So, a superintendent and I were talking this afternoon, and he joked that with the money a new proposal would save, maybe he could convince the board to reallocate more money to his salary. He joked that he and I could split the $100K. Which, I of course replied was tempting, but — knowing his salary — I told him he didn’t really need a salary hike. He has a pretty good gig.

He joked that maybe he should just get a job as a part-time reporter to supplement his income. I told him it wasn’t nearly lucrative enough to be worth it for him. Hard work, crappy hours, crabby sources. ;) lol.

This led to a discussion at which he made the comment that, “I bet on a per-hour basis, you (as in me, Meranda) probably make more than me.” I almost died of laughter, and informed him I really don’t think he knows how poorly journalism pays, especially the newbies.

But he challenged me to calculate it. So I did.

Using his salary and my standard per-hour wage — if I worked only 40 hours a week, which I almost never do, it’s probably closer to 50 on average so it’s actually less — I determined that he would have to work 187+ hours each week to make the same rate.

There are only 168 hours in an entire week.

At his salary, it is physically impossible for him to make as little as me. And he’s not even one of the best compensated ones in this area. Plus this says nothing of his vacation, retirement and other perks. Granted he has a Ph.D. and way more experience and licenses than I do or even than I ever aspire to, but still. Puts things in perspective.

I wasn’t surprised by the finding, and it doesn’t change my commitment to journalism. I just thought it was really funny. He severely underestimates both the amount of work I put in each week and how much I’m actually compensated for it. So I think it put it in perspective for him, too.

What would you nominate as the Seven Wonders of Journalism World?

Poynter wants to know. They’re soliciting nominations in several categories:

• Documents (such as the First Amendment)

• People (such as Walter Cronkite)
• Institutions (such as the BBC)
• Events (such as the publication of the Pentagon Papers)
• Technology (such as the invention of the telegraph)
• Works (such as the front page of the New York Times on Sept. 11)

From the nominations they receive, they’ll narrow it to about 10 per category. Then, they’ll do seeded brackets and let each go head to head to move forward.

I am trying to think of things worthy of nomination. You can check out the feedback on the post to see some other journalists’ suggestions.

Sounds like a neat idea. I’ll be interested in seeing what seven we end up with.

Haha, love this piece from the NYTimes: Welcome, Students. Now Watch It.

Instead of the traditional “make sure you make a wish in the fountain” or “kiss under the arch” that many colleges and papers peddle this time of year, this is a fun, snarky, no-B.S. list of things NOT to do when you’re a student in NYC.

I always wanted to go to NYC for school. But ah las, I could barely afford to stay in my own home state for college. So that wasn’t an option. But I think this type of approach would be fun for any school/student newspaper. Here’s 5 of mine from my time at Kent State, followed by a few observations on my time around Purdue.

Kent:

• Don’t spend all your money on campus. Just because you can buy food and groceries on campus doesn’t mean you won’t get ripped off. Dude, Acme is within easy walking distance, has better selection and a bonus card. Extra bonus points: Campus Wine Cellar is on the way. Plus, Kent State is already making a killing on you through fees and tuition. Don’t encourage them.

• Don’t make eye contact with the people handing out fliers or “you’re going to hell” tracts near the student center. Sure, they have the right to be there, even if what they’re peddling is disgraceful or disgusting. Don’t get into a conversation. Even when you agree, you lose. And then, you’re late to class.
• Don’t pull the fire alarm. Just because your drunken self has nothing better to do doesn’t mean the rest of your dormmates don’t have 7:45 classes or jobs to get to in the morning. Seriously. Grow up.
• Don’t catch the bus to class and then complain when you’re late. Nothing on campus is that far. And everyone know the bus schedule is merely a suggestion not the reality.
• Don’t forget to see downtown Kent — during day light. Far too many Kent Staters see only the bars of downtown Kent and never eat at Franklin Square Deli or watch the train go by or sit by the Cuyahoga. There’s also some pretty quirky “only in Kent” stores you should see.

Purdue:

(noting that I don’t actually have much to do with the school, this is all based on my experience living among and around college students, these are decidedly more tongue-in-cheek)

• Don’t live on Dodge Street if you intend to sleep or park anywhere on game nights. Wish someone had given me this tip before I moved into what I came to pretty quickly learn was party central — every night of the week.

• Don’t bother crossing at cross walks. Only seven pedestrians have been hit in 2007, and only three of them were actually injured. Besides, all the cool kids are jaywalking. Don’t believe me? Watch the video.
• Don’t bring a car to campus. Seriously, there’s no where to park anywhere in Lafayette/West Lafayette on a good day. Add 40,000 additional vehicles, driven by inexperienced, caffeinated and sometimes drunk students and those seven pedestrians hit is likely to skyrocket. Besides, walking across campus will help work off those late night binges.
• Don’t complain about how there’s nothing to do. There are hundreds of student organizations, tons of restaurants and bars, a few libraries (and book stores) and 39,000 other undergrads who have nothing better to do than play cornhole and walk around half-naked near the streets. Plus, Indy’s only an hour away and Chicago is just over two. Stop complaining. You could be in Kent.
• Don’t bother going to graduation. I don’t think they tell you this in the view book, BUT, they don’t even announce your name. In fact, your name is projected about 20 at a time on the stage as you and another student walk simultaneously across the stage in opposite directions toward the middle. The whole culmination of four (or more) years hard work and thousands of dollars in tuition lasts less than 15 seconds. Sorry to break it to you, but someone should.
• I’ll think of some more. I’m tired now. I’ll recruit some actual Boilermakers to help with this.

And there you have it. My five reasons Meranda is over college, and why she has realized living in a college town, while having its benefits, also has many downfalls.

So, I saw this list of awesome education statistics from the Census Bureau linked from Al’s Morning Meeting and bookmarked it to peruse later. As in tonight.

I was a little sad I hadn’t stumbled on it sooner, or thought to look. See, back to school for me was early to mid-August. Yes, most of the little buggers in this county started back Aug. 13 & 14. I KNOW?! Insanely early. But they also finished up by the end of May, which is a nice trade off if you ask me. But I digress.

As I was flipping through the stats, I made notes to myself, “Oh that’s interesting. I didn’t know 70 percent of students are enrolled in all-day kindergarten. I could have used that stat in all those stories I wrote.” Or that “Only 50 percent of full-time college students are employed. (NO wonder everyone else seemed less stressed than me!)”

Then I came across this tid-bit, and I won’t lie, it sort of depressed me: $14.18 Average hourly wage for the nation’s school bus drivers in 2004-05. Custodians earned $12.61, while cafeteria workers made $10.33. Bus drivers make more than me, and custodians earn almost as much on average. Not that I would want either job (though mom did try to lure me into being a campus bus driver, sorry ma, transportation was your thing not mine), or would be good at either. But still, it just puts into perspective how much I get paid after busting my butt to get my degree and the experience necessary to get a job in a competitive field.

But then again, I didn’t get into journalism for the money. (Thank, God.) I got into it for the thrill of seeing a problem, trend, issue or injustice and finding out everything I can about it, what can and is being done about it and passing the knowledge/torch on to readers. I got into it because I can’t not ask when I have a question. I can’t not know.

In terms of how much I think I get out of my job, I think that makes up for some of the difference in pay. A lot of the difference in pay or I wouldn’t do it. I guess I’ll just be extra nice to all the district transportation directors, and keep the bus idea on the back-burner in case this reporting thing doesn’t work out. Lord help you all (and your children) if that ever happens. lol.

Only the Wall Street Journal could take beer pong and make it this classy.

It’s been awhile since I’ve actually sat down with a print edition of WSJ (except the occasional items pointed out by the county reporter whose father bought him a print subscription for his birthday — hey my parents aren’t that thoughtful!). But I do get the CollegeJournal e-mails every day. Mostly it’s recent stories or Q&As from the WSJ. But it’s free and targeted pretty much to my demographic: soon-to-be grads and recent grads setting out in their jobs as new young professionals. I dig that.

My favorite part of the story — other than reading about young people capitalizing on the interests of other young people, (hey why not?) — is the accompanying graphic. I imagine a CEO sitting behind his desk, reading the paper and studying the inner workings of beer pong. That thought makes me smile.

They also have a video (though the audio on it is really wonky, at least it came across that way for me?). I had to watch the video because I wanted to see how you could create a video about beer pong that wasn’t like made for YouTube/Facebook. But, again, there they go making the drinking game classy.

For the past several months, I have been subjected to a weekly recounting of every hit, every catch and every error the J&C softball team has made. This is because the reporter who sits behind me loves to talk about it. It’s gotten to the point where our editor, when he goes to ask what stories he has coming that day, starts off with, “Tell me about the game… and then don’t mention it again.” But it’s all in good fun.

At first, I didn’t tell anyone here that I used to play varsity softball in high school. In fact, the only year I didn’t letter was freshman year, and even then I played up from the JV team half the games. (My position was first, and my freshman year my sister was the varsity first basemen, so when she pitched, I played. Otherwise, I DH’d or sat the bench like a freshman probably should.) I probably wasn’t the best person the team, but I can put the bat on the ball and stop just about anything. But I haven’t played in so long, I never thought I would again.

Then, somehow, I let it slip during a conversation with said reporter that I had played in high school. He could not believe I hadn’t told them earlier. Apparently, they are always in need of female players who can, you know, actually play. (There’s a rule that half your field and every other batter has to be female.) Particularly female infielders are always in short supply.

I kept putting it off, thinking of reasons not to. (Hey, my mitt until last weekend was 350 miles away back home.) I attended a few games to support them when I could, but they practice on Monday and play Wednesdays. Half my Mondays and Wednesdays each month are spent trying to figure out what the school boards are talking about during their meetings. Education here isn’t conducive to playing in this league.

Finally, I threw my hat in as a sometimes player for the fall team. After I suggested the executive editor as a possible player, and she actually said yes (and is apparently pretty awesome, though I haven’t seen her play yet; but again, I’ve heard about it through the weekly game recap), I felt pretty much compelled. I had to join the team. So I did.

Tonight was the first night I could actually make it out to play. No meetings. Mitt in hand. I haven’t practiced in years. Once Abbey and I went to the batting cages, where I sucked at hitting the slow pitch balls — seriously, why are they so slow? and they come at a weird angle — and when I was home earlier this month, my sister and I threw the ball around. That’s it in nearly four years.

And know what? I had fun. I’ve made some good friends here, but even among my co-workers, I’ve mostly tried to keep my distance. I’m younger than most everybody, and I don’t know, I already spend way too much time there anyway. But it was nice to be around my co-workers not in the office or even out to lunch with the prospect of more work ahead. It was fun to be back on the diamond, and apparently, yes, it’s a bit like riding a bike: I’m rusty, but I still remember the mechanics and what to do in each situation. I struck out a few times, but my last few at bats I made solid contact. I made a few blunders, but I also made a few good plays. I even took one for the team — as in my bloody knee in the kitty-litter field so I could stop a throw that way in the dirt to first.

Like I said I had fun. Maybe tomorrow, I won’t grumble so much the fifth time I hear the story about the lightning that struck just behind our field and postponed the game, nor the amazing home run one of my teammates hit or how we beat the first team we played 15-5. And I’ll be back — the next time I actually have a reprieve from my school board meetings.

The first thing I do every morning when I wake up is reach for my phone. There are two reasons for this. First, I use it as my alarm clock, and at 7 a.m. I just want it to shut up. But the second, far worse reason is, I want to check my e-mail.

I don’t know why I feel compelled to check for new e-mail that has arrived since bedtime and dawn. I know, and tell myself each day when I do it, that nobody else was up to send me e-mails. Even if they did, surely the e-mail can wait until I brush my teeth, right? And yet, every morning, I do it anyway.

Today, I read this article, Stop Your BlackBerry From Being the Boss, and I have to confess. Yesterday, when I was at dinner with a friend/co-worker, I was texting another friend, granted the other friend was part of the conversation but that’s beside the point. How many times have I been annoyed when someone else was having a phone conversation instead of engaging in the conversation at table? And though I laugh a bit about it now, I have, most definitely, checked my e-mail while driving. Haven’t you?

Apparently, and I think the story is right, this is a sign I need to let go.

I used to get far more e-mail than I do now. Perhaps it’s just that I used to use one single account for both personal and professional e-mail, whereas now I have my J&C account and my gmail account (which my kent e-mail feeds into so it’s all together). To my credit, I rarely check the J&C account when I’m not sitting at my desk. But my personal e-mail? Constantly. When I’m sitting at my MacBook it’s constantly updating my status bar. When I’m at work, I have my personalized Google page constantly up in a tab which I check several times a day.

So, I’m going to try and internalize these four tips from the article:

• There’s no such thing as an “email emergency.”

• The world does not revolve around you.
• Stick to a schedule.
• Respect BlackBerry Blackout Zones.

And you know what? I’m pretty sure the world will keep spinning and nothing major will fall through. Because as item number one says, if it’s that important, someone will call me instead.

Do I have no? Um, heck no.

As I told the man in the NPD team meeting this week when he asked if I’d be line for one, “I would love to be. But they don’t pay me enough here to be able to afford a $500 cell phone.” That got a laugh out of the others in the room, including the ME who confessed he doesn’t even have a cell phone. So, I guess I won’t get any pity from them. lol.

However, I really do want one. As was evidenced by my extensive knowledge of the phone, it’s pros and cons, what it does have (and more importantly, what it doesn’t… hello, no video camera, no flash, no data storage, no aim?). The reporter who was writing the local story for today’s paper asked me, after I corrected him seriously like five times because he kept calling the stores and asking about the iPod because he just sounded silly, if I just spent the day reading press releases about the iPhone. Uh, no. But I have been following it since I first heard about it, way back before I even started here.

I still have my Razr. I hate my Razr. I hate it so much that I pray every time I drop it, which admittedly is more than you probably should abuse any electronic device, that this time it will break. But that bugger is resilient. Unfortunately, it’s also glitchy. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I was an early adopted of the Razr. I had read about it in Wired back before it was even on the market, and it was only a few months after it became available that I got my hands on it.

So, maybe it’s not just the money holding me back on the iPhone. There are other considerations, both monetary — I already have a video iPod and a digital camera I love that go everywhere with me and which set me back several hundred a piece less than a year ago — and practical — I’ve never heard good things about AT&T service (and know it doesn’t get reception in our office) and I’m reluctant to sign a two-year contract with a company I may be unhappy with. But really, the other thing is I want them to work out the bugs. I think that was my mistake with the Razr. In my zeal to be the first with the awesome new phone, I took the hit in terms of working the bugs out. Now the Razr is probably the most ubiquitous phone on the market and in the hands of consumers. I’m no longer the cool kid, and instead I have a phone that I hate that is so popular it’s common.

I and the reporter who sits across from me are constantly telling our editor that we should run more photos of cute animals. People love cute animals, right?

I just happen to love animals, especially cuddly, furry, bouncy, shaggy, big — OK, pretty much all — animals. It’s annoying to walk down the street with me. Every dog I pass gets an, “Oh, how cute! Can I pet him?!” And then five minutes of behind the ear treatment as I crouch low to the ground. If the dog is big and it’s toungue hangs out of its mouth to the side while its tail wags, so much the better. Aw, I’m smiling just thinking about cute dogs.

The other reporter is more of a cat lover, especially the alley cat she likes to run after by the J&C yelling “kitty!” But I digress.

Thing is, we both spend time on other newspaper’s sites looking at cute animals. Me at IndyPaws.com and her at the Chicago Tribune.

Other than our anecdotal, “We could be clicking around on jconline instead of going to other sites looking at animals” pleas, we never had empirical proof. Until now.

We ran a story this week about a local high school track coach who has nurtured a squirrel back to health and keeps it as a pet. Yeah, a pet squirrel. The photos were ADORABLE, and we had a whole gallery with the pictures of the squirrels progress.

As I flipped through the online gallery on Tuesday, my “aw”’s were mixed with “I hope this gets a ton of hits and they realize that pets are the way to go.”

Even our often-feisty online posters couldn’t find anyway to turn this discussion into an assault on our journalism skills or a discussion of how illegal immigrants signal the end of the world. Several read like this one:

First, thank you J&C for running some very good animal stories lately!!
I loved this story!! I laughed all the way through it! It’s so nice to see people caring for animals of all kinds. I wish this family and Rocky the best. Good luck Rocky!!!!

The next morning, I opened the readme memo and lo and behold: The squirrel gallery got 16,000+ page views that day. The story got nearly 3,000. But the squirrel gallery was by far our top page-grabber that day.

The victory came later that day in my e-mail. I’ve recently been asked to join the New Product Development committee here. And that e-mail was a few items we’d be talking about at our meeting this morning. Number two on the list? How to capitalize on the interest in pets, as evidenced by that photo gallery and the success of other sites, such as IndyPaws.

Tonight, I watched as our entertainment reporter edited a video about animals at a new farm animal exhibit at the zoo. The little goats and chickens were humorous to watch, especially the little goats. A-DOR-ABLE. I think that will drive some traffic, too.

Score one for the Lafayette animal lovers. And expect a lot more girly squeals of “How cute?!” from me.

I write this post on Roy Peters Clark’s Writing Tools blog yesterday, and his post “When Journalists Use Archetypes” reminded me immediately of a time when I had to make the same choice that student did: Do I go with the touching, cute story or the warts and all version?

I took one summer course other than my internship in college. It was feature writing (at 8:30 a.m.!), and it was the summer I was serving as managing editor at the Stater. I liked the class for two reasons:

First, unlike feature writing in the fall or spring, we turned around a story a week instead of a story a month with endless revisions. I have a tendency to grow weary of a story I work on too long, favoring instead a more immediate turn around and revision process. Because the semester was shorter, we pitched the idea to the professor, reported and wrote it that same week. We pitched the next story and worked on both the revision and the new story simultaneously. It was more time consuming each week, but it was a more newspaper-like than feature writing in spring and fall.

That was my second reason for liking the class. I had been a magazine major because I wanted to do these feature stories. It wasn’t until my professor, Mitch McKenney (who was then the deputy metro editor at the Beacon Journal and has since become the features editor), had us read newspaper feature after newspaper feature, many from his own experience where he could elaborate on the reporting and editing processes, that I realized you can do those types of stories at a newspaper. You can do those types of stories better on a beat because you understand the material and the people and the issues that much better. I also saw that you can write interesting features in a non-traditional form or in very few words. Until that class, I had never really been exposed to that. So it was a turning point for me. It was after taking that class that I changed my major from magazine to newspaper (though, obviously by my status as ME at the Stater, I had already established myself in both newspaper and magazine student media, so I was poised to go either way, both with the intent of doing online in the long run).

I pitched the idea of riding around with the ice cream man for my final story. It was an idea stolen from one of the stories we read where the reporter rode for a day with a dog catcher. I also liked the idea of being able to do all — or almost all — of the reporting in one sitting.

It was both one of the most fun and miserable stories I’ve ever done. Fun because the woman was hilarious and you really do hear and see a lot of cute things from the window of the ice cream truck. But miserable because the truck didn’t have air conditioning, and I hadn’t thought to wear light clothes or put on sun block — my legs and arms were sunburnt on half of my body after baking for 12 hours(!) in 97 degree sun. Oh, and then there was the prolonging of the 12 hour day by the truck breaking down half an hour away from the company base. It was, eh hem, an interesting day.

I met the owner and he put me on a truck with the woman with whom I had struck up a conversation outside.

It was the first of many contradictions that I experienced that day. This was an ice cream woman. That followed with many more: before doing this she had managed an adult bookstore, she swore like a sailor (though not around the kids), and she profiled the neighborhoods in the opposite way you would think: lower- to middle-class were better. As she drove through the neighborhoods, she went on about her theory (the upperclass kids were playing video games, their parents were too cheap that’s how they got so much money, etc. and the poorer areas where she did her best business, the parents could spend a dollar and totally make their kids day.) I was able to see this play out as we drove through much more affluent areas and sold not a single popsicle, and then as we drove through “the projects,” she had lines halfway down the road.

When I got home and sat down to write, I was confused. Do I write about the feel-good stuff, the cute kids counting their pennies and stopping at Wal-Mart to buy sugar free popsicles for the nursing home she visited because many of the adults were diabetic yet her boss couldn’t sell enough sugar-free items to stock them? Or, do I write about the more real-life stuff, the empty yards and sidewalks in the affluent areas, the kids who wanted the ninja turtle but could only afford a freeze pop, the other driver invading her “turf” and cutting into her business, the annoying song that must have played 1,000 times, the lack of air conditioning, the truck breaking down, the excessive use of “damn” and the like?

I struggled with that, and then called Mitch the next day to ask for his advice. I had decided to go with the warts and all version, even though it wasn’t what I set out to report or to write. But I wasn’t sure how to treat it when fully half my best quotes included an expletive. He helped me work it out so it wasn’t offensive and it wasn’t sugar coated. It was what it was true to her character and my day in the life of this ice cream truck driver.

Sadly, as it was written for class and it wasn’t of immediate appeal to the Stater audience, it never ran, and I have long since lost the copy I had of it. But it is still one of my favorite stories. I know Mitch really liked it, too, because the last time I saw him at a function last fall, he mentioned it as he introduced me to his boss and he has told me he uses it as an example in his classes.

Something tells me this story wouldn’t have been nearly as memorable if I’d gone with the cliche, ideal of the ice cream man.