Just in case anyone wasn’t sure, the N&R has successfully made the transition from newspaper to community activist.
Today’s paper had two themes: “Building Bridges” and “Greensboro Disease.” Note the key bridge-builder along with the graphic medical imagery symbolizing the city’s grave condition. For starters, there’s Jeri Rowe’s lead story:
But pull back that Hallmark-card sheen, zero in on the ground, and there’s a different city. A city wounded by controversy.
A scandal in the police department that festers like a splinter. A lack of reconciliation over one of our worst moments. And an effort to recognize one of our best moments — a time when four college students sat down to stand up against racism — that still breeds skepticism.
These community lightning rods have created a cancer of distrust and raised tough questions about our leadership, past and present, and our legacy of racism, real and perceived.
….Our city needs more of that honest, in-your-face boldness. Yvonne Johnson, who last week became our city’s first African American mayor, promises that’ll happen.
She’s got the experience. She’s been on the City Council for 14 years. But she’s also got something else: a knack for building bridges.
….columns by John Robinson:
The topic is broad and complex. What are the root causes of what divides the city? What does healing mean? Is Greensboro even in need of it? Has it always been like this?
Finally, will writing the story deepen the divide rather than help bridge it? When does letting a wound heal with sunshine turn into picking at an open scab?
….and Allen Johnson:
Johnson’s first term will be challenging. Her election brought to mind a recent rebroadcast of the Public Radio program, “This American Life,” which revisited the tumultuous tenure of Chicago’s first black mayor, the late Harold Washington. The show’s thesis: that Washington carried many more burdens into office than a white mayor would. And that all black candidates for such offices bear that burden to some extent….
As a 14-year council veteran, Johnson is a well-known quantity. She was mayor pro tem three times and elected to an at-large seat on the council seven times.
She already has built bridges Washington was forced to erect from scratch.
.. a lengthy lead editorial:
Greensboro won’t reach its full potential until it learns, as a community, to build trust through effective communication.
As for our advice to ourselves, the News & Record should help identify community problems but help find solutions as well. We hope our town hall meetings and One Guilford symposiums (the next to come on March 12, 2008, at UNCG) are accomplishing that. But we will do more. We will write more editorials celebrating our successes. We will make the newspaper’s public square a place not only for civil debate but for creative thinking.
…..a 10-Plus interview with GCS diversity officer Monica Walker, whom Rowe had already cited in his lead article:
QYou talk about these divisions — the problems of trust you’ve seen in Greensboro — and you liken them to cancer. Why?
A. These divisions erode the body. There is a sickness in the body, and our job is to fight the illness. Doctors say the body has everything within itself to help heal itself, and metaphorically speaking, we as a society have everything in this body — and in this city — to heal ourselves.
….And just for the hell of it, a classic Lorraine Ahearn column on the homeless.
Guarino and E.C. Huey have analysis. Is community activism really what readers want from their local newspaper?
