I just realized that tomorrow will mark a first for me. Not necessarily a good first either.

In a sidebar to a front-page story, my name will be on a story that bears an anonymous source. Not wholly anonymous — her first name and her relationship to a student at one of the schools is with it — but still anonymous to nearly everyone but me and the school all the same.

It has weighed on me much of the week. I cringe when I read newspapers and magazines that quote “a spokesman at the institute” or “a high level legislative aid” or whatever. And I turn down people who “don’t want to be quoted” several times a week because I can’t and won’t offer anonymity. So it was with unease that I even bridged the topic with my editor.

When I first talked to the woman, I wasn’t even sure I would use her. I seriously considered just not including it, just not even telling my editors I’d talked to her. I was prepared for my editors to say no, and that would be that and understandably so. She wouldn’t be part of my story at all.

But as I tried to find other sources who “would do,” the reality set in. Her ordeal was something we haven’t talked about before precisely because we haven’t had someone who went through it. It is something everyone wants to know about, something everyone is scared of and her family’s experience is something they all could learn from — and hopefully they will.

Man, I feel like there is so much weight riding on those seven inches. It’s crazy. I mean, tomorrow’s paper will be laid out tonight, printed and delivered by morning. By this time tomorrow it will be old news. Chances are, readers won’t blink an eye. But for me, this is a huge issue.

I trust my reporting. And I really do think the anonymity was the proper way to present it, for the child’s sake. I think Jan, my ethics prof, would be proud of how much I seriously thought this through. More than it probably deserves. But then, it’s my reputation and my paper’s credibility on the line when we choose to “protect the identity” of a source.

(And if I’m being vague, forgive me. I don’t talk about the specific stories I work on or my sources because I think that’s murky water. But this was an ethical inner-dilemma I felt I should document and learn from.)

“Journalism can never be silent: That is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.”
— Henry Anatole Grunwald

I am a horrible person. No really.

I understand the economics of newspaper publishing. I understand that the number of inches in my story is at the least indirectly related to the number of ads our reps can sell. I know that though we’re certainly not making a killing with our online advertising, anything we can do to draw more visitors’ eyeballs is much appreciated by our ad staff, who can hawk those page views to the highest bidder.

I don’t dwell on these things, but I do know they pay my salary, however meager it may seem. (It’s really not that low.)

And yet, I am a horrible person.

Why? Because the addition of one more set of ads was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. The in-text Vibrant Media ads (featured on, or rather within, news stories here, here, and here, to name a few) has pushed me to a place I’d long considered but held off on precisely because I know the the indirect correlation between these ads and my financial bottom line and therefore to my future.

But I couldn’t take it anymore. I put up an ad blocker on Firefox that means I’ll never see green again. Or at least, not until those pesky advertisers figure out a new way to annoy, err trick, me into seeing their wares.

There’s a lengthy Wall Street Journal story from Tuesday and shorter Business Week article this week discussing the green in-text ads that drove me to the ad blocker.

For an interesting take on this trend, read this blog post, which details the issue at the Indy Star. The comments are particularly interesting. He also has a follow-up post that’s equally worth your time. From the follow-up:

When online (Big Corporate Media) opts for the short-term revenue bump that these kinds of ads promise to provide, they’re being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Annoying readers is not a good way to increase traffic over the long run. Undermining the credibility of the news they provide diminishes the only product news organizations have to offer. And bilking advertisers with borderline click-fraud doesn’t seem likely to appeal to those advertisers in the long run either.

And all this says nothing of the ethics, which Paul Conley has more than beat dead in posts deriding the practice among B2B publishers.

For me, I’m less concerned about how these in-text ads might influence editorial copy (at least here, I’m confident the answer is it won’t). I am deeply concerned, however, with how this will impact the user experience.

First, it is annoying. It annoys and frustrates me when I highlight a paragraph and end up with a box blocking half the text I want to read or when an ad forces me to interact with it to shut off annoying sounds, animation or to get it out of my way. Though I surely spend more time with news Web sites than the average consumer, I also have a higher tolerance for these ads precisely because of what I said in my introduction, these pay my salary and salaries of my peers. I can’t imagine an annoyed reader is a happy reader, and unhappy readers will likely move on to another site that is less annoying.

Second, not all readers can tell the difference between these advertiser links and intentional links endorsed by the writer/news organization. Sure a green link with a double underline is obviously not the norm for a link, and the blue box does clearly indicate advertisement. But it’s still misleading. This also leaves out the potential for actual meaningful in-copy links, a la NYTimes linking to archived stories on major news topics or companies.

All of this isn’t to say advertising doesn’t have its place. It obviously does, both from my selfish desire to be paid to the need for businesses to reach customers and for consumers to find the items and services they need and want.

Online, I’m a huge fan of the Google text ads precisely because they are unobtrusive and usually relevant, neither of which the Vibrant Media ads can claim. I also don’t mind banner ads that fit in their rightful place, so to speak, stripped across the top, bottom or side of the page — as long as they don’t talk to me without asking first or send me into near seizures. To be honest, even video pre-roll ads and those splash-screen ads that jump up between links I click and stories I want to read don’t bother me, as long as they’re infrequent (maybe one per five or more stories?), and the larger display and captive audience on that page are probably more effective anyway.

I do wonder whether my turning to ad blocking programs is an ominous sign and yet another unneeded hurdle for newspapers to jump in the new media game. It’s so simple to do, why shouldn’t Web users install these ad blockers? If you annoy them enough or push them to their limits, they will.

It took about one minute for me to find the appropriate extension to nix the offending ads. I didn’t want to, but for my sanity — both as an annoyed reader and writer — I had to do it.

For my future? I hope the Internet and I, or more importantly other users, can come to some sort of understanding whereby advertisements and tolerance for them can peacefully and profitably co-exist. I just don’t think these in-text ads help that cause. If anything, they are giving it the middle finger.

I hadn’t heard about this before, but stumbled on it recently and spent an hour listening to Randy Pausch’s last lecture.

Pausch is a highly respected scholar in computer engineering/virtual reality, but he has terminal cancer and was given a few months to live. Seriously, his lecture about achieving your childhood dreams and basically how to live your life is worth listening to for anyone.

Here’s a story about the lecture from earlier this fall in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Here’s a short Wall Street Journal video story to give you a quick snynopsis of the lecture and its point:

The full video, I caught in 10-minute snippets on YouTube, but you can read the transcript, learn more about him or watch it in entirety at the Carnegie Mellon site.

There were a few lessons in particular that struck me from his lecture, but this one was my favorite:

“Brick walls aren’t there to keep us out. Brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop people who don’t want it bad enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”

Ponder that the next time you come upon something that seems impossible or really, really to the point of “is it even worth the effort?” hard. The next time you have an assignment or story you just can’t nail down, plug on and press harder. Prove every person who ever said you can’t, or doubted you would, do something wrong.

I went home this weekend to Akron for Thanksgiving. I’m working Christmas, so I don’t know when I’ll be home next, but likely not this year.

Good thing. It seemed everyone I talked to asked when I was coming home (as in, moving back to Ohio) or when I was moving on (as in, how long do you think you’ll actually stay at the paper? are you looking for another job yet?).

Woah, back up everybody.

I haven’t even been in my position a year. I’ve only just gotten familiar enough to not mapquest every place I need to be. I finally know the different school boards members and temperaments and the 30-some principals in this county by name and sight — and they know me! And I actually understand the issues (OK, most many? of the issues) driving things happening today.

I’m finally comfortable with where I fit in and what I should and can do here. And already, everybody wants to know what my next move is?

Why the rush?

As I was explaining to one of my friends (also a j-school grad) when we met up this weekend, I don’t really know for certain what my next move will be or even when. But now is definitely too soon. There’s still much for me to learn here. But as I always intended (yet apparently didn’t articulate well to anyone back home?), I’m going to play it by ear. I’ll just know when it’s time or when something too good to pass up comes along. I mean, sheesh! I started here on Martin Luther King Day. That’s mid-January, folks. As in, it hasn’t even been a year since graduation let alone starting my job. I’m still recovering from my last job hunt, and you all are ready to see what I’ll do next?

It kind of freaks me out how universal everyone’s assumption was that I am biding my time until I find something else. I’m not. Trust me. I wouldn’t have taken a job for that purpose. I didn’t. Yes, it’s Indiana. (But the city and people and paper are nice.) Yes, it’s only about 40,000 circulation. (But the push is for enterprise, and I’m being given opportunities I’d never get anywhere else, especially not at a larger organization.) Yes, it’s six hours from home, and nearly all my best friends are scattered far, far away. (This sucks, trust me I just got in from that drive and am not looking forward to an eight hour shift tonight coming off it, but I needed to move away and prove to myself I could.) But get this, I like it. As I told my grandma when the topic came up, I’m doing exactly what I thought I’d be doing and most of what I hoped I’d get to do — and more.

So everybody, calm down. I’m 22. Think about that. At a minimum, I’ll be working the next 50 years. I have plenty of time to see what’s out there. But in order to do whatever that “next” is well, I need a strong foundation. To get that, I need to take the time to develop and not rush and stumble along just because of others’ expectations for me.

“Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you’re at it.”
— Horace Greeley

“Journalism is literature in a hurry.”
— Matthew Arnold

This week when I was out giving my career presentation two things occurred that gave me hope for the printed page. Kind of.

I started the presentations by trying to engage the kids and ask whether they read the paper. I was surprised, no seriously caught off guard by the quantity of hands that shot up. I’d say 80 percent of the high school students had their hands up. I was unsurprised to learn many read the sports section first (and several exclusively). Nearly all said they read the local section, at least skimmed it. I’d guess that most skim most of the paper. But I was pretty surprised to learn they don’t read our entertainment and life sections at all. Not one of them admitted to reading TGIF, lots didn’t seem to know it existed. And this was a place that really is on the edge of our coverage area (i.e. not a mainstay of our beats/circulation) but where there is no other local paper. But still, I was a bit caught off when so many kids had their hands up.

The second thing that surprised me was from the substitute teacher who was proctoring in the room where I happened to be. I got there with about five minutes to spare before kids arrived. So we were talking about the paper. He was asking about news stories including the recent election, about our recent redesign, etc. He told me he reads the paper COVER to COVER every day. EVERY SINGLE DAY. He said he spends at least an hour and a half DAILY. Then, when he’s done, his wife reads it. And he moves on to do the same with the Indy Star, to which he also subscribes.

I was also shocked by this. I didn’t know people like that existed. Or that they still existed. No, that they ever existed. I mean, think about that. Two hours a day for him is not uncommon with the J&C. Then he reads the Star as well. He said, he’s retired, what else does he have to do? OK, I’m still kind of amazed these people exist.

Sadly, we didn’t get to talk about the Web site and more in-depth, because the kids started trickling in. But it was an interesting and eye-opening experience for me. As much emphasis as we put on the Web. How many people go through the Web site every day and read every single page? I don’t even think that is physically possible. Our links are ever-changing, our updates stale before they’d get back to square one. Plus all the evergreen databases and stories.

How can we get those kids to be as loyal as that retired engineer, who took up subbing just to fill the time? Whether they’re loyal to our print product or our Web site or our podcast or whatever. How do we continue to keep their attention and their enthusiasm for our product? I know this is an old argument, but it’s been on my mind since that day.

(BTW: The career presentation went so-so. The TV chick presenting after me had a game and free T-shirts for winners. Though I did laugh when she had to give them away to kids who couldn’t play along and name four anchors or four reporters at the station. Not that they could name four bylines in my paper. The difference is, we’d never be so pompous as to ask.)

Here’s an interesting, albeit it not journalism related, task that came up in a story today.

It was National Mix It Up at Lunch Day, a concept that intrigued me enough when I got the press release a few weeks back that I actually went out of my way to call the group behind it and inquire on what local schools might be participating. The idea was basically kids sit with people different from them for a day to break out of their comfort zone and maybe, who knows, learn a little tolerance or meet a new friend.

I went to a local middle school for lunch. Rather than just one day of mixing it up, they decided to go for three. And to give the kids something to discuss, each randomly assigned table was given the task of creating a CD of songs that represent them. Basically, each kid had to come up with one song, and then they come up with a title and a CD cover, etc.

I didn’t really focus much on the CD, and mentioned it in one short paragraph in my story. When my editor goes through and is editing it, he calls across the newsroom, “Meranda, what song would you pick to represent you?”

I couldn’t think on my feet. Partially because one of his favorite sports is rolling his eyes at my pop culture choices, which are not necessarily mainstream (not that his are, but his are of an earlier era and mostly out of my knowledge base — and whenever I say this, I think he takes it personally like I’m saying he’s old, which he’s really not, I’m just not pop-cultured enough), and also because it’s hard to pick a theme song!

I said I wasn’t sure, but it’d probably be something upbeat like “Walking on Sunshine” or something ridiculous like that.

He went around the newsroom and asked everyone in turn. None of us were very good at thinking so quickly. So he said he should bring in a song on CD not labeled, and we’ll all try to guess. lol. Don’t know if anyone will actually participate.

Readers: Think on it for a moment, what would your theme song be and why?

When I got home, I started thinking about what my theme would be. Glancing through my iTunes and there was one song that is actually my unofficial theme. It was the song I played on repeat in the weeks before running for editor, and is the most-played song by a long-shot in iTunes. And it something most people have never heard of. I only heard it because once, several years ago, it was offered as a free MP3 download from MTV.com, and I was researching free & legal music for a story I was writing for the Stater. Awesome discovery. The song is “She Said” by Brie Larson. Heard it? Likely not.

Here’s the video. (I’m not a huge fan of the video, but the song is great if you just listen to the lyrics.)

I know it’s cheesy and cliche and so, well, predictable. But it’s honestly the song I put on when I need reassurance or want to cheer up. I’d say this is pretty much my theme song. I’m willing to take risks and fail, and at least I tried even if I don’t make it.

…

Get off of my back, stop sayin’ that
Cause I’m not afraid a heights
I may never get where I’m goin’
Yeah, but then again I might
You can’t get inside my head
Can’t be my safety net
I’m standing on the edge, yeah

I know it’s a long way down
But you can’t walk the wire
For anybody else
I might hit the ground
But at least I’ll have a story to tell
She said, I gotta find out for myself

…

This Tuesday, I’m slated to talk to high school students about journalism as a career. I’m teamed up with someone from the local TV station, and together we have three 40-minute presentations to sophomores, juniors and seniors who each signed up because they have some interest in this field.

I talked to groups of students when they visited the Stater, or during the scholastic press days we had at Kent State. So I’m not entirely green.

I volunteered to do this because they were looking for speakers for three different career days and someone to let a kid shadow them. Plus, it’s at a school I don’t get out to much, so I’ll work my beat a little while I’m down there.

I asked the editor what I should expect, and what I should talk about. She was telling me that last year when she did this presentation the TV person after the talk had photos of herself to autograph. (Shoot me now.) I’m not even sure I’ll bring many biz cards. Her suggestions were what I expect:

In the 10 minutes or so, I’d talk about the newsroom in general — that we have about 50 people on our staff, and the different kinds of departments and jobs that they do. Then you can transition into what you do — what kinds of stories you write. How you get story ideas. What kind of hours you work. What you like about your job — what you don’t like. Why you would recommend it to someone. etc.

The anecdotes that seem to impress crowds are 1) famous people you have met/interviewed; 2) cool things that you’ve gotten to do as a reporter; 3) stories that have made a difference for a person or group.

The last three are of course the things kids want to know. Friday, I was at one of a high school doing the mugs and quotes for my Monday schools page. When I was done talking to one group of kids one asks, “Do you like being a reporter? Is it fun?” I laughed and joked that I thoroughly enjoy harassing high school kids with a camera and notepad. And then I told them the things I get to do that make it exciting and interesting. And then they asked question No. 1 from above. I told them a few people I’ve met, but that I’m a bad example because I never cared for or did entertainment. They asked if I knew anyone who’d interviewed Lindsay Lohan of all people. lol.

Anyway, I figure out little micro-discussion was a quick run-through of what I’ll talk about Tuesday.

Monday, I’ll have a chance at another run-through.

Last week, the editor came over to me and said, “I have a deal for you Meranda.” It was more, “I have an idea.” A local high school student taking journalism/working for her student paper graduates in December but wants to volunteer/intern here over the next month to get some experience. The editor asked me to kind of show her around and let her help me with the schools page. In particular, those mugs and quotes I love doing so much I seem to always put them off until Friday. So my editor asked me to set one up for her to try out Monday, her first day. That way, even if it turns out messed up, she or I can go back and redo it later in the week, and she can get some real-world experience (albeit at the thing most reporters loathe: man-on-the-street).

Any tips for the talk or for the high school intern? I plan to mostly just wing it Tuesday. As for the Q&A, I have it lined up already and a question prepared so it should run as smoothly as possible. I’m mostly scared about my boss intimidating the kid because, I love him but, he can be hard-core. Sometimes he still scares me. lol.

Either way, this will be the week of Meranda trying to sell journalism to high school kids. We’ll see how successful I am.

But no, I won’t be signing autographs.