For my reporter and editor friends: The future of news

Glen Greenwald, journalist, blogger and lawyer, and Bill Keller, columnist and former executive editor of the News York Times, engage in an exchange about the recent past, current state and future of journalism. While they discuss matters in a global context, there is plenty to chew on for local reporters too.

An excerpt from Greenwald that resonated with me as relevant to national and local reporting:

"In essence, I see the value of journalism as resting in a twofold mission: informing the public of accurate and vital information, and its unique ability to provide a truly adversarial check on those in power." 

The unbelievable depravity of the News & Record

GREENSBORO, NC -- For all the things to which the News & Record could turn their attention; things for which the public begs and pleads for them to step up and do in the name of journalism—to do some investigation, fact checking and original reporting instead of just regurgitating press releases or acting as stenographers of differing opinions—with so much room for improvement, where does the News & Record go?

To the depraved depths of "reporting" on the mental health of a political consultant under the guise of  "election coverage."

What is wrong with that enterprise that it remains forever incompetent?

New Rhino sends Bledsoe down memory hole

GREENSBORO, NC -- Jerry Bledsoe is back. Jerry, as anybody who pays attention to Greensboro government will know, has the great distinction of doing the very heavy lifting of Greensboro's story from the muck and mire of lies and misinformation a lazy press and gullible elected officials almost left enshrined in history.

Jerry's series, "Cops in Black and White," was an account of the circumstances surrounding former police chief David Wray being forced from his position amid claims of racial motivations. It appeared in over ninety issues of the Rhinoceros Times newspaper and on the Rhino's website.

While the Rhino disappeared for a few months this summer because of financial troubles, it is back today with new financial backing and with Jerry Bledsoe as a contributing writer. Unfortunately, while the website is back too, it is without the archives of "Cops in Black and White". Search results for articles from the series link to "page not found" errors.

Bledsoe's series is an important resource—a touchstone for historical truth. The Rhino should restore its online presence.

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.

Another WGHP bald faced lie

GREENSBORO, NC -- From a WGHP story about a robbery:

"The suspects were described as 6-8 males all in their teens or early 20s. No other information was provided." 

That's a bald faced lie.

From the Greensboro Police Department press release the story cites:

"The suspects are described as six to eight black males, all in their teens or early twenties." 

It's one thing if WGHP wants to, for whatever reasons it may have, withhold the race of criminal suspects, but to tell its audience flatly that no other information was provided when, in fact, other information was provided, is an inexcusable deception for an organization that pretends to be reporting news.

From beyond the grave: Dead people accessing city surveillance network

GREENSBORO, NC -- I spoke at last night's Greensboro City Council meeting about city records that appear to show large numbers of unauthorized accesses to city surveillance cameras, including by a couple of people identified by the City as former employees long retired and now deceased.

Here is the text of my remarks and the video, which includes commentary by city council and the City Manager.

Tonight, I am here to bring to your attention an example of the harmful consequences of the city of Greensboro's climate of obfuscation and hostility towards transparency.

In July of last year, I requested all records documenting access by anybody to city surveillance cameras for a one-week period. 

Rather than receiving copies of any kind of contemporaneous original records, I received a document obviously created in response to my request. A fake.

Although my request was officially closed, I reminded city staff that I had requested all records of anybody accessing surveillance cameras and requesting an explanation for why I had been provided a manufactured record. I had to ask three times. After my third request, I received a reply.

"The information listed is the names of the security guards who have access to view live and archive video from surveillance cameras thru out the city facilities."

For the sake of time, I must quickly summarize what happened over the next several months. My pursuit of the records I had originally requested was stonewalled at every turn. At various times, I was mislead, intimidated and ignored.

It became very frustrating.

For months on end, the City stood by their story, insisting that only security guards were authorized to access surveillance cameras and that I had been provided an accurate record of surveillance camera access.

I was even given this list, presented to me as those people authorized to access surveillance cameras. As you can see, it is a list of fourteen people. 

After seven months of city stonewalling, six months after my request was officially closed, I finally received a copy of an original record recording access to surveillance cameras.

It did not match the manufactured record I originally received, the one that was described as recording access by security guards because only security guards had access to surveillance cameras, supposedly. Instead, the real record showed people other than security guards accessing surveillance cameras.

So I asked for the log files for a longer period of time for a better idea of the extent to which City staff were watching surveillance cameras. What I found was shockingly different from what the City had said for month about who was accessing surveillance cameras.

Instead of the fourteen authorized users, log files showed well over fifty people accessing city surveillance cameras. Who?

According to the City's human resources department, those included not only security guards, but laborers, mechanics, and tax collectors -- over 50 people with various positions other than security guards.

It gets worse:

The City could not identify 21 of the people who the log files showed accessing surveillance cameras.

That's bad. But incredibly...

Two of the people recorded as having accessed city surveillance cameras are identified by the City's Human Resources as having long since retired and being deceased.

Questions:

- Why was I provided a manufactured record instead of a copy of an actual record?

- Why are people not authorized to do so, logging into surveillance cameras?

- Who are the people logging in that the city could not identify?

- Who was logging in using the names of deceased city employees?

- When is city council going to get serious about changing the culture of secrecy and hostility towards transparency that exists in city government?

Matt Brown's conflict of interest

GREENSBORO, NC -- Getting the City Council to approve the new 3,000-seat (give or take) downtown performing arts center involved financial projections based on booking 189 events a year. This was substantially more than the 149 estimated by the citizens committee and professional consultant hired to evaluate the center's prospects, but City staff decided to go with 189—what they called a "blend" of the consultant's estimations and ethereal "staff projections," which was really another way of saying, "the numbers don't work unless we say we'll book 189 events so we're going to pretend we thoughtfully estimated we can book 189 events."

Now comes word that the man whose team is to be charged with meeting that lofty projection has also been tapped, without City Council approval, apparently, to book events for the Lawrence Joel Coliseum in neighboring Winston-Salem.

That's right, City of Greensboro employee Coliseum Director Matt Brown, who, in addition to overseeing the coliseum arena, also overseas Greensboro's other public performance and exhibition spaces including the War Memorial Auditorium, the White Oak Amphitheater, the Special Events Center, the Pavillion and the Odeon theater, representing capacities from 300 to 24,000, has made himself and his employees contractually obligated to booking and supporting events at similar-sized Wake Forest University-owned facilities in neighboring Winston-Salem, including the 15,000 seat Lawrence Joel Coliseum.

How is that not an obvious conflict of interest? Dumb question. It is an obvious conflict of interest. The real question is, how can it be tolerated by those charged with looking out for the interests of Greensboro taxpayers; specifically, city council? How can city council possibly think it is a good idea to have the professional allegiances and obligations of city employees contractually divided between Greensboro's public facilities and competing facilities just down the road, especially since we are soon to encounter the challenge of filling the City's expanded entertainment capacity of the performing arts center?

FedEx hub and logistics jobs may never materialize

GREENSBORO, NC -- When Greensboro was debating the merits of spending what has become nearly half a billion dollars on tax incentives and capital outlays of public funds to accommodate the FedEx "regional overnight cargo sorting hub," the invincible gorilla in the discussion was the promise of hundreds and hundreds of jobs. 600 new jobs were to be filled when the hub opened, 750 new jobs would be created in its first two years of operations, 1,500 new jobs a few years after that... we were told. The mantra was repeated by op-ed writers, reporters, economic developers and every elected official in the county. It became indisputable gospel.

While the new hub opened in 2009, the number employed by FedEx four years later remains nearly the same as before the new facility opened. The new jobs did not materialize. The promises were hot air.

Undeterred by such evidence to the contrary, the region's economic developers and elected officials continue to push—as they have for the past 15 years—the idea of Greensboro as a "logistics" hub to drive job growth. Now, a new study out of Oxford University (article, study) shows that, even if good airport capacity and a confluence of highways distinguishes a city enough to give it a competitive advantage in logistics, it may not bring jobs with it; or, the jobs it brings may be outpaced by technology in short order—possibly bringing about a repeat of this region's turn of the century economic wounding when tobacco, textiles and furniture jobs evaporated.

"The study, based on 702 detailed job listings, found that computers could already replace many workers in transportation and logistics, production labor and administrative support." 

To the extent that Greensboro's decision-makers continue to stake our economic future to the dubious notion of us as a "logistics hub," they would do well to recognize that such industry is not likely to provide significant numbers of jobs for package handlers, laborers and sorters as was once predicted. Educating people to invent, design, build and program the machines that will do those jobs instead might make more sense.

All arrested for curfew violations were African-American

GREENSBORO, NC -- Following up on a Greensboro Police Department summary of the 60-day emergency downtown youth curfew, I asked the the city for the ages and races of the four individuals arrested for curfew violations. A police spokesperson reports they were sixteen and seventeen year-olds, all African-American.

The paid media might follow-up further and compare the demographics of those arrested with those who were ticketed and those who received warnings.

Criminalizing youth: temporary curfew nets four arrests, costs $81,800

GREENSBORO, NC -- Twenty-one children as young as eleven were ensnared by the city of Greensboro's emergency 60-day downtown youth curfew according to a letter from Chief of Police Ken Miller. Nine warnings, eight citations and four arrests were effected, eight of which involved youths sixteen or younger. The estimated cost of enforcing the curfew was, according to the letter, $81,800 and required a deployment of an additional 107 officers representing an extra 2,046 personnel hours.

The letter did not specify the ages or races of those who were arrested. This blogger has asked the city of Greensboro for that information.

The curfew was put into place on July 3rd during an emergency city council meeting called by Mayor Robbie Perkins following wildly inaccurate media reports, primarily from local TV stations WGHP and WFMY, of "hundreds" of teens brawling in the streets of downtown—reports refuted by the Greensboro Police Department, which the TV stations never substantiated and which brought world-wide disgrace to Greensboro including a permanent ignominious addition to Greensboro's Wikipedia entry.  Mayor Perkins twice declined to correct the misinformation when given the opportunity. No other council members took the initiative to publicly correct the erroneous reports either.

Council representatives who voted in favor of the curfew were: Mayor Robbie Perkins, Marikay Abuzuaiter, Nancy Hoffman, Yvonne Johnson, Jim Kee, Zack Matheny, Nancy Vaughan and Tony Wilkins. T. Dianne Bellamy-Small was the lone no vote.

UPDATE: A police spokesperson reports that those arrested for violating the curfew were sixteen and seventeen years-old; all were African-American.

[This post corrected at 5:08 P.M.]

Tony Wilkins, man of the people

GREENSBORO, NC -- Watch as district 5 City Council representative Tony Wilkins stands up for Greensboro against the doings of the local oligarchy. Also instructive is what passes for transparency in the mind of our Mayor, Robbie Perkins.

Superb

GREENSBORO, NC -- This is what passes for campaign coverage at the News & Record. Amanda Lehmert on mayoral candidate George Hartzman:

"He wrote two self-published books of meandering musings, some of which were wrote from his backyard hot tub. (“Think: What to do Now,” by George Hartzman. Chapter 4: 'There are no straight lines. Stability destabilizes. Non-random events cause random effects.') He drives a Jeep without a race car engine and is a regular at the Bench Tavern on Lawndale Drive." 

Screenshot:

News & Record: Duped or shillin'?

GREENSBORO, NC -- In her article of August 18th, "Here's what you need to know about GPAC," News & Record reporter Amanda Lehmert told her readers:

"Cost to buy the land: Up to $7.6 million."

"Up to...", she wrote.

From Richard Barron on the News & Record website yesterday:

"The city would borrow $3.9 million to buy the parcels — at 300 and 332 N. Elm St. — that would push the original $7.6 million land acquisition budget to $11.5 million."

The "original" $7.6 million was never real. It was a canard,  a charade, and reporting it as such illustrates the problem with regurgitating the pronouncements of authorities as facts, as the News & Record—Lehmert especially—routinely do in covering city government.

City Council and City staff knew land acquisition was going to cost significantly more than $7.6 million well before Lehmert reported $7.6 million as a limit.

Here is what Mayor Robbie Perkins said in a closed session meeting on August 5th, in which all City Council members, the City Manager, the City Attorney and Walker Sanders, president of the Community Foundation, discussed having the City spend $7.6 million to purchase seven of the nine needed parcels:

Perkins: "The other thing we need to... the other thing that we need to make real sure of is that we've got one piece of.. [cross talk] Walker, Walker you mind? We need to make real sure... Mr Attorney, we need to make real sure that everybody in this room doesn't talk about anything that we just happened [uninteligible] because we've got one person that's already jacked his price up a couple, three hundred thousand dollars, it's not under contract, and if it comes out that all of this is glued together except for him, you don't know where he's gonna go. And, and, and, I mean, if we start reading about this in the newspaper, this whole project would come unglued. So, y'all don't say anything." 

Yvonne Johnson: "I won't".

So there is the real news hook: somehow, either having been deceived by or cooperating with a deception, Lehmert reported the $7.6 million as a maximum—in a front page story of the most-widely circulated Sunday edition of Greensboro's paper. City staff and City Council knew thirteen days prior to the publication of Lehmert's article that land purchases would exceed $7.6 million, possibly significantly. They knew the $7.6 million they were seeking to spend was only for seven of nine needed parcels and that the mayor was worried about the possibility of the holdout landowner jacking up his price even further. Yet, Lehmert reported $7.6 million as a maximum.

$7.6 million was never the total for land purchases, it was only ever for a portion of the land, so how and why did it get reported as such? Dupe or shill?

WFMY: judge, jury and executioner

GREENSBORO, NC -- Journalism 101: You don't report something as fact just because someone in a position of authority says it is so. That is especially true of criminal allegations. WFMY flunks:

"After an investigation, Winston-Salem police determined Melvin Paul was responsbile [sic] for three other robberies, including an armed robbery prior to the one in High Point on Saturday."  

What do we expect though from a station that sill continues to leave gross errors of historical fact uncorrected?

WGHP MyFox8: who needs the facts when you have us?

GREENSBORO, NC -- From a Greensboro Police Department press release describing the suspects in an armed robbery:

Suspect #1 (Driver) is described as a dark skinned black male, 6’, short hair, in his 20’s, tattoo, last seen wearing blue jeans.

Suspect #2 (Passenger) is described as a dark skinned black male, 6’2”, 210 pounds, short hair with waves on top, last seen wearing a white shirt and khaki pants.

Suspect #3 (Passenger) is described as a dark skinned black male, medium build, 5’10”, last seen wearing a red shirt and blue jeans.

From WGHP's regurgitation of the press release:

Ample suspect descriptions were not available.

I ask again, when we can subscribe by email, feeds and social media to official government announcements, what value do news outlets add when they regurgitate press releases but filter details?

Local media: the less you know, the better

GREENSBORO, NC -- It puzzles me when the local media assume their job includes keeping information from their audience.

Here is how a police press release described a suspect in a downtown stabbing this morning:

"The suspect is described as a black male, approximately 5’9, medium build and wearing a white tank top shirt."

Here is how WGHP MyFox8 reported the suspect's description:

"An ample suspect description was not available."

And the News & Record:

"According to the victim, he was involved in a fight with a man near Washington and Elm streets and the other man assaulted him with a knife, police said."

So tell me, when we can subscribe by email, feeds and social media to official government announcements, what value do news outlets add when they regurgitate press releases but filter details?

WGHP MyFox8, who needs reality when you have us?

The News & Record, the most trusted source for newsish morsels.

Greensboro City Council's unequal treatment

GREENSBORO, NC -- Billy Jones on Mayor Robbie Perkins insisting that speakers from the floor at city council meeting provide their home addresses:

"To add insult to injury, Mayor Perkins often exempts friends, high rollers and connected elites from having to state their home addresses. Others openly use their office addresses."

That's true. The Mayor cut the mic and had city council candidate Ben Holder escorted  from the chambers for giving his address as "blah, blah, blah lane" (to make the same point) yet, as Billy rightly notes, certain insiders and city staff are allowed to speak without giving their addresses.

This kind of preferential treatment extends to the City's practice of reporting the public records requests of certain individuals while giving an unspoken exemption to insiders, the connected and former employees. Oh, yeah, the exemption extends to city council people too, who, of all people—with their obligation to public accountability—should have their interactions with city government transparent and open and, instead, get a comfy cloak of secrecy bestowed by city staff who never, ever include their records requests with the regularly published list of requests. Never.

This is not just the mayor's doing though, none of the incumbent councilors have lifted a finger to make any changes. It's going to be really hard to vote to re-elect any of them.

Yes! misses the point on Holder/Abuzuaiter confrontations

GREENSBORO, NC -- With the Rhino Times gone (although rumored to be coming back on October 3rd), the remaining local weekly has a real opportunity to fill the vacuum on election coverage. It looks like they are not going to take it.

In addition to the silly mistake of identifying Greensboro's mayor as "Robbie Knight" (a concatenation of the current and previous mayors) today, a (justifiably) unsigned editorial completely misses the point of at-large city council candidate Ben Holder's recent attention to at-large incumbent Marikay Abuzuaiter.

While Yes!'s editorial reminds us of their stories last winter (here and here) about emails that revealed Greensboro Police identifying Abuzuaiter as a confidential informant and appearing to show Abuzuaiter sending information to the police, that has not been the meat of Ben Holder's gripe. As Holder has made clear in his two recent appearances before City Council to speak to the issue, his interest is in having Abuzuater reconcile her statements of denial surrounding those emails with the facts.

When confronted with emails appearing to be sent from her AOL account to the police reporting on the activities of groups such as Occupy Greensboro and the local Tea Party, Abuzuaiter denied sending them, according to Yes! Weekly reporter Eric Ginsburg. This incongruence prompted people to wonder if there shouldn't then be an investigation into how emails could be sent to the police from a council person's email account without her sending them.

Respected local attorney Lewis Pitts even went to a city council meeting to demand an investigation.



Abuzuaiter's "explanations" have thus far included protestations that she couldn't have taken the pictures included with some of the emails because her only camera was on a cell phone that she says was broken at the time; that she couldn't have accessed her AOL account at the time of the emails because her computer suffered a "blue screen of death;" that someone must have impersonated her because she doesn't sign her name the way it appeared on the emails in question; and that she wasn't even a council person when the emails in question were sent (not accurate).

When confronted with the possibility that the police may have "framed" her, she said "time will tell."

But time will not tell. Not on its own. Not without an investigation that Abuzuatier has not called for and which, although requested by citizens, the city has declined to undertake.

Abuzuaiter now says the issue has been "resolved," but the public remains as much in the dark as when Yes! first reported the story. It is this failure of a sitting council person to explain herself to the public that Holder is insisting be addressed. It is not the matter of her being identified as a police informant or her sending information about peaceful assemblies to the police. Although those matter, the Yes! editorial misses Holder's larger point, that Abuzuaiter is avoiding giving the public a straight answer.

The issue is one of honesty, public accountability and can be illustrated in this question I emailed to Abuzuaiter eight days ago and to which she has not replied:

Did you send the emails you told Eric Ginsberg you did not send?  

Yes! Weekly weakly

GREENSBORO, NC -- From Yes! Weekly's election coverage:

 "Tanya Wiley is managing Mayor Robbie Knight's reelection effort."

Greensboro's mayor is, of course, Robbie Perkins. Our previous mayor was Bill Knight. Yes!

Zombies or Naive?

"For an agency like the NSA, the data storage units are a goldmine, combining in a single device almost all the information that would interest an intelligence agency: social contacts, details about the user's behavior and location, interests (through search terms, for example), photos and sometimes credit card numbers and passwords." -- Der Spiegel 

On the heels of public revelations that the United States National Security Agency has the capabilities of collecting "a broad spectrum of user data from smart phones," comes Apple's announcement that its new phone will now also collect fingerprints.

 "Who knew in 1984... that [Steve Jobs] would be big brother... and the zombies would be paying customers?" -- NSA presentation 

Was the N.S.A. right, are smartphone users zombies or just confident in the perpetual good intentions of government?