GREENSBORO, N.C. -- It's a journalist's job to ask questions, but they're usually aimed at outsiders.
At the News & Record, a 93,000-daily circulation newspaper in Greensboro, reporters and editors are asking tough questions about the paper itself.
The biggest questions: If the paper needs to change to survive, what changes should be made? What can it do, especially online, to make itself the electronic equivalent of a town square?
Seeking the answers, the paper has launched an audacious online experiment.
The News & Record's website features 11 staff-written Web journals, or blogs, including one by the editor that answers readers' questions, addresses their criticisms, and discusses how the paper is run.
That puts the paper way ahead of even much larger news organizations. The News & Record's blogs range from ''just-the-facts, ma'am," to irreverent commentary.
There's a page for reader-submitted articles, another for letters to the editor, and an online tips form. The website hosts online forums on 23 topics, including safety at a local high school,
The site also posts up-to-date public records on property ownership, marriages, and divorce.
''When the paper's overhaul is complete, it may be a model for the sort of 21st century paper that many journalism big thinkers have been talking about, chewing over, and confabbing on for the last few years," wrote the industry-watching magazine Editor & Publisher. ''Greensboro will be the first place where this conceptually newfangled newspaper actually exists."
''It's a wonderful idea," said Phil Meyer, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ''It's important for newspapers to try dangerous experiments."
His only reservation: The paper hasn't added any staff to work on its electronic experiment. ''I'd rather they were willing to make an investment in this."
Other papers are watching. The Houston Chronicle, The (Portland) Oregonian, (Raleigh) News & Observer, and USA Today have all called News & Record editor John Robinson to discuss what his paper is doing.
Why the interest? Declining circulation, vitriolic criticism of everything from the media's obsession with celebrity trials to its coverage of the 2004 election, plus a series of scandals involving reporters who made up facts have led to industry-wide soul-searching.
Except for a honeymoon period after Sept. 11, the percentage of people who say news organizations often report inaccurately has hovered around 56 percent, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.