Help Wanted: N&R needs a new parent company

The chatter among the Greensboro bloggers is that it is probably time for Greensboro News & Record editor John Robinson to go.

Among the ongoing fallout of the David Wray/police blackbook/city manager-corruption/wiretap/insert-your-city hall-scandal-here, many are charging Robinson for failure to accurately and fairly report what has been going on inside City Hall and our City Council.

And yet Mr. Robinson touts changes being made and buy-outs among its last remaining veteran journalists.

Honestly, the only changes I'm seeing is that the paper is getting worse. It's almost unreadable now.

Many of you who've known me for a while know that I wrote for Robinson's local competitor, the High Point Enterprise, almost 10 years ago. I've applied many times for reporting gigs at the N&R, to no avail.

And now, I blog. And I substitute teach.

Journalism is dead in the Piedmont Triad.

And you know what? The smartest thing the N&R could do is to sell the pub and keep on moving. Landmark Communications, N&R's Norfolk, Va.-based parent company, sold The Weather Channel. Since then, TWC has been exploited on every angle by NBC-Universal. It was a good sale. I contend that it is possible that Landmark could be building up its Virginian-Pilot and Roanoke papers, and probably would not mind dumping the N&R to any joe that has a buck-and-a-half in its pocket...likely, the buck-and-a-half that I wasted on yesterday's pathetic excuse for a Sunday paper.

Community journalism is broken out into menial break-out sections when it should be part of the main pub. Blinders are put up when anything happens west of the Guilford/Forsyth County Line in favor of wire copy. I miss the stand-alone business section. The local job section is only four pages now...the N&R really needs improvement, and fast.

E.C. :)