I was thinking about writing some very special posts to celebrate a decade of sucky blogging here, then I figured you can look at the archives as well as I can, so probably not. 

But while I was kicking it around I set the wayback machine for 2005, when Harvard hosted a conference on Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility*, to which I was invited to speak about the awesome web strategies of...the News & Record.

Yes, the News & Record, home today of the Google-proof vault and a website so bad that it makes news, once was a national leader in online journalism.

What happened? A lot of external factors hurt our local daily over the years, but of course most of those things hurt papers everywhere. The N&R did not labor under the burden of debt that afflicted so many publishing businesses, some of which became online innovators. The same crew of journalists that built the good version was there as things went south, at least until they started getting fired all the time.

Is it fair to blame the publisher, Robin Saul, for the malaise that has afflicted the N&R over the course of his tenure, which began not long before that high water mark in Cambridge? 

Not for all of it, but surely for some of it. The paper is worse now by every measure I can think of than it was before Saul arrived, and worse also relative to its peers. He has been a disaster for the N&R, and thus for Greensboro.

And now he's neutered his editorial page. 

* IIRC the conference was kind of fun, in a talky way, and there was some juicy (well, by media conference standards) controversy in its wake. My only regret is that the name I gave it, BloJoCredCon, did not make the OED.

Comments

[Roch]

You're a year late to the party (or maybe I was fashionably early), but welcome to the club.

[Roch]

A graph of Saul's tenure:

[Roch]

And remember when they paid that local guy to write a column from time to time and he'd hitch up his pants, take a stand and, with masterful prose, convince us there was a right way to see an issue? Then he went to ultra short form and

[character limit reached]

[Bill]

When Lex left, my subscription ended. They had some talent, and it is sad to see what has happened.

[Roch]

My mistake. According to the News & Record's website, Ed Cone still writes a monthly column appearing Sundays in the N&R, along with Charles Davenport, Jr. and David Noer.

[Ginia Zenke]

We worry so much about separation of Church and State in this country, which is all well and good. The evidence is increasing, however, that we need to pay attention to the separation of Press and State, and Greensboro certainly has an intense case of this malady. The nationals and locals would never bite the hand that feeds the news cycle.

(As an aside to all this, a friend who works for WRAL in Raleigh said to us, "I bet the Edwards trial has everyone hopping in Greensboro!" Which was received with my shrug. Edwards picked the perfect town to go unnoticed in - he blends right in.)

[Andrew Brod]

Definitely. I wish I had a dime for every time I fathered a love child with my videographer.

[David Hoggard]

Now THAT is funny, Andrew.

[Margaret Banks]

Ed, I'd like to give you some examples of people working hard to give you your 75 cents worth each day:

Staff writer Robert Lopez, until October a features writer, is covering his first trial like he was born to do it. He's worked 3 weeks of 10-hour days on this Edwards stuff - 10 hours a day except for last night, when he worked 13. John Newsom, who works for our web site, is posting semi-live updates about the trial on Twitter - not an easy task, considering all technology is banned from the courthouse.

Nancy McLaughlin is writing into the night covering the Old Navy trial. You can't imagine how hard she worked to make we got the verdict online first.

Remember the Greensboro bear? Photographer Nelson Kepley stalked it on his own time until he got pictures of what everyone in town was talking about.

City hall reporter Amanda Lehmert crammed a 45-hour week into 4 days last week to write a story about how an incentives package the council was considering wasn't in the best interest of taxpayers. When, at the 9th hour, she learned that said package was off the table, she and business editor Dick Barron scrambled to turn that story into an informed look at how the deal fell through. Amanda contributed from her vacation.

And what about our page designers - people like Margaret Wimmer, Jennifer Burton, design chief Ben Villarreal, who work for hours to make our front page look nice, then gleefully tear it up at the last minute if that's what the news dictates? What about Charles Wheeler and Steve Mann, copy editors who catch errors daily, then hear from colleagues at other papers than their desk operations have been farmed out to other communities?

I know what you're going to say, Ed: You're not talking about individual people. You know we work hard. You acknowledge that we have good stories in the paper that help our community. You're talking about our overall strategy, the trend over the last 10 years, the erosion of our community status. I get that. But your statement "The paper is worse now by every measure I can think of ..." is unbelievable hyperbole that I'm not going to let go unchallenged.

[Dr. Mary Johnson]

Oh I dunno, Margaret. From the cheap seats in Asheboro, I'd say this time Mr. Cone got it right.

Andrew, I believe you'd be much better off if you had a dime for every time the "journalists" in Greensboro toted water for the father of the love child who cheated on the "universally beloved" wife.

I wrote "Burned Citizen Journalism" in 2006, Roch. You're later-than-late to the "party". But from his perch on one of the Cone boards, maybe Ed can submit a guest editorial about blogging (as opposed to writing a story when he had the chance).

So, Margaret. Challenge away. "Worse by every measure" actually isn't saying much.

[Ed Cone]

Margaret, I don't think it's hyperbolic to say the paper is worse now by every measure than it was in 2004.

The very real hard work and moments of excellence only argue against that general statement if those things were lacking or less common back then. They weren't.

It gives me no pleasure to write bad things about the N&R. I have respect and fondness for many people there, including you. Allen and Doug were great to work with on a professional and personal level, and I'd call both of them friends. But arguing that today's thin-staffed, downsized paper is somehow undiminished is not credible -- let's leave that to the publishers and owners.

[Roch]

Margaret, you are a nice person, but when people write to you regarding the publication of false allegations made by government official against a private citizen and you ignore them, it's pretty hard to find your anecdotes convincing.

Maybe the new editor will affect some improvement in the quality of news reporting, but that remains to be seen and in that and other important areas, Ed is right, there is no publicly perceptible measure by which the N&R is better since Robin Saul took the reigns.

Your public defense aside, Margaret, my understanding is that there is great, widespread, long standing and growing dissatisfaction among N&R employees with the publisher. I sympathize that you guys don't have a whole lot of options, but defending the decay as noble seems silly.

[Margaret Banks]

You guys are free to disagree. That's what makes our country and this blog great. Just wanted to let my coworkers know I value their work.

[Ed Cone]

I appreciate that last point, Margaret, and I second it. Saying "the paper is not what it was" is much different than saying "nobody there does quality work."