EdCone.com

The N&R responds to our letter to the editor about accuracy in LTE with this note: 

The News & Record’s policy is to screen and edit letters for factual errors. Occasionally not all inaccuracies are caught.

I was hoping for a little more detail on process, and perhaps a bit more acknowledgement of the scale of the problem. 

Below, the letter as published in this morning's print and online editions:

Expressing an opinion is a right. Having an opinion published in the newspaper is not a right.

The News & Record should not publish letters that contain clear misstatements of fact without appending clarifications or corrections.

One recent letter to the editor said Women’s Hospital might close in October. This is not true. Women’s Hospital might close in 2019. Saying otherwise is not an opinion, it’s a mistake. It is reckless for the N&R to publish that kind of misinformation without telling a concerned community the real story.

An even more recent letter stated that scientists now have evidence that dinosaurs lived several thousand years ago. This is not true. Saying otherwise is not the writer’s sentiment, it’s an assertion of (alleged) fact that should not be printed without commentary in a serious newspaper.

We are entitled to our own opinions but not our own facts. What is the newspaper’s policy on the accuracy of information it publishes?

Edward Cone
Greensboro

Twenty-eight people, via social media, added their names as co-signatories of this letter (http://edcone.typepad.com/wordup/2014/08/a-letter-to-the-editor.html andhttps://www.facebook.com/edcone/posts/10152662847380421).

Editor’s note: The News & Record’s policy is to screen and edit letters for factual errors. Occasionally not all inaccuracies are caught.

People are talking about the N&R opinion page. They are not saying good things. On Facebook, the paper's former top editor (and before that, opinion editor) mocks his old employer's standards for LTE. There's a pile-on in the comments. [John Robinson, via FB, re his comment ("Next up, a letter explaining that ghosts are scientific fact"): "I don't mock the paper's standards. I do question them in that case. That's different than mocking them."]

Another former editor posts at his blog under the headline, "Letters to the editor: Now the News & Record is just trolling us." That's preferable to the theory I floated a couple of weeks ago: They just don't care.

Oddly silent are the folks on Market Street. Sure, their actions speak volumes: The N&R will publish letters containing factual errors obvious to a clever ten-year-old. It's policy. But why?

Maybe their take on free speech enshrines a right to spew misinformation in a newspaper, because, Opinion! Maybe they don't have enough people left to monitor letters for content, or enough readers left to fill the page with non-fiction. We don't know.

There's a conversation out here among their readers, but the editors are not participating. It's a pre-internet approach to journalism. 

I guess we could write a letter to the editor. 

Seriously, my draft is below. If you want to sign it, leave your real name in the comments.

To the editors:

Expressing an opinion is a right. Having an opinion published in the newspaper is not a right. The News & Record should not publish letters that contain clear misstatements of fact.

One recent letter to the editor said Women's Hospital might close in October. This is not true. Women's Hospital might close in 2019. Saying otherwise is not an opinion, it's a fallacy. It is reckless for the N&R to publish that kind of misinformation. 

An even more recent letter stated that scientists now have evidence that dinosaurs lived several thousand years ago. This is not true. It should not be printed without commentary in a serious newspaper. 

Maybe the editors can explain their policy and the reasons for it in a note or editorial.

[your name here]

From the advertiser’s point of view, the nation’s newspapers have become little more than a blue-bag delivery service, with a horoscope and enough local sports inside to get people to open the bag.

Inserts are one of the last sources of advertising to resist digitization. They are also the next to go.

To follow on my latest post about the dismal direction of the N&R, it bears saying -- again -- that these folks are dealing with real problems. Like, existential problems. The inclination to protect the insert revenue is understandable, but the new paywall strategy is a false move.

I don't claim to know the right way to save the local news-org business, but I'm pretty sure it involves a serious commitment to high-quality local reporting and digital delivery -- two things the Market St. managers and their absentee bosses abjure.  

But, yeah, this is horrifying: 

I disagree with Shirky on one key point. When he says, "The closing of a local newspaper matters more than the closing of a local shoe store for only one reason — newspapers employ journalists," he understates the value of a newsaper as town square and public advocate. Maybe that's what he means to say, and maybe he thinks journalists will fulfill those functions elsewhere, but if so, where?

As we used to say, read the whole thing. 

I've pretty much given up on asking the N&R to vet LTE for basic accuracy before printing them. Roch still tries, but after all these years the message from Market Street is clear: We don't care.

Today's example gets my attention because it's about a story in which I have some personal involvement: the possible relocation of Women's Hospital to the Moses Cone campus. This is and should be a topic of community discussion, and the daily paper is an important part of that discussion. Too bad its contribution this morning is to sow fear and confusion by publishing without comment a bit of serious misinformation. 

"I’m due to have my baby in October of this year and was saddened to hear that the only facility in Greensboro for women may be closing a few weeks before I deliver," writes Kendra Turner of McLeansville. 

That would be harsh. But the possible move would not happen until 2019. 

Part of the problem may lie with the News & Record article Ms. Turner relied upon, which omitted the essential fact. Still, you'd think a newspaper editor would be able to glean from the story that any possible closure is far from imminent. But that would require an editor to think about the letter before publishing it. 

My resignation about the LTE is part of larger rethinking of my expectations from the N&R. There is no evident plan to rebuild it into one of the best newspapers in the south, as it once was, much less a leader in digital media. Its aspirations appear to be small-time and small-town. Good work still appears with some frequency, but that does not seem to be management's goal. 

So it feels futile to complain at this point about yet another day of front-paging a boosterish take on the local PGA tour event [post updated with Sunday A1 -- again with the golf] instead of, say, doing some reporting on what the huge national story about militarizing the police means in GSO. The news hole is up for sale, and the opinion section is on autopilot. It is what it is. Move on.

[T]he building aesthetics on the plans unfortunately reflect the specialties of the architect chosen for the project, whose portfolio is mostly composed of generic suburban motels and fast-food restaurants.

Welcome back, Dr. Wharton, and thanks for sharing your sound urban planning advice with Citizen Carroll.

This is important stuff. Downtown GSO has been creeping ahead for decades. Now it’s on the cusp of the most significant building boom in my lifetime. We’re about five minutes away from being recognized for an urban renaissance.

It’s an excellent time not to screw things up.

We need a walkable city that works at human scale. The slow fuse has allowed a lot of primo streetscape to survive, but precedent is not wholly encouraging. Or, as Dave puts it, “Will Bellemeade Village Be An Urban Village Or A Suburban Development That Happens To Be Downtown?”

Carroll’s conciliatory remarks about Lindsay St., as appended to the N&R version of Wharton’s article, are good news. Let’s hope he follows through, and that a similar spirit animates the design of the big projects still to come. Our music hall should be welcoming even for people who never go inside (left, Luna just chilling at Lincoln Center). And it's going to take some vision to, say, integrate the Union Square campus into the street life of South Elm Street.

The City has to hang tough on design issues. Downtown’s success has a lot of drivers and a lot of stakeholders, but ultimately it is our public space, and that is a valid public concern.

Consumers don’t give a sh** why you’re pricing your digital subscription at whatever level it’s priced, they only care that the product is worth the price.

The N&R's new absentee owners have made it clear that their first priority is defending print circulation. JR and Jon Lowder ask some good questions about the wisdom of the new paywall plan.

The emphasis on paper is nothing new. The previous absentee owners brought in a circulation guy as publisher. That did not go well, online or off. Print continued to dwindle, and a decade after its brief moment of online glory the N&R does not have a good digital product or a strong digital brand. Management seems content to let whatever buzz builds around their stories happen on Facebook or other sites. Innovative ways of info-sharing and audience building are MIA.

We all understand the math that makes the vanishing print business desirable, and it's easy to say that nobody has cracked the reinvention code yet, so experiments are the only way to go. But why is the rear-guard strategy going to work in 2014 when it didn't work before?

And what comes next? Will BuffettCo invest the (hoped-for) print-circ dollars in more reporters to guard and grow its local news and info franchise? Will it use the (possible) revenue to hire editors who really understand digital media? 

Or will it just milk the old cash cow until it dies?

Meanwhile, they could at least make my paywall login work on an iPad.

I first met Zephyr Teachout when she was "a 31-year-old lawyer in black high-top sneakers" at Dean campaign HQ in Vermont.

I was impressed by her then, followed her career when it took her to North Carolina, and I'm impressed by her now.

"My job was to walk up to the bull, bother him a little bit, maybe tickle his nose, and then run as fast as I could."

Teachout pauses and grins wide.

"So now I’m running for governor of the state of New York."

Does yesterday's rout of Berger Jr. show weakness in the local and state GOP establishment, or was it more a reflection on a candidate who grew less attractive to voters the better they got to know him?

Surely a 17% drop in votes between primary and run-off bespeaks a certain lack of passion for the man. 

Walker ran an impressive grassroots campaign and deserves all credit for that. And some prominent local Republican officials were Walkerites, so the establishment wasn't monolithic in any case. 

Maybe it was just hubris by the machine to try promoting Berger Jr. so rapidly in the family business. Will that have lasting consequences?

The next test for the establishment will be its ability to rally behind the man they trashed so energetically for the past couple of months.

UPDATE II: Berger Jr. finishes with 17% fewer votes than he got in the primary. He does not seem to have worn well with people.

UPDATE Tues PM: Shows what I know --Walker is crushing Berger Jr. in a low-turnout race. So much for the establishment candidate's GOTV chops. 

Given Berger Jr.'s association with the GOP powers-that-be in Raleigh, what if anything does this portend for Thom Tillis?

May my prediction below about November prove as accurate as the rest of the piece.

/update

Over at the Style and Cut shop last week an old-school local conservative told me that he plans to vote for Mark Walker instead of Phil Berger Jr. because Berger Jr. is the machine's man and Walker just seems like, well, a better guy. 

Not the first time I heard that as the race for the 6th district GOP nomination came down to the wire. Will those things be enough to win the race for Walker? I doubt it. My bet is that Berger Jr. wins tomorrow and goes on to win in November, even if some Walker voters hold a grudge against him. The 6th is just drawn that way -- the party-registration balance has shifted with its new borders, but that didn't slow Howard Coble down in 2012.

There's not much daylight between the two Republicans on the issues (I disagree with both of them strongly and often) so the barbershop logic could create an upset. Even those factors, though, won't necessarily break the insurgent's way.

Walker's anti-establishment vibe taps into the energy that helps propel the Tea Party movement and he appears to have the grassroots momentum, but Berger Jr. has the money and (presumably) GOTV machinery. Berger Jr.'s endorsement from the Beloved Incumbent is offset by Walker's blessing from BJ Barnes. I'd guess the insider/outsider game is a wash.

(Speaking of endorsements, I don't know how seriously John Hammer takes his theory about the N&R's 3-D chess game, but here outside the bubble the stuff Roy Carroll pays to publish sounds...weird.) 

Personality can be a wild-card in politics, and the impact is hard to predict. Berger Jr. is not cuddly and his allies even less so, but maybe that's already baked into his profile. Walker has skated on some bad judgement because he's Not A Politician^TM but if voters think he's down in the mud with Berger Jr., that's trouble. 

Add it all up and I see Berger Jr. headed to DC.

May Laura Fjeld prove me wrong. 

The shifting ACA narrative (sing along, you know the words) claims Obamacare is...

• a botched website
• DOA 
• not reaching young people
• not getting premiums paid 
• only having a small impact
• not reaching millions of people
• not reaching that many millions of people
• not reaching 20 million people

When your argument is about massiveness of scale, just six months in, it may be time to change the subject. Hey, look at those kids crossing the border!

If the Hagan campaign won't do it, outside funders need to start running ads right now that discuss the success of this law -- in numbers, and in human terms -- and the impact of Tillis-led Medicaid stonewalling. 

What definition of "news" justifies today's N&R front-pager on the availability of tickets to the upcoming Paul McCartney concert at the Coliseum?

Here's the hard-hitting lede:

Haven’t snapped up tickets yet to Paul McCartney’s Oct. 30 first-ever concert at the Greensboro Coliseum?

With a little luck and a lot of cash, it’s not too late.

Tickets still are available but are going fast — even with a top price of $250 plus fees at Ticketmaster.com [N&R web story includes live link to Ticketmaster website].

And seat choices are narrowing, particularly for the least-expensive $59.50 seats.

There are some tidbits about the concert biz that would fit into an article on that topic, but this is mostly a breathless gush of advertising.

Concerns about the relationship between the paper and the local arts community (see previous post and comments) are looking all the more reasonable today.

Previously: Front-page advertiser fluffing, retail division. 

Update: CJR has its doubts about the deal.

/update

A few years back a local arts exec was wondering aloud what could be done about the News & Record's dwindling coverage of GSO culture.

The obvious answer: Roll your own.

Things were only going to get worse on Market Street, and while creating a meaningful online arts presence would take some work, new media is better than no media.

Flash forward to this week and we see ArtsGreensboro finally taking some ownership of its media needs by raising money and...giving it to the News & Record.

For a reported $15K, the paper will write 70 stories about the local arts scene over the course of a year, in addition to its regular arts coverage. 

This unusual pay-for-play arrangement has drawn attention from national press-watchers and outrage from a local competitor. A concerned citizen interrupted my dog-walk yesterday to ask me about it. People want to know how the N&R reviews and profiles can escape the realm of advertorial happy talk, and if a critical eye can still be directed at the arts institutions themselves, and what other parts of the news hole might be up for sale. Good questions, all. 

But let's also look at the value proposition for the arts community. Assuming all purchased articles are, as promised, additive to arts coverage the N&R would do anyway, that's about six new articles per month. Depending on the length, placement, and quality of these pieces, that could be a pretty strong bump in arts coverage.

I'm not convinced, though, that it's the best investment for ArtsGreensboro. My guess is there's a lot of overlap between the existing audience for arts institutions and the readership of the print newspaper and its stunted online presence (which raises more questions: Will the paid-for articles be available online? Promoted via Facebook? Etc.). That doesn't mean the articles will be without impact, but it probably limits their contributions to outreach and brand-building.

What if that $15K was being spent instead on digital media that cut out the middleman? The N&R rate comes to $214 per article, which, sadly, will buy a lot of freelance work in this town, especially for things like reviews. Assume some costs for design, hosting, and management, and you've still got plenty of money for content that is shared via channels that people under the age of, well, me, actually use, and that potential visitors to the area can find easily. 

Meeting the needs of smartphone nation seems preferable to purchasing space in a shriveling organ read largely by the people who already know what you're doing -- especially when the purchase itself diminishes the credibility of the paper.  And since the arts articles are subsidized by donations, the digital strategy would not be constrained by the same economics that make online publishing so tough.

Back when I had that conversation with the arts exec, this stuff was still new enough that wishing for the old days was sort of understandable. And that mindset wasn't limited to GSO -- at about the same time I did a consulting gig for a PR shop that wanted more coverage in the New York Times for its museum clients, and their response to my roll-your-own rah rah was similarly unexcited.

But that was then, and this is now. It's past time for fresh thinking. Paying off the local daily is a new approach, but it's not the long-term solution to the probelm of anemic arts coverage.

More than a decade ago, when a Massachusetts court affirmed gay marriage in that state, I used my old-media platform to say, "That's a good thing for the country and for marriage."

Today it's Indiana.

Soon it will be North Carolina.

Chapel Hill has joined a growing group of towns and cities in North Carolina to clear the way for AT&T to build out its fiber-based, 1 Gbps-capable “U-verse with GigaPower” platform. 

Good for Chapel Hill, but it don't do much for me.

In 2007 I finally got around to reading The Quiet American and then devoted a newspaper column to the similarities between Graham Greene's prescient view of Vietnam and our then-ongoing misadventures in Iraq.

Now we're up to the part of the story where Fowler, the jaded Brit, sees the next disaster coming: 

"We go and invade the country; the local tribes support us: we are victorious: but like you Americans we weren't colonialists in those days. Oh no, we made peace with the king and we handed him back his province and left our allies to be crucified and sawn in two...We shall do the same thing here. Encourage them and leave them with a little equipment...

It was so much more fun when we were being greeted as liberators. 

The things one finds when looking for something else: A 1999 Rhinoceros Times front-pager on Y2K telling readers to be afraid...be very afraid.

Obama-era conspiracy theories got nothing on Clinton-era conspiracy theories. 

So, obviously this map of the "most liberal and most conservative towns In each state" is click-bait and includes odd methodological choices like comparing major cities and small towns, but, still, beyond the fact that any North Carolinian is bound to say, "really? Not Chapel Hill?", I think they probably got it close to right on dear old GSO.

One of my favoritest examples.

In contrast to today, Americans in the Gilded Age openly recognized the connection between monopoly power and inequality. They enacted the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, and the Clayton Antitrust Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act in 1914, to safeguard themselves from concentrated economic power, which they believed posed a threat akin to political autocracy. 

Political power is not the only power to be feared, and sometimes it's a necessary bulwark against corporate power. This is a deeply American idea --Jefferson understood it -- from which we've veered in a radical direction.

Another angle, this one with a surprising local connection: "The decisions culminate a thirty-year trend during which the judiciary, including initially some prominent liberal jurists, has moved to eliminate courts as a means for ordinary Americans to uphold their rights against companies."

"...why shouldn’t the public be able to see exactly how the state is investing its money?” he said. "Public officials should have to defend their investment strategies and the associated fees."

Or, not: 

[L]egislators in North Carolina — whose $86 billion public pension fund is the 7th largest in America – are proposing to statutorily bar the public from seeing details of the state’s Wall Street transactions for at least a decade. That time frame is significant: according to experts, it would conceal the terms of the investment agreements for longer than the statute of limitations of various securities laws.

The whole shadow banking thing worked out well in 2008, didn't it?

Grassroots challenger ousts establishment GOP champ...does Eric Cantor's stunning loss foreshadow a Mark Walker win in NC6, or was that a unique situation?

Your state’s decision not to expand health coverage is creating two Americas: one where millions are benefiting from preventive care and covered treatments while local economies get stronger and healthier by the day; and another where patients continue to show up to emergency rooms without a way to pay and the local economies are falling further and further behind. 

Kay Hagan signs a letter to governors, including our own, from states that have not accepted Medicaid expansion. 

The letter is about Medicaid, but refers directly to the ACA. Hagan needs to hammer home the message that burgeoning healthcare coverage = ACA = Obamacare = no exclusion for pre-existing conditions etc. 

And she should emphasize the importance of personal stories and personal responsibility. As long as people are going to get healthcare in some way -- and they are, and they should -- they should have some way of paying for it. 

Related: "Ms. Marks had a hole in her tooth this winter, she said, and went to the emergency room. They gave her a painkiller and a bill for $600, which she has ignored. The tooth remains so damaged that she can chew on only one side of her mouth."

Our system -- and those of us with private insurance -- are paying for this kind of inadequate care already. Rationalizing payment and delivery is the smart and humane way to go.

Councilman Tony Wilkins wants the city to consider creating a year-round International Restaurant Row to promote existing and future restaurants on High Point Road in Greensboro.

Makes sense to me to recognize and support one of the good things already happening in GSO, improve our brand in the process. 

Best to do it in a way that addresses concerns raised by Luck Davidson in the article, and is respectful of work already underway on this front and mindful of business owners in other parts of the city.

Annie Penn Hospital president Mickey Foster and vp of nursing & patient services Debbie Green gave a presentation at this huge Cleveland Clinic conference on the topic of "99th Percentile in Employee Engagement and Its Impact on Clinical Quality."

If I worked in the local paid media I'd think about using that national recognition to set up a story about the Reidsville hospital and the good things happening there.  

Thom Tillis is an ACA-repeal dead-ender, but significant elements of the GOP are moving away from that position.

Having staved off his hard-right primary challengers, Tillis will find it difficult to tack toward the center now. 

That's Hagan's opportunity. 

Ask him about the parts of the law that everyone loves, then watch him stammer.

Acknowledging there are parts worth saving is a step into the quicksand.

What would he preserve? How would he do that? Isn't that just a version of mend-it-don't-end-it?

And if he says kill it all, tee up the adds showing a nice lady who was able to start her own business despite a pre-existing condition.

Two of the nation's most august journalistic organs are having a reprehensibility contest!

In this corner, the Washington Post has a sad because a war is ending. 

And in this corner, the New York Times sneers at the peasants who think they have a right to know that their government is spying on them.

Mitigating factor, NYT: Self-awareness of public editor.

Exacerbating factor, NYT: Grotesque history of war-mongering. 

Winner: None.

Loser: You.

As we exited this fine show about dark matter and dark energy I felt a twinge of sadness about the inevitable heat death of the universe.

So I compensated by telling a joke favored by my paternal grandfather:

Teacher: The sun will explode in 5 billion years.

Student, waking up in back of class: What did you just say?

Teacher: The sun will explode in 5 billion years.

Student: Whew, I thought you said 5 million.

Nobody laughed, and we trudged on into the existential gloom.

Planetarium movie: Recommended. Joke: Less so.

Periodic reminder: Typepad's spam filter occasionally gushes spam, and then gets overly restrictive; it's in the latter phase again now, so apologies if your comment got hung up while I was doing Things Other Than Blogging ^TM over the long weekend. Commenter Hugh wins the Memorial Day prize for most wrongly-held comments, although over time the machine seems to hate my comments most of all. 

Sykes updates the settlement negotiations in the suit against blogger Jeff Martin, aka Fecund Stench. 

Perhaps it's been settled already? 

Martin tells Sykes he plans to keep a low profile until the settlement is final. His current post at a new blog takes aim at a prominent local developer with the headline "Marty Kotis: Dumbass."

More from the kinder, gentler Martin here (do not click the link to the Fecund Stench blog in Gauger's post -- it's an abandoned and unsafe address).

If the goal of the legal action was to limit conversation about the business dealings and past transgressions of prominent local Tea Partiers, it was a failure. Even some of the content the plaintiffs deemed most offensive, although disappeared from Martin's blog, lives on in the public sphere via the lawsuit.

Typepad has been a reliable host for this blog for many years, but yesterday's prolonged outage was the second in about a month. Not good. Neither was the company's communication with customers. Would hate to leave you, Typepad, but will if I must.

Jeff Gauger nails it in this morning's column about the defamation suit against local blogger Jeff Martin, aka Fecund Stench, by founders of a local Tea Party group: The core issue is the right of Americans to say terrible things, not the terribleness of the things Martin writes. 

Gauger makes a good case that the plaintiffs are public figures. He necessarily rehashes the backstory about strip clubs and sex offenses, facts the controversy has enshrined in Google searches forever.

And he cites some posts the plaintiffs claim to be over the legal line, including a prize-worthy line about Jodi Riddleberger founding Conservatives for Guilford County with “wads of bills still damp from the garters of strippers” and a reference to the imaginary malady of "erectile narcolepsy." These quotes presumably are cribbed from the lawsuit, through which at least some of Fec's material will live on long after the blog itself is gone. 

Bonus points to the N&R editor/publisher for including as an example of Martin's scabrous tone his own on-site nickname, "Wet Fart Gauger." 

One reader who thought less of the column than I did: Martin, as explained at his new blog.

Sykes: 

As part of the settlement terms, Martin would have to agree not to speak publicly about Douglas or Isabella Adkins, or C4GC co-founder, Jodi Riddleberger. 

Riddleberger contributes a column to the local daily. Could Martin write an LTE about it? Join a comment thread someone else started about it? Jodi is very active in local politics -- if she said or did something on behalf of CFGC, is that off-limits? 

Both Jodi Riddleberger and Isabella Adkins have public Facebook profiles and post frequent photos of themselves, often dressed up in costumes or in formal attire...The settlement terms require that Martin not publish photographs that might be considered private. 

"Might be considered private" by whom? Is a photo published on a public profile private?

This thing's got more holes than that book about the kid who had to dig all those holes (it was called Holes).

"I have never been involved at any point with the group in a formal or informal way."

--6th district congressional candidate Mark Walker, in the N&R, backpedaling furiously from his suddenly-toxic supporters in CGGC.

What counts as "informal" involvement? Anyone got pics or docs or anecdata to share re Walker's closeness with the group?

FWIW, I was leaning toward Walker in the run-off. 

Good coverage in the N&R of the ready-fire-aim satire lawsuit. 

Nice summary: 

At issue in the lawsuit: satirical blog posts in which Martin mocked the fact that members and financial backers of Conservatives for Guilford County, a Tea Party-inspired political action committee, include the owner of area strip clubs and a convicted sex offender.

Analysis: "[T]he lawsuit’s real damage could be to political candidates associated with the group."

And kicker: 

Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan, who herself has been mocked by Martin’s blog in the past, said he can be crude and insulting — but that’s sometimes the cost of free speech.

“Jeff Martin’s style is parody. It’s satire,” Vaughan said. “Sometimes it’s very funny. Sometimes it’s not. But people didn’t take the things he wrote seriously. This group is only hurting itself with this lawsuit. It’s very ill-advised, just silly really.

Jeff Sykes covers CFGC's war on satire in the new Yes! Weekly:

Martin, who blogs under the pseudonym, Fecund Stench, lampooned Isabella Adkins and the group Conservatives for Guilford County often using a fictional character to relay experiences from the Greensboro strip-club scene.

The character, Tami Tightenloud, was described as a "dwarf, transvestite Hooters waitress" who would often find herself at strip clubs in Greensboro after hours. It was during these fictional encounters that Martin often wrote about members of C4GC.

The plaintiffs' lawyer on his clients: 

“They are quiet people,” attorney Culbertson said. "They are not trumpeters of a lot of negativity, unlike other people around here."

The first thing I said to Jeff Martin when he told me he was being sued was that his discomfort, expenses, marriage and livelihood were not my own, and so any advice I might have for him about fighting the suit was of limited value compared to his own needs and feelings. 

Still true. So I have to respect his decision to settle and, as I understand it, shutter the Fecund Stench blog and refrain from writing about the Adkins and Riddlebergers in the future.

But, still, dammit.

I hate to see a writer get bullied into silence, especially when his case seems so winnable, and he has ample legal resources and offers of funding at his disposal.

All that said, it's hard to see how this ends up as a win for the plaintiffs and CFGC.

The details of their personal lives and business that have percolated in the blogosphere for some time now will be in the N&R and Yes! Weekly tomorrow, and the damage to CFGC will be real.

The candidate they championed, Mark Walker, will be backing away quickly from their embrace, even as he's asked to explain his financial support of the organization and his relationship to the litigants; it's hard to imagine that attack ads leveraging those relationships are not on the way. 

So, lose-lose. Fitting, in a way, but kind of a drag.

Updates on the Fecund Stench lawsuit:

• Previous post, including link to lawsuit, here.
• Jeff Martin has contacted attorney Ron Coleman of the Media Bloggers Association, which provides pro bono legal aid to bloggers; Coleman has written the plaintiffs' attorney, Krispen Culbertson, urging him to agree to a swift, cooperative resolution. 
• The suit can't be welcome news to Mark Walker, who just forced a surprise runoff against Phil Berger Jr. in the 6th congressional district GOP primary. Walker, a former pastor from GSO, recently praised CFGC for its role in his campaign: "The endorsement of Conservatives for Guilford County helped his campaign, Walker said, both in the organization’s approval and in the shoe leather invested by its members on his behalf." 
• The N&R weighs in with a pop-gun report that manages not to link the Yes! Weekly article that broke the news, or to the lawsuit itself, or to make the connection to its own article about Walker. No link necessary.  

So glad this isn't really happening. 

"The collapse of large parts of the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable."

Fortunately, our state is totally prepared: "After promoters of coastal development attacked a science panel’s prediction that the sea would rise 39 inches higher in North Carolina by the end of this century, the General Assembly passed a law in 2012 to put a four-year moratorium on any state rules, plans or policies based on expected changes in the sea level."

[Updates to this post, including its possible impact on the 6th district congressional race, here] 

A defamation lawsuit filed recently pits four members of Conservatives for Guilford County against a no-holds barred blogger in Greensboro.

Douglas Adkins, whose wife, Isabella Adkins is one of the most prominent members of the local political action committee, filed a defamation suit against blogger Jeff Martin of Greensboro.

Jeff Sykes covers the story.

I'm not a lawyer, but I've seen the lawsuit and this looks like a very heavy lift for the plaintiffs. 

Fec's stuff is often scabrous (even when it's not written in the voice of fictional transvestite Hooter's waitress Tami Tightenloud, as I believe to have been the case for at least some of the offending posts) but that doesn't mean public figures can shut him up. 

At his best, Fecund Stench is Guilford County's own, digital H.L. Mencken (and like Mencken, his use of racial and religious stereotypes can be an issue). At his not-best, duck.

Unfortunately, he disappeared his blog when the suit was served. I hope it can be reconstructed.

I'd expect a legal defense fund to be established for Martin if this goes on much further. 

Owning it at last, and taking the fight to Tillis.

Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) used her time to trumpet the benefits of Medicaid expansion -- and emphasize the downside of not expanding.

Left unsaid, but strongly implied, was that her opponent, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis, who locked up the GOP nomination earlier this week, had been instrumental in stopping the state from expanding Medicaid under the law.

"Last year in North Carolina, our state legislature and governor decided against expanding the state's Medicaid program," Hagan said as she started her questioning, "and as a result, about 500,000 people who would have qualified for coverage through Medicaid are not now able to do so."

Meanwhile, the Tillis campaign this morning sent out a rambling email about Hagan and Obamacare and how Tillis doesn't think Obamacare is a great idea even though Hagan said he does and Hagan is running away from it anyway.

That last part may no longer be the case, which would be great.  

A divisive figure in Greensboro politics, Hyde may seem an unlikely choice to lead a major political money operation like Justice for All NC. 

Chris Kromm has a gift for understatement. 

Seriously, though, who handed Jeff Hyde the keys to such a powerful machine? 

Also, nice list of corporate donors to a group responsible for "perhaps the most despicable political advertisement ever aired in the state."

Merle Haggard at MerleFest in Wilkesboro. Last week. Photo by John Hayes of Greensboro.

Ten years ago I wrote that "gay people can already have religious services to celebrate their unions at amenable houses of worship, with everything but the ;by the power vested in me by the State...' part. They can enjoy the ceremonial consecration of their relationship..."

One of the heinous things about Amendment One is that it took away that religious freedom, too. 

Thanks, United Church of Christ, for taking this to court: "In a novel legal attack on a state’s same-sex marriage ban, a liberal Protestant denomination on Monday filed a lawsuit arguing that North Carolina is unconstitutionally restricting religious freedom by barring clergy members from blessing gay and lesbian couples."

This bit of number-crunching from the post-Nate Silver NYT shows a couple of things: 

• Kay Hagan has tough, tough road ahead of her.
• Number-crunching without context is of limited value.

The voter-turnout analysis certainly looks grim for Hagan -- but the article ignores some key factors that might influence turnout.

Like, say, the long-running and highly-visible protest movement against the GOP regime in Raleigh, and the underlying ire upon which that movement is built. Hagan could well have a more motivated base in 2014 than is typical of off-year elections, and a sophisticated GOTV machine to activate it. 

Writer Nate Cohn seems to be looking at statistics in a vaccum (he also ignores factors like the extreme dysfunction of the NCDP, and the influence of outside money). The raw numbers tell a story, but they don't tell the whole story.

Following on yesterday's post about GSO's opportunity to be a part of AT&T's new broadband rollout -- and the importance of that infrastructure to our economic development -- the last I heard is that AT&T is "interested in working with communities that appreciate the value of the most advanced technologies and are willing to encourage investment by offering solid investment cases and policies," and that "Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan said Monday she hasn’t heard from AT&T."

I assume she's picked up the phone since then. 

Beyond that, what's the plan?

GSO actually did a pretty good job of courting Google during the national contest to host its big fiber network. 

That courtship generated serious, sustained attention across the community, with organization at the highest level and energy from the grassroots. A key consideration then was not focusing on what Google could do for us, but what we could do for Google -- and letting the company know, in detail. 

Time to get the band back together again.

I didn't see anything about this in Friday's report from the City Manager. That was disappointing.

Madame Mayor, please let us know your plan, and what we can do to help bring this necessary project to town.

Dan Gillmor:

This is a potentially tragic turning point in American politics and policy. We are on the verge of turning over the internet – the most important communications system ever invented– to telecoms that grew huge through the government granting them monopoly status. Barring a genuine shift in policy or a court stepping in to ensure fair treatment of captive customers – or better yet, genuine competition – companies like Verizon and Comcast will have staggering power to decide what bits of information reach your devices and mine, in what order and at what speed. That is, assuming we're permitted to get that information at all.

Do we want an open internet? Do we want digital innovation and free speech to thrive? If we continue down the regulatory road pursued by the former cable and wireless industry lobbyist [and FCC chair] Tom Wheeler, all of those good things will be in serious jeopardy.

More here: Why You Should Care.

Worse, when Dan says "the telecom cartel has frantically worked to get state legislatures to prevent [communiity broadband networks] from existing," well, that frantic work was effective in North Carolina. Our econ dev and political leadership in GSO missed an opportunity to build out some rare and important infrastructure while they could.

But we are where we are. And where we are looks somewhat better than it did just few days ago, because we are maybe in line for some serious broadband service from AT&T (caveat: "Before anyone gets too excited, AT&T isn't promising that it will actually build in any or all of these cities.")

And AT&T is making nice noises about competition with the cable giants. So, good.

If it happens.

Kay Hagan needs a really good Get Out The Vote effort to hold onto her seat.

More than a year ago, she assured me her campaign would build on the formidable GOTV machine built by Obama in 2008. That seems to be happening.

But the GOP has put a lot of resources into catching up with the Democrats in terms of technology. While I'm sure the Democrats have not been standing still, closing tech gaps -- or even leap-frogging them, as the Democrats did between 2000 and 2008 -- is very doable. 

And the best GOTV tech won't overcome a lack of enthusiasm. 

Here's where Hagan has an advantage some of her Senatorial peers may lack. North Carolina progressives are highly pissed off at the GOP regime in Raleigh. They're looking for reasons to love the moderate Hagan.

She's already running against Raleigh, which is smart. 

You know what would be smarter? To run against Raleigh's obstructionist strategy on healthcare. 

ACA is yours in this race no matter what, Kay. Owning it is good politics, and good GOTV fodder for the liberal wing of your party.

Sorry if you've tried to leave comments here and couldn't get them to stick.

It wasn't you, it was me.

Well, it was TypePad, which seems to have had a rough weekend and a bad hangover today.

From an N&R op-ed by Cone Health CEO Tim Rice:

The plan was that states would expand Medicaid coverage to more uninsured people, and hospitals would offset some of their reduced revenue through the increased volume of patients paid for by Medicaid. But North Carolina has not expanded Medicaid coverage, which means Cone Health and others are being paid less while still caring for the nearly 80,000 uninsured in Guilford County alone.

This has had an impact on access to health care in our immediate area. For example, Triad Adult and Pediatric Medicine closed a major clinic that provided care for adults and reduced services for infants and children. Our response to the loss of this vital service was to partner with our pediatric teaching service to open Cone Health Center for Children, which will help care for nearly 40,000 uninsured children in our community. We plan to open a facility for adults later this spring. Still, the numbers are daunting. Cone Health provided $245 million last year in care for which we didn’t get paid. That’s nearly $60 million more than the year before. How can we keep that up?

And of course the human costs are even higher than the financial ones.

Greensboro is fortunate to have a strong, locally-controlled health system (disclosure: I am still on its board) and to have had Tim Rice running the show during tumultuous times. 

Read the whole article for a sense of the issues facing hospitals -- the two-midnight rule is another tough one -- and some of the local responses to them.