EdCone.com

Mark Binker is not necessarily a pretty face. But he’s the face of where journalism is going in North Carolina. And that looks like good news.

The N&R lost a franchise player, and he's helping build something valuable just one mouse-click away from the N&R website. Readers will follow him. 

NYT lowers monthly free article count to 10: "The digital subscription service is a bright spot for the Times Company, which has tried to make up for declines in print advertising revenue."

Other online strategies are cited; surely the N&R can figure out something better than it has now.

Charlotte wields a heavy pen on DNC docs:

"Almost by definition, something that is publicly known can’t be a security issue," Martin said. "They are being far more generous in redacting than I think is warranted."

QC has reasons to be careful -- people were preparing to disrupt the convention long before Occupy arose -- but this stuff makes the city that wants so much to have that "comma North Carolina" removed from its name look bush league.

St. Louis Fed: 

Did Affordable Housing Legislation Contribute to the Subprime Securities Boom?

                            Abstract

No.

North Carolinians surveyed on health care; I'm told the forum was interesting, hope they post some video now that the live feed is no longer live.

Thnx to CS for the pointer.

 

Thanks to Phillip Oakley @pographics for letting me repost this here, and for Angie the true Carolina fan for alerting me to its existence.

Fracking Can Be Done Safely, With Protection.

That's what they taught us in health class.

I've maintained pretty good discipline on fracking puns, but I'm not made of stone, people.

Thnx to NH for fwding the DigTriad headline.

I believe that it is our duty as elected officials to set the standard when it comes to accessibility of Public Records.

Nancy Vaughan responds to Jamiah Waterman: "I suggest that we contact the Attorney General’s Office for an advisory opinion on how to handle records that are not explicitly included or excluded in existing legislation."

Kinda fitting to be having this conversation in public.

Read the whole thing after the jump.

A round-up of the Trayvon Martin case.

I expect this story to make its way into City Council conversations about guns in GSO parks.

One supposes that there might be a higher-than-usual challenge rate on new property tax evaluations in Guilford County, but $5.6 billion is a big starting number, so the feared reval disaster seems not to have happened.

Dejah Thoris fails to tempt movie-goers; Disney may lose $200 million on John Carter flick.

We play a game sometimes when watching sports on television. 

A routine punch to the body in a boxing match, a hit from which a receiver bounces up quickly, a hard foul in the paint -- the question is, Dad, would that have killed you, sent you to the hospital, or just made you cry?

Anyway, it's remarkable that Kendall Marshall is even considering the possibility of playing at some point in the near future.

Good news: He's well enough to tweet.

The sharp drop in employer coverage reflects a rapid acceleration of a long-term decline in employer health coverage...Employer health coverage has become unaffordable for a growing share of the population, especially for low-income families.

Speaking of affordability, my COBRA premiums equal the per capita income for North Carolina, and come to about 3/4 of the median earnings figure for a male worker in this state. Making affordable insurance more portable would seem likely to unleash a lot of creativity and energy into the economy, but it's easy to see how people fortunate enough to have employer-supported policies feel trapped.

Contrary to media reports, the City Council has the right to inspect an employee’s outside employment form. The City Council, as a body, has the absolute right to inquire into personnel matters, including inspecting any employee’s outside employment form. It is our opinion, however, that the City Council may not release this information to the public until the City Manager determines in writing that the release of this information is essential to maintaining public confidence and is intended to inform the public of the reasons behind a personnel action.

From a memo to the Mayor and Council members from interim City Attorney Jamiah Waterman.

The 100 concentrated-poverty neighborhoods were located in only 30 of the state’s 100 counties, with the largest share located in Guilford and Mecklenburg counties. Of these 100 neighborhoods, 63 were in urban counties, with the remaining 37 located in rural counties.10 The largest share of people who were poor within these 100 neighborhoods were also clustered in Guilford and Mecklenburg counties. The map below shows the geographic spread of concentrated poverty in North Carolina.

Report here; more from HPE:

The census tracts and neighborhoods in High Point with the high concentration of poverty generally extend from Montlieu Avenue and U.S. 311 through downtown to the southwest along the railroad tracks to Interstate 85 Business Loop and the Davidson County line...

Other areas of the region with the highest concentrations of poverty include neighborhoods or census tracts in Davidson County in or around the cities of Thomasville and Lexington...

A North Carolina legislator sponsored and voted on a bill to loosen regulations on billboard construction, even though he co-owned five billboards in the state. When the ethics commission reviewed the case, it found no conflict; after all, the panel reasoned, the legislation would benefit all billboard owners in the state — not just the lawmaker who pushed for the bill.

And we rate higher than a lot of states -- much higher than VA or SC -- on this survey of accountability in government.

More here: "No state received an A, but North Carolina ranked lower than many others on measures of its public access to information, executive accountability, state budget processes, and its procurement. It bested all other states on its lobbying disclosure rules."

Post-racial America, not quite that post-racial.

Bringing the ACC Hall of Champions into the late 20th Century, commerce-wise.

I'd guess the hurdles are higher and turf-wars more vicious than we can know, and still this might work in some way.

UPDATE: "Don't expect any status update today in terms of Marshall's availability for Friday, though due to the successful surgery, the possibility of him playing again in the 2012 NCAA Tournament remains on the table."

Kendall Marshall's dad said last night that he could possibly play again this season, but this doc says it's very unlikely.

Creighton rugby team action video.

Alert reader MF tells me that Ted Olson's visit to GSO has been canceled. 

Eichner is still scheduled for 4/16. 

UPDATE: Kendall Marshall has a broken wrist. Damn.

Hardcore Carolina fan: Rooted for Lehigh over Dook on Friday.

Extreme Carolina fan: Pulling against Lehigh tonight, just to salt Dook's wounds.

Elijah and I rooted wholeheartedly for State this afternoon.

And go FSU.

City responses to Charles Cherry dominate this week's report from the Manager.

Worthwhile takes on the This American Life/Mike Daisey/Apple fiasco from Jay Rosen and Felix Salmon, the latter including an indictment applicable to much of what passes for political coverage and conversation in this country: 

Real life is messy. And as a general rule, the more theatrical the story you hear, and the more it divides the world into goodies vs baddies, the less reliable that story is going to be.

I read The Hunger Games because Sydney read The Hunger Games and I like to talk books with my daughter*, and Elijah listened to it on his drive home for spring break, so we've been having a good time nerding out about it this weekend.

It's a good young-adult adventure story SPOILER ALERT that promises a lot at the beginning -- oh, goody, we're going to spend much of this book in the arena -- and pays off with tons of action and some nice twists, and not too many alt-universe mistakes to distract my inner Comic Book Guy.

 Syd read the next two, but tells us we really don't need to. 

Anyway, North Carolina plays the Seam in the movie version. Unless it turns out to be the Best. Movie. Evar. I'll wait for Netflix.

* Not enough to read Twilight, but, still.

[T]wo successive presidential administrations have now spent nearly half a decade and hundreds of billions of tax dollars defending the premise that Hugh McColl should always be allowed to have the "taller one."

Fraud, mortgage madness, and a "ridiculous rivalry between two strutting Southern peacocks" as NCNB gets the Taibbi treatment.

Queenan trolls college basketball fans, DBR goes dark again, Hairston comes home, Norfolk State shows again the perils of playing a low-seeded school from Virginia (don't forget VCU).

DENR report says fracking in NC could be done safely, as long as it's done safely.

“While the president does not weigh in on every single ballot measure in every state, the record is clear that the president has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples,” said Cameron French, the Obama campaign’s North Carolina spokesman, in a statement. “That’s what the North Carolina ballot initiative would do — it would single out and discriminate against committed gay and lesbian couples — and that’s why the president does not support it.”

Helpful to the degree it helps get black voters out in opposition to this awful amendment. 

Stressed: Minor details like debt and liquidity aside, the banks are just fine.

Good to know.

Years ago I asked some sports marketing types to quantify the PR value of the Greensboro Coliseum -- all those logo shots and mentions of the city during nationally-televised ballgames -- and they came up with a very large number. 

This placated the Coliseum haters not one bit, of course.

Nor does the fact that the City operates other amenities (e.g., parks) without any hope of a cash return, because the value to the community comes in other forms. 

The hard number I've been searching for is tax revenue generated by the Coliseum.

Today, Don Patterson reports that this year's NCAA tourney alone will bring in about $300,000 in local taxes. Now, you can chip away at that sum in a few ways, but the upshot is that over the course of a year, the Coliseum is adding a substantial amount of revenue to City coffers. 

Enough to completely offset annual operating losses, or to make a serious dent in them? That's a question I'd still like to see answered.

Joel Fleishman, a Tar Heel forever.

Obit.

Guy and Jerry's Burger Spot makes really good hamburgers. 

Really good.

You should go. 

I was told that an infrared grill and high-quality, hand-pattied beef contribute to the excellence of the fare. 

Also, the salads were said to be quite good. If I ever go with someone who orders a salad, I'll let you know what they report.

Thnx to Fec for the tip.

This commercial confuses me -- if the woman doesn't see the guy clean up the spill in the break-room, she wouldn't hold the door for the blind woman?

A lot of the small moments in this cascade of human kindness seem like things normal people would just do anyway, regardless of social cues gleaned from random encounters with mildly decent strangers, but, really, she was going to let the door close on the lady with the white cane? 

She is the worst person in the world.

I've seen that ad 114,000 times, and I had to poke around on the Google a bit to remember what it's supposed to be advertising, which is Liberty Mutual insurance.

Bill Maher on the differences between himself and Rush Limbaugh: "I'm a pottymouth, not a misogynist."

Romneycare seems to be working, says a paper co-authored by UNCG's Daniela Zapata.

More from Ezra Klein and Metafilter.

Out: Linsanity.

In: Melodrama.

Previously: Can Lin and Carmelo play nice?

In the manoeuvering that preceded it, in the strategy that compelled it, in the heroism that signalized it, and in the results that flowed from it, the Battle of Guilford Court House is second to no battle fought on American soil...

I never get tired of that, and I like to remember it on the Ides of March.

I was not hyperbolizing when I wrote to new N&R editor Jeff Gauger that his horrible website is killing his brand.

There is data to back up that assertion: the local daily is in last place in its online media market.

That's quite an accomplishment. Local papers usually lead their markets, and reporter Carol Marie Cropper told me she was shocked to find one running dead last.

Former N&R editor John Robinson is quoted re the online strategy that evidently was forced upon him: "I thought it was a terrible idea."

Changes are said to be coming to the N&R site, but that doesn't mean more newspaper content. 

More evidence of the local audience's discernment: Despite heavy promotion, WFMY's laughable DigTriad site ranks third out of four major media outlets, behind WXII and leader Fox8.

The News & Record should be the dominant online brand in Greensboro instead of an afterthought. The attempt shore up its print franchise at the expense of web development was a strategic blunder on a pretty grand scale and has put the paper at a real disadvantage in the business of the future.

I'd love to interview N&R publisher Robin Saul about this important local story.

UPDATE: Robert Reddick fwds what he describes as an unscientific survey he did of newspaper links in Google, which shows the N&R way, way behind the N&O and Charlotte O, and trailing even the Winston-Salem Journal by a substantial margin.

Democrats tend to be literalists, assuming that the presidential campaign is only about the presidential campaign and that birth control is only about birth control. In 2010, they thought that health policy was only about health policy, even as conservatives were metaphorically making it about freedom ("government takeover") and life ("death panels").

It is vital that Democrats not make that mistake again.

George Lakoff says Santorum and Limbaugh are part of a coherent messaging strategy.

"Paul Stam tells the media one thing and his supporters another."

Some strong words for the majority leader re his position(s) on the awful Amendment 1, which would make civil unions unconstitutional in North Carolina.

The Obama campaign may be hoping for Santorum, but it is running against Romney.

Today's email exults, "Mitt Romney and his allies outspent Santorum 3-to-1 in Mississippi and 5-to-1 in Alabama, and he still lost those primaries. Voters in Mississippi and Alabama learned what voters across the country have learned: Mitt Romney has no core and someone with no core can’t be trusted to lead."

Greening Greensboro: How the Sustainable Cities Movement Can Make Our City and Region More Livable, Tuesday 3/20, UNCG.

Details here and here.

The bio for keynote speaker David Owen fails to mention the nefarious purposes of the sustainability movement. Robbie Perkins will be part of the panel discussion -- given that he's both the mayor and a real estate developer, he could enliven the proceedings by debating himself.

N&R front-pager focuses on the presenting issue in Nancy Vaughan's challenge to City management over personnel records -- the details of GPD Captain James Hinson's outside employment -- which is fine, but my sense after speaking with Vaughan and reading her memo is that this is the beginning of a larger effort on her part to increase transparency into matters of public interest.

Leaving Goldman Sachs: "It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off."

Goldman Sachs responds: Nuh-uh.

"Greg Smith" is trending on Twitter.

"The system is broken and it needs to be fixed. We're telling MERS and the banks: you broke it, you fix it."

Jeff Thigpen sues a sizable swath of the mortgage industry, including BoA and Wells Fargo; "no registry can work if it is filled with falsified documents."

Lawsuit here.

Press release after the jump.

I have never believed the claim in Mary Gabriel's book, The Art of Acquiring, that Grant's infamous General Order No. 11 had any impact on my great-great-grandfather's business in Jonesborough, TN. 

For one thing, the expulsion of all Jews from the Department of Tennessee was quickly revoked. Also, while my family did leave Jonesborough during the war, they went just a few miles away. And the Department extended only as far east as the Tennessee River, so Jonesborough -- still in Confederate hands at the time -- appears not to have been in it anyway.

But, anyway, that's a weird little piece of American history.

The part about the reappraisal of Grant's presidency is interesting, too.

Now is the winter of our great content made glorious springtime by, oh, hell, it's too nice outside to argue about why it's happening, let's just enjoy it.

NCCJ says, "We're bringing lawyer Ted Olson, former Solicitor General, to Greensboro to talk about a conservative's take on Amendment One. Maxine Eichner, professor of law at UNC, will join Olson to give perspective on the North Carolina proposal."

Sunday afternoon, April 1, location TBA.

Eichner, previously.