RickyWhy

In perpetuity

2012-01-14T12:52:00.001-08:00

A note to Chris Cadelago, which would normally be a tweet, but it's too long...

The Denver Post's motto is now "Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire" but it used to be a bit more grandiose. Here it is:

Dedicated in perpetuity to the service of the people, that no good cause shall lack a champion and evil shall not thrive unopposed.

I used to use it on my Facebook page, but it seems to have disappeared in the "timeline."

mullets, indeed

2011-11-13T11:42:00.000-08:00

Below is a word cloud of a blog post I found very thought provoking.

Facebook's latest redesign = New Coke

2011-11-13T09:38:00.001-08:00

Thank goodness for this:

With the return of the "recent stories first" sort option, Facebook has backed away from its latest redesign, which insisted on deciding based on some mysterious metrics which stories would be displayed in the Newsfeed.

My commenting identity crisis is over

2011-09-21T00:09:00.000-07:00

This may not look like much to you...

...To me, it was a longer than necessary conundrum.

My newspaper recently changed its commenting system from Disqus to Facebook. Under the new system, I was identified with the college I went to -- a long time ago -- rather than my current employer.

No one in the building knew how I could change my affiliation to show something more... current. We tried changing my profile settings to make sure my employer information was marked "public." It was already.

Always one to find workarounds, I removed my college affiliation from my Facebook page. Then my comments posted with my high school. So I removed that. Then it just showed the city I live in. So I removed that.

If you are a friend on Facebook, this may explain a series of changes to my personal information -- irritatingly broadcast in newsfeeds -- when my personal information really hasn't changed in years.

Finally, tonight, I decided to reinstate some of my information and see what would happen. Somewhere in that process, I found the problem. My employer was not specified as my current employer. Checking that box made my name (and even my title) show up with my comments.

The truth is, I had stopped worrying about this days ago. As soon as my comments started showing up as a "Top Commenter," all was forgiven between the Facebook comment system and me. Still, it's nice to know how to get the settings right.

Now, is "commenter" even a word? My colleague John Wilkens (and/or someone on the copy desk) don't seem to think so. See his story on the change-over, not using the word "commenter" once, preferring the term commentator.

Top Commentator. Now that's something to aspire to.

No one has any followers.

2010-05-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

At first I thought it was just me. But this is proof:

And this:

UPDATE: @Jumpthesnark and @DowntownRob found out what's really going on.

Shorter links make better tweets

2010-04-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

This blog post is designed for a simple purpose -- to show people how to use a url shortener. On Twitter, long links can take up most of a 140-character tweet. They also cause visual pollution for those who follow your tweets. A url shortener allows you to turn something like this...

...into something like this:

There are several url shorteners. The first one I ever used was tinyurl.com (which helps create a tiny url!) You just copy a long url into it, and it spits out a short one.

The one I use the most is is bit.ly. This one has a one-touch functionality that makes it my favorite. If you drag the 'bookmarklet' into your links bar in Explorer or your Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox, you can use it to shorten your url's and prep them for Twitter with one click. Once it's bookmarked, you just click on it from whatever page you're on, and it makes a short url. It's far less work than copying a long url into your tweet and finding a message that will work in the few characters left.

Many of these url shorteners will also tell you how many people are clicking on your links, including bit.ly and HootSuite. They will also let you assign vanity url's like this one:

http://bit.ly/rickysblog

My colleague Rob Hopwood has been experimenting with om.ly, which apparently offers lots of data.

I toyed for a while with tinyarro.ws, which assigned funky-looking short urls like this one: http://➡.ws/åöå. But then I discovered it uses characters that some people don't have on their computers, so it didn't work for links for them.

Others have offered helpful tips as well.

Now I just have to work on my own Web site not to have this come up when you click the 'share on Twitter' button!

Rob?

Fourth in a series

2010-01-31T22:05:00.000-08:00

Museum of Contemporary Art

This post is not from Jesus

2010-01-06T22:24:00.000-08:00

Let's get this out of the way first: Yes, I like it better when San Diego alternative weekly CityBeat aims its media coverage away from the U-T and toward other subjects. This is only natural. Forgive me for enjoying it a little. Despite that, I think I am in a position to note the importance of their revelations this week.

CityBeat's Dave Maass is reporting some strange doings by Beth Green, a columnist for Internet startup SDNN.com and founder of a Bonsall nonprofit. According to CityBeat, she was inspired to pitch the columns by The Source, a.k.a. God, and they got published with His help on the writing. She told Maass:

“These people — Jesus, the Buddha—had the capacity to connect to a higher frequency. What I heard when I finished [the columns] is, ‘You can do this now, Beth.’ I had become attuned and trained to go to that higher level of consciousness.”

In addition to the divine intervention, it probably didn't hurt that Green's column is offered to the Web site for free. The trade-off is this: She writes the column for free. SDNN posts it. The column promotes her nonprofit, at the bottom (where it invites readers to contact Jesus at Green's e-mail address). According to CityBeat, Green is the sole financial beneficiary of the nonprofit.

So be it.

But it's not just a column. And SDNN is not just a Web site.

As CityBeat editor Dave Rolland noted on Twitter, the Los Angeles Times is entering a partnership with SDNN's founder involving a similar Web site in Orange County -- the less-elegantly-named OCLNN.com.

According to the Times' own story:

Senturia said San Diego-based U.S. Local News Network planned to develop a national network of 40 local news websites over the next two years.

"Instead of owning 50 newspapers, the next media baron will own 150 news websites, and that's what we intend to be," Senturia said. "That's the goal."

More power to him. Anyone trying to forge a future for journalism is doing the Lord's work, if you will. My concern is, that future looks to have a lot more Beth Greens and a lot fewer Dave Maasses.

The SDNN Web site, under "About Us," states, "Our values reflect the best of traditional journalism standards, and we will seek to adhere to the Poynter Institute Journalism Values & Ethics in New Media Protocols." There's a link to the Poynter standards. When I click it, I get an error page that says, "This site is temporarily unavailable."

This post has been modified from its original to note that the columnist is unpaid, which I hedged in the original version because I read over it in Maass's piece.

Surfer crossing

2010-01-05T22:09:00.000-08:00

Encinitas, Calif.

More voters 'hiding' their political party

2009-09-25T22:04:00.000-07:00

I am a member of the fastest-growing political party in San Diego County, an amazing feat considering what a dull name it has. We are the 'decline to state' party.

This has always driven me crazy. As a journalist, I am nonpartisan. But as a word person, it offends me that the only choice I have on a California registration card is to classify myself as 'decline to state.' As if I'm hiding something.

For years, being nonpartisan meant I could not participate in primary elections. Voters have opened up the process somewhat with initiatives. And a ballot measure next June would open it even more. Instead of parties picking nominees, voters would pick the top two candidates for a runoff, and the top two vote-getters would proceed to a general election. In some cases, this would mean a general election pitting two members of the same party against each other. The idea was apparently formulated by former San Diego lawmaker Steve Peace.

Some Republicans are opposing this. Some are not.

For those who oppose it, their thinking is simple and understandable: keep the party pure. From their point of view, I can see this.

But, honestly, what's always bothered me is this -- if a primary election is a private affair, why am I paying for it?

This seems like a simple, and obvious, question. But because 'decline to state' voters have no power in the electoral process -- not one representative that I know of -- no one looks at it this way. Certainly, taxpayers should fund general elections. But if a primary election is about a closed group of people picking their nominee for the general election, why should everyone else pay?

So if the Republicans, or the Greens, or the Communists or the Natural Law Party or any other party want to keep their primary elections as a private affair, it seems like there should be some discussion of it. And some discussion of them paying for it. As I understand it, the state could use the money.

I guess we'll see what happens next June first.

Elfin Forest, Calif.

2009-09-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

Elephant Odyssey, San Diego Zoo

2009-08-20T19:20:00.000-07:00

Mission Beach, Calif.

2009-08-20T19:19:00.000-07:00

San Diego Zoo, Calif.

2009-08-20T19:15:00.001-07:00

Sudden recognition

2009-08-16T23:49:00.000-07:00

There is an oft-repeated storyline about the Voice of San Diego, the local Web site that has become well-known in journalism circles for its nonprofit business model. It goes like this: The site grew out of the deficiencies of the local newspaper, the Union-Tribune. I have written about this too much.

The Web site's editor, Andrew Donohue, puts it like this: "If there is one storyline that sums up why we exist, it is because investigative journalism on a very local level isn't being done." This canard has been repeated, without much checking, in a series of national stories that I have linked to before. At one point, I wrote a Letter to the Editor to Salon.com griping about it.

That's why it was somewhat surreal tonight to see a top-featured story on their Web site praising years of very impressive investigative efforts by one of our staffers. It's sad that, for the Voice to acknowledge this, the reporter had to get laid off. That way, his many successes could be portrayed as something bad about the paper.

Hotel Circle, San Diego

2009-08-16T20:12:00.001-07:00

Crystal Cove, California

2009-08-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

Tybee Island, Georgia

2009-08-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

Twitter doesn't break news, people do

2009-07-21T21:45:00.000-07:00

I have met the enemy, and his name is WizardElite.

That's the screen name of a guy I follow on The Twitter, and he follows me. His name is Chris Rogers. He is a Web developer and Internet addict who lives in San Diego.

On Saturday night, he sent out this broadcast to the 800-plus of us who follow him on The Twitter:

He quickly followed up with this: "2 perps, one back one white. Shot a passenger and stole the gun from a secruity guard."

Looked like news to me, so I went to my newspaper's Web site to make sure we had something. We did not. I called the desk. They were working on it, and soon they had this item up.

If you look at the time stamps, we "scooped" Twitter on this story. Our item is timestamped 11:29 p.m., and WizardElite's showed up five minutes later. But the timestamps are wrong. Our NewsBlog software actually enters the time you created the file, not the time you published it (unless you correct it manually before you post, which is what I do).

Does it matter that Twitter "beat" us on this story? There are people out there who say it does. The same people always pitting old and new media against each other.

There's an entire blog whose purpose seems to be to document times when Twitter "beat" the "mainstream media" on breaking news. In Jakarta. In our nation's own capital! (Maybe I'll submit the trolley shooting as further proof of the obsolescence of the mainstream media!) A blogger named Craig Kanalley believes this is proof that "MSM outlets are losing the edge on breaking news they’ve held for so long."

I follow media trends closely, and this is a favorite theme -- how the rise of Twitter means the fall of traditional media. Before I got on Twitter, I would read how Twitter broke stories of plane crashes and earthquakes, and I thought, what an amazing service this must be.

But the news "broken" on Twitter is really no different from someone running down the street saying, "Guess what I just saw" or a trucker getting on his CB radio to tell his convoy about an accident up ahead. These are means of communicating out an eyewitness account. Twitter adds an eavesdropping element that's available to everyone, but one that comes naturally to journalists.

As a commenter put it on Kanalley's blog post, the smart journalists are the ones who tap into the unending and mesmerizing stream and synthesize it. Newsgatherers. There is a skill to following the right people and #subjects, and mining news out of it.

Over time, I have learned that the people who break news on Twitter have not been turned into journalists. They are generally quick-thinking bystanders who are adept on the medium. They are users like WizardElite, or the NBC receptionist who "broke" the D.C. shooting story.

Twitter is people.
-

This should propel me through the day

2009-07-16T21:37:00.000-07:00

My 4-year-old has drawn me -- with rocket shoes.

Third in a series

2009-06-06T00:12:00.000-07:00

along for the (big) ride

2009-04-26T22:40:00.000-07:00

My kids and I saw an elephant caravan and followed it for 35 miles.

The timing of the move of the elephants from the Wild Animal Park to the San Diego Zoo for their $45 million new exhibit was a big secret, so when we set out for the Wild Animal Park on Saturday, we had no idea we would be seeing the big move.

But there they were, trundling the other way, a procession of green-tarped trucks traversing the road out of the park. I Twittered it (Twitpicked it?) on the spot. Then we decided we had to see them reach their destination. So we turned around at the gates to the park. My daughter declared it would be more interesting than your average day at the animal park.

We followed them from the 15 to the 8 to the 5 to the 163, with two kids snapping photographs as if... well, as if you could actually see the elephants. The elephant names, we later learned, were Cookie, Cha Cha, Mary and Ranchipur. We wondered if they argued over directions. The speed was slow, the police escorts copious.

When we got to the back entrance to the zoo, the gates closed behind the trucks, and they certainly weren't letting anyone in. We saw some Girl Scouts get interviewed on TV. ("I saw one of them pee.") And then we went for a nice day at the zoo.

The Elephant Odyssey opens May 23.

if it's in texas, it's bound to be big

2009-04-21T20:41:00.001-07:00

There is a common storyline in the national reports on the business model at the Voice of San Diego, a local Web site.

A recent example from Salon.com: "When you step into our newsroom, the one thing you're doing is public service journalism. We measure our success solely in the impact and the quality of our stories. We don't measure our success in hits."

I read this Web site daily, and I find things other than public service journalism. These things have value, to me and other readers, but they fall outside the vaunted media portrayal of the site. Incremental updates. Musings. Commentary. [Biotech. Real estate.] Coverage of the local media. Self-promotion. And, yes, occasional public service journalism. To say investigative journalism is all they do is simply an overstatement, [and it belittles the other efforts on the site]. To say they do it, and the local newspaper does not, is just wrong.

That said, I am pleased to see some of the limelight for non-profit news sites shining on a new site that is clearly focused on a mission of watchdog journalism, Texas Watchdog.

You have to like a site whose "special report" dropdown menu includes "Dallas County dead voters," "Harris County dead voters" and "highest-paid state employees."

The site is clean, easy to navigate and focused on its mission of watchdog journalism. It's embraced the form of online journalism, with databases and Google maps and robust news-breaking blogging.

As I have said repeatedly, I respect the Voice of San Diego. There's just something in me, as a journalist, that makes me cranky when one thing is said publicly (and regularly) and the reality is a little off.

[Material in brackets was added after the original post.]

Pulitzers out

2009-04-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

I'm posting the Pulitzer list here, because the Pulitzer site is bogged down. Congratulations to Steve Breen of The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Public Service - Las Vegas Sun
Breaking News Reporting - The New York Times Staff
Investigative Reporting - David Barstow of The New York Times
Explanatory Reporting - Bettina Boxall and Julie Cart of the Los Angeles Times
Local Reporting Detroit Free Press Staff -- and -- Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin of the East Valley Tribune, Mesa, AZ
National Reporting - St. Petersburg Times Staff
International Reporting - The New York Times Staff
Feature Writing - Lane DeGregory of the St. Petersburg Times
Commentary - Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post
Criticism - Holland Cotter of The New York Times
Editorial Writing - Mark Mahoney of The Post-Star, Glens Falls, NY
Editorial Cartooning - Steve Breen of The San Diego Union-Tribune
Breaking News Photography - Patrick Farrell of The Miami Herald
Feature Photography - Damon Winter of The New York Times

Details

must i tell you if i change this post?

2009-04-18T00:01:00.001-07:00

I am writing this to beat the Voice of San Diego to an item about... me.

The Web site has previously criticized me for changing news content after the fact without a public acknowledgment. I have responded, saying the online ethic that calls for fessing up publicly to mistakes is not always adhered to strictly by the "new media," either.

Well, today, I broke the rules. A reporter posted an item about a complex city labor deal. She got something wrong, because the city refused to give her a term sheet spelling it out. She wrote an item, based on her understanding. I posted it, and Twittered about it. Ten minutes later, the reporter realized her mistake, and went into the posted item and fixed it. I edited it, and failed to add a note saying "this was changed from the original, which had a mistake."

I have just added that note -- hours after the fact, and probably too late. What brought on this stab of accountability? My blog analytics showed me the gig was up. Someone from San Diego (presumably the Voice, [as I'm not sure who else would care]*) was poking around on relevant Twitter posts from today, and blog posts from weeks ago.

Here's what I have to say for myself. I have been up front in questioning whether every little thing needs to be corrected -- with a trail -- on posted Web material (see poll below). The Voice has been self-righteous about the need to fix mistakes and note it. But the site's staff has twice been caught fixing things themselves, without leaving a trace until called on it.

The bottom line is, we as editors make judgment calls. This is one I should have left a note on immediately, not just when I got "caught."

I will re-iterate the point from my earlier post. Although the new media certainly raises awareness on this issue, they are not pristine.

We have a new Web site in town called the San Diego News Network. That Web site posted a story this week that we broke at the Union-Trib. They used a wire version that credited us -- and they took out the credit:

I protested on Twitter, and our newsroom operations manager dropped them an e-mail. Next thing you know, The San Diego Union-Tribune was credited in the story for the scoop. SDNN even got the punctuation right, capitalizing and italicizing the 'The.' But the site, a new media pioneer gaining national attention for its efforts, left no indication that the original version had the omission.

*This phrase was added after the original post

25rtam

2009-04-14T21:35:00.000-07:00

Like a really late echo, I have decided to play the 25 random things about me game, although not on The Facebook. I am a fan of this genre, and enjoyed these lists by several of my friends. But posts on The Facebook come and go, on the endless walls, and I'm thinking this blog post can have a little more permanence.

An ancestor on my father's side engraved the nameplate for the Providence Journal (or Bulletin, not sure which).
An ancestor on my mother's side invented the Ace bandage, and possibly Velcro, although both of these seem apocryphal to me and I'm certainly not getting any royalties.
I was born in the home of Mr. Potato Head, Pawtucket, R.I.
In elementary school, I was voted Good Citizen by my peers, but my election was vetoed by the gym and music teachers.
Most people have 206 bones. I have 207 (the extra is in my right knee).
My middle school jazz band played a gig at Disneyland.
I saw "Young Frankenstein," "Star Wars" and "Terms of Endearment" more times than I should admit. I would like to take back the time I spent watching "Gilligan's Island" and "Dr. Who."
I got into journalism at my high school newspaper because I was envious of a friend's by-line.
In Vail once, I jumped off a balcony, envisioning an exhilarating landing in the 8-foot snowdrift below. It turned out to be a sheet of ice, and I broke my leg.
In high school, I had a rubber chicken for a pet, and named it Spot.
On my college dorm form, I included that last fact under "anything else we should know about you," and ended up matched with an equally unusual roommate named Gordon.
He liked to say, "Fire it up," a phrase I still use today when greenlighting a newspaper story.
At my college paper, I turned the Off-Campus Desk into the City Desk and encouraged staffers to answer the phone, "Evanston's Only Daily."
As an intern at the Memphis newspaper, I covered the 10th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death and wound up in a photo of the candlelight vigil in The New York Times.
As an intern at The Kansas City Star, I began a lifelong addiction to the journalist lifeblood known as coffee.
As an intern at The Boston Globe, I learned to parallel park within an inch of my life.
Impossibly, my parents ran into an ex-girlfriend of mine at a restaurant in Utah once. I hadn't told them we had broken up. She was there with her new rock star boyfriend. (Really.)
The first sentence of my job application to The Orange County Register said, "All my friends are getting jobs, and I want one, too." The managing editor circled it in red, and put an exclamation point by it.
I came *this close* to following a group of speeding cops up a freeway ramp one afternoon, and it turned out they were joining the chase of O.J. Simpson.
The Register named a design element after me, the Ricky box.
The first time I asked my wife out, it was to a Barry Manilow concert on opening night at the Anaheim arena. She rightly turned me down.
A water district receptionist once said to me, "and you're with..." I replied, "I'm with the public."
I let a source cook me a meal once. His name was Anthony Puzzo. I wrote about his distaste for his neighbor's RV ("a monstrosity") and the still of his garden the morning after a malathion spray. He cooked me green pasta made from that very same garden, an ethical breach I was powerless to avoid.
I never should have left California, the first time, the second time or the third time. I hope the decline of my industry doesn't somehow force me to make this mistake again.
I have four delightful children who could each have a list like this of their own (except for the parallel parking).

second in a series

2009-04-11T22:29:00.001-07:00

first in a series

2009-04-11T22:26:00.001-07:00

the dmv blog responder

2009-04-11T20:36:00.000-07:00

I am struggling this weekend with the question of whether to pay $20.25 to the DMV for a copy of its $1.5 million contract with a PR firm whose duties include responding to blog posts.

I first wrote about this on Jan. 28. At the time, I surmised that Jessica Love's "dear blogger" post to Justin McLachlan (that guy who writes) was a form letter, ineffective in the Internet Age.

I later requested the PR contract, and any amendments, from the DMV. An attorney informed me the 19 pages would cost $20.25.

As part of my deliberations about whether to pay for the copies, I decided to check around and see if Jessica Love is still posting "on behalf of the DMV." She is. The morning after my original blog post, she was on Peter Black's Freedom to Differ posting the same message (with one difference, she dropped the "dear blogger" salutation).

Another thing I noticed tonight. Not only did both her blog posts fail to engage the blogger, fail to respond directly to the post. Both blog posts also came months (years, in fact) after the original post. Justin posted in July 2008, and got the DMV response in January 2009. Peter posted in November 2007, and heard from the DMV in January 2009. Not exactly taking advantage of the speed of the Internet.

You might surmise that the delay is because the PR contract is a new effort, and they were catching up on Web activity before it started. But the contract has been in place since 2006 -- well before Peter or Justin posted.

When I last wrote about this, I had contacted the DMV seeking to inspect the records or to get digital copies, rather than pay for paper copies.

The attorney has informed me 1) I can only inspect the records if I drive 504 miles to Sacramento and 2) I cannot have digital copies because the documents were created in File Maker. I don't work in File Maker, so I don't know, doesn't that program have a "save as" function to make it a doc or pdf?

PR deal is for $1.5 mil

2009-04-08T21:34:00.001-07:00

This is the gist of the DMV's "Save Time, Go Online" campaign:

The Department’s overall goal is to promote and increase the use of available online services and drive customers to do business with the DMV over the Internet, on their time, and at their convenience.

But the campaign does not immediately seem to apply to public-records requests.

I have asked the DMV for the PR contract behind the campaign, and the agency has agreed to release copies of it -- for $20.25.

I wrote back asking, how many pages is that, and could I have electronic versions of the documents rather than copies (something that should be easy enough for a "go online" campaign!).

The answer came back yesterday. It's 19 pages of documents (which means they're asking me to pay $1.06 a page). And, "the records are not currently available in a digital format."

I have written back, asking how that's possible.

One final note. In my last e-mail, I asked how large the PR contract is. And this is the answer I have now received: "The Katz contract is a three-year, $1.5 million contract ($500K per year)."

save time, go online

2009-04-02T22:39:00.000-07:00

I never want to let my friend JP down. So when she hopped on a blog post of mine, and admonished me to follow up with a public records request, I did.

The issue was a representative of the DMV using new media to send a very old-school response to a blogger -- a form letter, basically.

So I found a handy DMV e-mail address (askdmv@dmv.ca.gov) and sent this off: "i have a question about the dmv. does the dmv have a contract with katz & associates to handle PR? if so, please send me a copy of it, plus any change orders or amendments to it."

The response I received was much longer. It came in the mail, a pleasant breeze from the past. I'm so used to digital docs, I wasn't sure what to do with it. But I faxed it, to turn it into a pdf. And I discovered that Google Docs now allows you to upload a pdf, even a scanned or faxed one, and turn it into text with a simple cut and paste.

Some key sections:

The Department has identified documents responsive to your request regarding Katz and Associates. In an effort to help increase overall customer satisfaction, reduce wait times and provide additional resources to the general public, the DMV hired Katz & Associates in 2006 to develop and implement its first public education campaign to promote the availability and capabilities of its public Web site, www.dmv.ca.gov. The public education program is designed to:
Raise awareness of current online services and new ones as they become available
Lessen the burden of field offices and make transactions easier for consumers by encouraging the use of online services as the primary means of conducting business with the DMV
Enhance the public image of the DMV
Address issues/concerns identified through campaign research in future and ongoing outreach efforts
Provide a one-stop resource for driver and driver safety related information to the general public

Current Contract
Katz & Associates is responsible for implementing the following activities under its contract with the DMV
Strategic planning and program development
Advertising production
Media buying
Informational materials development and production

Results
All business services offered to consumers via the DMV's Web site, including vehicle registration renewal, driver license renewal and the ability to change mailing addresses have shown record increases in use by consumers (on average, 25-50 percent) since the launch of the "Save Time, Go Online" campaign. This would indicate that the outreach and advertising efforts are effectively encouraging consumers to use the DMV Web site. The campaign has reached millions of California residents with important information about the DMV, new driver laws safety information to help Californians be safer, more knowledgeable drivers.

The letter asked me for money before I could see any documents. This blog has no budget, per se, so I'm not sure I want to spend that, as much as I respect JP. So I sent the DMV lawyer back this response:

Thank you for your March 5 response to my Feb. 26 public records request. Your correspondence asks me for $20.25 for copies of documents responsive to my request. Before I can decide whether to make that outlay, I was wondering if you could answer some questions.

How many pages is that, and what is the fee per page for the copying? Is it a statutory fee, or is it for the direct costs of duplication?

Are any of the records available in a digital format, such as a Word document or a pdf, which would not require copying?

What is the dollar amount of the Katz contract, and over what time period?

The lawyer's auto-reply said he's out of town until tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

explaining my twitter feeds

2009-03-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

Skip to the list below, if you're in a hurry.

I've been going a little nuts on The Twitter, because I have learned to use The Twitterfeed.

The idea came from a reader, Holly Kolman, someone I know through Twitter. She was saying the U-T Web site didn't sound the alarm loud enough when we broke the story of a water main break that endangered the water supply in the Carmel Valley area. One suggestion was that we should have sounded the alarm on Twitter.

Most of our news stories get posted on Twitter automatically, but not the ones on our Newsblog -- which is a pretty big blind spot, since it's where our most immediate news is posted.

So in response to her suggestion, I made a new Twitter account for the Newsblog. She signed up, and has told her 2,054 followers about it -- twice. (Thanks, Holly.)

While I was at it, I tried a couple other new things, and I will try to explain the idea behind each one here:

@ UTNewsblog: As mentioned, this is our most immediate news. I also included a regular local news feed here from the U-T, because much of our breaking news first appears on the blog and then gets updated as a story. This tends to have about 40 items per day.
@ UTPolBlog: This is a for my team's main online outlet, the PolBlog. This is a subset of the Newsblog, so if you sign up for the Newsblog, you won't get anything additional here. This is just a separate feed if you want your political stuff without your wrecks and robberies. The PolBlog tends to have about 10 updates a day.
@ SDNewsfeed: This is a more comprehensive local news feed, including other local Web sites and TV stations and bloggers. This contains everything from the PolBlog and the NewsBlog, so if you get this one, you don't need the other two. This is a turbo feed, with more than 100 updates a day.

All three of these new feeds are automated, and won't be staffed or interactive, which I know is the preferred Twitter way. For the more chatty approach, I'm still using my original Twitter venue. I also recommend you follow my colleague, Mark.

sale away

2009-03-19T22:02:00.000-07:00

Absurdly, I feel the need to follow up on yesterday's post, in which the edge of my desk was featured in a photo on our Web site.

Today, my actual face was featured on the front page of the printed newspaper, front and center. During this meeting, I was understandably self-conscious, as they were taking so many photos. I swear, there were many in which I smiled. Alas, in the one they printed, I looked more dour than I felt. (With slumpier shoulders.)

I took some ribbing for this photo, but none better than when I got home. My 9-year-old exclaimed, "Dad, you were on the front page of the newspaper," and he treated me to an impression of my expression. That, more than anything, made me smile.

the moment on the twitter

2009-03-18T22:43:00.000-07:00

When my paper's sale was announced, I watched how the news unfolded on The Twitter, and I Twittered about it (sorry, can't bring myself to say I tweeted).

A half hour after the news broke (an eternity on The Twitter), I went back to see how the news spread, and to see who had it first. Within my 140 characters I wrote, "After U-T broke story, next were @glassesgeek @nickmartin @journalism_info @joshsprague @balankygal @codytoshiro @bgindra @LATimescitydesk"

Somehow, I missed @mjdavis, who snuck in there between two posts by @glassesgeek. The Twitter is anything but precise.

I remain mystified by the oracle named @cvpfep, who gave us all a clue that went unheeded two hours beforehand. She is identified on Twitter as Elisa Betancourt, and she did not respond to my twinquiry about whether she knew something, or whether her post was some strange coincidence.

Anway, here was 'the moment'... Click on the image to make it bigger, I can't figure out how to enlarge it.

lean on me

2009-03-18T20:00:00.000-07:00

Below is the home page of our Web site, right now. That's the company CEO, leaning on my desk. I am proud to note two exclusive stories on the page, too. My team broke the stories on the Web today, even as their worlds shook.

(If you click on the homepage, it gets a little bigger. Not sure why it's so small.)

it's like this...

2009-03-16T21:10:00.000-07:00

When I was young, newspapers had a lot of luxuries, like writing coaches. Ours was Lucille DeView, and I learned a lot from her. One thing she encouraged us to do was to teach each other. So I put together a little program on similes and metaphors.

I played a musical montage of lyrics with figures of speech (Rickie Lee Jones: "Eddie's got one crazy eye that turns him into a cartoon when a pretty girl walks by...") And I put together a list of writing from our own paper using enough similes and metaphors to... well, insert your own here.

The people who wrote these things were my co-workers. They were my inspiration. And they are the people now watching, from the inside or the outside, the demise of our industry (but not our craft).

"She made the mistake of having the baby at lunchtime, when traffic through El Toro was slower than a broken-legged Beagle."
-- Nicole Brodeur
"Much of Orange County watched with horror as flames two stories high marched over the hillsides, swallowing houses, schools, businesses -- eating up a seaside village and spitting out charred dreams."
-- Tracy Weber
"Leaves seem to have fallen from some impressionist painting onto the lobby's sofa and chairs, all wispy greens and blues sewn together with salmon."
-- Teri Sforza
"Illegally graded land pocks these canyons like rust on an old pickup."
-- Chris Knap
"Jay Kim is bidding for re-election to Congress with a collection of political headaches that would make Job feel like Little Mary Sunshine."
-- Gary A. Warner
"The other repair orders read like a military cadence: right doors; left-rear door; right mirror; left door; left door; right fender well; right-side doors; left-front door and fender. Two weeks ago she again reported damage to the right-front door of her 1992 Chrysler."
-- Chris Knap
"Today's plating industry is as clean as June Cleaver's kitchen compared with the old days."
-- Alina Tugend
"The interviewer looked again at her resume and discovered she was from California. His smile shriveled like a sun-dried tomato. His eyes turned to slits."
-- Nicole Brodeur
"We lean on elbows out of the vestibule of the train like happy dogs in a convertible, letting the wind massage our faces and the low subarctic sun warm our noses."
-- Laura-Lynne Powell
"Pounding at the bridge in giant jackhammer style, Grahm in 10 minutes had punched a hole in the surface big enough to sink an Oldsmobile. Below, concrete chunks as small as car radio knobs and as large as a Volkswagen Beetle rained onto the closed freeway."
-- Andrew Horan
"Designed in the 1940s, Viking's heat-fired presses -- which operate something like a waffle iron -- convert orange puttylike slabs of silicon to delicate yet resilient seals."
-- Elliot Blair Smith
"Far Eastern trade washes into the hulking twin ports of San Pedro Bay like a great foamy tide, each year swelling higher than the last."
-- Elliot Blair Smith
"But, if the reader considers this book a box of Christmas chocolates, the nice, soft ones with the gooey caramel centers will more than make up for the ones with banal fruit flavoring."
-- Steve Eddy
"Even folks who try to help me give up when they realize how little I comprehend. It would be like trying to teach someone to drive and you're explaining how to shift gears and parallel park and then you set out on the road for the first time and the person you're teaching says, `OK, where do I sit?' "
-- Martin J. Smit h
"Aerobics without strength training is like a shoe without a lace. It's only half of what you need to get the job done."
-- Michelle Nicolosi
"Like an odd slice of yin and yang, the new temple on Magnolia Avenue will be a mix of practical needs and traditional panache: 84 parking spaces, green roofs with curved eaves, a six-foot wall to contain noise and a 20-foot-tall ceremonial archway."
-- Mike Gordon
"Flames took to the brush Tuesday like a stray dog takes to a plate of food. A plume of smoke rose 500 feet into the hills seven miles northwest of San Juan Capistrano."
-- Mike Gordon
"The Mexican peso could soar like a mariachi's trumpet if Congress ratifies the North American Free Trade Agreement. But the currency could strike a sour note should NAFTA collapse."
-- Elliot Blair Smith
"She gazes out into the deep, cool sea, where the sun has cut a path of light that seems to end at the patio door. The sky is streaked like a mad painter's palette -- gray, pink, red, yellow."
-- Katie Hickox
"Most of the test, which costs $20 to take, remains eerily familiar. In fact, the new SAT is to the old SAT as -- well, as a recurring nightmare is to the last time you had it."
-- Dan Froomkin
"Fast cars intrude on the suburban tract like denim cutoffs at the opera."
-- Ricky Young
"Expiration of the law could hit cash-strapped local police departments like a financial kidney punch -- in 1992 alone, the state poured $8.5 million in forfeited cash into Orange County agencies, second only to Los Angeles' $14.3 million."
-- Tracy Weber
"Some investments are like marriage -- relatively easy to get into, but expensive to leave."
-- Liz Pulliam
"Emma is built like a bouncer, drives a cab, and, when her hands are free of manhandling detractors, drinks great quantities of malt liquor."
-- Elliot Blair Smith
"Below our feet, like a compass point, the wind has carved an arc in the sand with the tip of a spiky grass plant."
-- Laura Saari

meerkat manners

2009-03-14T22:42:00.001-07:00

I just noticed this photo my daughter took at the zoo. Eerie how emotive it is, the little meerkats huddled together, holding hands, their chins up in the warm glow of hope. Click on it if you want to see it bigger, it is something.

That's my daughter's high-top reflected in the upper left corner, as she was taking this photo through the plexiglass of their incubated little enclosure.

better than '92 anyway

2009-03-12T19:28:00.000-07:00

A new Field Poll shows Californians are not as wild about California as they once were, which I suppose is not surprising considering the general state of things. My newspaper saw this as all bad news, saying, "California has declined steadily in the estimation of its residents."

Being an optimist, I found positive news in this. I looked at the Field research, and 2009 is not as bad as 1992 was. Back then, 15 percent of respondents saw the state as a poor place to live. Now it's only 9 percent. Back then, 33 percent saw California as one of the top places to live, now it's a healthy 41 percent of residents (including me).

In a world where report after report finds things the worst they've been since the Dawn of Man, I find it comforting that my neighbors have a more positive outlook than they did in 1992.

in a dependent clause lede,

2009-03-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

Newspaper ledes with a common structure proliferated in the LA Times in 1995 -- at least, that's when I noticed it most. Each story started with a dependent clause. Sometimes, it would be every story on a section cover. I started collecting them, and turned them into a poem of sorts. Compiled this way, they show something dramatic -- it's hard to tell what the story is about when it starts with a dependent clause. Wasted words, some editors would call them. But in some cases, they do get the imagination going.

In 1976,
In Texas,
For once,
Until now,
In retrospect,
Through it all,
A few years ago,
In one big swoop,
Across the nation,
When you wear one,
By a lopsided margin,
In a stunning admission,
After a year of fumbling,
On that gray winter's day,
Sometime earlier this year,
After decades of searching,
Like surfers and firefighters,
In an unusually harsh action,
Close by the Statue of Liberty,
With one of their lot seriously ill,
At Tampa's WFLA radio station,
As a soldier in the National Guard,
After more than 70 hours of talks,
Just before shipping out to Bosnia,
A glass of Chardonnay in his hand,
At 5 feet, 7 inches and 127 pounds,
With Democrats joining Republicans,
Trying to close their case with a bang,
Joining other major Hollywood studios,
Echoing the views of people nationwide,
Tooling around in her Jaguar convertible,
Eager to save money and avoid duplication,
If there was one thing Pete Wilson could do,
With a prophet's rebuke and a pastor's heart,
During the Mexican film industry's golden age,
Since being diagnosed as a manic depressive,
Late to a sales appointment Thursday morning,
In a gilded room of the French presidential palace,
As they meet this week at an Air Force base in Ohio,
In interviews with California Highway Patrol investigators,
Over the vehement objections of O.J. Simpson's lawyers,
Driving home the severity of Orange County's bankruptcy,
In a world where everybody's looking to save his own skin,
Amid stacks of legal papers, books, and school documents,
Clad in filthy overalls instead of his trademark khaki uniform,
In by far the largest case of mass censorship involving the Internet,
As it seeks to place a campaign reform initiative on next year's ballot,
As she was wheeled down Disneyland's Main Street on Wednesday,
In what was billed as their first appearance together since they left power,
As a white male growing up in the predominantly white community of Irvine,
Bringing one of history's most riveting courtroom dramas to a stunning climax,
In the latest of a string of mega-mergers transforming the entertainment world,
Endorsing a popular public health measure shadowed by lingering controversy,
In a parting gesture of support for Orange County's sheriff and district attorney,
In a sign that Orange County's commercial real estate market is gaining strength,
In an apparent repudiation of one of his Administration's central legislative efforts,
After a summer of debate over whether to allow year-round surfing at the beaches,
In a day that began with hope, soared to elation and then ended with shock and sorrow,
When the Ritters bought their spacious four-bedroom house on Fairgreen Drive 17 years ago,
With the golden fruit that gave Orange County its name rapidly disappearing from the landscape,
When the Coast Highway was still a footpath and Laguna Canyon Road a dusty, one-lane thoroughfare,
When scientists concluded the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station was destroying massive numbers of fish and kelp,
Enjoying a hero's welcome at her elementary school -- which included a thrilling police car ride, media interviews and the cheers of hundreds of her classmates --

3 evils of partial quotes

2009-03-08T11:16:00.000-07:00

I have rediscovered Don Fry on the web. Don was a Poynter Institute writing guru whose advice was freely dispensed by Lucille DeView, the late writing coach who inspired me at The Orange County Register.

I wrote Don with a problem:

Dear Don,

I discovered your blog today (thanks to Twitter!), and it's good to see your advice flowing on the Internet. I am a former 'student' of Lucille DeView from The Orange County Register, and she shared much of your advice in my formative years as a journalist.

I saw your posts on dashes and question leads, and I wanted to ask if you could take on another topic: partial quotes. They drive me crazy. But I have a hard time convincing my reporters that there's anything wrong with them. One reporter on my team is particularly enamored of them, and my plea to cut back on them resulted in an increase in their use. I'm not seeking management advice, although it seems I could use it, just some ammunition in the battle against partial quotes.

To me, they promulgate at least three evils. One, they change voice in the middle of a sentence, sometimes twice. Two, they erode our credibility, as people wonder what we left out of the quote. And three, they are a crutch that belittles the importance of selecting quotations. If you cherry pick three to five words from quotations routinely, you're not going through the important exercise of picking and using the best full quotes for the right reasons.

Thanks for listening, I'll watch your blog for an answer.

Ricky

He answered me with a brief note and a blog post. It contains what I remember about Don, which is good advice for writers.

your phone is wringing

2009-03-04T21:02:00.000-08:00

Newsless.org had a piece today praising the new media for how they handle corrections, and criticizing the old media.

It goes like this: When the new media makes a change from an original posting, they correct it publicly, leaving a trail behind to disclose what the post said originally. When the old media makes a mistake, they don't. They often handle this by posting a list of corrections somewhere other than the initial post.

This is an oversimplification, and gives the new media too much credit.

For instance, a local online-only news site here in San Diego posted a chart that had a key figure that was $90 million off. A few hours later, it was fixed, with no notation. Only when a reader commented on the surreptitious change did the web site add an inobtrusive footnote fessing up to the original mistake. (The reader noted that the web site had recently criticized the local old media outlet for making a change without noting it.)

Today, that Web site did it again. It posted a story about an award earned by one of its reporters. One of the editors was praising her hard work, and he wrote, "Her keyboard's always clacking. Her phone's always wringing." I read it, and wondered if this was an intentional misspelling. After all, the reporters I work with are often wringing their phones. But when I got home tonight, the sentence had the more conventional spelling, with a "ringing" phone.

I was disappointed. The pun was gone, and the after-the-fact correction was not disclosed.

Do I care if an editor goes in and corrects something like this with no notation? Not really. I'm not sure I understand the ethic that requires public flagellation for a mistake. But those who preach this asceticism should probably practice it.

-30-

2009-02-27T10:48:00.000-08:00

transparency indeed

2009-02-26T10:38:00.001-08:00

I was copied on a "letter to the editor" sent today to Voice of San Diego by activist Ian Trowbridge... I don't see it on their site yet, but sometimes I have a hard time finding things there.

Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009 | The Voice has recently been congratulating itself as a new model for the delivery of news to the public by a nonprofit internet organization that is being replicated across the country. It is indeed true that the Voice has introduced a new form of competition for the dissemination of local news that has stimulated other news outlets to respond. In general, the Voice's reporting has been accurate and uninfluenced by the editorial positions of the outlet just as it should be. As a national nonprofit model, however, the Voice, could improve its own transparency by providing a link to a list of their donors and the amounts they have contributed. I speak as a donor myself and don't necessarily believe the Voice editorial positions are influenced by efforts not to offend major donors. However, that bias is a potential problem not encountered by a for profit newspapers such as CityBeat, the Union-Tribune and the Reader. I also want to encourage more competition of news dissemination in the San Diego market not less so I reject the idea that the Voice has higher ethical standards because it is a nonprofit. So, I repeat, allow the public to have easy access to your donors for the sake of the transparency you expect from local government so they can reach their own conclusions about the factors that have influenced the latest editorial blast.

old media, my foot

2009-02-24T21:56:00.000-08:00

I am a numbers fiend, something not all that common in journalism. If you doubt this, you can ask anyone on my staff, past or present. I am also a bit competitive, about certain things. So I was more than a little interested to find the site compete.com. For free, this site runs some kind of analytics, and gives you a (very specific) estimate of site traffic for up to three sites at a time.

I ran our numbers, and it looks like our "newspaper Web site," SignOnSanDiego.com, is doing fine. To say we're dominant in the local Web market is a wild understatement. Add up the monthly traffic for five TV sites, two competing print sites and a local Web news site, and we have more traffic than all the others put together (for January, the most recent data available).

One thing that irritates me in the new media/old media polemic is, it ignores the fact that we in the old media are present in the new media. Well, we are:

I have blogged lately about a non-profit site called Voice of San Diego and the national attention it's getting as the future of journalism. I have to tell you, I couldn't get the Google app I used to build this chart to break out the Voice's numbers, they're so low. (That's why I included the spreadsheet, too.) Also, it should be noted, our page views grew 18.6 percent from January 2008 to January 2009, while theirs fell 8.1 percent.

There may be some issue with these numbers, and I don't mean to misuse them. I'm just trying to put things in perspective, and to speak up for the idea that we do new media, too. The problem, of course, is that these Web efforts have been supported by a print model that's not paying the bills like it once did. But I look at this pie, and I think, somehow we should be able to cook up a future.

twisting twords

2009-02-19T23:40:00.001-08:00

A twit is an insignificant or bothersome person, and for that reason alone, I stayed off Twitter for a long time. I was unaware that twitter meant "to utter a succession of small, tremulous sounds, as a bird." Now I know, and I'm on Twitter.

A couple of weeks ago, the Web site went through the "twestival" season, which seemed to involve efforts to meet each other in the real world. What annoyed me was, the twisting of language that proliferated in notices about the events. I meant to collect instances, and write about them. Now, the ValleyWag blog has beat me to it with a post entitled "Twitter's Evil Plot to Destroy the English Language" [Tagged 'shut up, Twitter.'] I was alerted to this blog post by a tweet (not a twit, mind you) with the catchy phrase 'no twanks.'

I have decided there is still twime for me to write about this phenomenon.

The most basic of these involve people addressing each other as tweeps or tweeple or tweople or (frowned upon) twollowers. This is common in the twitterverse.

Many on Twitter want to stake out definitions of their made-up words. There are several competing efforts to define twolls.

People seem to enjoy the word play: "I love Twitterspeak. I love the fact that all the tweeple at the twestival bought tickets in a twaffle, for example :-)" (Not sure why they didn't buy twickets.)

Then there are tweird people like this sombrero-topped guy. Thoughtful word play arises, like 'twink twank.' And people write parodies: "Think I might sit at home and watch TweeVee. Or read a Twook. Or Tweat Twinner Twand Two Two Twed."

Generally, I suppose I agree with @izs, who tweeted, "I'm over the tw* twitter naming phenomenon. It's twawful. Please twop it. Twight twow. Tworst tweme twever."

But I would add one specific plea -- don't explain the play on words. If it has to be explained, it's no good. Too many people write "how's the tweather? Get it, Twitter weather?" or somesuch. They will use some of their precious 140 characters to explain that Tworld=Twitter world. Or they will write about twitter twaffic, when they really should just say twaffic. Isn't that the point of a contraction?

Each user should obviously decide twhere and twhen to use these twords. Let them. As for me, I'm not twicklish and I don't want any twouble.

(Is it twover yet?)

to the victor

2009-02-19T20:49:00.000-08:00

Through the wonders of social media, I learned about the echidna today. I posted this video on my Facebook page. So happens, someone in the PR department of the San Diego Zoo is a friend of mine on Facebook. She saw the video, and posted this:

Did you know Victor the echidna is the oldest mammal at the Zoo? He has been at the Zoo since 1956 and is more than 50 years old! :)

I have seen Victor many times, as he is in the children's area of the zoo, where I spend a fair amount of time. And I never knew this about Victor, because this fact is not on the sign posted by his enclosure (nor is his name, I think). It took me a few visits, I think, even to realize he was not a porcupine.

A college classmate of mine also posted a little something, a pretty groovy song called Echidna's Arf (of You) by Frank Zappa. Never would have heard of it. Liked it.

And, as I sat down to post this, my 9-year-old saw the word echidna, and he remembered Echidna from his mythology books. I guess Echidna was the mother of all monsters, a character that Zeus allowed to reproduce so that her monstrous offspring could go on challenging heroes.

No offense, Victor.

pretty hot

2009-02-18T09:24:00.000-08:00

The LATimes has weighed in on the Voice of San Diego, a local Web site that I blogged about before. Here's to Jim Rainey, for capturing what's going on there without the requisite slams on the newspaper (and my employer), The San Diego Union Tribune.

My one complaint would be, Jim's column was not open for comments, which I have come to really enjoy as a way to see how people react to a story.

At the Voice of San Diego, the comments were open -- sort of. They don't allow comments on most of their stories, but they do allow them on their Letters to the Editor. Someone wrote a letter about the U-T, and a reader who identified herself as Michelle Meckel hopped on and said:

Voice of San Diego writers can barely disguise its glee as its pseudo-reporters breathlessly report the slow, spiraling demise of the Union-Tribune. You dudes think you're pretty hot after the New York Times blew up your already inflated egos. Go ahead and wallow in this perverse little pleasure. When the Union-Tribune is sold and gutted, journalism as a whole will be diminished. You guys are young and cocky and full of bullshit. You're also vain to think you will ever match the journalistic might of a vibrant daily newspaper in its prime. Your website will be matched and exceeded by smarter, better funded competitors. But go ahead and feel superior, dudes. You think you are rock stars for exposing one minor scandal involving South East Development Corp., an agency that really didn't affect anyone's life. Oh,sorry, maybe you should nominate yourself for a Pulitzer for that.

(For the record, I think they have nominated themselves.)

Is Meckel being a little harsh? I believe so, having met these guys. (They certainly deserve credit for posting her comment. Unlike ours, their comments are screened before posting.) My beef is more with the national onslaught of one-sided coverage for their efforts, and again, I think Rainey turned that around. I would just like to note something, for what it's worth. I have my Google Alerts and rss feeds and Twitter all rigged to notify me about everything that moves mentioning San Diego. But how did I find Rainey's column? Turning pages in my home-delivered LA By God Times.

voice of the future?

2009-02-09T20:52:00.000-08:00

Today is the fourth anniversary of Voice of San Diego, a local news Web site here that celebrated the occasion by adding fireworks to its masthead for the day.

This nonprofit Web site has become a well-publicized poster child for the survival of news, featured today on the NPR show "On Point." This follows appearances and mentions on NPR's "On the Media," on the World Editors Forum blog, on OJR, and (in print) on the front page of The New York Times.

The Web site strives for investigative journalism, and has had success. One example that is mentioned often is a story the site broke last summer, a good get about an obscure bureaucrat giving herself substantial bonuses.

What's unfortunate is, much of the coverage of the site has come at the expense of the local paper (and my employer), The San Diego Union-Tribune. Some of the swipes are oblique ("If there is one storyline that sums up why we exist, it is because investigative journalism on a very local level isn't being done.") Some are more pointed. ("We used to get happy and excited when we scooped the Union-Tribune. But they've lost so many of their strong reporters and editors, now it's just sad to see what's happening. I think they're particularly bad at a particularly bad time.") Some of this, I'm sure, they're goaded into by interviewers seeking to exploit conflict.

I would just like to note, we still do investigative journalism at the U-T. Some that have impressed me lately are this story from Sunday, about a post-wildfire debris removal contractor whose records didn't match the haul in a single instance... And this one from the Sunday before, about the city giving breaks to a marathon that's not so nonprofit.

(Hear me on the air with a Voice of San Diego editor, Scott Lewis. ...)

taxpayer bonfire

2009-02-05T06:53:00.000-08:00

The Orange County Register's excellent OCWatchdog blog has a new post about freeway art that I covered when I wrote the traffic column there (still has the name, Honk). The art panels have apparently fallen into serious disrepair.

This all could have been avoided if anyone had listened to then-Costa Mesa Councilwoman Sandy Genis.

After the OC went bankrupt in December 1994, she thought spending $1.3 million on art panels to make freeway sound walls look better was a waste of government money.

Everyone said, it's federal money, has nothing to do with the local bankruptcy. And the feds require it to be spent on "transportation enhancements" -- not anything completely necessary. She didn't buy that, and she gave me a series of really good quotes. I overused them for my column, and I'll overuse them for this blog post.

That's like a family _ you have a kid dying of some horrible disease, and you've spent all of your medical budget. And you look and you say, 'We haven't touched our entertainment budget, so we'll go ahead and go to the movies and let the kid die! '

We all have to stand up and say, 'This is pretty frivolous,' If they were going to have a big bonfire with our dollars, would we volunteer to have it here instead of San Bernardino?

Genis was trying to get her city to sit out the mural project, but they went head and put their hands in for the money anyway.

"If they're determined to go ahead with it, we wanted to send in our list," Councilwoman Mary Hornbuckle said.

At the time, I was told it was a $1.3 million project. Now they're telling OCWatchdog that it was $956,000. Does anyone really believe the price went down?

dammit, how can I help?

2009-01-31T16:45:00.000-08:00

Four years ago, reporter Ron Powell featured an 86-year-old woman who was an active volunteer at the food bank in San Diego.

Four years later, the economy was a lot worse, and things got a lot worse for Josephine Cooper. In short, she lost her house and is fighting cancer. Ron did what reporters who understand their community do -- he wrote about her plight.

Reader comments rolled in.

jeez, louise, the story made me shed a tear. what a lovely story. i'm reaching out to help this wonderful woman.

i just called the SD Food Bank and spoke to a wonderful woman, sylvia. granma cooper's story makes me take stock of what i have. some of us are fortunate and we still complain. i'm sending a check today.

The first story I wrote in professional journalism was about a woman, about the same age. She was out tending to her honeysuckle one day when she was approached by two men concerned about the condition of her roof. They told her it needed a sealant. They applied one (cheap house paint) and charged her $1,500 for it. The day the story ran in the Local section of the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, warning readers of such scams, an anonymous donor contributed ... $1,500. The woman was made whole. (Marie Houck, I think her name was, although this was 20 years ago and it's not in the computer archive).

When San Diego cut funding for its beachside firepits, we singled out the budget cut for a front page story. A donor stepped forward, with a lot more money than $1,500.

One thing a newspaper does very well, still, is rally the community. It's something a blog (even one with my robust site traffic) can't do.

In the newsroom, we have a little coffee room with more brews and flavors and niceties than any newsroom java corner I've ever experienced. Half the revenue covers the coffee, the other half goes to charity. I'm drinking a little more than usual this month (if you know me, that's hard to believe). Because the people who run the coffee bar have decided, this month's charity will be Josephine Cooper.

PR on blogs

2009-01-28T22:18:00.000-08:00

So I got to wondering who is this Jessica Love, posting messages "on behalf of the DMV" when a San Diego blogger complained about long lines. It appears she also posts messages on blogs "on behalf of the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality District."

She seems to be attached to Katz & Associates, headquartered here in San Diego with offices in Orange County and Sacramento and Seattle. The firm is "ready to help with your communication needs, whether a stand alone project or ongoing program."

Here is a little bit of their strategy on PR-ing on blogs (see page 3 of Katz Konnection):

Step 1: Finding and monitoring blogs

The first step to entering the blogosphere is simply to read a blog. There are a number of resources that can help you find blogs on particular topics. The most popular blog search engine is Technorati.com, which easily identifies the most popular blogs of the day on its home page. You can also use the search feature to find blogs on the topics you are interested in. Other blog search engines include IceRocket.com, BlogPulse.com and Blogsearch.Google.com.

One of the easiest ways to keep updated on blogs that cover your organization or project is to set up a Google Alert at google.com/alerts, which will send e-mail updates when it finds blog entries with your search criteria.

Once you have found the blogs that cover your topic area, read them regularly and see what they say. There may be an opportunity for you to respond to a blog with your organization or project’s key messages, either to balance the coverage or to get stories out about your organization or project in a positive way. You may also contact bloggers and let them know that you can be a resource on certain topics.

The Katz Konnection goes on to offer advice for "Step 2: Making Sense of Blogs" and "Step 3: Try out your own blog (after thoughtful consideration)" [emphasis added]. The printed newsletter does not appear to have been published since summer 2008.

I wonder if my mention of the DMV will bring forth a comment on my blog, which might well be the first!

love, jessica

2009-01-28T12:30:00.001-08:00

So a local blogger goes to the San Diego DMV and experiences what everyone experiences there -- long lines. He photographs the line, and blogs about it. Someone claiming to represent the DMV posts on his blog, in a style that certainly sounds like the DMV:

Dear blogger,

We recently came across your post addressing your experience with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, and we wanted to respond to you directly and provide you with a timely resource for DMV related information. One of the best ways you can learn more about the DMV, its new services and how to get answers is to visit the DMV Web site, www.dmv.ca.gov.

We noticed that you shared DMV related information with your readers. It’s important for California drivers to be aware of DMV services, so we thank you for sharing this information. We’d like to assist you should you choose to share additional information with your readers, so please remember that you can come to us as a resource.

If you’d like to learn more information or have any questions about how we can help, please feel free to send an email to askdmv@dmv.ca.gov or visit the DMV Web site at www.dmv.ca.gov. Thank you!

Sincerely,

Jessica Love
On behalf of the California DMV

Of course, had Jessica Love bothered to read the blog post, she would have seen Justin's actual problem and she could have offered an actual solution -- next time, make an appointment. After driving by several times and seeing the line in San Diego *never goes down,* I made an appointment, and things went pretty well.

pocketbook journalism

2009-01-17T20:21:00.001-08:00

Ever since I saw my friend Teri's blog post and my newspaper's computer-assisted report on errors with price scanners, I have tried to pay closer attention at checkout.

In order to do this, I would like to take this common-sense step: quickly look over the receipt before signing the credit-card slip. But here is the problem I have noticed, since Teri and Eleanor raised my awareness: They want me to sign the credit card slip *before* they will hand me the receipt. I have noticed this at Ralps, Vons and (tonight) Alberston's. (It's Joe Alberstson's supermarket, but the receipt isn't your until you sign the slip.)

I have noticed this peripherally, a time or two, thinking -- shouldn't I get to see what I've been charged for my items *before* I sign away the money? But there's really no way to review the receipt before you sign the slip without becoming a ... problem.

My friend Ted used to call me Joe Crank, customer relations nightmare. Tonight, I guess, I lived up to it.

For the record, the item I wanted to question was charged correctly tonight. Usually, it is. The trick is lining up the items you might question with the ones that really are wrong. Maybe not worth it, after all.

piering out

2009-01-15T16:14:00.000-08:00

Former colleagues of mine (Donna Wares, Val Cohen & Kate Cohen) have started up a great site about Seal Beach, calling it the Seal Beach Daily. Headlines are community paper staples like "Weekend stick up in Seal Beach" and "Middle School band plays Disneyland." It's clean and clearly tailored specifically to the community it serves. And it also gets a nice community flavor from real display ads from local coffee houses and such.

Compare their site to the metro newspaper site serving the same area. You can see the problem big papers have connecting with small communities.

Seal Beach has a great little paper, the Sun, that I read religiously when I lived there. Its police blotter provided regular fodder for Steve Harvey's Only in LA column in the LATimes. Oddly, the Sun has no online presence at all (Dennis!). Here's hoping Donna, Kate & Val can fill the void.

keep those cards and...

2009-01-14T20:02:00.000-08:00

I love the Letters to the Editor. I can't tell you how many times I have, as a reporter, relied on the letters to find sources of indignation and outrage -- and as an editor, how many times I have sent reporters to the same well. Letter-writers are a visceral expression of *what people think* and, like journalists, they are now migrating to blogs and story comments and what have you. I follow them there, too. If we as journalists rely too heavily on official sources, or consider ourselves above the "man on the street," we err. A recent story in my local zone section showed the pitfalls of this, quoting a lot of officials and people involved in organizing a road project, all agreeing with each other that it was a success. Then came the Letter to the Editor:

A dissenting opinion on Bird Rock roundabouts

Not everyone is thrilled with the roundabouts in Bird Rock (“Now-popular roundabouts took a difficult path | Structures benefit La Jolla Boulevard,” Our San Diego, Dec. 19). You neglect to mention the numerous retailers and restaurants that closed or went out of business during construction, comments from business owners who are still there but barely hanging on, and some mention of the fender benders the roundabouts have caused.

Currently, shrubbery camouflages pedestrians who are in danger of being hit by cars, and the “bicycle lanes” are extremely hazardous to bicyclists.

It is a shame that over $5 million was squandered on these roundabouts. The only real beneficiary was the Seahaus developer.

It is truly unfortunate that this project is being touted as a “showcase” to persuade other communities to squander their dwindling funds on what will eventually prove to be a losing proposition.

MARTY BLOOM
La Jolla

I confess, I drive this road every day. It requires me to slow down, almost to a stop, several times to negotiate the new "roundabouts." I think of the emissions belched out for my slowing and re-accelerating, multiplied by so many motorists, and I think of Marty Bloom. And I wish that, in San Diego, we had something like the old tradition in Nashville. Every year, the newspaper gathered its Letter to the Editor writers for a banquet, to thank them. Some on staff found it corny, but I never missed, and I enjoyed it every time.

now i know what #that is

2009-01-13T11:34:00.000-08:00

Thank you to Jennifer Peebles for explaining Twitter hashtags to me, as follows:

I couldn't understand hashtags for the life of me, either, but once I figured it out, I thought it was great.

hashtags are a way for people Twittering in public (unlike my personal Tweets, which are protected) to group tweets by subject.

This easier to explain via an example.

we asked people to start using the #txlege hashtag whenever they tweeted about the legislature. Everytime we wrote about the legislature, we put #txlege in the message (usually at the beginning, sometimes at the end). The Austin paper's leading political writer picked it up, and the libertarian thinktank has done so, too.

So now, you can search all of Twitterverse for the phrase "#txlege" and you will see all the tweets about the texas legislature. No matter who they are from, or what time of day they came from, and no matter whether you know or "follow" the Twitter-er.

Same with the House speaker's race here. We created #txspkr for it, and people started tweeting with #txspkr when they wrote about it.

You can go to http://hashtags.org and see more hashtags in action.

There's #tcot, which is for conservatives tweeting on pro-conservative stuff
There's #coalash, which The Tennessean and others are using for tweets on the East TN TVA coal-ash spill
We are also going to use #txfoi, about Texas Freedom of Information issues.

You could create a #sdcity hashtag for people who are tweeting about San Diego city government, for instance.

funnier from afar

2009-01-10T21:13:00.001-08:00

i interviewed george carlin once. what amazes me is, how long the link has lasted. sometimes it get redesigned.

why shouldn't blagojevich appoint a senator?

2009-01-05T11:23:00.000-08:00

what's unclear to me is, why shouldn't blagojevich appoint a senator? he hasn't even been indicted yet. we had a cluster of legislators indicted in the operation tennessee waltz sting in nashville, and they performed their duties for months. they were accused of following through on bribery, not just talking about it...

welcome

2009-01-02T21:32:00.001-08:00

This is my new blog. Mostly, I wanted to create it to have a clearinghouse for things I have been sharing on Twitter and Google Reader. Those links appear below.

Forum Banquet offers 'star' readers a chance to interact

2004-05-01T20:12:00.000-07:00

The Tennessean
May 1, 2004

By ANDY HUMBLES
Staff Writer

They are the newspaper's most voracious readers and vocal contributors - the proud, the inspired, the outraged.

They are the writers of the "three-star" letters to the editor, recognized every day on The Tennessean editorial page - and celebrated last night at the newspaper's annual Three-Star Forum Banquet.

The Tennessean held its 65th banquet at the Millennium Maxwell House Hotel, honoring three-star writers for the past year, and giving them each a chance to speak out at the microphone for one minute.

The Forum Banquet is an old-fashioned tradition that's new again as media analysts suggest that connecting with the community could be a key to survival of the newspaper industry.

The event also makes news. Big names like Ronald Reagan have delivered the keynote speech. And last night's speech was by Police Chief Ronal Serpas. (See related story, Page 8A.)

If the lecturer of the evening doesn't stir controversy, the other speakers - the letter writers themselves - are sure to stir it.

"It's an interesting spirit when a person goes for the first time," said Milt Herring, a repeat winner and banquet guest. "Particularly the one-minute spiel."

The "one-minute spiel" is the signature event of the Forum Banquet, which is usually attended by 150 to 200 of the three-star writers.

After the meal and the keynote speech, each writer has the opportunity to speak about whatever they desire. Some come prepared while some make "game-time decisions," as invitee Stan Scott put it.

"I do like to listen to the speeches," said Scott, a multiple three-star winner this year who also has experienced several past Forum Banquets. "Someone who writes letters (to the editor) has an agenda. But it's a pleasant evening."

The Tennessean began awarding the three-star letters in 1938, and the first banquet was held in 1939. It has been held each year since then, with the exception of 1945, when it was scratched during World War II.

"From our point of view, it's a way to say thank you to people who play an invaluable role to our newspaper," said Sandra Roberts, managing editor for opinion. "They don't work for us. We can't give them a raise. But we can bring them together and say thank you."

Lynnell Burkett of the San Antonio Express News, who is president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, thinks there are some variations of such a banquet at papers across the country - but not on the scale of The Tennessean's.

"Letter writers are among the most loyal readers," Burkett said. "Honoring them recognizes this form of writing. It's also a way to draw people in and make a personal connection with readers."

One newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, used to hold a comparable event, but it ended in 2000 after five or six years, said Dodie Hofstetter, Voice of People editor at the Tribune. Hofstetter said the banquet was discontinued because of budget reasons.

"I thought it was just a wonderful chance to meet face to face those we interact with, some almost on a daily basis," Hofstetter said. "I know people here loved it."

Frank Sutherland, The Tennessean's editor and senior vice president for news, said the Forum Banquet had continued through tough budget times "not because we have 'always done it,' but because we think it is one of the best things we do outside the newspaper to interact with readers."

Karen Helgesen, a three-star winner who attended the forum for the third time, said her conservative letters are an important counterpoint to the official editorials.

"It makes you feel your voice is being heard, and not just The Tennessean's," she said.

Roberts estimates that about 60% of published letters are liberal and about 40% conservative, which she says represents the paper's readership.

The Readership Institute, a think tank at Northwestern University that studies newspapers to find new ways they can get more readers, has no specific data measuring the relationship between outreach and readership.

But Managing Director Mary Nesbitt says that how a newspaper relates to its community contributes to the perception people have of it.

"In that way, the outreach can enhance the newspaper's image or brand," Nesbitt said. "On the negative side, not having outreach or bad outreach is also going to affect what people think of you.

"The stories, the photos, the way you deal with me on the phone, the community events you support, the way you thank me for my participation - I would put the banquet in that last category - if those things give people a good feeling, they are more likely to talk about The Tennessean in a positive way, and that is the best marketing you get."

Human-rights advocates denounce radio contest

1990-10-30T17:13:00.000-08:00

October 30, 1990 Tuesday
BYLINE: Ricky Young, The Orange County Register

An Anaheim-based radio station has angered some human-rights advocates with a contest where the disc jockey calls a convenience store and listeners guess whether the clerk was born in the United States.

The game is called "Foreign or Domestic."

Chris Little, morning-show host for KEZY/95.9 FM, started running the contest in mid-September. He has given away Billy Idol concert tickets and "Tonight Show With Johnny Carson" tickets as prizes.

Little discounts criticism from human-rights advocates who say the game furthers racism in the county.

"That's their job to go out and look for that stuff," he said. "It's supposed to be a benign little game. People can sit down all day and read stuff into it."

Don Simmons, a board member for The Cambodian Family, a refugee support organization in Santa Ana, has read racism into the game.

He has complained to the station, stopped listening to it and called its advertisers to let them know the kind of contest the station is running.

"It's a tacit form of racism disguised as humor," he said.

Little said 30 to 40 people have won prizes through the game, which he plays about four times a week. He wants to keep playing despite Simmons' complaints, he said.

But Station Manager Peri Corso said the game might be called off during a general fine-tuning of programming this week. If the game stops, she said, it will not be the result of one man's complaints. The station will evaluate overall response to the game.

"No matter what you seem to do nowadays, it offends someone," she said. "But you have to go with the majority."

To play, Little gets a contestant on the line. He tells the caller what city the convenience store is in, and the caller makes his "Foreign or Domestic" guess.

He puts the caller on hold, calls the store and chats with the clerk. At the end of the chat, Little finds out where the clerk was born.

The caller wins if he guessed right.

Little said the game takes about three minutes. He said one time the game didn't work because the clerk didn't speak much English.

Simmons, who has heard the game played about 10 times during his commute, said he often gets the sense that Little is mocking people because they are foreign.

He told of one time when Little repeatedly asked a clerk where she was born. The woman was uncomfortable, Simmons said, probably because she lived in the country illegally. But Little asked her four times where she was born.

"I thought, give her a break, just stop," Simmons said. " 'Don't you know this isn't funny anymore?' "But Little said 40 percent of the clerks who answer are
American-born. And he said he makes fun of them, too.

"People have always made fun of 7-Elevens," he said.

Officials at the Orange County Human Relations Commission said they had received no calls about the game. But they said it sounded like it worked to divide people, not bring them together.

"That sounds extremely divisive," said Mary Ann Gaido, a human-relations specialist.

How should mistakes be fixed, once something is posted?
	1) ONLY major changes should be noted
	2) ANY change should be noted, for full transparency
	3) JUST fix the mistake, do you really think people are going to re-read it and wonder what happened?

pollcode.com free polls

How should mistakes be fixed, once something is posted?
	1) ONLY major changes should be noted
	2) ANY change should be noted, for full transparency
	3) JUST fix the mistake, do you really think people are going to re-read it and wonder what happened?

pollcode.com free polls