news-record.com

In recent years the News & Record has not had a very good front page. If it has been covered by radio/TV or Internet, that does not mean that good storeis cannot be written on the material. Washington passes stimulus? Why not an article on how that will help NC or Guilford County? The N&R has missed numbers of great local stories, such as when Businesses fail. Why? For instance Newman Machine will lay off about 40 people tomorrow, where's the info? Also the paper often writes about what may happen in the future (rezoning, etc) but not one word on what really happens on that date. Many papers write about how other Governmental districts do things compared to us. Why we pay the highest salaries in North Carolina for beginning teachers and the performance is poor to low average? The continuity provided to an avid reader is often missing. The N&R does very little to no independent investigative reporting. Their few attempts have been good and interesting but instead of one article a week, we get one article every 13 weeks. (My estimate) Nothing captures the interest of the ordinary citizen more than education and it is a local issue. Few cares about education at the nationaal or state level, but all cares about local education. We seldom get more than what went on at a Board of Education meeting not what effect it will have on our community. For instance, we are spending millions on magnet schools and not one has been eliminated although some are below county average. Court coverage and rezoning coverage is spotty. The production (column inches) per full time reporter of N&R should be compared to writers at other competitive papers. We don't want short stories, we want interesting stories. Also, too many trees wasted on super large pictures on the front page. NY Times and Charlotte N&O has about the right amount.

I disagree. When most of those layed off had 15 to 25 years experience at the company, that's a story. The story is that companies that have never laid off before are going down the tube. The story is that the economy is not getting better in the Triad area. Mfg. jobs are still going down the tube. Forty jobs paying about 40k or more is not to be dismissed. These people will not find other jobs in the area at that level for years. It is sad and the story should be told. Best regards.

John, this is a very good list and meme. The Front Page. In fact, the front page of a newspaper is a thing unto itself, it is the face the paper presents to its readers, and it's something that online news sites cannot do as well as paper newspapers. I mean, the feeling one gets, or at least i get, and I am sure i am not alone, when one first grasps a copy of the newspaper at home, looking at the front page, seeing the banner on top and the stories and pics and headlines, and then ready to dig in. And whether it's the paper edition of the New York Times, which I read as a kid on Sundays in Massachusetts and still read here in Taiwan on Tuesday when it is inserted into a local Chinese-lanuage paper here as a supplement, complete with same NYT typface and fonts and page design, an 8-page duplicate of the daily Times but called the Weekly Times here, a product of the Times brand, yes, the front page is an entire phenom unto itself. Loved your list...................by the way, since I am here today, just want to let you and your readers know that as the snailpaper coiner i created a novelty song about newspapers, sung by a crooner in Texas, words by me, called I just Can't Live without My daily snailpaper .....here......http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnZKIk1Krp8........and it's a six minute comedy song with refernces, loving refs, since this man loves paper newspapers and uses snailpapers as a term of endearment, google it for more info, the word i mean, the Juneau Empire ran my oped last week on snailpapers.......refernces to Ben Bradlee, bill keller, Woodward and Bernstein (who has seen and heard the song now), the old Her-Ex in LA, Alex beam in Boston and Neil Steinberg in Chicago, please read the lyrics, they are on the video in a scrolling text. and your POV and reax would be cool to read later, either here on the blog or a seprate blog or an email to me at bikolang@gmail.com.......cheers, danny in taiwan, FRONT PAGE MAN from the 1950s to today!

http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-see-by-snailpapers-that-john-rob...

And one more note to your readers here, John. Some newspaper readers, er, snailpaper readers, just don't get it. A good front page is planned and designed and created by a good front page editor who uses his or her gut instinct on that particular day to make what he or she thinks will be a good front page. The FP cannot never please everyone. There's always going to be someone carping that such and such a story was not on the FP, but you know what, and I say this as a newspaperman who has been involved with newspapers for over 55 years, in the end, a good front page editor puts together a good FP the best way he or she knows, and it's a calling, it's a feel, it's like playing jazz everyday with a different jam session, and not everyone is going to like the music each day. But that's the nature of the beast, and a newspaper is a beast. One problem with readers today is that they do not know how to READ a newspaper, they are often newspaper-illiteratel they confuse a letter to the editor with an editorial, for example, or they confuse an oped commentary with an editorial, they don't know how a newspaper is put together or really how to read it. maybe one day you can make a new list titled "HOW TO READ A NEWSPAPER"......readers gotta be educated....