New local online classified ads for Greensboro

(GREENSBORO, NC) This week, I launched gso101.com a local classified ads website for the Greensboro area. It's pretty sophisticated, including advanced search options, mapping, automated email alerts and video embedding.

There are three price options:

• FREE: 1 day, 1 picture, 100 words
• $1.01 7 days, 2 pictures, video and unlimited words
• $4.04 30 days, 6 pictures, video and unlimited words.

You can try any of the ad plans for free, with as many ads as you like with this coupon code:

1a2b

Just enter the code at checkout for a 100% discount. Place an ad by noon, May 7th, and you'll be automatically entered into a drawing to win a lovely t-shirt.

How to lose a voter in two easy steps

Don Wendelken, candidate for Guilford County Commissioner, district 5, did some door to door campaigning in my neighborhood yesterday. A willingness to do that always gets a candidate off on the right foot with me. Shows initiative and sincerity.

Although I missed Don, he left a postcard in the door. It didn't have his campaign website on it, but I found it on Google. Faced with a choice of two tea party conservatives in the primary, I am interested in discerning who between Wendelken and his opponent (who appears to not have a website) is more palatable to this unaffiliated voter. So I sent Don an email, asking:

"Can you give me an example of an issue or issues, a position or positions, on which you separate yourself from ideology -- an issue on which you might say you hold a moderate or pragmatic view that is not inline with partisan expectations?"

Don sent me a polite reply that completely avoided my question. I thanked him and said I wished he had answered my question to which he replied.

"Is there a specific issue you would like to ask me about?"

No, Don. What I wanted to ask you about is what I asked you. Is there a specific reason why I should vote for a candidate who will not answer a direct question?

Lex is 10

Blog on the Run Reloaded is 10 years old today. Written by Lex Alexander, it's one of my favorites. The man has a memory like a steel trap and, whether it's a quick hit or a surgical dissection with his truth laser, Lex keeps the lies and deceptions of the powerful and would-be powerful exposed and raw. (Update: Lex's Greatest Hits.)

Several years ago, Lex worked at the News & Record. His last position One of his positions was as the brief Citizen Journalism Coordinator, a job that, had he been allowed to continue, would have fundamentally changed the nature of local journalism and, I'm convinced, better secured the vitality of the local daily.

Unfortunately, the job lasted all of about ten seconds before someone put the kibosh on the idea of involving citizens in reporting just as Lex was about to get the ball rolling.

I don't know exactly what happened. I suspect that when they saw the kinds of stories the public wanted to pursue, upper management decided they did not want to share control of the agenda with the hoi polloi. Lex won't offer details other than to say he doesn't think he was treated poorly. Still, it seemed like pretty shoddy treatment from the outside and an opportunity missed by whoever the bonehead was that shut it down.

Lex carried on though, and his blog serves as an example of the kind of substance one wishes was in the newspaper anymore.

Make me smarter

(GREENSBORO, NC) The bottom line to the success of newspapers? Make us smarter. If you can do that, we'll read. If you offer a sloppy morass that leaves one feeling like he has just spent the past five minutes with a plastic bag over his head, we are going to wonder why we wasted our time.

So, when the News & Record writes something like this in an article describing a church's parishioners, which way do you think I'm leaning?

"Some used to live as homosexuals."

Sweet Carolina (vote against Amendment One)

Roll call of city council votes on hiring new attorney

(GREENSBORO, NC) From information provided by the City Clerk on hiring new city attorney Mujeeb Shah-Khan:

"Councilmember Bellamy-Small moved adoption of the resolution. The motion was seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson; the resolution was adopted on the following roll call vote: Ayes: Abuzuaiter, Bellamy-Small, Hoffmann, Johnson, Kee, and Perkins. Noes: Vaughan and Wade. Absent: Matheny."

But, but... Daughtry!

Ed Cone:

"A second significant public event against Amendment One has come and gone in Greensboro without a single word or photo in the News & Record.

"That's twice in four days that the local daily has completely ignored meaningful local news about a hot-button statewide issue."

The Greensboro page of the News & Record's website has a single local story for today:

"Guilford students rock out with Daughtry"

Hey, you have to have your priorities.

Says she!

(Greensboro, NC) Yesterday, I wrote about the carelessness of a couple of articles in the News & Record that attributed information and assertions to sources without identifying them.

So why does that matter? Beyond the obvious matter of accountability and credibility, the additional information can color our opinions of an issue. Case in point: the unidentified attorney in yesterday's story about the disagreement over whether we can or cannot use the motel tax to pay for a performing arts center is from Raleigh.

Does that matter? The News & Record editor editorial board seems to think so.

Me dumb, me vote for you!

I don't blame candidates for talking down to voters. It works sometimes, especially among certain constituencies. Still, it grates me when I see it, including:

Justin "I've never raised taxes (because I've never held elected office before so I've never lowered taxes either)" Conrad

and

Tony "get out your magnifying glass and read the microscopic word 'former' preceding the legible 'Executive Director of the Guilford County G.O.P.' in my ads" Wilkins.

Really guys, there's something to be said for playing it straight.

And while I'm griping, parks, schools and public medians are not proper places for campaign yard signs. In fact, it is against the law in Greensboro to place them there. Under the category of "do they know the law and do they care?" I make note of which candidates place their sings in prohibited places and it influences my vote. School board candidate Sandra Alexandar is a big offender.

Update: Tony's ad (actual size):

Says who?

When does the News & Record protect the identity of sources?

From "Report: Greensboro No. 71 in cyber crimes" (A story that also failed to identify the report referred to in the headline):

"'Based on how connected Greensboro is we weren't surprised, but it is alarming to see such a large amount of fraudulent traffic originating from the city,' a spokesman for Aite said.*

From "Use of hotel tax money debated" (not online**):

"But an attorney representing the Greensboro Area Convention and Visitors Bureau said the city must use the hotel tax revenues to pay for projects at the Greensboro Coliseum until the debt on the complex is paid, tourism bureau President Henri Fourrier said Tuesday."

Although assertions were attributed to them, neither the attorney, the spokesman or the report were identified.

Most newspapers are careful to identify sources unless there is a compelling reason not to. Was this reporting just careless or does it comport with the News & Record's standards?

* This story also failed to bring any context to the spokesman's "alarm" as might have been gained by reporting that Greensboro's 71st position is actually lower than its rank among U.S.cities by population.

** UPDATE: The story is online, just not on the News & Record's website and not discoverable by Google or Bing.

Digital Digi on Amendment One

It's called human progress; you'd think a doctor would appreciate it

In an absurd, although now predictable, justification for his prejudices against gay and lesbian people, Dr. Joe Guarino once again makes an appeal to tradition over rational thought. He tires to argue that Jews should support the bigotry of North Carolina's Amendment 1 because of their traditions. His mind blowing observations:

How could millenia of Jewish ancestors have been so terribly wrong; and why are you so right? How did they misunderstand your faith and religious tradition for thousands of years in such an awful manner...?

To make the same mistake for thousands of years would have been a stunning level of failure.

Human history is replete with examples of people making the same mistake for thousands of years. Then someone has a new thought and things change. It's called human progress and you'd think a doctor, of all people, would appreciate it.

Religions change
The history of Judeo-Christian religions is one of change starting with the Christian borrowing from the Judeo. Since then, there have been awakenings, realignments, reformations and religious people can now get divorced, they can eat shrimp and they don't have to stone their daughters for having unmarried sexual relations. Indeed, Guarino's own Baptist religion evolved from older Christian religions whom the Baptists thought were "getting it wrong." People thought about things, rejected old ways and progress was made.

Science changes
We no longer rub mercury on our wounds, drain blood to balance our humors, or drill holes in our skulls for headache relief. People thought about things, rejected old ways and progress was made.

Hopefully Dr. Guarino does not practice medicine with the same blind devotion to tradition as he would have us adhere to in other matters.

Law changes
In the comparatively short time since our country's founding, our understanding of its legal tenets has progressed. Black people are no longer property, women can vote and the government cannot tell you not to wear a condom unless you are married. People thought about things, rejected old ways and progress was made.

Would Dr. Guarino prefer that we go back to the literal and initial understanding of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness too; that we abandon the progress we've made in favor of a strict interpretation of the unamended U.S. Constitution?

Whether you believe it to be the consequence of God, space aliens or the simple evolution of a fortuitous amalgam of amino acids, we humans have brains for Pete's sake. It is incumbent upon us to use them and not give precedence to ancient notions just because. That's ludicrous. We think new things and progress ensues. That's humanity.

Dr. Guarino would have us shut down our minds and defer to the superstitions and prejudices of the less informed generations of thousands of years ago. Can you imagine a world where that was the way? Heck, we would have never even made it to the dark ages. We'd all the the Taliban.

No thanks. I'll think instead.

Trapped in the valley of death

Mathew Ingram:

"[N]ewspapers in particular have been trapped in a classic “innovator’s dilemma” as described by Clay Christensen in his book of the same name, in which they have failed to adapt to the web as quickly as they should have because they have been busy running their existing businesses."

That is certainly in evidence at our local daily, although I would put it a little differently: it is not the failure to adapt to the web quickly that has our newspaper mired in the valley of death (they actually dove into the web early). They missed the innovating part—continue to miss it—by failing to leverage their old infrastructure into a new model. At some point, there will be nothing left to leverage.

More Time Warner Cable customer noservice

After Time Warner Cable raised my bill nearly 50% ("Time Warner Cable, gouging dipsticks"), I got on the phone with them for what I expected to be the annual "customer retention" dance, where they send me an inflated bill, I tell them I'm going to leave them, they offer me a new discount, and I continue as a customer with a small increase in my bill..

This time, however, after more than an hour on the phone with them, they weren't budging. So, I'm leaving. My Roku is in route and I've put in my order with Time Warner Cable to disconnect my cable TV tomorrow. Next month, I'll disconnect from their internet service.

Did I make the right decision? Their recorded reminder this morning that I need to be at home tomorrow to meet their technician between the hours of—are you ready?—8:00 A.M. and 9:00 P.M. is another indication, as if I needed one, that customer service is of little concern for them.

Gant and Vinroot on Amendment 1

Hold the presses (and the bytes)

This is the front page of the News & Record's website at this moment.

This is what the top story looks like when you click through to it (in Firefox and Internet Explorer).

Tim Minchin's "Storm"

With a million and a half views, you may have already seen it, but it was new to me today: Tim Minchin's poetic monologue puts into words (beautiful and adult) the absurdities of rejecting science and the foolishness of avoiding logic.

Tim Minchin's "Storm:"