fanatical Israeli settlers is well-known. Less remarked upon is the way American evangelicals have made common cause at the United Nations against international accords protecting women's and children's rights. Under [President George W.] Bush, U.S. delegations to United Nations conferences mimic the lineup at the Reclaiming America for Christ conference: the group sent to a 2002 U.N. summit on children included Concerned Women for America's Janice Crouse; Paul Bonicelli, dean of academic affairs at Patrick Henry College; and John Klink, a former advisor to the Vatican. They worked with delegates from authoritarian Islam countries to scuttle a reference to "reproductive health services" in the declaration that came out of the meeting. In a story headlined, "Islamic Bloc, Christian Right Team Up to Lobby U.N.," The Washington Post wrote of U.S. and Iranian officials huddled together during coffee breaks, presumably plotting strategy. (In 2005, Bonicelli was appointed to oversee the U.S. Agency for Internatinoal Development's democracy and government programs.)

According to the Post, partnering with conservative Muslims "provided the administration an opportunity to demonstrate that it shares many cultural values with Islam." It quoted an American official noting, "We have tried to point out there are some areas of agreement between [us] and a lot of Islamic countries on these social issues."

* * *

The things so many Islamic fundamentalists hate about the West -- its sexual openness, its art, the possibilities it offers for escaping the bonds of family and religion, for inventing one's own life -- are what the Christian nationalists hate as well. And so, in a final grotesque irony, we come full circle and see defenders of American chauvinism speaking the language of anti-American radicals. At another U.N. meeting, this one in March 2005, Janice Crouse made the connection pointedly.

Held to review the progress made since the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the gathering offered another opportunity for the administration to pack its delegation with people like Christian radio broadcaster Janet Parshall (who, incidentally, was the narrator of David Balsiger's fawning documentary, George W. Bush: Faith in the White House). Crouse wasn't an official part of the team this time, but toward the end of hte conference, she gave a talk at the United Nations nongovernmental organization building about how feminism and "sexual liberation" have been an "unmitigated disaster" for women. ...

The blatancy of her appeal to patriarchy surprised me, because in speaking to American audiences Christian nationalists usually imitate the language of female empowerment. What shocked me, though, were Crouse's comments during the Q&A following her performance. A Turkish woman in a head scarf stood up and declared that American culture and communism are "the same," because both are colonialist forces that assault traditional norms. And amazingly, Janice Crouse agreed.

"I think you're very much on target when you say that modern-day feminism is colonialism in disguise," she said. "I get very short-tempered with American feminists today, because I see much of what they emphasize as importing decadent Western culture into third world nations." Frantz Fanon -- or Osama bin Laden -- couldn't have said it better. The crowd applauded.

This is what we are up against. Christian nationalists worship a nostalgic vision of America, but they despise the country that actually exists -- its looseness, its decadence, its maddening lack of absolutes.

Writing just after September 11, Salman Rushdie eviscerated those on the left who rationalized the terrorist attacks as a regrettable explosion of understandable third world rage: "The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings," he wrote. "Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multiparty political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex." Christian nationalists have no problem with beardlessness, but except for that, Rushdie could have been describing them.

It makes no sense to fight religious authoritarianism abroad while letting it take over at home. The grinding, brutal war between modern and medieval values has spread chaos, fear, and misery across our poor planet. Far worse than the conflicts we're experiencing today, however, would be a world torn between competing fundamentalisms. Our side, America's side, must be the side of freedom and Enlightenment, of liberation from stale constricting dogmas. It must be the side that elevates reason above the commands of holy books and human solidarity above religious supremacism. Otherwise, God help us all.

From our IT department:

"[Our hosting vendor] is experiencing technical problems that is affecting all of the sites that they host. They have assured me that their people are working on this and, of course, hope to have it solved ASAP."

Sigh.

I'll have a short story in tomorrow's paper about some fans who came to the "American Idol" concert tour's sold-out Greensboro stop. Nice folks all. My colleague Lynn Hey also got what appear to be (I can't see them at full size on my monitor) some good photos.

We did not take any photos of the show itself. That's because the "Idol" tour organizers made such ridiculous demands of us in exchange for the right to shoot photos that we just laughed at them. Seriously: Everyone in the newsroom who I saw actually read their letter laughed out loud. I've worked here for 19 years, and I worked in various facets of the music bidness for years before that, and even I had never seen anything so ridiculous.

I don't have the letter in front of me so I'm going from memory here, but they demanded pretty much everything but our cameras. I think they wanted all the original work, plus contact sheets, plus one-time-only use on our part (not an unusual request in and of itself), plus a whole bunch of other stuff, for which they were either paying us $1 or $0, I forget which. I don't think there was anything in there about first-born children, but as I say, I'm going from memory.

I wonder sometimes whether the goal of the music business isn't to ensure that there are no mourners at its funeral. Behavior like this makes me think most of us will still be around to find out.

No one knows for sure, but you can look in Saturday's News & Record to learn more.

Full disclosure: I lived from 1992 to 2000 about a block and a half north of the Mr. Morris quoted in the article, but as far as I can recall he and I have never met.

Barring important breaking news, I'll be out at the Coliseum Sunday evening chatting with people who are coming to the American Idols concert, for a story for Monday's paper. (Not writing about the show itself.) If you're going to be doing anything particularly noteworthy -- camping out in the parking lot, dressing up as a 10-foot Chris Daughtry, whatever -- e-mail me and let me know.

UPDATE: Well, it ran Sunday instead of Saturday, but here's the critter story.

My article is now online here; please leave a comment or e-mail me if you have a comment or question.

I mentioned earlier that I've been working on a story examining some issues of conspiracy raised by the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission's recently released report. That article is now finished and, as I type this, is schedule to run on Sunday.

Related at least somewhat to the Greensboro TRC report is the fact that Wilmington recently underwent a similar process in regard to the violent overthrow in 1898 of a legitimately elected city government -- the only such case in U.S. history. Local blogger Sean Coon has a couple of posts on the issue and its Greensboro connections. Sean in turn links to the Wilmington report and an outstanding radio program on the subject. As I said in the comments, I'm 46 and have lived in this state all but a few months of my life, and I was past 40 before I ever heard anything about the events of 1898.

Some members of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission suggest that the city's tentative response to its report means that real change will have to come from the community, not the City Council.

UPDATE: Story is here.

For the next little while, I'm going to be focusing on some issues related to the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report. (Margaret Banks, who has provided the bulk of our TRC coverage to this point, is filling in as our city-government reporter until a permanent successor to Eric Swensen is named.) In particular, I'm going to be looking into the basis for some of the report's findings and recommendations, starting with the report itself, which I'm still reading, and continuing with documents the commission will be delivering to Bennett College for archiving, and with interviews with commissioners (I hope) and other sources.

I imagine that some of the topics that this line of inquiry will cover will be obvious -- the notion of police conspiracy v. intentionality, to name just one example -- but feel free to suggest any you think are particularly important.

I've lived here almost 20 years -- long enough to know that a lot of people's attitudes and opinions about the events of Nov. 3, 1979, have settled into concrete. If the report itself won't change these people's minds, or even lead them to consider new possibilities, I know our reporting won't. But facts matter. Context matters. And those are the only things on my agenda.

Besides, this is the South. We don't hide our crazy relatives in the attic. We sit them in the front-porch rocker where everyone can enjoy them. So let's get to it.

Actually, we do -- badly, in fact -- but it's down again today. If you need to e-mail me something, you may do so here

UPDATE: It would be nice to think that all the e-mail we have received during our server outages over the past week and a half has been preserved, even if it's not accessible. It would be nice to think that ... but it would be wrong. Much of the e-mail sent to us is permanently lost. So if you have e-mailed in the past week and haven't gotten a response, that might be why. I strongly suggest you consider alternative means of getting in touch with us until our IT folks pronounce this crisis permanently fixed.

Well, as an experiment, I attempted to insert a Google map into our story Thursday about a fatal house fire. Staff artist Margaret Baxter already had put in a map, so if I screwed up or couldn't get the javascript code to work right, it wouldn't be any loss.

After some tinkering, I got it to work. I had to put the longitude value before the latitude value in the script, which is a bit unusual, and I had to add a couple of other lines of code to get the map to play nicely with Internet Explorer (v. 6; it still won't work under v. 5), but I did get it to work. So now we have a way of adding locator maps (fairly) quickly to breaking-news stories.

But that's probably all we'll use them for. I had a discussion with Stephen Paschall about the advantages and disadvantages of Google maps, and unfortunately, the latter tend to predominate. A summary of his concerns:

• Yeah, it's free, but Google doesn't guarantee either the quality of the code or the continuity of service.
• Our pages already have a ton of script in them, both in the page files themselves and scripts added by the server. Google's script for maps plays nicely now, but if Google ever changes its script, which it has said it could do, it could conflict with some of our scripts.
• Inline scripts of any kind -- I had to paste the code into the body of the story, then designate it as HTML -- would make it harder to adapt our content for wireless mobile distribution (cell phones, PDAs and so on).
• Relying on graphic content that's 1) external in origin and 2) involves scripts that can change is a risk when we're trying to create a unified, permanent database for all our content.

Besides, for a lot of our maps some of the features that Google Maps include -- you can drag them; you can zoom out or in -- just aren't all that useful.

We can, however, use the program in a pinch to generate stable *.jpg images of maps that we can include in stories on the Web and stick in our permanent database, and I can foresee our doing that more often, particularly with breaking news. So it's not useless.

We welcome other suggestions regarding tools of this type. But remember, I'm not much of a techie, so please use small words and type slowly. Thanks!

After publication of "Strange Days: Our 12th Annual Roundup of the Idiotic, the Ironic and the Just Plain Weird," frequent N&R blog commenter Bruce Raynor wrote JR (and cc'd me):

01.06.05,03.06.05,04.13.05,06.13.05,09.13.05,10.1/.05,11.24.05 and 08.22.05, 08.24.05.

These are dates in your 12.30.05 “THE IDIOTIC…’05” article involving things done, said, or about Republicans and a conservative religious leader. I cannot argue with their inclusion.

What I find strange (but not surprising) is that you did not include any of the many available appropriate inclusions from Democrats and ACLU types.

You continually indicate that you want to represent the community but more often than not fail to do so by your one-sided presentations.

It'd be nice if the process of creating a "Strange Days" column were as simple as Raynor thinks it is. It'd also be a lot less work. (Not that I'm complaining -- getting to do this feature every year is one of the nicest parts of my job.)

But since Raynor raised the issue, and since we're supposed to be all about the transparency here, I'm happy to share with you the conscious/subconscious thought processes that influence what the final column looks like. I'm not going to swear to you that this explanation is complete, simply because of the subconscious part, but after doing this 12 years running, I think I've got a pretty good handle on what happens.

I gather raw material almost every day, all year. My sources include the N&R's section fronts and its wire services, along with stuff I see on TV or hear on the radio (both broadcast and satellite) and the couple of dozen news-related Web sites I visit every day, and weird-news features on such Web sites as Yahoo!, Salon.com (excellent celebrity-gossip column) and Ananova.com. I also stumble on links to potential items while reading blogs. (Did I mention that I get paid, in part, to read blogs? Is this a great country or what?)

The published version typically runs 75 or 80 column-inches -- about two-thirds of a standard newspaper page in our standard type size -- but the initial list I compile every year runs more like 500 before I start cutting. (Why not run the whole thing on the Internet? you ask. Several reasons, but the biggest is that, upon reflection, a lot of it simply turns out not to be funny.)

Deciding what to use and what not to use is not a rigidly analytical process. The factors I *consciously* weigh include (in no particular order or proportion):

More than a decade ago, I had the privilege of leading the group of N&R folks -- both a formally designated group and some other folks who weren't officially part of the effort but were interested and had expertise -- who put together the newspaper's first Web site.

One of the people deeply involved in that effort was a very talented copy editor and page designer named Chris Clonts.

Not long after that effort, Chris and his then-girlfriend, now-wife, Kathleen Knauss, left us for jobs with the Detroit Free Press. Now, Chris has been hired away from the Free Press to become assistant design director for news at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which just underwent a complex redesign and is continuing to experiment with design and in other ways, in print and online.

As a look at Chris' portfolio shows, he has a gift. The Star-Tribune is fortunate to get him.

... as posed by CJR:

Take a look at the front page of your newspaper today. How many stories are on events that the average reader has already heard something about? The Metro section, is it riveting and creative? Or incremental and cramped? Does the paper have strong voices? Does it provide the kind of context that cuts through the fog of information? Does it have any fun? Does the photography speak volumes? Does the Web site offer more than digital newsprint? Can a reader get into the conversation? Do you want to read this newspaper?

If you don't have a copy handy, you can find today's front page here (probably near the top of the fourth set of pages).

So: How do you answer?

They're ripping desks and phones out of my end of the newsroom this morning to make room for the new, adjustable, designed-for-computers desks. Meanwhile, I'm homeless from a desk point of view, squatting at the desk of another editor who doesn't work Mondays. My voicemail works, and I'll be checking it, but actually trying to catch me on my office phone might not work so well for a few days.

My thanks to community editor Betsi Robinson; tech gurus Stephen Paschall, Charlie Stafford and Kevin Lockamy; and the people of Summerfield for their contributions to the successful launch of Hometown Hubs: Summerfield. We're going to do a quick post-mortem, and possibly some tweaking of the site design, before we start working on the next Hometown Hub. As always, feedback is welcome.

We've gotten sound files from this past weekend's second round of hearings held by the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission. For ease of use, we'll be cutting them into a separate file for each speaker before posting them. Not sure how long that will take; my PC (which isn't built for serious audio/video editing) just crashed when I tried to open the first file. So, uh, stay tuned.

From an e-mail just sent to the News Department from colleague Nate DeGraff:

Scott Simon's interview with superstar courts scribe Eric Collins will air on NPR's "Weekend Edition" tomorrow morning between 8 and 10 a.m. They'll chat about Eric's stories on whether witnesses should be allowed to swear in on the Quran before testifying. The interview was recorded this afternoon.

"I probably sound like an idiot," he said. I didn’t disagree.

No word on whether our young friend will attempt to show off by referring to himself as the News & Record's "legal affairs correspondent."

That Nate. Such a warm, affirming guy.

You can listen to the program on local NPR affiliates WFDD (88.5 FM) and WUNC (91.5 FM), or on the Internet here.

Kit Seelye of The New York Times, who was here reporting a story on the N&R recently, e-mailed to say it has been postponed at least a week, from 5/16 to 5/23. Given the changes in biz/media coverage upcoming at the Times, I wouldn't be surprised if it gets bumped back even farther than that.

As David Hoggard and others have pointed out, newspaper circulation continues to drop. But as JR points out today, ours is up slightly overall on weekdays, down slightly overall on Sundays and up both weekday and Sunday in our metro-Greensboro primary circulation area.

This is not to say that we're out of the woods. We're not. But it's a tribute to a bunch of hard-working people here, particularly but not exclusively in the newsroom, that we're bucking industry trends ... in a good way.

And, of course, this doesn't change our Public Square initiative.

Given all the vitriol in the blogiverse, you don't often see philosophically opposed bloggers engaging in virtual group hugs, but that's exactly what's going on over in -- of all places -- our Letters to the Editor. So if your morning blood-sugar count is low, head on over. :-)

"One, two, another, another ... "

That's how my son, now about to turn 4, used to count. I'm starting to feel the way he does about the growing number of N&R blogs.

And that's a good thing.

Two more blogs have made their debut.

Editorial-page editor Allen Johnson's Thinking Out Loud made its official debut Friday evening. To judge from the anticipation it engendered -- a routine "test" post by one of our tech folks two weeks prior drew nine responses -- it should quickly become a high-traffic site, one that involves a great deal of community discussion.

To me, someone who works in the newspaper business, the reason is fairly obvious. Most people don't really obsess much over the newspaper business the way they do over, say, TV or movies, which is one reason why movies about the newspaper business tend not to succeed. But one aspect of the business that does interest people, at least in this community, is how the N&R's editorials come to be. (That question may be rephrased, depending on one's political viewpoint, as "Why does the N&R support nothing but liberal candidates?" or "Why does the N&R always support the Old Boy Network here?")

Allen will tell you himself that he's a blogging newbie, but I've known him for 18 years and I can tell you he has one attribute that's necessary, and might even be sufficient, for blogging success: He enjoys a good conversation, even with people he disagrees with.

The other new blog, which made its debut earlier this morning, is Off the Record, by Doug Clark, a N&R editorial writer and columnist. Doug, a longtime staffer at the High Point Enterprise before joining us about a year ago, also has demonstrated a taste for conversation that will serve him, and you, well.

Also, beginning Tuesday, the letters to the editor published in the News & Record also will appear online in a blog called, simply, Letters.

Letters currently appear online already, but each day's letters appear together on a single page without links to individual letters and without a way for readers to comment on one. The blog format will create a link to each individual letter, called a "permalink," to make citing a letter online easier, and will allow reader comments on each individual letter. The commenting feature, we hope, will help engender more community conversation, particularly on local issues of wide interest.

We hope you'll enjoy these new features and use 'em often. And, as always, if you've got comments, suggestions or criticism, e-mail me at the link to the right or hit the comments link below this post.

The N&R welcomes another addition to its blog roster: religion writer Nancy McLaughlin's "The Front Pew." We had some technical problems with it this weekend (along with our forums and some other parts of the site that apparently no one noticed), but they're all fixed now (we think). So y'all stop by there and show her some love, mmkay?

Coming soon: Biz enterprise writer Dick Barron and editorial-page editor Allen Johnson will join our blogging ranks (Allen's will be here). And we might be able to whup up some more surprises for you this week, too.

Bill Mitchell, editor of Poynter Online, the Web site of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a journalism education program and think tank, has an interview up with N&R editor John Robinson about our open-source journalism initiative. Regular readers of JR's blog won't find much new, but this'll get what a lot of us in Greensboro already know out in front of a much wider audience.

One of the first things I wanted to do to our Web site was to enable reader comments on every staff-written story we post online.

The good news: We'll be able to do that, and we will do it.

The bad news: Our new Web-publishing software has to get here first, and it's still probably several weeks out.

Meanwhile, our tech folks are looking at some other changes we'd like to make. When I know more, so will you.

My colleague Mike Fuchs, the news department's main online guy, has posted links to the 10 most-viewed N&R stories of 2004.

Now, given that we don't post all our staff stories online, I'm not sure how much to, um, read into this. You will notice -- I sure did -- that not one of the 10 constitutes "hard news" as that phrase traditionally has been understood. The important work done by my colleagues on the enterprise/investigative team, Taft Wireback and Stan Swofford, on such issues as Project Homestead, video poker, school violence and crack cocaine appears nowhere on the list.

That's not to denigrate the work of other colleagues on the stories that did make the list. But the makeup of the list raises a question: What are the ramifications as the N&R proceeds with plans to remake its Web site and its news operations? Should we produce more stories like these? Should we give people what they want, or what they need, or both? Is serendipity dreamt of in the philosophies of those who will be working with and advising us on our plans? Why stories about mysterious creatures but not stories about jet-powered outhouses, which, as we all know, are much cooler?

Inquiring minds want to know.

As JR announced on Saturday, I'm going to embark on turning the News & Record's online presence into a public square, using principles of open-source journalism, as soon as I get one or two other things off my plate.

As he said, my "early efforts" will be to develop interactivity, forums, communities of place and of interest. I'll also be trying to break down artificial boundaries between N&R staff and readers by working to develop more staff and reader blogs and finding other ways to get more reader-produced content -- stories and media -- online.

That's an environment so target-rich as to be almost bewildering. And I'm a content guy, not a tech guy. (My c0ding skillz aren't mad. They're not even grumpy.)

So while I'm clearing my decks, let me lay the cornerstone for the public square by throwing this question out for discussion: Of the various formats for online discussion -- for argument's sake, let's say a discussion that could be initiated by readers OR N&R staff -- what format (blog, threaded messaging, etc.) do you like best and why? For the techies among you, is there any particular program for managing such discussion forums that you especially like? Any particular features we ought to be insisting upon?

Hit the comments link and let me know.

Thanks! Let's get to work.

I'm going to post the text as soon as I get some HTML issues worked out, but in the meantime, you can download the report as a Microsoft Word document by clicking here.

UPDATE: Text after the jump.

As I mentioned in this blog's first post, I've frequently been the one-eyed guy in the land of the blind, the N&R's version of an early adopter, where computers and the Internet are concerned. So I get drafted every so often to try to figure out where we're going, or what we're going to adopt, next.

This'd be one of those times.

As I said in that same post, I encouraged the Powers That Be here at the N&R to get us involved in blogging primarily because of the possibilities I saw for the medium to enhance the relationship between the paper (and its Web site) and the community. Now, I'm pulling together a list of possible specific ways we can do that, ways in which you and I and everyone in the real-life and online community who wants to participate can make the N&R's Web presence a true online public square for Greensboro and Guilford County.

At a minimum, such a presence would include a deep and rich variety of links and RSS feeds, some form of aggregation, expanded online presence for N&R staffers (including more blogs) and ways in which members of the community can contribute directly to the content. In short, we plan to take some large steps, soon, toward building an open-source, online community.

We have no preconceived notions of what it should look like, and no idea is too weird. (And John Robinson will confirm that when *I* say no idea is too weird, I am not joking.) We want -- we NEED -- your input and help.

So have at it -- hit the comment link below or e-mail me and tell me what you'd like to see, do, contribute. Know of any sites already doing this in a way that appeals to you? Shoot me a link. Know anyone I should talk to? Shoot me the contact info.

And to help us prioritize, categorize each of your specific suggestions in one of these three ways: 1) You want it. 2) You need it. 3) You can't live without it.

For the longest time, newspapers have been an evolutionary business rather than a revolutionary one. Appropriately, for a city named after a Revolutionary War hero, that trend reverses course right here, right now. Join us.

This article in the Wall Street Journal offers a real thumbsucker to those of us of the newspaper persuasion:

"The challenge for newspapers is for them to figure out what they can provide that isn't being provided by the Internet and CNN," says David Cross, a director at Zyman Group, an Atlanta marketing consultant that recently advised the newspaper industry.

One thing we can provide? Local news, and a lot of of it. And that's what most of our news staff is devoted to doing. Subsets of that include the community news that you and your neighbors are interested in, written, we hope, so as to entice even people who aren't your neighbors to read it, and local watchdog journalism (because "60 Minutes" can't be everywhere, and besides, there's that whole Dan Rather document thing).

Will we always be providing this news on dead trees? "Always" is a long time, but so far, predictions of the demise of print have proved premature. But my co-workers and I are trying to develop the kind of journalistic competence that crosses medium lines (or is, as the geeks say, "platform-neutral"). That means we want to be the ones who bring you the best-reported, best-written, best-illustrated, best-designed local news, whether that be via print, video, audio, online, modeling clay or any combination of the above.

If we can do that, and I'm confident we can, then we can live in harmony with the Internet and cable news for a long, long time to come.

"If you come into the newsroom dressed like a bunny, you're going to get what you deserve."
--One of my co-workers

You've been warned.

Given the news out of some of our local schools in the past few days, you can be forgiven for thinking that the N&R's series on school discipline has already started. But it actually starts tomorrow. In this two-day package, my colleagues Taft Wireback and Jennifer Fernandez are going to be taking a detailed look at a subject of great interest to students, parents, teachers and a lot of other folks with no direct connection to the schools. Don't miss it.

Crack cocaine was introduced to this area almost 20 years ago. A lot of very bad things began happening very quickly as a result, and they're all still going on today.

On Sunday, the News & Record begins publishing a three-day series, "Crack in our Community: Too High a Cost," reported and written by my colleague Stan Swofford. The series examines just how far-reaching the effects of crack cocaine use are, the human and financial costs, and ways we just might be able to make headway against it. It also will offer you an online forum in which to discuss the problem and possible solutions. Don't miss it.

The pseudonymous Greensboro blogger Mr. Sun* had an interesting observation the other day (if, by "interesting," you mean, "cuts me to the quick"):

I stopped reading the News & Record a while back. I subscribe for the advertisements, but I get my news online. I scan the News & Record for can't-miss items, but I no longer read it. The thing that has struck me about the News & Record blogs is that they reveal the personality of the writers. I never miss them. I read them daily. I look forward to finding out what the writers think about things. I wonder what they will say about current events. The content in the newspaper, by contrast, is stilted and dry. I never find myself anticipating anything in the print version of the News & Record. ...

In the orgy of self-analysis overcoming the traditional and online media, I hope this point isn't lost. I like hearing the voice of actual human beings who know more about things than me. Right now, all of the emphasis is on the knowledge, but let's not forget the voice. ...

I think my editing peers would agree with me when we say that we put more emphasis on the knowledge rather than the voice for a reason: Screwing up the voice can get you ignored, as Mr. Sun observes, but screwing up the knowledge can get you sued. Mr. Sun also says specifically that he wants to hear voices of people "who know more about things than me," and the way a writer gets to know more than Mr. Sun is by reporting.

Too, for the past century or so, newspapers have tried to be "objective," a description that extends not only to what they cover but also how. In some stories, the weight of facts is enough to satisfy the reader. But most readers, most of the time, are looking for something more.

This basic tension between fairness and flair underlies the problem Mr. Sun describes, and few reporters (or editors) can balance those competing needs successfully.

How do we fix this problem? I have a few half-formed ideas I'll throw out.

To start with, voices usually are made, not born, and they're usually not made right away. Rather, writers tend to develop their own distinctive voices only after years of practice and reading other writers' work. There are some exceptions, of course, but few work in the newspaper bidness and those who do tend to gravitate toward the largest markets pretty quickly. So we could: