news-record.com

Maybe there is some value to all the bad weather we've had in the past week.

The map that we publish each Sunday of the previous week's home break-ins shows 23 break-ins for the first week of February. Normally, there are three or four times that many in a week.

Perhaps burglars don't like the cold or maybe they know that they leave footprints in the snow.

A letter writer wonders why we identified the public officials by race in this story about the proposed downtown hotel.

The News & Record needs to share the blame as well, based on my reading of Sunday’s update (Jan. 31). The article went out of its way to cite comments by the principals in the dispute and then identifies them as either black or white. Why?

Should I change the way I think about a person’s comments because of his race? Definitely not.

We didn't include their race because we wanted you to change the way you think about their comments. We included the racial identification because we thought it informs their comments and help you understand why they said what they said. When the discussion is one that is based on racial politics -- and this discussion is nothing if not that -- then the race of the principals is relevant.

Which of these two sentences is clearer and more informative:

* Skip Alston talks to two city council members about their lack of voter support and a possible recall election.

* Skip Alston, who is black, talks to two white city council members about their lack of black voter support and a possible recall election.

You could do the same with the claim that Deena Hayes makes that opposition to the proposed hotel is racist. The race of the players is a key part of the story.

But we agree with the letter writer that race isn't relevant in all cases. In the typical story about City Council, we rarely mention that Mayor Knight is white or that T. Dianne Bellamy-Small is black. It's usually not relevant. 

In the same way, we tend not to identify crime victims and suspects by race because there is rarely evidence that race is involved in the crime. (At least, at the time we're reporting the initial incident.)  Even when the perp is at large, we include his race only as part of a longer list of identifying characteristics. Saying that police are looking for a white man in his 20s doesn't narrow the field sufficiently to help anyone identify him.

It does, however, do precisely what the letter writer argues against: Inserts race into a story for no obvious reason.

Sunday update: I am comforted to know that Charles Davenport Jr. disagrees with me. At least, I think he does.

The Washington Post makes a common but significant error in its story today on the recognition of the Greensboro Four at the National Museum of American History. The first two paragraphs:

For 50 years now, the faces of the students have been etched in our memories, four young men at a lunch counter, nattily dressed, clean-shaven, looking over their shoulders, serious about their actions, perhaps a little uncertain about its results.

Sitting at the whites-only counter in a North Carolina Woolworth, they asked for cups of coffee and were refused service. The Greensboro Four didn't leave, instead stepping into history Feb. 1, 1960.

The writer is referring, I believe, to the photo above from the Feb. 2, 1960, edition of the Greensboro Record. It is not a photo of what is known as the Greensboro Four who conducted the first sit-in at the Woolworth on Feb. 1. This is a photo of the second day. And while Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil were there for their second trip, original participants David Richmond and Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan) were not. The other two men in the photo are Billy Smith and Clarence Henderson.

The Charlotte Observer made a similar error earlier this week. (Click on the second slide.)

As far as I know, a photo of the original four at the lunch counter on Feb. 1, 1960, doesn't exist.

Update: The Post ombudsman, Andy Alexander, wrote to say that he has alerted the editors and that revisions in the story will be made for print. He didn't mention the online version, but you'd think....

Friday morning update: Unfortunately, they didn't.

You know the talk about how newspapers and broadcast television are mature industries, without much future growth potential?

Looks like blogging is fast becoming a mature industry, too. According to a new Pew survey, the percentage of 18-29 year-old bloggers has dropped 9 percent in the past two years.

A new study has found that young people are losing interest in long-form blogging, as their communication habits have become increasingly brief, and mobile. Tech experts say it doesn't mean blogging is going away. Rather, it's gone the way of the telephone and e-mail -- still useful, just not sexy.

Instead, they’re using Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

With social networking has come the ability to do a quick status update and that has ''kind of sucked the life out of long-form blogging,'' says Amanda Lenhart, a Pew senior researcher and lead author of the latest study.

We’re not shelving our blogs any more than we’d shelve the paper. But you can’t stand still. You go to where the people are.

I’ve found that I tend to devote more attention to Twitter than the blogs. I use them differently. In the case of the social networks, the conversation is more diverse and robust. The idea exchange is vibrant, and linking is plentiful.

Join us on on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.  And read the paper, too.
 

Jeri Rowe tells me that the News & Record is inside the time capsule that they buried at N.C. A&T Monday. Specifically, they included a copy of the special section we produced for the 50th anniversary of the first of the Greensboro sit-ins and a copy of the Sunday newspaper with President Obama's letter to Greensboro.

We're honored to help mark the moment in history. Newspapers are good at that kind of thing; we're always being placed in time capsules. I'm not sure when the time capsule is scheduled to be opened. 50 years maybe? I'm confident that newspapers will still be around. I'm also confident they will be wildly different then than they are now in both look and content. 

At about 5:45 a.m. today, ratings for the Good Morning Show on WFMY plummeted, sending the program director into a frenzy! What the heck happened????!!!!

Watch.

I should have said that readers could find Ed's head in the paper.

(Thanks to Rosemary Plybon for helping a printie deal with broadcast.)

First thing Monday morning we'll be covering the opening of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum. Here's the plan:

* We'll have the traditional coverage in the paper and on the Web site.

 * We'll begin posting photos early Monday and continue throughout the day. Check back often.

* GenlGreensboro will be filing 140-character reports on Twitter all morning. Join him in the conversation.

* We're going to take a shot at streaming the ceremony live, and filing an edited video as soon as its over we can.

* We'll pull together some time-lapse videos of the set up and crowd arriving. Eye candy, they call it.

* Tuesday we'll come back with a view inside the museum.

Anything else we should do?

Our coverage here.

Other coverage from outside the area:

Atlanta
Dallas
Raleigh
Los Angeles

USA Today

One of the perils of permanency is that news changes. What was reported one moment is wrong the next. Happened today.

About 18 hours ago, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum assured us that tonight's gala celebration would go on as planned, regardless of weather problems. We published that on the front page in the morning paper.

This morning, the event organizers announced the gala has been postponed and rescheduled for Feb. 13. Good move, although I wish they had done it yesterday when we all knew what was coming and we could have announced it on our front page.

Now, how to get the word out to the 2,200 people who plan to be there tonight?

Random thoughts about our sit-ins coverage so far:

* One sign of the appeal of the 44-page special section in the newspaper today: we have had a great deal of theft from single copy boxes, which, while a great annoyance to customers and an expense to us, suggests that we produced something that people want enough to steal.

* We solicited letters from readers about what the sit-ins meant to them. We got 25 good ones and will start publishing them Monday. Many were moving personal remembrances. Several writers said they were in Woolworth that day and sat in support with the Greensboro Four. We haven't been able to verify their stories. Not saying they weren't there; just that we can't confirm it. 

*  I was worried that we would hear from the haters. But to my delight, we received only four that, in one way or another, used the sit-ins as an excuse to blame African Americans for the downfall of Western Civilization. Maybe it was because we required name, address and phone number.

* On Tuesday, a woman called to say “Enough is enough. Stop writing about the sit-ins.” But that's the only call I've gotten like that. The rest have been supportive.

From Sunday's letter from President Obama to the daily sit-ins coverage to the hotel shenanigans to the snowy weekend, it's been quite a news week. Got to love that.

Reporter/columnist Jim Schlosser talks to Neill McNeill about the Greensboro sit-ins last night on Fox8.

That's Jim talking about the sit-ins. Some links of Jim writing about the sit-ins