Does this mean I have to be nice now?

In announcing the commencement of the Northwestern's "Community Newsroom" today, Stew Rieckman graciously acknowledged the work of the Oshkosh Community News Network in pioneering the concept.

I appreciate that, and I wish the Northwestern success in this endeavor. Starting from scratch and relying purely on volunteers (as well as subject to withering criticism from a local columnist who will here go unnamed), OCNN has not been able to pull this kind of thing off. But that doesn't mean that the idea isn't worthwhile or that the Northwestern, with its deep community roots and deep pockets, won't be able to make this work.

If the Community Newsroom functions as envisioned, Oshkosh will benefit, although it will also mean that OCNN may have to strike off in other directions. Using the power of print as well as online publication, the Northwestern can deliver an audience that OCNN has not been able to, and frankly cannot hope to. That's OK. We've always said that we were meant to serve as a laboratory for new approaches to journalism, and there are plenty of other experiments to try.

But the Northwestern will encounter challenges that may make it difficult to keep the Community Newsroom going. One is simply that there is a shortage of motivated, competent writers in this or any other community.

What we found out at OCNN is that we built it, but they did not come. So the Community Newsroom is an effort that is going to take some nurturing.

The contributors that keep coming back may, at some point, question whether they are getting full value for their efforts, or they may decide that this free promotional vehicle makes paid advertising less attractive. In either case, the challenge for the Northwestern--and it's a challenge faced by newspapers across the country--is how to manage its way down from extremely high profit margins while still delivering enough value to stand out in a media-saturated landscape.

The CEO of craigslist made some interesting observations about the newspaper industry this past week, including this:

"Journalism as practiced at newspapers has been hurt by an excess of money over the years as you've seen newspapers bought and sold and consolidated into large chains run by corporate managers to maximise profit, and increasingly over decades have resorted to running wire stories, putting an ever-greater proportion of advertising into their newspapers and shying away from writing hard-hitting stories about corruption in high places."

My hope, frankly, is that the Northwestern's corporate owners come to the conclusion that their continued focus on excessive profits is ultimately so detrimental to journalism's public-service mission that this emphasis has to be abandoned.

(And perhaps pigs will fly.)

But the main thing is that I think the Northwestern is making a sincere effort to open up its pages to the community and to cede some of the control that journalists have long cherished. In some ways this is inevitable, but the Northwestern should be commended for being willing to undertake this change.

As my former boss Arnaud de Borchgrave once said, in his farewell speech at The Washington Times: "Change is always hard--even when it is from worse to better."

Was the Northwestern at the Boone speech?

The Northwestern reports today that Herman Boone, the high school football coach played by Denzel Washington in "Remember the Titans," focused his UW Oshkosh speech on the movie.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Many in the audience were drifting off as Boone spoke at length about the importance of Black History Month and said relatively little about the film.

Boone used a Q&A after his prepared remarks to talk about the movie, and that's where he really connected with the audience.

He went into detail into about where the movie deviated from history, provided heartfelt advice about the importance of conveying high expectations for a student who said she hoped to be a coach some day and completely charmed the crowd with his humor and insights.

One possibility is that this is a case where a newspaper produces what is really an advance story, perhaps based on a telephone interview, and then tries to pass it off as eyewitness news.

On the subject of coaching, Boone said that it was important to balance critical words with comforting gestures. After tearing a player apart, he wouldn't let the player leave withuout a hug.

At the end of his presentation, it was announced that Boone would stay behind to meet individually with members of the audience--and provide one of his trademark hugs.

Almost immediately dozens of people lined up to take him up on his offer.

Another problem with the article is that it seeks to put Boone in the same company as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This is really a stretch (and demeaning to the civil rights movement).

King, we should remember, was not merely subjected to slurs and vandalism. Nor did he live to see his dreams achieved.

He was murdered for his beliefs and his courage.

No. 1 or 0-1?

The Wisconsin Badgers didn't have much time to enjoy their status at the top of the basketball rankings. Since attaining that position, they are now winless.

Gannett looking for talent (and free content)

Gannett is looking for young talent to help it develop its new multi-platform news gathering operations. It will apparently have a job opening in Green Bay for some lucky person. Read more here.

I also see the Northwestern has modified its navigation bars this morning and is no longer soliciting help with its investigations. Instead it is asking community members to submit announcements and calendar items (the way Oshkosh News has been doing for the last couple of years).

I hope the Northwestern is successful with this. Everything that the paper does to encourage the local community to make greater use of the Internet will benefit alternative sites like Oshkosh News. Because of OCNN's low-cost position and nonprofit orientation, even a little spillover could help a lot.

YouTube election predictions

Since there are no local election polls in Oshkosh, we political watchers can grab onto anything we want to make predictions about who will make it through next week's primary election.

We can, literally, put our finger to the wind and try to feel what the forecast is, or we can, electronically, navigate the Web and see whose video is getting the most play over on YouTube, where introductory statements were posted by the Oshkosh Community News Network as a public service. (Council candidates are here, and school board candidates are here.)

Based on this ridiculously flimsy evidence, I am prepared to make the following predictions (although I wouldn't put money on any of them).

In the Council race, the results will be:

1. Bryan Bain, 29.5%
2. Jessica King, 15.9%
3. Tony Palmeri, 15.9%
4. Meredith Scheuermann, 13.6%
5. Bob Cornell, 9.1%
6. Kent Monte, 9.1%
7. Mark Nielsen, 6.8%

There are no real surprises here. If we assume that name recognition is the most important factor at this stage of the game, it stands to reason that newcomer Mark Nielsen wouldn't make the cut.

In the board race, the results will be:

1. Dan Becker, 36.5%
2. Michelle Monte, 24.7%
3. Karen Bowen, 21.2%
4. John Daggett, 9.4%
5. Teresa Thiel, 8.2%

Here I have a little more trouble. I just can't see John Daggett making it into the general election. But, lord knows, I have been wrong before.

Google: friend or foe

The Journal Sentinel seems to think friend.

Belgian newspapers say foe.

Uncle Walter warns on media ownership

Walter Cronkite, once named the most trusted public figure in the country, warns that media companies are threatening American democracy.

Northwestern editors: bullies or just sloppy?

One of the enduring questions for all of us who are exposed to the Northwestern is whether the brain trust over at State and Waugoo consists of the small-minded or simply the sloppy.

The latest person to ask this question is the president of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, Tim Lyke, who came down on the side of sloppy, as well as sensational and irresponsible.

Tim is also the head of one of the Northwestern's competitors, the Ripon Commonwealth Press, and he seems to think that the Northwestern may have been slanting its coverage to hurt his paper's parent firm, the company that was responsible for printing Social Security numbers on state tax returns that were to be distributed through the mail.

Here is Tim's letter to the editor, published in Monday's Northwestern:

Headline, editing failed to explain printer's error

I was disappointed to read the headline, "Printing company attempted cover up," in the Feb. 2 Northwestern.

As a co-owner of Ripon Printers and president of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, I appreciate the story was local and so needed to be told. What I deplore, however, was the fact that one of your editors decided to cut the AP wire story before it explained the alleged "attempted cover up." Only nine of the story's 22 paragraphs were published.

Had you shared the rest of the story with your readers, they would have understood that my brother, president of Ripon Printers, did not ask anyone to bury the story. Instead, as the story reports beginning at the point your editor decided to excise: "Company President Andy Lyke said he only wanted the press to wait a few days before reporting it to reduce the risk of identity theft."

The press has every right and responsibility to print the news, and to do so expeditiously. But to use "cover up" in a headline and then fail to publish the accused's good intentions at minimizing harm to victims seems sloppy, sensational and irresponsible.

Thanks for your consideration.

Tim Lyke Ripon

You have to wonder which of the Northwestern's editors was responsible for this. This looks like real "old-time" newspapering, in the Wilbur Storey tradition. (One of Storey's more memorable tricks was to run an obituary of a political enemy just before an election in hopes of discouraging voters from casting their votes for the still very alive candidate that his paper opposed.)

I find it hard to believe that professional journalists would continue to engage in such antics, but the alternative explanation doesn't make me feel much better. Here is the Northwestern, with a profit margin fatter than that of Exxon Mobil, and yet it can't afford to hire a couple of extra copy editors?

(OK, I don't really know the Northwestern's profit margin. I'm just going by what its parent company reported, an operating margin of 25.25 percent. By contrast, poor Exxon had an operating margin of 18.48 percent.)

Editing community columnists

The Northwestern is to be commended for its use of community columnists to expand the conversation in Oshkosh. It was a good idea when the Oshkosh Community News Network started promoting citizen journalism back in 2003, and it's good to see the local paper abandon its previous opposition to the concept.

One of the things that newspapers can do, at least in theory, is provide superior editing for these amateur journalists, as opposed to what a community blog might be able to do.

Or maybe not.