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The smaller the paper, the bigger the mirror
After Day 15 of my time as a small-town newspaper editor, I can confirm and amplify what I had always heard and believed: The smaller the staff, the more the paper reflects the editor’s personality....
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Coming soon: postcards from inside the wall
I recall once writing (although apparently it was before I migrated my blog to WordPress) that I was getting sick of the paywall debate and I wished someone would just pull the trigger and put up a...
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Gathering the notes from my desk …
The years away from a community newspaper made me forget how close a relationship a small paper has with death. Most often it is formal. At times it is close and raw. In the former category, death has...
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I guess you could say I’m skeptical about Warren Buffett
I have trouble figuring out Warren Buffett’s fixation with newspapers. He didn’t get to be a billionaire by being a sentimental, soft-headed fool, but in his statements about newspapers I often wonder...
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Living more in a place, less in a time
Nieman Media Lab’s article about media theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s book “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now” struck me because ever since my move less than three months ago to become editor of...
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Legislative sound and fury, signifying nothing
Here’s a little secret of the legislative process: Absolutely every time a legislative body convenes, anywhere, some of its members introduce bills that they know stand not a snowball’s chance in Hades...
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Is there a name for what you are?
Before moving to Lenoir, N.C., I lived almost 12 years in Richmond, Va. Richmond is a beautiful city, a mix of Old South and mid-Atlantic, accents from hither and yon, a wonderful array of...
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Duties of small-town editors: bugs and fruit
As the warm weather pushed in here again last week, it reminded me of one duty of a small-town newspaper editor I learned about during my first stint at the News-Topic 25 years ago that I have not yet...
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Watch your news metrics and adjust what you do
In a world of dwindling newsroom resources, one of the harder questions is how much of your time and attention to place online. The view I tend to align with is that the future audience is going to be...
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What if Warren Buffett is telling the truth?
I was exasperated the other day at the latest entry in the “No, come on, what is Warren Buffet really up to?” genre of columns. There are two things these things seem to have in common: One, the...
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Too early to call it a success
Lord knows I want the Orange County Register’s print-centric business model to be successful. It is the model of simplicity: Beef up the content + charge for content = Profit! But an article at The...
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Opinion pieces are nothing personal
“Why don’t you have anything nice to say about the governor?” A reader called our publisher last week to ask that question. She was someone who knew N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory personally and felt that the...
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The journalism world is holding out for a hero
When we were children and encountered a problem, we went to our parents, and they fixed it. Parents can fix anything. As we get older we take on more of our own problems, maybe asking advice. Well into...
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Biased opinion page? Not according to the numbers
The last two or three weeks I have received a higher-than-usual number of calls complaining that the News-Topic editorial page is nothing but liberal opinions. In particular, many of those complaining...
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Meanwhile, here at Woolworth’s …
The news coming out of a series of meetings that the new owner of the Washington Post, Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos, had with the paper’s employees this week sounded both encouraging and discouraging...
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Small minds prevail in Randolph County
“Invisible Man” may be widely acknowledged as one of the greatest works of fiction of the 20th century, but it’s no “Captain Underpants.” I’ll explain, but bear with me. The Randolph County (N.C.)...
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Enough boasts, just give us some facts
Ken Doctor lists 10 ways the news industry will judge 2014. I agree with the list, but I’m focused on just one: “New strategies will be tested. We’re bound to get some sense of how the major strategies...
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An experiment in reducing publication
This morning, for the first time in decades, there was no morning print edition of the Lenoir News-Topic. Several dozen regular readers are not taking it well. We dropped a day of publication as a way...
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‘Which products and customer relationships are profitable’ for news?
As the editor of a small newspaper, I sometimes have a number of other roles to fill. Recently it has been business reporter following the bankruptcy process of one of this county’s major employers,...
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All I want for Christmas …
Santa may be coming on Tuesday night with a sleigh loaded down with toys, but he’s leaving with enough cookies and milk to choke the U.S. Army, if the letters to Santa printed in my newspaper’s...
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