What's trending in local news & blogs?

I've added a new feature to Greensboro 101 called "Trending." It shows the most prominent 101 words from local news and blogs in the past 24 hours. You may access it by clicking on the "Trending" tab on the main page of Greensboro 101. Click on any of the individual words and you will see the posts from the past 24 hours that contain that word.

I built the same thing for Twitter, but I swear I can see little value in it. Whatever imperfections there may remain in the blog and news trending feature, one can get a meaningful sense of what topics are currently of local interest. Twitter, on the other hand, is so chock full of junk that, from minute to minute, it appears as if popular interests move from such compelling words as "girl" to "boo." It is 99.9% inane. Still, I suppose that in itself is of minor sociological interest and may be worthy of some curiosity so, while I doubt if I will add it to Greensboro 101, if you want to see it as a stand-alone, it is here. http://greensboro101.com/twitterwords_gso.php (may disappear at any time. Updates throttled to ten minutes.)

Greensboro 101 search repaired

The recent redesign of Greensboro 101 broke the search feature. It would return results, but they were not linked to their source. I have fixed that now and you can once again search local blogs and news by clicking on the "Search" tab on the main page.

It gets complicated: My love/hate relationship with Greensboro 101

The way in which the complexity of a data-driven website can quickly explode both fascinates and frustrates me. I am amazed by the abilities of the popular web application programming combination of JavaScript, PHP and MySQL, which are what drive Greensboro 101, but there is not much room for error. The code never responds with "I think this is what you mean to do;" the instructions are either executable or not. Get it right and it's a thrill often provoking an involuntary "woo yeah"; forget an ' or include an extra ; and everything can come to a grinding halt. Figuring out what is wrong can be maddening but for a walk around the block or a glass of Scotch, depending.

When I added the "Just blogs" section to the main page of the new Greensboro 101, I did so by recycling the code that generates the "Latest" items, making the changes necessary to only retrieve items from blogs. It appeared to work and, for the most part, did. Alas, I forgot to change what must be a unique code for each "Recommend this item" button. So, if you tried to recommend an item in the new "Just blogs" tab, nothing appeared to happen. (Recommendations were recorded, there was just no feedback to the user.) A detail overlooked. Fortunately, not a critical one. Important, but it didn't send the site into a coma.

It's fixed now. Thanks to user BK for bringing the glitch to my attention.

Greensboro 101 Event Calendar

GREENSBORO, NC -- The new Greensboro 101 includes a public event calendar. This video gives a brief introduction and demonstrates how to add an event to the calendar.



Features of the Greensboro 101 event calendar include:

• Events posted to interactive Google map on Greensboro 101 main page on the day of the event.
• Events posted to event list on Greensboro 101 main page.
• Events posted in the events section of Greensboro 101.
• Events posted to other channels, including Eventbrite, Eventful and the Greensboro 101 Events Twitter feed.
• Press release generator that emails details of your event to local media.
• Social sharing tools that allow people to share information about your event on their favorite social media.
• Driving directions.
• Insert images into event listing. 
• View events by dates, category or venue.

Just blogs

By popular demand, I have added a view to the new Greensboro 101 for just blog posts--without feeds from local newsorgs. Just click on the "Just Blogs" tab.

My new favorite local blog: Envy America

I don't know who the author is or why he/she chose this particular slant for a blog, but I'm getting a kick out of the new Envy America.

Well, we tried

Google chooses Kansas City, Kansas. Big thanks to the people who tried to make this happen for Greensboro, especially the city staff who took it seriously and made a valiant effort, but certainly to others who selflessly wanted it for no reasons other than it would have been good for Greensboro.

The new Greensboro 101

The new Greensboro 101 launched today. It continues the tradition of bringing local people-generated content into an efficient and democratic presentation.

New features include:

• New Design. Color schemes and design elements that better assist the mind and eye in using the site. Since not every user has the same preferences, also added multiple design styles from which users can choose -- available through the "styles" button on the right side of each page.
• Event Calendar. Added an event calendar. Rich in features, it deserves its own post -- which is coming, but multiple channel distribution, mapping to Google maps, press release announcer, Twitter feed, and category filtering are a few of the features.
• Better Ergonomics. Layout and navigational tools that minimize the effort needed in thought and muscle to move through the content. More of a sense of flowing through the content.
• Smarter. From better calculating how to rank recommended news and blog items to remembering which tabs users prefer to have open when they visit the site, there are several unseen but important improvements to the site's intelligence. If you never notice the particulars, that's even better but you will hopefully sense that the site offers a refined experience.
• Better Under the Hood. I've used the lightweight but powerful jQuery JavaScript library to build much of the user interface. Appearance and navigation should be more reliable, more stable and more compatible across multiple user platforms. I've also made better use of caching and optimized database queries to make the site load faster.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome. Leave them in the comments here or email me at curator@greensboro101.com.

The annual Time Warner Cable dance, in which I bend over...

GREENSBORO, NC -- Today was my annual over-the-phone dance with Time Warner Cable to negotiate my monthly bill for cable TV and Internet access. This year's engagement was started, as always, with TWC attempting to implement an outrageous rate increase. This time, TWC had the audacity to send me a flyer announcing:

We're pleased to extend you (sic) ADDITIONAL SAVINGS...

...followed by a bill with a 50% increase.

Gee! Thanks Time Warner Cable! Any more of your generosity and I'll be in the poor house.

Anyway, after 34 minutes and three customer service representatives, I managed to negotiate a rate that is only 13% higher than last year. They won.

I despise being held hostage by this gouging company with their mediocre service. Good thing the free market has provided me with other options... oh, wait. Never mind.

2 minute trash options breakdown

Sometimes one of the most useful things a journalist can do is give you a quick yet informative summary of an otherwise involved topic. The News & Record's Amanda Lehmert offers up a nice and concise breakdown of the trash disposal options presented to Greensboro city council yesterday.

City Councilor Vaughan on Time Warner Cable: "We're like a sitting duck."

GREENSBORO, NC -- There was some interesting discussion by the Greensboro City Council at Tuesday's meeting on opposing proposed state legislation that would limit municipalities' ability to build public broadband infrastructure. Best line? Nancy Vaughan on Time Warner Cable's service to Greensboro: "We're like a sitting duck."

Council ultimately voted 6 to 3 to adopt a resolution opposing the state bill.

Video here. Discussion starts at the 5:40 mark.

Debunking voter fraud myths; Binker breaks it down

Mark Binker of the News & Record takes a look at the validity of recent claims of voting fraud in a fine piece of journalism.

Smell that?

Mmmmmm. Can you smell what the Roch's got cooking?

Damn right local is hard. But what I lack in brains I make up for in persistence.

All... most... there...

Heroes

GREENSBORO, NC -- From the News & Record:

Officer C.J. St. Pierre arrived and detected a strong burning odor, like an electrical shortage, he said. Lights were on, but no one answered the door. Pierre saw a blinking light from a carbon monoxide detector and called for backup.

Officers M.R. Leahey, A.L. Dellinger, W.F. Sizemore and Cpl. C.E. Tuck arrived and some of them kicked in the door. The normally odorless, tasteless gas was so strong that it burned their eyes and throats.

They found the 9-year-old and 7-year-old girls semiconscious in one room. The 3-year-old boy was hiding under bed covers in another. The boy was more alert, but the girls were lethargic. Tuck awakened them by flashing light in their eyes.

 And the neighbor, Essam Yousef, who bothered to call 9-1-1 when he heard the alarm beeping. 

Greensboro city council campaign contributors

GREENSBORO, NC -- (Hat tip Ed Cone). George Hartzman has entered into a spreadsheet  the campaign contributions to Greensboro city council members. I have taken the liberty of putting it into a web-accessible Google doc.

(Full page version)

More word-for-word press release regurgitation from the News & Record

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record continues its sad bad practice of publishing press releases as news with a byline of "staff reports." This one is copied nearly word-for-word from a press release from the North Carolina Attorney General's office, the copied portions are highlighted.
-------------------------

Some 21,879 people filed complaints in 2010 with the Consumer Protection Division of the N.C. Attorney General's Office.

The overall number of complaints dropped slightly from the 22,665 complaints received in 2009. The Attorney General's Office said the top two areas — health care and lending — saw increase in complaint volume last year.

Here are the top 10 [...] complaints for 2010:

1. Health care
Health care led this list for the sixth straight year. Complaints were about health insurance, medical providers and health products and services. Common complaints include getting charged money for supposedly free trials of weight loss products, medical billing or collection practices and overcharging for medical services.

2. Lending
Complaints often include problems with high interest rates, charges for late or missed payments, adjustable rate mortgages, prepayment penalties and loan fees. Consumers with foreclosure issues or who have fallen for a foreclosure assistance or loan modification scam are included here.

3. Do Not Call/Unwanted telemarketing calls
Among the top sources of complaints are offers for credit cards with lower interest rates, free grants, or debt consolidation services. Many of these pitches are made using illegal robo calls that ask consumers to press a number to speak with a representative.

4. Telemarketing fraud
Scammers often located outside the U.S. try to lure consumers into giving up their money and their personal information. Some of the most popular telemarketing schemes pitch bogus lower credit card rates, international lottery tickets, advance fee loans, government grants, identity theft protection, and phony prizes or sweepstakes.

5. Credit and collections
Complaints about credit repair scams, debt collectors and identity theft were common issues. Complaints about scams that promise to fix your credit or settle your debts for an upfront fee are increasingly common. Consumers also complain about threatening calls from debt collectors as well as calls about debts that aren’t really theirs.

6. Motor vehicles
Common problems include mechanical problems with used cars, difficulties obtaining a car title when the dealership has gone out of business, and failure to honor warranties. People also complain about pricing, improper diagnosis, unauthorized repairs, and slow repair jobs.

7. Home furnishings
Consumers often contacted the Attorney General's Office us [sic] when an item they’ve paid for never arrives, or when their piece of furniture arrives damaged or defective. Many of these complaints come from out-of-state consumers who placed orders with North Carolina retailers by telephone or online.

8. Home repair
Most consumers who complain are dissatisfied with work done on their homes. Other common sources of complaints are contractors who abandon the job after getting paid, miss deadlines, or go over budget. There are also scam artists who target homeowners, especially seniors, attempting to talk them into a series of expensive and unnecessary repairs.

9. Television services
Many of those [sic] consumers complained about extended contracts and hidden fees with satellite provider DIRECTV, problems that were addressed by a settlement reached with the company in December.

10. Telecommunications
Many people complain that bundled packages for phone, television and Internet service don’t provide the savings they were expecting. People also have problems with cell phone bills, poor cell service, and the cramming of unauthorized charges onto their phone bills.

To file a complaint or get tips on avoiding problems, visit ncdoj.gov or call (877) 566-7226.

But, how do you really feel? Lensinger on lazy TV newspeople

The photog with a way with words vents about lazy TV reporters.

Still want to be a TV reporter? Cool, go find a story no one else has, convince a reluctant witness to talk on camera, melt the Rain-X off my lens with your scintillating presence. I’ll sing your praises from on high, when I’m not following you into the fire. Otherwise, go sell Mary Kay, real estate or perhaps your own plasma.

Thigpen takes on secret deeds

(Hat tip: Ed Cone)

GUILFORD COUNTY, NC -- Guilford County Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen stands up for the people.

“To me these issues with MERS are simple. Are major banking conglomerates going to tell the truth or not; and are we going choose to have two standards of justice in America: one for Big Money and the other for the rest of us?

Read more.

WGHP MyFox8 brings local blogger's plight to light

MAYODAN, NC -- A Las Vegas law firm is targeting bloggers for alleged copyright infringement on behalf of the Denver Post and a blogger from Mayodan finds himself caught in their crosshairs. It's a big deal with implications for free speech, fair use and copyright protections that has gone unnoticed by local media and bloggers, until now. Good for WGHP for bringing it to our attention.

Sxip Shirey: "Moon in her belly"

Sxip Shirey.

XMG Guilford County website files released

GREENSBORO, NC -- I received a response to my public records request from Guilford County. I had requested the website files as provide by XMG to the county in their effort to produce a new website for the County. Those files were provided to me on CD today. The website was built for a Microsoft web server. I use a different server environment, so I am unable to offer a true end-user view of what was provided to the County. Nonetheless, if you are interested, you can see the files here.* Please be advised, these are the files delivered to me by the County, I do not know if XMG would agree that they constitute the entirety of their work.

If someone has access to an ASP server (which would properly display all of these files) I will gladly share the CD or you can request them from the county. And speaking of getting files from the County, although their response was not particularly speedy, I do want to thank County staff for eventually providing these files. There was some confusion about whether or not these files were public or confidential and I appreciate the legal staff's willingness to learn a little about the nature of websites and coming to understand why files like these do constitute a public record.

* [These files may be removed in the future.]

WGHP MyFox8 making it up

GREENSBORO, NC -- "School Test Results Skyrocket After Church Partnership" shouts the headline on WGHP's website. The unnamed "staff writer" explains:

Several principals were looking for possible "faith partners" Thursday after the success of a similar program at Smith High School. Smith has partnered with nearby Ebenezer Baptist Church for the past two years after receiving a $100,000 state grant.

Several principals? Really? Like who? Ah, never mind, let's get to the meat of the story, those "skyrocketing" improvements.

Dr. Noah Rogers, Smith High principal, said graduation rates have skyrocketed from 55 percent to 80 percent, fewer students are getting suspended and the attendance rate is up.

55 percent to 80 percent in just two years? Wow! Fabulous... but not true. According to the Guilford County Schools, since the church program has been in place, graduation rates at Smith went from 73 percent to 80 percent (we don't have the rates for this year, obviously). While still a nice increase in graduation rates are they attributable to partnering with the church? Smith has seen steady improvement in graduation rates since 2006, including an 8 point jump from 2007 to 2008 -- before the church program. "Graduation rates improve before church partnership" doesn't have the same ring, I suppose.

But what about the story's headline about those skyrocketing test scores? According to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, Smith's annual yearly progress showed year-over-year improvement from 2009 to 2010 in math and reading test scores, but not inconsistent with the kinds of improvements seen in years past, before the church program. The 10 point increase in proficiency in math last year is fantastic, but so was the 10 point increase in reading proficiency in 2008, before the church program.

Bottom line, the Fox8 story incorrectly reported graduation data and wrongly treats the improvements at Smith as attributable to the church program, ignoring that Smith has seen similar improvements prior to the church program. There is no reason to tout the church program as the reason for Smith's continuing academic improvement and so this story joins others from WGHP where they occasionally go off the rails and just make stuff up (here, here, here, here, here and here.)

News & Record predicts the future

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record regurgitates more public relations hype and ends up sounding idiotic in the process.

Tonight's screening of "Rise" will have its largest audience in Greensboro.

Although the "report" also says the film is going to be screened tonight in 500 other theaters throughout the country, somehow the News & Record can divine which one will have the largest audience. Amazing!

"If they support the organization we will come after them"

From Wired:

Barr’s ideas about WikiLeaks went beyond attacks on their infrastructure. He wrote in a separate document that WikiLeaks was having trouble getting money because its payment sources were being blocked. “Also need to get people to understand that if they support the organization we will come after them,” he wrote. “Transaction records are easily identifiable.”

As an idea that Barr knew was being prepared for a major U.S. bank, the suggestion is chilling.

"Social media is a significant problem that should worry everyone."

(Hat tip: Fecund Stench)

Security experts employed by the U.S. government and the likes of Bank of America and the Chamber of Commerce are actively tying online "nicknames to real names and other personal data."

Why? Because, to them...

"Social media is a significant problem that should worry everyone."

 UPDATE: Here is the founder of the company that employs these practices:

I am only one removed from the President of the United States, I know multiple decision makers in both major intelligence community organizations, and my company has software installed in about 1/4 of all fortune 500 companies.

Escher on video

Pay attention:

This is not the America I was promised

This is not supposed to happen in America. It is close to Fascism.

The very idea of trying to threaten the careers of journalists and activists to punish and deter their advocacy is self-evidently pernicious; that it's being so freely and casually proposed to groups as powerful as the Bank of America, the Chamber of Commerce, and the DOJ-recommended Hunton & Williams demonstrates how common this is. 

Related:

The documents appear to include pitches for unseemly ways to undermine adversaries of Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, like doing background research on their critics and then distributing fake documents to embarrass them.

Greensboro teen wins video news contest

GREENSBORO, NC -- (Hat tip, News & Record) Tyler Hardin, a ninth-grader at Guilford County School's Weaver Academy has won first place in Teen Kids News online reporter contest. Tyler has his own video production company. Here is his winning entry:

Hicksville

GREENSBORO, NC -- Why has Guilford County not put the minutes of Guilford County Commissioners' meetings online since October, 21, 2010? Joe Guarino is right to ask what in the world are we getting from the six County web developers at a cost of $647,200 per year.

And this is why I am an independent; proposed amendment to state constitution

RALEIGH, NC -- Ideologues piss me off more and more lately. Partisan filters are a surefire way to make sure one wallows in the shallow end of ideas. As a free-thinking unaffiliated citizen, I can applaud good ideas no matter where they come from. Here is a great one, an amendment to the State Constitution proposed by Republican Rep. Stephen LaRoque of Lenoir County:

The proposed constitutional amendment would say that every person has the right to inspect or copy any record connected to the official business of any public body or official.

Former judicial candidate cleared

GREENSBORO, NC -- Joe Floyd II withdrew from the race for a Superior Court judgeship last fall after his arrest for breaking and entering and harassment. It made the papers. Now a judge has cleared Floyd of wrong-doing. Good for the News & Record for following up with the same vigor as with which it reported the original charges.

UPDATE: SamH points out that the News & Record incorrectly states in their follow-up that Floyd was charged with domestic violence. He was not.

WFMY: American Express closing data center

GREENSBORO, NC -- One small consolation to the announcement that American Express was closing its Greensboro call center was that it is building a new data center here. Now, however, WFMY is reporting that American Express is closing its data center [But, considering WFMY's poor reporting standards, probably not.]. From the WFMY story:

There's another ripple effect from the closing of the American Express data center in Greensboro.

Back scratching exposed, newspaper publisher offers gifts to city council member

GREENSBORO, NC -- Keith Brown at Triad Watch uncovers an email from William Hammer, publisher of the local weekly newspaper The Rhino Times, offering Greensboro City Council person Mary Rakestraw free event tickets.

Sex change

The story is a convoluted mess to begin with, but funner for the gender re-assignment. (Robin Hayes is a man.) From News14 Carolina:

CHARLOTTE -- The North Carolina Republican party was quick to respond to the announcement Tuesday morning. Former 8th District Congressman Robin Hayes leads the state GOP party. He said they welcome the Democrats so North Carolinians can more clearly see the differences between the two parties.

"We're glad that they're here," she said. "The closer that you get to the Republican ideas and compare it again, and you can do that because the Democratic National Convention is here, Republican principals stand out. They are what jobs the economy and working people are all about. The Democrats again, being here, gives us a chance to make a very clear comparison."

Learning curve

GREENSBORO, NC -- I received a denial from the Guilford County attorney today for my request to receive the files delivered to the County by XMG in the attempt to build a new county web site. The reason given was that software is not publicly releasable.

I don't mind being patient with County staff on this one--I'm told mine is the first request of this kind--but two things:

1. There is a difference between software and files. Requests for documents in Microsoft Word format are not denied because they require software to be read. Web site files are documents, read by server software and web browser software. They require software to be used, but they are not software.*
   
2. Guilford County is already releasing web site files publicly. Our web browsers download and display them every time we visit www.co.guilford.nc.us. So of course web site files are publicly releasable, it's happening as you read this. If web site files were not publicly releasable, there would be no current County web site. 

(* For my geek friends, I recognize there are exceptions, but I think you will agree the vast bulk, if not the totality, of most web sites will be composed of files, not software.)

In fairness, on the economic impact of the U.S. Figure Skating Chamionship

GREENSBORO, NC -- With the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in town, reporters armed with lots of glee and few facts were touting the local economic impact, reporting it as expected (by whom they did not say) to be anywhere from $20 million to $30 million -- none ever attributing the information to any original source, report or data. WFMY's news director even went so far as, when asked about it, to insist that he was "not in the habit of sharing our sources."

Today we had another estimate: $26 million, as brought to my attention by Keith Brown. This one, from News 14 Carolina, had a little meat to it. Although it is annoying that the newsorg did not verify it, it quoted Henri Fourrier of the Greensboro Convention and Visitor's bureau as saying that number came from a report published by the City of Spokane, Washington, last year's host of the event.

Rumors of such a report had been circulating, but without the correct "$26 million" my internet searches came up empty. Different story today. I'll spare you the details, suffice it to say that with an internet search, an email to a very nice person at the City of Spokane and the fifteen minutes it took me to write this post and upload the documents, I can report to you, dear reader (and I mean that in the strictest numerical sense) that yes, an official in Spokane's Finance Division did publish a report that estimated a $26 million dollar impact to the city from last year's U.S. Figure Skating Championship. I'll leave it to you to decide how convincing you find it -- it is an estimate -- and to what extent Greensboro can extrapolate expectations from it, but the bottom line is this, we now have a documented source for the claims from which we can draw our own conclusions. Here it is:

Spokane: CITY EXPECTS ECONOMIC BOOST FROM 2010 U.S. FIGURE SKATING CHAMPIONSHIPS

Spokane: Complete Breakdown of the Estimated Economic Impact 2010 U.S. Figure Skating Championships

Secrecy shrouds "State of the City" report

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record and the Triad Business Journal both report today on "The State of the City: 2011," a report "prepared for," as the News & Record describes it, the Greensboro Partnership. Both reporters proceed to tell us what they think we need to know about the report, but where is the report? It is not attached to either reporter's story and neither has yet to reply to a request to access it online or by email. Most astounding, the Greensboro Partnership website doesn't have a word about it, much less the report itself. (Their PDF clad news items appear quite stale.)

I don't understand the secrecy. In this day and age, it is simply incredible to report to the public the contents of a report and not make the source document available. Unimpressed.

The Daily Taylor

Blogger Taylor Wray showed up as a commentator on Ed Cone's blog yesterday. I followed the link to his blog and found it fantastic. While there are many different ways to be a good blogger, Taylor does a great job of bringing insight to a topic through quotations, links and intelligent commentary; and he's succinct while giving himself enough space to flesh out the details. Topics include new media and journalism, Constitutional freedoms, politics and more. Taylor describes his profession as "transcriptionist" -- I won't be surprised if we soon see him in bigger leagues.  Well worth a look.

doing more with less

GREENSBORO, NC -- Joe Killian has a thorough summary of what we know so far about the Guilford County website fiasco.

Unsubstantiated allegations

GREENSBORO, NC -- I called into Dimitri's show on Rush Radio 94.5 this morning after hearing host Dimitri say that XMG got the Guilford County website design job because County Commissioner Chairman Skip Alston, in Dimitri's words, "threw some business" to his "buddy."

I appreciate Dimitri taking my call and giving us enough time to have something of a conversation, but his assertion that Alston was instrumental in, or even involved in any way with, getting XMG the design job is completely unfounded. Dimitri insisted it was a reasonable assumption and that all we had to do was connect the dots, but he couldn't come up with any dots other than the one dot that Alston and XMG CEO Calvin WIlliams, Jr. knew each other. That "thinking" -- that, because they knew each other, Skip must have procured the job for XMG -- is a belief irresponsibly perpetuated by County Commissioners Billy Yow and Paul Gibson, but they don't have any dots either.

The dots we do have, those that, you know, actually exist, document Skip Alston getting involved well after XMG had been hired, months after XMG had received their final payment and that Skip's involvement was at a meeting called to try to settle disputes between XMG and the County. Saying that Skip threw some work to his buddy is not, despite Dmitir's insistance, rational. While plausible, insisting that is what happened is really just a knee-jerk jump to an unfounded conclusion.

Look, folks, we have to stop floating off into fantasy land just because some circumstance accommodates our suspicions. It's stupid. It's hicksville. Maybe Skip did help XMG get the job, but there is zero evidence for it, just as there is zero evidence that County Commissioner Billy Yow improperly profited off of stray cows. Would it be impossible for us to keep our understanding attached to reality instead of floating off into the land of make-believe just because it feels right?

[Just for the record, I told Dimitri to "put up or shut up" while on the air. I wasn't really telling Dimitri to shut up, it was an expression, but it sounded a little harsh after the words left my lips. I also recall saying something about "conservatives in Guilford county" that I'm pretty sure sounded very much like the kind of broad-brush label I deplore. The conservative landscape in Guilford county is varied and I should not have lumped everyone together.]

And monkeys could fly out of my... More making it up from the News & Record

GREENSBORO, NC --

From the News & Record today:

Think about that: The boss of an event that could pump an estimated $30 million into Greensboro’s economy hauling blank paper in a Toyota 4Runner along Interstate 40/85.

The event to which writer Jeff Mills is referring is the U.S. Figure Skating Championship. Where does the $30 million figure come from? Who knows? It's more of the substandard, amateurish, unsubstantiated bullshit that the News & Record accommodates. $30 million you say? Okee doke.

Just a week ago, the previous unattributed, unsourced and unverified estimation was a mere $23 million. Kudos to reporter Mills for adding another $7 million to the local economy with a couple of keystrokes. Well done. At this rate, we'll all be rich soon.

Clark's support for Yow, Gibson supported by ignorance of the facts

GREENSBORO, NC -- From the News & Record's Doug Clark:

The problem began when XMG's Calvin Williams Jr. asked Alston for help after the county (understandably) didn't want to pay him for work that wasn't getting done.

Alston should have said, "Sorry, I can't get involved in that." Instead, he intervened, setting up and attending a meeting between Williams, the county attorney and the county's director of information systems.

That action might have sent a signal, at least implicitly, to the county officials that they'd better make Williams happy. So he ended up with a $47,000 payoff.

The payments Williams received were not a result of Alston's involvement in the meeting. All monies received by Williams were prior to Alston's involvement, the last one coming four months prior to the meeting. Clark will have to find some other reason to say that Yow, Gibson and other commissioners are right if he still thinks so, because this isn't it.

A demo of the County's "unsalvageable" web site

GREENSBORO, NC -- According to the News & Record, Guilford County officials worry that the incomplete website delivered to them by local company XMG online "can’t be salvaged." Guilford County Information Systems Director Barbara Weaver is reported as saying disparagingly, “I guess you do get what you pay for.” (Missing the irony, apparently, that her department actually paid a healthy sum).

Here is an online demo of the County's site on XMGonline.com. It may be worth discussing whether what we see is worth what was paid--there seems to be little beyond a nice design and the beginnings of the site structure--and we would be wise to keep in mind that we don't know if this demo represents the entire scope of what XMG completed, but it is clear that XMG made a significant start on the project. It's hardly what one would call unsalvageable.

[Thanks to News & Record reporter Joe Killian for sharing documents from the County that contained the URL for this demo.]

If your mother says she loves you, check it out

GREENSBORO, NC -- Local news organizations in Greensboro should tattoo the following famous advice on each of their reporters and editors:

"If your mother says she loves you, check it out."

If the permanent mark is too extreme, laying down the rule I suggested will suffice: No more reporting on people making assertions of fact without checking out the facts. Here's why.

Local news outlets have a very bad practice of reporting as fact things that are not facts and it seems to be getting worse. (Some very recent examples here, here, here, here, here and here). Most recently [emphasis added]...

News & Record, January 21, 2010:

Alston denies bringing the company, XMG Online, to the county or helping it win the contract. Alston said he does know XMG CEO Calvin Williams Jr., who went to Dudley High with Alston’s son.

News & Record, January 22, 2010:

Although Alston has said Williams attended Dudley High School with his son, Williams said he went to school in his native state of Maryland.

In the first story, it was a "fact" that Williams went to Dudley, in the next story: "wait a minute, back up," that's what someone said and it may be wrong. If you have been following this story, you'll recognize that this matters greatly because, with hardly anything to go on beyond their own suspicions, people had been trying to make hay out of the website problems by casting aspersions on County Commissioner Chairman Skip Alston and website designer Calvin Williams. They've implied that Alston got Williams the job because they knew each other. Commissioner Billy Yow has gone so far as to call for an S.B.I. investigation. That's county politics, I suppose, but those kinds of fact-free-inspired conspiracy theories should not get an assist from the local press. Reporters should be here to add clarity, not cause greater confusion. (see: Greensboro Police, black book).

Whatever one's opinions on this particular story (we still don't have all the facts), it is fundamental to journalism that you never, never, ever, report something as fact that you got from a single source. Even I know that. If the assertion is the kind of thing that should be found in some record or report, you check the original source. Barring that, if you have to rely on people's personal knowledge, you use multiple sources -- and you better make damn sure your sources are not all just repeating something they, themselves, heard from the same single source (see: Iraq, WMD, Chalibi/Cheney/Miller).

Gullible is as gullible does

GREENSBORO, NC -- A shorter version of what I was saying here (you should read the longer version anyway):

The value of the American Express data center goes from being attributed to unnamed "local officials," with no attribution to any underlying data or analysis, to cold hard fact:

News & Record, April 20, 2010:

"After 20 years, local officials say, the company investment could surpass $1 billion."

News & Record, January 20, 2011:

"American Express will not change its plans to build two data centers worth about $1 billion in eastern Guilford County,..."

 What are we, schmucks?

UPDATE: Thanks to an assist from Dick Barron, N&R editor John Nagy describes the sources for the 2010 value:

"The figure from last year comes from people within the industry with familiarity of the American Express project and from individuals in the data center industry who provided cost estimate per square foot for a data center project."

If it takes the Amex shock to get us thinking...

GREENSBORO, NC -- The announcement that American Express is shutting down its Greensboro call center is not the all-clear to pile on with every waiting criticism. It is a serious blow that demands, first and foremost, that we respond as best we can to assist those people who, through no fault of their own, will be losing their jobs. My sincere best hopes go out to them.

But if it takes something like this to get us thinking about our approach to economic development, now might be a good time to think about Greensboro's propensity to buy into the rosiest promises of business projects, only to be befuddled when they don't materialize. Exhibit A: The yet-to-create-a-single-new-job FedEx hub, which we were told would employ 750 new workers by now.

In trying to sell Greensboro on the hub in 2001, the Chamber of Commerce told us to expect a $7.5 billion impact. Uh-huh. They also said it would increase the tax base. Instead, the state passed special tax exemptions for FedEx, ancillary facilities on airport property remain exempt from local property taxes and the thousands of homes around the airport newly annexed into the city saw their value diminish drastically as the hub came to fruition, even before the market turned sour. Some predictions.

We bought it though. We gave it an enthusiastic "Okee doke!" The rosiest of expectations became de facto in our minds and conversations. Without creating one job, the hub became the "1,500-employee FedEx hub." We were to be saved from the decimation of the local textile industry by the "aerotropolis." Everybody knew it. We just knew it!

We did not want to talk about the possibility that this thing we were pouring our hopes into might not be all sunshine and salvation. That was just naysaing. We certainly did not want to hear about the possibility that, if things did not go perfectly, unexpected costs might materialize: costs such as the airport needing to pay for the FedEx expansion by tacking on fees to passenger tickets, as they are, just this week, proposing. (This, oddly, despite multiple published reports that the airport has already paid for its share of the expansion.)

The hub is not, of course, the only example of promotion through wild rosy predictions. In the past few days, the News & Record and WFMY News2 took to telling us that the U.S. Figure Skating Championships will bring in $20 million or more. Remarkably, neither cited any source or data for this claim. Even in commenting on the call center closure, the mayor reminds us that Amex is building a data center here that represents "an eventual investment of close to $1 billion." Really? One thousand million dollars? Again, no source. The mayor may just be taking somebody's word for it, but can we believe the investment will equal the entire annual economic impact of the airport and the 50 companies that operate there?

The point is not that we should not be optimists. Our collective optimism is one of our strengths. But we should become a little more sophisticated--a little less gullible. The county commissioners recently turned down a request to provide financial support to the U.S. Figure Skating Championship. The event was coming regardless and the commissioners, five of them anyway, were right to realize a taxpayer gift was not necessary.

That is the kind of discernment we need to cultivate; the ability to be realistic about prospects and where to direct our energies, our hopes and our money. When we stop swallowing the over-promising of anybody who cheerfully announces an "economic impact," when we stop salivating at the mere word "jobs," and start thinking about things more critically, really assessing cost versus benefit and aligning our expectations with reality, we will do better: When we stop allowing illusions to lull us into complacency, the better prospects will come into focus. We can do it.

PTIA to charge fee to pay for already-paid-for expansion?

GREENSBORO, NC -- WGHP MyFox8 reports that officials at Piedmont Triad International Airport want the FAA to authorize an additional $4.50 per passenger charge to pay for the runway and infrastructure improvements built to accommodate the FedEx overnight cargo sorting hub. WGHP cites airport officials.

Forgive me if I sound confused, but news agencies have reported that this has already been paid for.

The News & Record:

The runway was paid for using federal grants and $30 million in airport authority money.

The Business Journal:

But officials say the new runway — paid for with $120 million in federal funds and $30 million from the airport authority — will provide other immediate benefits.

Piedmont Triad Partnership:

The project was paid for mostly with government grants, as well as about $30 million from the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority revenues. 

Even PTIA's own web site says:

The runway project was funded primarily by federal government grants, along with a contribution of roughly $30 million coming from locally generated Airport Authority revenues.

So what happened? Has the expansion been paid for or not? If not, why did news organizations and community leaders report that it had been? If it has been paid for, why are airport officials saying they need to raise money to pay for it? Something doesn't fit here.

WFMY news director: Sources? You don't need no stinking sources.

GREENSBORO, NC -- Last February, WFMY News2 faked some "news." A couple of weeks later, the news director departed. Since September, WFMY has had a new news director. He has some views about the responsibilities of his news organization that I think may not fit well with Greensboro. They suggest a lack of appreciation for the recent history of local media failures and the way we hold our media accountable here.

Last week, WFMY reporter Meghan Packer wrote this single sentence paragraph in a story about the U.S. Figure Skating Championship:

The event is projected to bring it [sic] at least $20 million.

Projected by whom and by what method? I wondered. I wrote to Packer and asked:

What is the source for that claim and did you, as a reporter, check it out? Did you see if it came from any study, report or empirical source you could examine?

Meghan never replied, but a few days later, I received a reply from the new news director, Bob Clinkingbeard, that said:

That figure comes from a series of interviews as well as a comparison of an economic impact study from Spokane, Washington, which hosted the event last year.

I replied:

Who made the comparison of the economic impact study from Spokane you say was made? Can you tell me where I can find a copy of that study? And finally, whom did you interview that cited a $20 million impact?

Here is where it gets funny, in a sad way. Clinkingbeard wrote back with:

...I will have to respectfully decline to answer.  Finding previous figures, comparisons, impact studies, etc all came from our journalists digging for, calling on and uncovering factual information. Please understand that I am not in the habit of sharing our sources and techniques of uncovering these facts with any other journalistic entity.  I’m sure you understand the competitive nature of the industry. 

What? That's hilarious. Identifying sources is precisely what good journalists do. It's basic. It's journalism 101 -- click and scroll to "Attribution & Sourcing" where the list includes: "The more specific we can be in describing the source in the story, the better." Quite the opposite of Clinkingbeard's view.

I am flattered that Clinkingbeard thinks of me as a 'journalistic entity" -- but I was not asking him for some trade secret. I was asking him to provide the kind of substantiation that should have been in the story to begin with; the kind of information that any good news organization would have eagerly provided subsequently if initially overlooked.

Unable to identify a source, here's how Clinkingbeard might have handled it:

It was not appropriate to include that kind of assertion without attributing it to a source. Without attribution, it should not have been included in the story. Doing so was below the standards we strive for here at WFMY News2 and I've used it as a teaching moment, asking our reporters to learn from it and do better in the future; to deliver the higher level of professionalism our audience deserves and to which we are committed.

Bad reporting, exemplified by reporters using the passive voice to sneak unattributed, unverifiable assertions into public consciousness is a sore spot in Greensboro and an animating force for our local blogging community. Clinkingbeard may continue to excuse mediocrity or he could come to understand why it gets called out in Greensboro and raise the bar at WFMY. I hope it's the latter.

Sometimes, it's the little things that make a big difference

GREENSBORO, NC -- It may seem unremarkable, a story on the News & Record website that begins with:

A Walkertown man won $177,680 playing the Carolina Cash 5, according to a state lottery press release.

Yet, this wording and the rest of the brief story mark a subtle but important improvement in how the N&R reports lottery winners. Previously, the N&R had taken to simply cutting and pasting from the lottery's press releases, including the positive spin of the lottery's promotional language. Now, they are avoiding any confusion that their staff was involved in compiling this information and they are avoiding the promotional language. It is an improvement that they now make it clear that these "announcements" are void of any balance the paper's reporters might otherwise try for with their reporting and declining to serve as a promotional mouthpiece. Three cheers!

Making it up

Sam Spagnola:

Jim Rumley wrote a Facebook post this evening that I thought was spot on and worth noting:

"Today we honor one of the great Republicans of the last century. Someone that gave his life for the ideals of the party of Lincoln. He lived the words of charity to all and malice to none. He fought for the right of the individual and their right to be judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin. He was the head of the teaparty [sic] movement of his time - individuals fighting the establishment. Thank you Dr. Martin Luther King."

Yeah. That's why King was such a big fan of Barry Goldwater: Debunked. But kudos to Sam for determining the misinformation to be "spot on."

Why are you spamming me Bruce Lande of American Business Networks?

Bruce Lande, spammer.

I did not ask to receive your Over Capitalized Email Crap inviting me to "Experience the American Business Network Difference," so why are you spamming me, Bruce Lande of American Business Networks?

News & Record publisher Robin Saul should retire

GREENSBORO, NC --

Ed Cone:

This is big statewide news, with national implications, but the bosses have it hidden in the GPV [Google-proof vault]. Same with Ewing's expanded writeup on McNeill Smith. (Binker tunnels under the wall with this blog post on his own story, noting that even the Google-proof version will disappear after a week.) Whatever you think of the circ-boosting strategy behind the electronic edition, disappearing these two articles makes no sense.

Why does the News & Record's president and publisher Robin Saul still retain his position? Saul has exhibited no publicly discernible ability to successfully steer his enterprise towards modernization. Under his leadership:

• He allowed the N&R to institute a technology that sets its presence on the Internet back fifteen years -- that to which Ed is referring above -- hiding content from search engines and allowing archives to expire in a virtual instant. The N&R's content is no longer the "record," it is a fleeting, hard-to-reference and nearly-invisible oddity. Even News & Record staff must resort to linking to other media outlets' stories because their own, on the same topic, are impervious to hyperlinks. Saul has remained oblivious to, or certainly unresponsive to, the righteous criticism of the egregious problems caused by this bonehead decision from people who are smart about these things. The lack of a technology-aware head in charge also manifests itself in other missteps, such as only allowing comments on some content weekdays 9 to 5 -- pretty ignorant of the nature and culture of the Internet.
  
• Saul tolerates or is unable to improve inconsistent standards. Occasionally, the N&R will produce some good reporting. Too often, "reports" are cobbled together from regurgitated press releases and unchecked assertions, even occasionally treating readers to a fabricated quote, representing a charlatan as legitimate or plagiarism. The professional standards at the N&R are inconsistent and if Saul has tried to raise them, the results have not been a success.
• His management staff remains stuck in a twentieth century newspaper model, rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship instead of envisioning and implementing a new model. It is Saul's responsibility to either inspire people to reorient the enterprise or find new people who will. After more than six years, he appears incapable of either.
• Circulation has fallen off a cliff. Saul's area of expertise is print circulation. Despite this, since 2005 -- the year after Saul took the helm -- weekday print circulation has declined 34.7%, from 95,119 to 62,074, and Sunday circulation 23.2% from 112,154 to 86,087.

Nobody has this all figured out; other newspapers are struggling with the Internet too, but if Saul bears any responsibility for the public face of his enterprise's efforts, it appears too obvious that he is uninspired by or befuddled by, if not hostile towards, modern information technology. That might be excused if he were doing a bang up job without it, but he's not.

WGHP on auto pilot?

GREENSBORO, NC -- More than twenty four hours after its original posting, the egregiously mistaken story still remains uncorrected on WGHP MyFox8's web site. That's some fine quality control they've got going on over there.

Blowing my mind

Amazing.

Fec on Guilford County's website fiasco

Fec:

This circumstance is a fucking outrage and someone on county staff should be handed their ass for it. Hundreds of local capable IT professionals remained without jobs while this sweetheart deal went on under their noses.

Employees at the upper echelons of Guilford County's information technology staff are being paid well over $100,000 per year. For that kind of money, we deserve competence. Unable to build a sufficient website themselves and unable to evaluate the fitness of the vendor who fell down on the job at a public cost of $40,000, someone or multiple someones should indeed be shown the door. We should not permit the coddling of incompetence.

City of Guilford, County of Greensboro. More WGHP confusion.

GREENSBORO, NC -- What does it say about a local news organization when their reporters cannot distinguish between Guilford County government and Greensboro City government? I mean, it's not academic, it's basic. And if the audience is thinking, "Wow, some of your reporters are really ignorant," WGHP MyFox8 might ask itself what, exactly, is its value proposition?

To a long list of errors in WGHP's reporting (including the laughable identification of Greensboro city council representative Robbie Perkins as "city council chairman" -- of which there is no such thing), add today's report that:

City Denies EMS Funding for Skating Championships

No, they did not. The City of Greensboro does not operate local EMS, the event organizers did not make the request of the City and the City does not have a board of commissioners, all as were erroneously reported in this error-riddled story.

The event organizers did make a request of the Guilford County Commissioners. WGHP, if you are going to cover local government, can you assign reporters to the beat who have a clue?

Figure skating and Greensboro's ol' okee doke

GREENSBORO, NC -- I once worked with a guy who described gullible people as playing the old okee doke. "I don't play the ol' okee doke," he'd say if he thought someone was trying to put one over on him. We're good at playing the old okee doke here.

The News & Record reports this today on the economic impact of the coming U.S. Figure Skating Chamionships:

Previous host cities have reported $25 million in economic impact, depending on final attendance.

Have they? I cannot find such reports and you'll notice no source is cited by the N&R, although the wording is very similar to a memo from Greensboro City Manager Rashad Young (in which there is also no source cited for the claim).

While there appears to be no source of a previous city reporting $25 million in economic impact, what I do find is that amount being recycled as the promised economic impact for this event, again and again, as it moves from city to city, year after year. In the passive voice, i.e. never attributed to any person or entity, the amount just keeps resurfacing from the shadows, unattached to any study, report or empirical data.

In 2006, in Saint Louis:

"Some 125,000 spectators are expected to attend, generating an estimated $25 to $30 million dollars in visitor spending."

In 2009, in Cleveland:

"The event annually attracts more than 1,500 figure skaters, coaches and officials with a local economic impact estimated at $25 million."

In 2010, in Spokane:

"[L]ocal hotels and businesses are looking forward to cash in on a projected $25 Million windfall..."

And now, in Greensboro, those previous projections from unidentified sources have been magically transformed into reality -- from projections to reports from other host cities -- without any actual reports from any actual host cities being cited.

Okee doke.

Fortunately, the Guilford County Commissioners managed to find a little common sense last night and rejected a request from the wealthy promoter of this project to donate $26,000 in emergency medical services to the event. But it was close, 5 to 5.

Enough commissioners admirably recognized that this request could not be considered in a vacuum, that any benefits accrued to the donation would come at the expense of other county endeavors. They rightly reasoned that this donation was unnecessary and unwise. Still that did not stop other commissioners from exhibiting a remarkably astounding lack of logic.

Board Chairman Skip Alston and commissioners John Parks and Carolyn Coleman all spoke of supporting the donation in order to reap the economic benefits of the event. But that is just, in a word, and forgive me for being blunt, nonsense. The event is coming. With or without the donation, the event is coming. There is no cause and effect. It was not, as these unthinking commissioners postulated, that if the taxpayers make this donation, then the event will bring people to town. The event is coming independent of the public donation. Concluding that the County must donate to the event in order to procure its benefits is just playing the old okee doke.

Editorial gullibility; or, where I sympathize with local conservatives

GREENSBORO, NC -- At a time when Guilford County is in dire financial straights, unable to afford such fluff as school construction, a News & Record editorial says the County should donate some $40,000 in public services for the benefit of a for-profit sports promoter.

The figure skating competition is coming. Nothing will be lost if the County declines the requested contribution, except perhaps for some profit for the promoter, but we can surely all agree that that is not the taxpayers' obligation. The cavalier and unjustified calls by the N&R to spend the people's money on misplaced priorities are getting irksome.

I'd also like to know where the News & Record editors get the "facts" they cite. Using an undocumented estimation of the economic impact of the event from the very promoter who stands to personally benefit from the County's largess seems quite naive to me. "Aw, shucks, Andy, he says it might bring $25 million."

WFMY manager as Chamber of Commerce head: C-O-N-F-L-I-C-T

CORRECTION: Well, that was embarrassing. I was not careful. I missed the fact that the News & Record's Dick Barron had reported that Hooper is leaving WFMY to take the position at the Chamber. My apologies for the oversight and thanks to Dick for bringing the error to my attention. I leave the original post below as a testament to my fallibility.

GREENSBORO, NC -- WFMY general manager Deborah Hooper has been tapped to head the local Chamber of Commerce. Say what? The Chamber of Commerce accepts public funds, engages in political advocacy and attempts to influence government policy decisions, the very kinds of activities that properly deserve media scrutiny. For the manager of WFMY to head such an organization is to kiss goodbye any remaining notion, however already minuscule, that WFMY is a serious watchdog of public interest.

I have to hand it to the Chamber though, it was smart to get a media organization in its pocket.

Joseph Brousseau, lying sack

DETROIT, MI -- I am aware that the police are under no obligation to tell you the truth, but when one does lie, especially in the course of an interrogation of a 13-year-old boy while telling him, "I'm not going to lie to you," it qualifies him as a lying sack. From the Detroit Free Press:

On Dec. 4, 2007, without notice to a legal guardian appointed to represent the boy, West Bloomfield Police Detective Joseph Brousseau interrogated a 13-year-old witness about allegations of sexual abuse against his father.

Prosecutors later dropped criminal charges against the parents and agreed to reunite them with their son and daughter, who had been living in separate foster homes for more than three months.

Today, the Free Press reported that the family will get $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit against the police which arose after the Free Press' 2008 articles.(Source, with videos)

Hat tip: Greensboring.com

Please ma'am, may I have some fact checking?

GREENSBORO, NC -- Were I an editor at the News & Record, I would announce: "New rule! No more reporting on people making assertions of fact without checking out the facts." (Previously).

Today the N&R "reports:"

By [Greensboro City Manager] Young's calculations, the bill for both services would come out to about $1.5 million -- so the two governments might as well call it a wash.

Local weekly The Rhino Times aligned Young's assertion with the facts (six weeks ago):

It's a great deal for Guilford County because according to the agreement on library funding reached years ago the county should be paying more than $2 million for the library, and for years the city has been paying $400,000 for the collection of property taxes.

One of these examples is reporting, one is stenography.

Great question

Daver Ribar:

In the wake of the murderous shooting rampage in Tucson, Rep. Peter King, the Republican chair of the House Homeland Security Committee intends to submit "legislation which would make it a federal crime to carry a weapon within 1,000 feet of any event which is attended by the President, the Vice President, members of the Senate, members of the House of Representatives, Cabinet officials, including the CIA director as well as federal judges."

As the Church Lady would say, "how convenient." The legislation might protect you if you're a federal official or meeting with one, but how about the rest of us that might end up the targets of one of these nuts at a Luby's, a McDonalds, an immigration center, a financial office, a beer distributor, or a university.

Grifter alert

GREENSBORO, NC -- I'm all for entrepreneurial success, but profiting from taxpayer largess is not capitalism, it is a bamboozle.

The guy who lives in this $680,000 4,000 square feet house wants the Guilford County Commissioners to give $40,000 to a sports event his company is managing at the Greensboro Coliseum. The Commissioners should decline. It is not the taxpayers' responsibility to keep entrepreneurs living in the style to which they have grown accustomed.

FedEx hub apologists and the incredible shrinking job expectations.

GREENSBORO, NC -- My greatest disappointments with Greensboro is the ease with which we accommodate mendacity in our public discourse. Their is no greater evidence for this than the prevalence of propaganda that masquerades as sincere information about the FedEx overnight cargo sorting hub.

Andy Brod thinks that the mere idea of the misnamed logistics-driven "aerotropolis," is a sore spot with me. That's ridiculous. It's not. What gripes me is the spinning and bullshit that has driven enthusiasm for this long-delayed, over-promising/under-delivering project. It has made us an inverted perversion of our state motto: "Greensboro: To seem, rather than to be."

I could come up with a long list of the ways people and institutions equivocated in order to promote the hub: From people initially denying that noise studies should anticipate the heavier jets needed to fly to Europe because the hub would serve only the eastern seaboard, only to now tout the hub's potential to serve Europe; to the refusal to conduct a meaningful cost/benefit analysis; to biased "reporting" pitting one person's assertions of fact against other people's denials instead of an evaluation of the facts themselves and offering up "data" that was massaged to put the hub in the most favorable light possible.*

The latest example is an attempt to tweak history a little bit -- to have us misremember what was promised. Originally, hub cheerleaders promised the hub would employ 750 - 800 workers when it opened. Having created no new jobs since it opened, Dick Barron of the News & Record "reminds" us today that the hub originally promised jobs for "more than 600 workers" upon its opening. Well, yeah. More than 600 the same way they promised us more than 400 new jobs; more than 100; more than zero. But, accurately, they promised us at least 750 new jobs upon the hub's opening and massaging that to "more than 600" is just another in a long, long string of disappointing ways in which Greensboro has shown itself willing to lie to ourselves--to each other--when it comes to this hub. Just a little at a time--constantly--little drops of deception into a now-overflowing bucket. I don't understand it, but I'm quite embarrassed by it.


* One of the most common and insidious was the News & Record's repeated publishing of a "noise cone" map that showed noise contours overlayed on a map of Greensboro while failing to report that the "noise" shown was of a twenty-four hour/seven-day average that included periods of silence from days and day-parts when cargo jest would not be flying. There was never a map projecting the loudest noise people would experience, but this map of averages was made to seem like it.

A way with words

GREENSBORO, NC -- The story of Fox8 cameraman and local blogger Chris Weaver being attacked by a crazy man with a stick while shooting some footage is worthy of attention in its own right, but fellow photog and blogger Stewart Pittman brings out the color. The man has a way with words.

"Ya know, I though I'd met every type of unhappy customer there is. I don't remember ANY as unhinged as one Danny Kirkus, Jr. In his world, it's perfectly acceptable to attack a cameraman if you perceive him to be your land, to go after him with a stick, to rant, rave and threaten in a manner that makes those Mel Gibson phone rants sound like the sweetest of all booty calls. Really, Mr. Kirkus - what universe do you live in where acting like a cartoon character is permitted? Did you think such behavior would [stop] all the queries about your suspiciously skinny horses? Are you as inbred as you look? Or did the greasy mullet and demented spittle come with the hat?"

Original video of handcuffed girl assualted in Walmart scrubbed from YouTube

GREENSBORO, NC -- Yesterday I posted a YouTube video from "officergaryknotts" who News2 identified in an unrelated video as Gary Knotts, a "loss prevention agent." The video showed what appeared to be a girl restrained in handcuffs being assaulted by a woman (presumably her mother) while Walmart employees and a police officer stand by.

That video has now been "removed by the user" according to YouTube. Here it is again, unedited from the original:

On the News & Record reprinting blog content

UPDATE (01/04/11): News & Record editorial editor Allen Johsnons says he'll impliment these recommendations.

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record has started a new feature on their editorial page called "Mixing it Up," in which they reprint content from area blogs. While I can see a mutual benefit to both the News & Record and the featured bloggers, I think bloggers are getting the short end of the stick without some improvements.

I have suggested the following to editorial page editor Allen Johnson:

1. Include the url or "address" of the blog from which the content originates. Not only is it a professional courtesy, but failing to do so leaves a column about commentary from the Internet less than complete. 
2. Indicate when content is edited. The last post of mine that appeared in Mixing it Up had significant portions removed from within. There was no notice, no ellipses, just an editor's invisible hand. That might be okay for a letter to the editor, it is not for what is represented as a reprint.
3. Use TinyUrl. Since hyperlinks don't work in print, and long urls are cumbersome, the option is to either diminish the value for the print reader by excluding links altogether or including them as shortened versions from tinyurl.com. The latter is better.

Handcuffed girl assaulted by mother; police and adults stand by

GREENSBORO, NC -- This video (below) appeared on Greensboro 101 yesterday. It was posted with the screen name officergaryknotts and the title "Walmart." Gary Knotts is identified in a separate News2 segment as a "Loss Prevention Agent." From the video description:

I caught the girl in the white hat trying to walk out with over $150. Her mother was...Upset,to say. Greensboro Police response was good.I hope she learned her lesson.

At about the 1:50 mark, a person in uniform, seemingly a police officer, checks the restraints securing the girl's hands behind her back, then a woman, presumably the girl's mother, enters the room and starts punching the girl while the officer and other adults stand by.

[UPDATE (01/04/11): The original video has been "removed by user." An archived copy can be viewed here.]



Say what you will about parents' rights to discipline their children, adults, especially those with the authority to restrain others, have an obligation to protect people they have restrained from assault.