The NYTimes has a story today about how media outlets are dealing with a new trend: People “video snacking” at their desks at lunch.

It’s an interesting phenomenon I haven’t heard of before. Though, apparently several newspapers and TV stations, as well as big online ventures like Yahoo/AOL, are responding to this increased noontime demand for fresh video.

The midday spike in Web traffic is not a new phenomenon, but media companies have started responding in a meaningful way over the last year. They are creating new shows, timing the posts to coincide with hunger pangs. And they are rejiggering the way they sell advertising online, recognizing that noontime programs can command a premium.

In 2007, a growing number of local television stations, including WNCN in Raleigh, N.C., and WCMH in Columbus, Ohio, began producing noon programming exclusively for the Web. Among newspapers, The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Va., and The Ventura County Star in California started posting videos at lunchtime that have young journalists as hosts and are meant to appeal to 18- to 34-year-old audiences.

The trend has swept across large as well as small independent sites. Yahoo’s daily best-of-the-Web segment, called The 9 and sponsored by Pepsi, is produced every morning in time for lunch. At MyDamnChannel.com, a showcase for offbeat videos, programmers have been instructed to promote new videos around noon, right when the two-hour traffic spike starts.

I was unaware of this jump. Granted, reporters/newsroom staff here are only sent the basic stats report e-mail for each day. So I don’t know the exact numbers for each hour. But our traffic very clearly seems to spike around 8/9 and then again at the end of the work day. I’ll have to look back through a few days when I’m at work again to see if this midday trend holds true here. If it does though, it begs the question of whether we should and how we should cater to that demand? And if it doesn’t, it still leaves open the question of whether we could compete for this attention, and of course, how.

The first reporter at my paper starts posting around 6 a.m. daily (8 a.m. weekends — but both shifts seem ungodly early when you’re the one on them), and throughout the day local and state, and sometimes big national, stories are posted. On bigger news, the No. 1 slot or the No. 5 slot (that is the top slot w/a photo or the top slot sans photo) will get swapped out or updated and timestamped breaking news. Often, those stories are among the most read. After the 4 o’clock meeting each night, they post a PM Update with four or five teasers for the top stories in tomorrow’s paper. That is also usually well read.

But if there’s a group of people or even a growing appetite for a noontime video/news bite, it’s worth considering what type of demand that is (seems from the NYTimes story that lighter fare is popular) and then how to cater to it. (Wow, so many food cliches.) Here’s some very preliminary ideas I have off the top of my head, or as Carl (former prof/Stater adviser) used to say: I’m thinking out loud here…

• A noontime round up of odd news off the wire. These are generally short, and pulling out three or so each day would probably be a cinch. People like weird stories. If you want this to be video, grab one of your more camera friendly staffers and get him or her to quickly tell the stories. Throw in a few stock photos/screen grabs/whatever for effect if you want.

• A midday news synopsis with very brief (think news tickerish) bits about the stories we’re working on or even the biggest national stories — with links to more details for any stories that are already posted, of course, even if it’s a link to CNN. This could easily be paired with a noon-time 2-minute newscast. I don’t think you need glitzy here, down and dirty headlines could suffice.
• Maybe like our PM Update a Midday Update. Promote the top stories, video, galleries, forums, whatever on your site to let other people know what their peers are reading. Kind of, “Here’s what’s generating the biggest buzz on (your site).”
• Get an employee who’s always finding cool stuff online (there has to be at least one) to do a round-up of stories, videos, Web sites, whatever people are talking about online today. Maybe it’s just a quick round-up of the top stories on other sites, like YouTube’s most popular item or whatever is out there on Digg or just whatever cool or crazy news/fun item he or she stumbles on that day. This would probably work best as a blog that you promote or cross-post at noon each day. I’m thinking kind of an “in case you missed it” blog. Something along the lines of Clicked over at MSNBC, with a dash of USA Today’s On Deadline or a more focused version of Pop URLs. I could spend hours following all those links. The benefit of doing this locally (instead of Clicked, etc.) would be it would focus the local audience on the same items. Fostering that communal experience, “Did you see…?”, and community conversation on the comments.

I’m sure there are plenty of other more innovative and effective ways to capture that noontime media consumer. Those are just some initial thoughts. I’ll have to look around to see if anyone out there has come up with some cool ideas. If you know of one, pass it my way.

Everywhere I turn I see Twitter-this or Twitter-that. I even read a post today about how Twitter will come of age in 2008. (I would link to it, but I can’t find it again. Sorry guys.)

I for one am intrigued by the possibilities. Even though last week, a few reporters and I went out after work and somehow we ended up talking about Twitter and they all made merciless fun of me. They don’t get it. I can’t blame them. It wasn’t that long ago I was skeptical, too.

I was off today, and I have been exploring some of the possibilities everyone is talking about.

Recently, I started importing the feed from Meranda Writes and from stumblED. (The latter is my education tumble log, remember that?) I also started following hashtags. Though I’ve only used it once so far to post my #resolutions. I also keep my Facebook mates up to date on my whereabouts by feeding my twitter updates to my Facebook status. None of this makes me a better journalist, per se, but knowing how the technology works is the first step, I guess to commanding it for my craft not just for fun. But even just for fun, me gusta.

Today, I set up a Twitter account, more for my own amusement and use than anything else, that imports RSS feeds off jconline. Of course, I’ll have to see how the powers that be feel about it. But either way, it’s useful for me. It could be useful to other people in the community who use Twitter (including a few who are following me, one of whom I’d never met and happened to run into at a coffee shop this weekend!). I also foresee, if we could establish a sizable userbase, it could be a good crowdsourcing medium or great way to break news quicker/as we get it. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I was just playing with Twitterfeed.

If only I could figure out how to get just a feed of my bylines. (Funny enough, that teacher memories call-out posted now is mine.) But I am not so sophisticated or intelligent enough to get it to feed just my stories for you all (OK, just my mom and maybe a professor or two curious what I’m up to and wondering just how much I’m producing out here). I’m working on it. So far, the best archive for my recent stories is actually Newstin. Check that, I just scanned the page — apparently I can get Newstin as an RSS feed. Wish granted. I love the Internet. My Twitter followers are now in for a treat: an ongoing log of the stories I write. Yay?

Meanwhile, on the JC Twitter account, I can’t figure out a smart way to avoid pulling in stories that are out on multiple feeds. For example, a story on the Purdue feed and on the sports feed about the Big Ten. In fact, I am not pulling in the breaking news/top stories feed because it’s nearly always just the same as the news feed, except for some reason it also pulls in content off our Moms site and occasionally, off the WLHS microsite. Part of the problem is that our RSS feeds (like many newspaper feeds) are wonky. I don’t think anyone actually sits down to think about which 10 stories get pushed out each morning, and only items posted as breaking news AND news during the day get put out on RSS, not the “breaking news” at the top of jconline. (That probably doesn’t make sense to you, but it’s part of the classification you have to choose in the CMS.) So my RSS feed/Twitter idea is only as helpful as those stories it chooses. I wish we had an Opinions RSS feed, because those are popular here, too.

Anyway, to get back to my point, I’m not sure, still, when or if Twitter will “come of age.” But there are certainly lots of cool things going on with it. Here’s a few:

• ReporTwitters (Using the medium to be a better reporter. Sounds like an interesting proposal.)

• Tweet Scan (Search for your own interests, like Apple, or when breaking news happens for fire & California. You get the idea.)
• Hashtags (Tag your twitter posts.)
• Twitterfeed (Import your RSS feeds, or even the RSS feeds of blogs you regularly read, a la ojaggregator. It’s the filter/editor and choosing the best blogs to follow, so I don’t have to.)

That’s just to name a few I use. There are hundreds more and new ones coming each day.

Anyone else know something cool I missed or could use?

Too funny not to share with you guys. Newspapers and friendship bracelets? lol.

Apparently from an a cappella group of techies called The Richter Scales.

I have added several — and deleted many more — applications to my Facebook page over the past several months.

That page has grown progressively more crowded as I gave in to the temptation to designate my top friends, adorn my profile with “bumper stickers” and LOLcats, push my twitter updates to my status and even hand out and receive superlatives for my friends.

But my favorite news media application is something I stumbled on this week: The New York Times News Quiz

As you can see, I’m doing well among my friends but have a ways to go among other players. I’m not disappointed or anything, the way I can figure the rankings work more by favoring recent performance and performance over time. I’ve only taken two quizzes so far. I scored 4/5 on one and 5/5 on the other. So I’m doing decent.

I can’t take a screen shot of the actual quiz because sadly — and I mean that as I wanted to take one today — there are none on weekends. But basically, it’s five questions about details of events in the news.

It’s made me realize I actually do pay more attention than I think I do. I just don’t have time to pay as much attention to events on a national and especially international scale as I would like. Ironically, when I was in college and we had news quizzes, I always hated them. I always did well (many of my j-school grades have that fact to thank for the extra boost). But I never felt prepared, I guess, then as now, apparently I absorbed much more than I realized.

Anyway, why do I like this application over others I’ve tried? It has some key components that in my eyes make the news quiz a winner:

1. Interactivity — I come back every day to take the quiz. Every day it is different. It is not a “use once and look at how pretty it is” application, a la the Washington Post Compass, which was really fun to take but didn’t serve much point after that.
2. Competition — It’s no fun to just play against myself, I want to know how my friends do and how smart I am compared to them and to other players.
3. Content accessibility — I suck at all those movie and TV quizzes because I don’t watch TV and have missed many of the movie classics and many recent movies by choice. The news, however, is something that only relies on me having paid attention at all within the past 24 hours. If I did that, I can score decent. If not, I can come back tomorrow and take another stab.
4. Recommendations — You can’t see it on my screen shot, but every day they recommend five Times stories to read as tips for the next quiz. I like that they’re encouraging people to read the news, even as a means of competition. It goes back to point two and three. I can beat the other players, and if I didn’t today, I can with little effort tomorrow. Over time, that little effort will pay off. Plus, there’s an even better payoff than besting my friends: I’ll be a more informed citizen. And isn’t that the point of the media anyway?

I just realized that though I claim to have no experience writing self-evaluations, I am mistaken.

My paper’s letters to Santa just reminded me of that. See, all these are is a quick-hit appraisal of your good deeds over the past year recounted in an attempt to convince the jolly old elf (though in my case, the editors are none of those things) that you are deserving of what you want.

Here’s a few of my favorite submissions, with the part that made me smile in bold. You can read more here and here (and throughout the week at jconline)

• I hope you have a great Christmas. I want some highlighters. I want a CD of High School Musical 2, $50, three gift cards to Toys R Us and a Wal-Mart gift card. Santa my real birthday is Dec. 20 then five days after is Christmas. Christmas is my favorite month in the whole entire year. It is the bestest month because we get presents and oh yeah I also want some new clothes like sweatshirts and new pants and some new shirts too please. And I want to see you on Christmas Eve and I want a globe.
  Cheers,
  Jasmine

• Will you make me soldiers and will you please bring me a dog? And may I have a football game on XBox Santa and one more thing, can I have a brother and a nice sister? Santa your reindeer are cool and P.S. can I have a Wii and a PlayStation? I love you.
  Cheers,
  Mikel

• How are your reindeer? I already know I am going to get coal. I wish I had been good last year and this year. How do you visit all of the houses in one night? I hope on Christmas Eve you won’t be pooped out. How is Mrs. Claus and your elves? How is Rudolph? Some people think you do not exist, but I do so so so much. I hope you have a Merry Christmas!
  Ariel

• I think you should come to my house and bring me a Wii, a bike and a dirt bike 85 cc. I got good grades like A, B, C, D, because I worked hard and got good grades. I helped my grandpa build a doghouse and I was not expecting money. I hope you think I deserve the things I asked for. I hope I get my presents.
  Yours truly,
  Jacob

• I think you should come to my house and bring me a Wii, a laptop, and a Spiderwick book. I haven’t bitten my sister. I worked really hard not to. I also did not hit her all year. I had some candy and gave it to my neighbor. I fed the fish at Indiana Beach. I did it so they would not die. I hope you think I deserve the things I asked for. Please come to my house.
  Your friend,
  Faith

So this isn’t news. But come on, didn’t those make you smile?!

When I come across something unfamiliar and want a quick synopsis of something, I generally begin by typing it into Google. Usually, one of the top five or so results is a Wikipedia entry.

So when my friend pointed out this doll for sale on eBay going for $1,200 I was floored. Why the heck would anyone pay that, I wondered. Apparently, whoever Sasha is is a big deal.

I turned to Google to find out about these dolls. A bunch of collectors came up and a few eBay auctions, and this quick-hit synopsis of the craze on About.com was very helpful.

But where was Wikipedia in all this?

We often joke in the newsroom that Wikipedia is omniscient (hey I can’t use big words in the paper, so when I can sneak them in conversation, I do). That is to say, Wikipedia is all knowing.

My prior usage of Wikipedia as a quick-hit summary for things when I don’t particularly care about the authority of the information, when I’m just generally curious about something random, like say why an ugly doll would net $1,000+, has always netted decent results.

But I learned that apparently all the entries on Wikipedia haven’t been created yet, as I kind of assumed they had. Sasha Serie is not in their index. I was able to, after trying to think of several combinations including the creator’s name, find out that there is a listing for “Sasha dolls” that deals with this. But it still did not come up in my Google searches, and that entry could use some sprucing up.

Being that it is Wikipedia, I could try and fix it up (maybe add a photo or some annotations — where’s this information from?!). But I won’t because I don’t know much about it and would have to rely on Google to tell me, thus I’d find myself in that perpetual cycle. My favorite part of that entry is this: Those who Google ’sasha dolls’ or ‘Sasha Morgenthaler’ will find themselves offered a wealth of Sasha-related sites - some historically-oriented, some devoted to their owners’ Sasha collections, some selling dolls or dolls’ clothing. LOL. No links. Just tell them to Google it. Which is kind of ironic for my purposes, being I was trying to Google to find the Wikipedia entry, and now the entry is telling me to Google the topic. Here we go in that cycle again.

In the end it’s irrelevant anyway: I’m not interested in any doll that costs nearly as much as my computer. No thanks. But seriously. $1,200 for a doll?

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

…

I don’t have anything profound to say today, but there are several random things floating around my head that I figured I may as well share. Feel free to add your own. This could be a fun game.

• UPDATE, I forgot the most important lesson of today. What happens when you go to make cop calls and get a busy signal. You hang up and finish calling the rest and then head back to the busy number? What happens when that number still rings busy. And half an hour later? Still busy. So, then you call the city (housed in the same building), and guess what, it’s busy? Well, I decided something was up. But since I couldn’t just call down there to find out, I did what any enterprising, curious reporter would do. I walked there and found the IT director. Something was majorly up, apparently there was a huge statewide phone outage. Our police, city and the two city school districts both went without phone service until about 3 p.m. as did several other businesses in our community. Just goes to show, there really will never be a true replacement for face-to-face, shoe-leather reporting. There’s no way I could have worked that story through the phones.
• Over the past few weeks I’ve done two different stories involving outages with two different phone companies. In light of this, I really think phone companies need to evaluate their media relations. Neither of the phone companies made it easy to a) locate a media representative, b) locate any live person, c) get a phone number that didn’t start with 1-800 and end with my hanging up after getting stuck in a loop of computer mis-guided menus. To sum up my editor’s response to the first of these stories, “The phone company doesn’t have a phone number on its site?!” And then a laugh and attempt to prove me wrong, as if I would seriously admit both my computer savvy and Google prowess had let me down without first ensuring it was worth throwing in the towel. I’m just saying. In both cases, I now have the phone number, name and e-mail of the person I need to talk to should anything else arise. But why make it so difficult?
• I learned a new word today: akimbo. Apparently it means to put your hands on your hips and bend your elbows. (Think annoyed teenage girl yelling, “But mooooommmm!”) I’m only including this here because I told my editor I would blog about the new word I learned. lol. He used it to describe the “sassy” pose one of the girl’s auditioning for the Purdue Play Boy edition had in her photo.
• This story, which I first saw on Romensko (and first commented on in my education tumblelog — which is off to a good start, thanks for asking) makes me nervous about ever writing about the ISTEP or other major tests. The reporter wrote a light feature about the testing and inadvertently included the essay topics that many students hadn’t yet written about! Now all the kids have to retake the test. Although, reading his explanation, I’d have to say I do understand he didn’t know he couldn’t include the topics — and really he shouldn’t have been let in the classroom and the teachers and administrators should have flagged it for him not to repeat test questions. Still, I’m not sure I like his defense. I think he’s trying to point fingers by his blog post, and really what it boils down to is, yeah, that’s hella embarrassing and really messes with a lot of kids, but take responsibility and go ahead and say, “I screwed up.” Not doing so is just as embarrassing.
• I have decided that while I could work the 6 a.m. shift, as in I am capable of waking up, getting dressed and being at work to start posting and picking up cops stuff from overnight, I reaaallly don’t envy the guys who have that regular shift. Yes, it would be nice to have a set shift that didn’t fluctuate from 8 to 4 through 3 to 11 virtually every day depending on meetings and assignments, and getting off (theoretically) at 2 p.m. is so appealing. But if a wonky schedule and a few late nights a week is the price to pay for getting to work during daylight hours, it’s worth it for now. I am way too tired to actually do anything with the rest of today. And as I told the business reporter when he came in at 7:30 a.m., I’m too young to be up at 6 a.m.
• That’s all I can think of for now.

And perhaps it’s best to get it out of our system while we’re young. Err, when I was? lol.

The business reporter this morning was nice enough to point out this gem of a refer on the front of the Purdue Exponent (the student paper):

In case you missed it, the headline on the front page of the exponent reads: “City has issued no tickets for shitty ordinance.” (I downloaded the PDF so you can see where it ran. Look in the lower right corner.) The headline inside and online is a bit more tame, as is the story itself.

We all had a great laugh at it. I texted one of the editors over there to ask if this was on purpose or if someone was getting yelled at today. The reply? The boss OK’d it, and they decided to have some fun with it. She ended with, “I love college.”

I texted back, I miss college. And I guess it’s not so bad as the whole “F Bush!” fiasco, which ironically the editor I texted and I had just talked about this past weekend. At least it was a play on words appropriate to the story subject, and hey, it is college. Do it while you can. Because you won’t get away with that in “the real world.”

I am reminded of an instance at the Stater where I probably reacted a little too harshly to the use of the word WTF in a headline. In hindsight (a year’s time and 350+ miles distance from it), maybe it, too, was just a fun way to get the point across. And I suspect that headline, like this refer today, probably got a few more students to want to know what was so important that it broke the “no cursing unless absolutely necessary to get to the essence of the story/character” rule. I know once I got over laughing, I read the story.

I guess if the college newspaper is meant to prepare the next generation of journalists, maybe getting these things out of their system is part of that training.

UPDATE: fixed the PDF link. oops.