What to do with the downtown YWCA?

GREENSBORO, NC --


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I had a nice talk with former city council candidate Julie Lapham this morning about the vacant YWCA building downtown. As the News & Record reported, the price has been cut on the building for a second time, it's down to $1.7 million.

Julie says there are some good ideas floating around out there for possible uses for the place. She'd like to see it accommodate a one-stop clearinghouse for human services, housing representatives from legal aide and law enforcement to refugee services and housing assistance. Another idea, possibly in tandem with the clearing house, is for a theater -- a performance space for the public performance arts agencies such as Community Theatre of Greensboro, Greensboro Ballet, Greensboro Children's Theatre and the myriad other performance groups currently lacking a modern, affordable and appropriately-sized theater.

Personally, the theater appeals to me. The idea of a downtown theater for the community performance groups is something I've long thought would be of great benefit to Greensboro. Doing it right would include a scene shop and rehearsal space.

Any ideas for new uses of this property are going to require some substantial funds both for purchase and rehabilitation, and the commercial options are limited -- Julie says McDonalds looked, but declined because of the limited access. As I told Julie, this is probably a terrible time for projects that would require public monies, but Julie thinks that might not be necessary. She thinks that with the right plan, Greensboro citizens would fund its capitalization through contributions. I think she might be right.

Clark gets another right

Doug Clark of the (Greensboro) News & Record:

"Our law does not allow a natural mother or father to share legal parenthood with a domestic partner -- same-sex or heterosexual. To allow adoption, the natural parent must either marry his or her partner (not legal for same-sex couples in North Carolina, of course) or give up his or her own parental rights -- which just makes no sense."

Rhino editor Hammer mistaken in Yost boast

GREENSBORO, NC -- News & Record editor John Robinson writes to say that the N&R article about Guilford County's questionable real estate broker arrangement did not only appear in their Google-proof e-edition, but also in the printed newspaper on October 4, 2010. (see: If a tree falls in the forest...)

That doesn't let the News & Record off the hook for their backasswards approach to the internet (there are consequences to hiding your online content) but it does make Rhino Times editor John Hammer quite mistaken in his boast that Rhino writer Scott Yost scooped the N&R with his story of December 4th.

If a tree falls in the forest; or the stupidity of the News & Record's secret internet

[UPDATE: Rhino editor mistaken.]

GREENSBORO, NC -- Several months ago, the News & Record started putting some of its online content behind a registration wall in a proprietary format. They call it the "e-edition." Human access requires coughing up your email address, age, gender and zip code; the content is invisible to search engines and its pages un-linkable. (Ed Cone refers to it as "the Google-proof vault.")

Heretofore deaf to the complaints of bloggers and blind to the drastic consequence of being ignored by Google, the News & Record may finally have bumped up against unavoidable evidence that their secret internet is really detrimental to one of the core missions of a news organization which, I assume (correct me if I'm wrong), is the dissemination of news.

At his blog today, N&R editor John Robinson bemoans the fact that weekly print competitor The Rhino Times is taking credit for breaking a story. Not so fast, says Robinson: "We wrote about it three months ago."

I went to the Google. I couldn't find it. I wrote to Robinson and asked for a link. He can't give me one: "It was in the e-edition," he explained.

While Robinson explains away the Rhino stealing the N&R's thunder as the result of "the holiday news doldrums," the undeniable truth is that it is really a consequence of the News & Record making its news invisible. (If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it...)

Whoever sold the N&R on the "e-edition," no, wait, scratch that: whoever bought into this idea at the N&R is either hostile to or ignorant of the power of the internet and a news organization's place in it. They, it's plain, should not be in position to make these kinds of decisions. The N&R needs some new blood in leadership positions, and fast.

Clark pwns Munger

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record's Doug Clark counters Duke professor (and former gubernatorial candidate for whom I voted) Mike Munger's counter to Clark's original editorial on the state's new instant runoff voting. It is Clark's best explanation yet of the scheme's flaws. Clark:

On top of its other faults, IRV is arbitrary. Why not just count first- and second-choice votes? If that had been done, Thigpen's initial lead over McCullough probably would have held up. Why add third-choice votes? That's sliding further from the voters' real preference. Or if the idea is just to count more votes, how about giving voters fourth and fifth choices? Or let them rank all candidates in order of preference? That would be worse, in my view, but it's no less logical than the IRV format applied in this race.

Civitas spam, spyware

I received an unsolicited email "newsletter" from John Pope's Civitas Institute this morning. I'm not sure how they got my email although one thing is certain, I did not provide it to Civitas and I did not ask to receive their newsletter.

That Civitas is spamming me is bad enough, but here is where it becomes really annoying and a stupendously bad public relations move by Civitas: They provided my email address to a third party to send and track the emails. Without my knowledge or consent, Civitas has delivered my email address to iContact.com. The email itself is embedded with tracking schemes through iContacts' domain icptrack.com. Even clicking on a link that appears to be to an article at the Civitas' web site is routed first through a tracking relay at icptrack.com. It's spying.

Worst of all, to unsubscribe, one must click through to iContact.com, a well-known means by which spammers confirm that an email address is valid. Sure, it may stop email from Civitas, but iContact gets a confirmation of a valid email address -- to then use or sell to others if they wish.

The Civitas email contained a solicitation for donations. Here's my answer: No way in hell.

The long and winding road -- every morning

GREENSBORO, NC -- I was speaking to an acquaintance at a party on Friday and she told me that she and her husband are retiring from their News & Record paper route at the end of the year, she after more than 22 years on the job. 

I thought that was remarkable -- that someone would stick with such an unconventional job for so long. More remarkable, I thought, because she also has a professional day job that makes getting up at 3:30 every morning seem impossible to do for the decades she has done it. 

Yet, News & Record editor John Robinson tells me she's not alone: "I’m told that we have several carriers with 30 years on the job and at least one who has been delivering papers for more than 34 years," he writes.  

Amazing. While they apparently don't have the "record," congratulations to Frances and Tom Deering for their dedication. Now get some sleep. 

Local hooping awesomeness

GREENSBORO, NC -- I admire people who take their interests to the level of exceptional, even if it's something we might normally think of as simple. Like this:

WXLV, WMYV -- let 'em go Time Warner Cable

GREENSBORO, NC -- Dick Barron of the News & Record reports that Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBGI) have been unable to negotiate a contract that would keep WXLV, the local ABC affiliate, and sister station WMYV on TWC's local cable lineup.

I'm no apologist for Time Warner Cable, their Road Runner internet service has been degrading in quality, performing far below advertised speeds; I'm tired of the dance we have to do every year where they raise my rates and I have to plead with a "retention specialist" to get them back down to a sane price; and they've earned plenty of lingering ill will from when they tried to make Greensboro one of their experimental markets for metered internet usage fees. Should my discussions next month with the "retention specialist" not be resolved satisfactorily, I won't continue as a Time Warner Cable customer.

For now, I remain a customer though and if one of the excuses Time Warner Cable has for trying to raise rates is that its content providers are charging more I would rather they keep costs down and drop WXLV and WMYV from the lineup.

The two shows the Sinclair stations offer in which I have any interest, The Office and Entourage, are also available on other channels and online. The rest is a bunch of crap targeted to the dumbest of trailer park morons. Family Feud? The People's Court? Jerry Springer? Dancing with the Stars? Who cares? They also are the only network-affiliated local station that has no local news. I would not miss them a bit if they disappeared from local cable; and if their absence makes it a little easier for me to negotiate my rates with Time Warner Cable back to normal, all the better.

Moody

GREENSBORO, NC -- One of my favorite local blogs, among many, is Greensboro Daily Photo. Its authors, described only as a husband and wife team who "have roots going back many generations here," capture Greensboro's places on camera.

Good photographers, in my opinion, do not only capture a subject, but they convey a mood. This recent shot by Greensboro Daily Photo of the University General Store is a perfect example.

University General Store from GreensboroDailyPhoto.com

Forget left or right, go get a good deal on some nice furniture

GREENSBORO, NC -- While I poke Tony Wilkins for the composition of his new political committee, I'm reminded of exactly why I am growing to despise factional politics, especially at the local level where I think it is not only unnecessary but counterproductive. The reason is this: in day-to-day living we interact with each other in ways that are far removed from considerations of politics, and there we communicate, cooperate and get things done.

Case in point: Tony Wilkins. Tony is a likable fellow. A self-labeled conservative. We talk politics, sometimes finding we have shared opinions and respecting each other when we don't. But that's in the abstract. Last week we got down to some real business.

Tony owns and operates Furniture Connection on High Point Road (map) and we were happy to buy some furniture from him, happy to get what I think is a good bargain and happy to come to a mutual agreement for our mutual benefit. [Does governing really have to be so different?]

The state is widening the road in front of Tony's store and taking Ton'y building, so he has to be out by mid January. That means you too can find some good values on some nice furniture. This isn't Papa's Furniture Warehouse glued together crap, I'm talking some nice upholstered chairs, sofas, dining tables, beds and end tables. So, if you are in the market for some furniture, visit Tony. Even though he's a conservative. Even if you are a liberal.

But there were no spelling errors

Ed Cone to the News & Record:

Publishing an article about the authorship and intent of the First Amendment that ignores James Madison completely while elevating the relatively obscure Fisher Ames over Jefferson makes you, not just your columnist, look ignorant.

Holiday parade in pictures

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record has a nice bunch of pictures of today's snowy holiday parade. Here is one of my favorites.

More Ranford

Found on Greensboro101.com.

Ranford Almond on Elm St. at the Greensboro, NC Festival of Lights.

You're blowing my mind!

300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

That's the new estimate of the number of stars in the universe. It is about the same as the number of cells in all of the humans on earth.

More images from NASA's astronomy picture of the day collection.

A reporter's value

GREENSBORO, NC -- One of the most useful things a reporter can do is to fact check assertions.

So, when a reporter reports:

For instance, at Guilford Metro 911, Director Wesley Reid’s entry-level employees make about $29,800 a year. After the switch, they will earn about $30,400.

Reid estimated that his department pays starting employees $2,000 to $3,000 less than Winston-Salem or High Point.

I'm left thinking, "Well, is that estimate accurate?" This is the kind of empirical, measurable thing that a good reporter should not allow someone to assert without checking out.

The City of Winston-Salem starts 911 operators at $28,890. High Point currently has a hiring freeze. These positions start at $33,919 in Raleigh.

Furthermore, the City of Greensboro advertises the starting salary range for this position as $29,025 - $32,663.

A wise editor once said, "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out." This is why.