It's all coming back to me now -- sort of.

Scott Yost at the Rhino Times:  "The band Meatloaf famously sang, 'Two out of three ain’t bad...'"

Sigh.

Down the tubes

GREENSBORO, NC -- I know a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do and, sometimes, circumstances make it hard to stick to one's principles; but the fall of John Hammer, former publisher of the Rhino Times and now-editor under new ownership, is remarkable to behold and a sad loss for Greensboro.

Always a staunch conservative, Hammer used to have going for him a tenacious allegiance to transparency and authenticity. It used to be that Hammer was a bulwark against public malfeasance and shenanigans that tried to deceive the people—often standing alone against powerful and entrenched interests in doing so. Whatever one thought of his politics, one could always admire him for that.

No longer.

Update: Doug Clark has more.

Keep it stupid, simple: John Hammer misguided on city's public records policies

GREENSBORO, NC -- Rhino Times editor John Hammer drones on with a negative opinion of the city's efforts to improve transparency and its handling of public records requests. In his view, the city is over-complicating things and nefariously working to shield itself from the demands of state public records law. "It's a trick," he writes in his uninformed paranoia.

In his view, access to public information is all very simple: Whoever has public records should provide them when asked. Sure, in some ideal pre-computerized era where paper records resided in binders and file cabinets, that might have worked fine, but in a world where records reside mostly electronically across a multitude of physical and virtual repositories, that's not a comprehensive policy.

Hammer might have gained some insight into the challenges and opportunities of modern technology and pubic records had he gone to the City's meeting today about improving public records access as did Ben Holder, Amanda Lehmert of the News & Record, Jordan Green of Triad City Beat, City Council members Mayor Nancy Vaughan, Marikay Abuzuaiter, Jamal Fox and Mike Barber, the City Manager, the City Attorney, the City's pubic relations director, the City's public records administrator and I.

Had Hammer attended, he might have learned how thinking bigger than his quaint notions has already resulted in greater access to public information and how the city is planing to make an even more responsive and transparent city government. (Not to mention being disabused of his mistaken notion that the City intends to start charging for copies of public records.)

Here are some things the city has implemented or is planning:

Staff education: It's fine for Hammer to say that staff should just "follow the law;" that does no good if staff doesn't know what the law is or what their obligations are. The city intends to implement formal procedures for educating city staff about public records law and the city's policies.

Providing reasons when records are denied: State law allows people who have had records requests denied to ask for the reason for the denial and the city is obligated to give a response. Under the City's updated policies, a reason would be given as a matter of course if records are denied, without the requester having to ask. This is one of those rare examples of the city raising its standards above the minimum the law demands.

Online request tracking and repository: The city has already undertaken laudable efforts to put more information online. The recent document dump of records related to the finances of the city-sponsored International Civil Rights Center and Museum and the now-searchable online access to City Council and committee agenda documents, video and minutes are two good examples. The city also plans to roll out this summer online access to the system that tracks records requests so that people can see just how well (or not) the city is responding to requests for public records.

This kind of proactive and modern transparency is a world away from Hammer's simplistic view of how people are to access public records.

Appeals process: Under state law, the only recourse one has if he feels records have been improperly withheld is to go to court (or whine and make a big stink). Hammer brags of having gone to court over public records. I have too. Hammer is right that it's not the ideal remedy. The city is considering coming up with some sort of dispute resolution process so that people, like Hammer, when denied public records have another course of action more accessible than the courts. It's the kind of proactive policy Hammer should cheer.

Better access to records of elected officials: Today's meeting covered several other aspects of public records that could greatly improve transparency including the possibility of having council members forward emails about city business from their private accounts to a city account where they could be better archived and searched; and considering how texts and emails sent and received during public meetings by elected officials and city staff can be made part of the record of the meeting.

While it's true that many (but not all) of these things are plans and promises, there is a very different posture towards transparency at city hall nowadays. Gone is the hostility towards transparency that flourished under former Mayor Robbie Perkins and the former city attorney Mujeeb Shah-Khan. John Hammer would help this city out if he recognized the opportunities this new council and new city administration offer and proded them forward. It may not be like this forever and putting some policies and procedures in place now, in a friendly environment, would make it just a little harder for some future enemy of transparency to clamp down on public access. Hammer could help things along, if he thought about it a little more than he has so far.

Get out of that state you're in

GREENSBORO, NC -- It seems Rhino Times editor John Hammer has some complaints about the News & Record's website.

The Rhino Times, with a website design from 1997, designed and maintained by a junior high school student that doesn't adapt to mobile devices, with archaic photo galleries and commenting system and no RSS feed or social media integration goes unaddressed by its editor, but he has the wherewithal to complain about another media site? Is he just monumentally oblivious or what?

Over the head of the News & Record editor

GREENSBORO, NC -- News & Record editor and publisher Jeff  "Grtis" Gauger has a problem with his weekly competitor, The Rhino Times. He finds the Rhino's headline accompanying an article about the retirement of Guilford County commissioner Linda Shaw "odd and daft."

The headline is  "Harper Valley Honey Hangs It Up" -- Grits says the headline is a real "head-scratcher" for an accompanying article he describes as a "straight-ahead account" of an interview with Shaw.

100 bucks says he didn't read the article. If he had, he'd find therein this more than obvious reason for the headline:

Shaw got an early start in life in high-profile elected positions when, at the age of 26, she was elected to serve as president of a PTA in Nashville.  Normally, PTA president isn’t something that counts as a high-profile job.  However, while Shaw was serving in that capacity in 1968, it became one of the highest profile positions in the country: At that time, the hit song Harper Valley PTA, written by Tom T. Hall and sung by Jeannie C. Riley, took the country by storm.

“I was living in Nashville, Tennessee, in the ’60s,” Shaw said.  “When I lived there I was president of the Harpeth Valley PTA, on which the song was based.”

“Tom T. Hall lived a few blocks away,” Shaw said of the songwriter.

The giant hit, Harper Valley PTA, is the story of a mother who wears her skirts too short and perhaps drinks too much, and who gets a note from the PTA rebuking her actions.  In the song, the woman goes to a meeting and calls out the PTA members on their hypocrisy, and the daughter recounts, “the day my momma socked it to the Harper Valley PTA.”

Shaw said that, when the song became a hit, her phone was ringing off the hook from reporters calling.

“I got calls from all over the country,” she said.  “They would ask, ‘What do you think of the song?’”

Shaw said that, at that time she wore some short skirts, but hers weren’t too short she said, adding that they generally fell just above the knees.

One might think the Rhino could have written a more laudable headline appropriate to the carreer of Shaw's public service but, regardless, the headline is not the mystery it was to Gauger. It was relevant to the interesting anecdote of the beginning of Shaw's long political career. Gauger's knee jerk potshots are the real head-scratcher.  

Rhino returns, website stumbles

GREENSBORO, NC -- The local conservative weekly the Rhino Times is back. Having shuttered operations for financial difficulties five months ago, it has returned with the financial backing of local developer Roy Carrol. Reprising his role of editor is the Rhino's previous editor and former owner, John Hammer. Reg Freemyer, previously advertising director for The Courier Times of Asheboro, is the General Manager.

In introducing the new enterprise, publisher Carrol writes:

 "The key to the survival of any print publication today is interconnectivity with a web-based publication. We at the Rhino Times understand this and believe our readers will appreciate the new interactive format."

In this regard, the new Rhino stumbles. In addition to the awkward format and design of the website (no line breaks between paragraphs, garish colors, antiquated photo "galleries"), there are no obvious opportunities for the interactivity Carrol rightly identifies as as key and says we'll appreciate.

The most basic and nearly ubiquitous commenting features found across the web are missing here, there is no discoverable RSS feed and no integration with Twitter or Facebook. As former publisher and current search engine expert Willy Hammer is sure to recognize, the new site is also woefully short of search engine-friendly code.

Indeed, the only thing that appears different than the previous one-way, static website is the addition of an embedded video on the main page.

Most problematic though, and the matter to which the Rhino should first turn their attention is the awful inability of the site to display properly on mobile devices. Here's a screen shot:

As you can see, the content doesn't adapt to the size of the screen, portions of the page disappear and the navigation isn't mobile friendly.

If Carrol is serious about an interactive "web-based publication," there is a lot of work yet to be done.

Carrol also says, now that he is the publisher of a newspaper, he will refrain from making campaign contributions. That will be bad news for some candidates, but its a good move by Carrol; one that sets a respectable ethical bar and avoids tarnishing the Rhino's credibility.

KKK joins Greensboro mayor in wishing good riddance to Rhino Times

GREENSBORO, NC -- On the heels of Greensboro mayor Robbie Perkins cheering the demise of the weekly Rhino Times newspaper is a comment at the News & Record website purportedly from Thomas Robb, "national director" of the KKK, also expressing his pleasure with the closing of the Rhino Times.

Robb writes:

"Rest is piece [sic] Rhino - you never were the voice of the people anyway."

Deep thoughts from Mayor Jackass

GREENSBORO, NC -- What a self-absorbed jackass we have for a mayor here in Greensboro. Anybody who has paid attention for a few years would have no doubt that the Rhino Times newspaper was an invaluable asset to our community, reporting with a degree of insight and depth rarely matched by other local media. Were it not for the Rhino Times, Greensboro would have proceeded in stupor to believe all sorts of wrong things the News & Record, WFMY and Yes!Weekly attempted to put over on the public.

Who would cheer the loss of such an important watchdog? Who would possibly think that the loss of such a vital journalistic enterprise would be good for a place? Jackasses who don't want to be accountable for anything, that's who.

I give you Mayor Robbie Perkins on the subject of The Rhino ceasing publication:

“I think it’s good news for the city.” 

It's good news for political hucksters and malfeasent elected officials bothered by transparency and accountability. It's very bad news for Greensboro, but megalomaniac Perkins would drive the rest of us over a cliff if it meant not having to considering anything beyond his sociopathic ego.

Hammer's big lie

"Last week we reported that Greensboro had given out confidential police reports to Yes! Weekly." -- John Hammer, Rhinoceros Times 

"Information that falls under the criminal investigation or criminal intelligence exception to the public records law is not public record, but it is not confidential." Frayda S. Bluestein, North Carolina School of Government, to Ben Holder.

As he is so very good at, Rhino Times editor and publisher John Hammer has begun constructing a narrative through his tried and true tactic of the firm and steady repetition of a claim he never bothered to explain or substantiate in the first place.

This time, Hammer is attempting to implant the notion in the public conciousness that the emails released by the City of Greensboro to his competitor Yes!Weekly were "confidential." (From here, it's an easy slide into Hammer's favorite past time of berating city staff as incompetent, which seems to be his real objective.)

One problem: The records are not "confidential." (They are not "reports" either, as Hammer says. They were emails. "Confidential police reports," sounds more sinister, I suppose, but it was emails that were released, not reports and Hammer surely knows that.)

As Frayda Bluestein of the North Carolina School of Government explains, courtesy of Ben Holder, "confidential" has a specific meaning in regard to government records and the documents to which Hammer is referring don't meet the test.

City employees, even police, cannot simply slap the word "confidential" on an email and make it off limits. These records fall into the area where cities have some discretion about their release. The records the City released are of the kind that Bluestein explains:

"[T]he statute leaves it to the public agency to decide whether and when to release this type of material."

The city legally released this information. It offered a glimpse of the way local police conduct surveillance on law-abiding citizens and revealed that at least one police lieutenant considered a city council person to be a "confidential informant."

I would argue that it's good for civilians to have this kind of insight into their police force and elected representatives. Others may disagree, but it's a big lie to express that disagreement by pretending that that such records are "confidential." They are not and Hammer should stop saying they are. He's misleading his readers.

Dear John Hammer, for Jerry Bledsoe's sake...

Dear John Hammer,

The most important local news reporting of the last decade was the Jerry Bledsoe series Cops in Black and White published in your Rhino Times. Even today, it remains an important touchstone as the inept local media remain unable or unwilling to handle the relevant facts.

I've publicly appealed to local reporters to read Bledsoe's series if they are going to venture into this subject. There's just one problem, other than an index of the first 25 chapters at Ed Cone's blog, there is no other consolidated means of navigating the series.

This is an inconvenience to us, the public, and a disservice to Jerry Bledsoe. His legacy deserves a more respecful treatment. He did a great service for the people of Greensboro and his work product deserves greater veneration than you've afforded it.

Will you please create and publicize a complete index of links to all of the chapters of the Cops in Black and White series?

Thanks,

Roch