They both annoyed the hell out of me tonight. And they did it with the help of the same Key Bank ad.

I need to update my ad block software or something, because almost or perhaps even more annoying than little green underlines on my articles is an ad that moves my page around so I can’t click or even focus on the actual content. Not only that, but you are allowing advertising to dominate the majority of my screen — including the content I actually came to see.

I took both these screen shots tonight to demonstrate exactly what news sites SHOULD NOT be doing with advertising. (Click the thumbnail for bigger pictures.)

Ohio.com/Akron Beacon Journal:

and the Indy Star:

If I had to make one cardinal rule about online advertising it’s this: Do not, under any circumstance, annoy the reader. They may leave and not return.

You may get my attention, but this is a bad thing. I am forming a negative association with your brand and your company. Now, for instance, when I see Key Bank fliers, mailings, advertisements, etc. I am going to associate it with being annoyed. I’m therefore going to be even less likely to patronize your business or products than if you’d just sat there nicely and conned me into clicking with words like “$100 free for opening a checking account.” This is not exactly what you were going for was it? I didn’t think so.

Who hasn’t wanted to scream about some ridiculous rule or moronic mantra at their organization? Or to tell their bosses what they are asking is inconsistent or, maybe even, impossible? Or just vent about the idiot who makes more money for half the work? You get the idea.

Now you can let it all out. And no, it’s not by creating a blog. (Because if your purpose behind creating a blog is to vent about your co-workers, you likely won’t have much to vent about for long. … I’m just sayin’.)

Meet your new homepage: AngryJournalist.com.

Think of it like PostSecret for journalists. You can drop your own anonymous confession or just listen in on others, even respond with your own nod of agreement if you want.

Even if you have nothing to complain about now, you can still muse over the agony or shared misery of some of your journalistic compatriots as they vent. In much the same way Twitter asks “What are you doing?” This site asks, “Why are you angry today?” (Actually, bonus, you can even follow the updates on Twitter.)

Here are 10 of my favs so far. (FYI: I may or may not agree with the sentiments.)

Maybe it’s the way Indiana handles its testing, or maybe it’s the nature of the education beat. But I spend a lot of time reporting on standardized tests — results, impact and changes they are undergoing or forcing schools to undergo.

One thing that keeps coming up as I report those stories is how student transience, that is kids moving frequently, was causing some schools to do even worse than they otherwise would. It’s uncontrollable, administrators would tell me, and it’s impacting us big time.

It’s not that I didn’t believe them. I know it’s bad when you move around a lot. I didn’t experience it because my mom planted us firmly and didn’t budge until we’d all crossed the stage at graduation precisely because she’d been subjected to more schools than I have fingers AND toes. (Yes, that’s more than 20 schools before she crossed the same stage I would nearly three decades later.) The impact wasn’t lost on her, and it’s something that continues to affect her everyday life even today. How could it not?

But how big of a deal it was in my community, and whether the schools were making a bigger deal than necessary, was a question I had from the very first time it was offered up as an excuse reason for some of the low numbers. It was something I wanted to look into. And finally, after initially proposing the idea this fall, I got to work on it at the beginning of this year.

On Sunday, that enterprise package ran on A1 as the anchor to our annual Grading Our Schools package (which is the annual performance reports detailing how each and every school in our coverage area performed on just about every possible thing the state measures).

I think it was one of the stories I’ve worked hardest on possibly ever. It required requesting data — it actually required schools to collect and compile that data for me — and cross-referencing it against what data I could get elsewhere. (I spent a lot of time creating and looking at spread sheets this past month.) It required getting into classrooms and talking to teachers, several I didn’t even end up using. It required leg work to find a family to help tell the story. It required patience to find an outside expert to discuss the issue. And it required a whole lot of concentration for me to finally rein everything in last week and focus the story. And then, it required killing quite a few of my darlings to tighten it and make my point.

It’s not 100 percent my favorite story I’ve ever written. But it may be my favorite story I’ve reported. If that makes sense. Yes there are other things I’d like to have had time to do with it. A multimedia component tops my list (though there were graphics in print, which didn’t get posted online?). Like all enterprise here, I had to work it in between my daily assignments. Even this past week when my editor laid off of me quite a bit on daily copy and let me wrap it up, it wasn’t my sole priority. But I think it accomplished what I hope it would. It’s just nice to see something I worked so hard on come to fruition.

All I had to do to find teachers and principals willing to open up to me was mention the topic of my story. Their anecdotes came pouring out. They all knew exactly what I was asking and why I was asking about it. This isn’t just the topic of a story to them, this is a real problem they are struggling with everyday. So there’s another lesson in this: Everyday problems can make for some of the best stories.

Sure, it’s not a government corruption exposé or anything. But it is an underreported and understudied problem, that does lead to real consequences, not just for the schools but for the kids, even long after primary school ends. My mother being exhibit A above. What I hope it accomplishes is that it makes at least one parent stop and reconsider moving her child or even one community member step forward and volunteer to help those kids. It is a problem that has been ongoing for, well, probably forever.

(As a side note: Sunday was another first for me. It was the first time I’ve ever had an all-Meranda front page. I know it’s not as big a deal when you consider our size means fewer stories on covers. But still a pretty cool feat.)

I posted a discussion at the Get wired, get hired group at Wired Journalists in reference to today’s Ask the Recruiter question.

Basically, a 20-something reporter is building his new media arsenal and wants to create a “personal” professional Web site. He’s worried, however, about how this would be received by his bosses.

Joe Grimm’s advice in nutshell? Sometimes, it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. But tread lightly.

I started Meranda Writes at the perfect time, I suppose. I was the editor of the student newspaper. There weren’t really any “bosses” to fret about. (Though I did get a lecture from the adviser about being careful not to talk about my sources. Duh.) But the truth is, I wanted my potential bosses to see the site to get a feel for who I was and what I was capable of doing. When I sent out resumes, under my contact information was the URL. When I e-mailed cover letters, I pointed editors to the site for more clips.

When I came to my current job, nobody told me of any policies regarding personal Web sites or blogs. I read the employee handbook and didn’t see anything even remotely pertinent. I spent the first week or so wondering how to bring it up to ease my conscience, even though I was 99 percent sure they had — at least someone? — come across it before hiring me. We soon had a newsroom ethics training session, but blogs didn’t come up. So I talked to the executive editor about it and discussed what’s cool and not cool to post. I don’t think she cared nearly as much as I did, but it was important to me that I have at least some quasi-go-ahead to continue. (In truth, I think my site was a part of the package deal they got when they hired me.)

I don’t know what would have happened if they’d stumbled on the site without warning. Nothing, I suppose. I would have been hiding in plain sight, a Google search away from “discovery.” Though I sometimes reference projects we’ve completed or stories I’m particularly proud of, it’s not like I blog about the latest office or town gossip. I don’t vent about my co-workers, bosses or beat. I like my job so I don’t really have much reason to do so.

I don’t know for certain, but from my site stats, I don’t believe my bosses or co-workers are active readers. They hear enough of me buzzing about Twitter and Facebook in real life they probably don’t want to read about it, too. My blog is actually the punchline to an on-going local staff joke. The imagined blog is much funnier than the one I actually keep. Either way, this site is not a secret. I have always been conscious of the fact that what I write is archived by Google and as available to my co-workers and sources as to anyone else.

I’ve actually fielded this question — “What was the boss’s reaction to your site?” — from at least a half-dozen other reporters who e-mailed me after stumbling on Meranda Writes. They all wanted to start their own sites but fear of reprisal held them back. Some of them did go on to create sites. Some never may.

My advice is the same as what Joe Grimm is handing out: proceed with caution, tell your bosses about it later. Personally? I wouldn’t want to work for an organization that didn’t see the value in having “wired” employees interested in extending their new media skills. Fortunately, I don’t.

The Monte Carlo Casino on the Las Vegas strip is on fire. For that news, the Las Vegas Sun has got you covered.

and an update

Here in Indiana, thousands of miles away, I might have caught this news blip on tonight’s news. (Except I only watch when I’m at work, and I’m off today.) If I was a 24-hour-TV-news junkie, which I used to be and am still recovering from, I may have caught it on CNN. (But my TV’s in my living room down the hall collecting dust. No, really, it’s been about a month since I turned it on.)

I learned, instead, via Twitter. It was also the way I heard about the recent market turmoil and the death of Heath Ledger.

I know I’ve been writing a lot about Twitter of late. But that’s because it’s become increasingly part of my daily routine. Where once Facebook was a dominant force for keeping in touch and updated, these days I find myself updating and reading Twitter instead. (To be fair, my Twitter status is fed to Facebook.) And I find it far more useful and helpful for me.

On a related side note, I love the Las Vegas Sun’s approach to the story. They’re updating the blog with new info. But I like the approach on the front of the site. It’s bullet by bullet what you want to know. No B.S. no he said, she said. Just what is going on, what has already happened, who is affected, and where to get more information. Nice and concise.

I just saw a tweet from a follower on Twitter worth sharing with you. Note, this guy is a member of my community. I do not know him, but he randomly found my twitter a week ago and started following me so I started following him to see if there’s anything interesting.

His comment tonight? (I’d link, but they’re protected.)

“interesting spin to twitter when you follow local people.”

My reply? Agreed.

One day, I happened into a coffee shop while reporting a story and ran into a person I’d never met but who I knew from Twitter.

In fact, I just watched another local person micro-blog a focus group that I helped set up for my paper. I didn’t know he was part of the group until I saw the first post and put 2+2 together.

It’s very weird to follow a focus group that I’ll get a full report on later from the eyes, or hands I suppose, of a participant. Here’s his wrap-up/summation of what came from the group of college kids:

focus group done. I would say college students want: 1. local, local, local 2. simple 3. wiki calendar of local events 4. to kill flash ads

I’m not surprised by that, and wish the summary I get would be so concise.

My question to you: Who at your organization is watching the tweets of your citizens? Who are your citizens following?

I think I may seek out a few more locals to follow because it’s definitely interesting.

As we continue to follow the recent floods up here in northwest Indiana, I’ve been called on to pick up random stories here and there. (Not so much random, but between beats kind of things.) Today it was the arrival of FEMA to assess the damage. Yesterday, it was about the American Red Cross naming the region a national level disaster.

A version of the charticle that ran in today’s paper was originally posted yesterday (Tuesday night) as a breaking news item. A version of my story was out on the state wire around 1 p.m. today (Wednesday).

Now, today, I was charged with kind of picking up all the pieces for a comprehensive “This is where we stand” update for Thursday’s paper. My editor handed me a story printed off the site of the paper in one of the small cities to our north, which was one of the worst affected spots. It included comments about the Red Cross efforts in that area, which he wanted me to check into.

I set it aside as I made some other calls and tried to rein in other sources and wrap up another story. About half an hour later, I picked the print out up and noticed something that piqued my interest. It sounded familiar. Really, really familiar.

At first I thought, well how many ways are there to write that an area’s been named a disaster site? Coincidence perhaps. But then, when I re-read it, I noticed something that made my heart race. Between the lead in my online update yesterday and the lead in the story that ran today I made a change to clarify something I realized after I’d already posted the update. My original lead was:

The American Red Cross has named Northwest Indiana a national level disaster because of the recent floods, which destroyed hundreds of homes and left thousands displaced.

As a result, more than 50 volunteers from across the country have already been mobilized to aid in the recovery effort in the 17-county region, with headquarters in Lafayette.

When I wasn’t just trying to get the story up, and I was smoothing it out for print, I realized I needed to specify it “left thousands of residents displaced.” Otherwise it sounds like it displaced homes. I also fixed the incorrect capitalization on northwest Indiana. Small technicalities.

But seeing the same technical mistakes in the other story made me suspicious. So I brought up my online update and compared the familiar-sounding lead.

My version, with a 6:55 p.m. time stamp:

Their version:

I don’t know if I can sum up in words how utterly shocked I was to discover the first two paragraphs of that story were identical to the first two graphs of my update. I mean, word for word they must have been copy and pasted. Go back and look again. I had to.

At first, my instinct was, maybe the wires picked it up and they just took that to top their story. But then I checked, and as I said before, it wasn’t on the wire until 1:12 p.m. I had the print out before then. Plus, the wire story further cleans up my lead. I also noticed the story doesn’t attribute anything to the Associated Press or even “Wire reports,” and it certainly doesn’t mention the J&C.

I mean, wow. I was pretty much speechless. This stuff doesn’t happen. Does it? Nobody’s that dumb. Are they?

This is plagiarism, right? I’m not confusing my journalism terms or just annoyed that guy took credit for my haphazard sentences and reporting. I mean, this is not OK. Right?

On one hand I have the inclination that I’m sure we caught them off guard because we got the news late in the day and posted it after the Red Cross had closed. Therefore, they likely couldn’t independently confirm what they read on our site. But they didn’t even attempt to rewrite around it. There was so much other, (presumably) original reporting in that story. Why would you top it off with someone else’s lead, especially if that someone else covers your region and will likely stumble across your story? I don’t get it. I mean. Who does that?!

The next question, I guess, once I reconcile my feelings is… What do you do with something like this? I pointed it out to my editor when I realized. I don’t know what he will do or has done. I asked him, jokingly, what he’d do if we just took two paragraphs from another paper, and his comment was simply, “I can’t fire a (the other paper) reporter.” I’d expect to be and hope I would be fired for doing that.

So I guess my question is, what would you do?

One of the other reporters suggested I e-mail the reporter directly to ask about it. But I don’t know. It’s probably one of those things best left to the editors.

Quick, can you identify all of the people Mindy McAdams names in her post, Do you know who this is?

• Vannevar Bush
• Ted Nelson
• Alan Kay
• Vint Cerf
• Bob Metcalfe
• Tim Berners-Lee
• Ivan Sutherland

I can’t.

I’m going to take one for the team here — the young’uns that is — and admit I didn’t know most of those names even in passing.

And please don’t shoot me, but Mike Royko was only vaguely familiar. (That’s the subject of the original post over at Newsosaur, re: a journalism student who didn’t know Royko’s name.)

Does that make me a horrible journalist? Should I hand over my reporters notebook and pen now?!

I’m 22. I didn’t take a “journalism history” course in college. Those lessons were interspersed among my Intro to Mass Comm, Law, Ethics, Magazine Publishing, Beat Reporting, etc. courses. And the famous journalists I did and do know are probably more happenstance than concentrated effort.

So someone give me a list of the top 10-15 greatest journalists of all time, and I promise I’ll memorize those I don’t know at the risk of looking dumb and being chastised down the line by some high-brow editor. No, seriously.

But therein also lies the problem. I’ll memorize it. Like it’s for a test, which I guess it could be. But who knows if the names I’m given would be the right ones. It’s kind of subjective.

I understand the usefulness of having historical context to understand where you have been and how it leads to where you are and will figure into where you go from here.

But am I a worse journalist for not knowing those names? Well, am I?

Does it make your 30-year veteran a worse journalist that he’d look at me like I was from Mars if I asked him about Rob Curley or Adrian Holovaty? They’re paving the future as much as any journalists have paved the past. Is it better to look forward or behind?

Or is it more important that my classes in j-school taught me and emphasized tangible things. I remember and use every day the practical skills that allow me to do this job competently not necessarily the names of those journalists before me. I can understand knowing important rulings like Times v. Sullivan. I can understand needing to know when newspapers started to mass publish and the impact cable had on broadcast TV. I can even understand and appreciate reading great journalists of the past to make my own work stronger.

But in the end, if I had to choose, I choose real-world application over historical context. That’s just me.

There’s been an awful lot of discussion of late, at least on the blogs I read, about whether you can — or should — teach journalists to be online journalists.

In one corner, we have those saying it can’t be done and shouldn’t. In the other, they contend it can and should be attempted at least. (And on and on. Read the comments on the posts, which are as enlightening as the posts themselves.)

Where do I stand? I’m torn. Though I find myself aligning with the cans and shoulds.

On one hand, I am the go-getter, I-want-to-know-more-faster type. On the other, I still see a role for the reluctant journalist. I’m also an optimist. I think you CAN teach an old dog new tricks, as long as they aren’t afraid to come out and play (even if it takes a shove to get them out there in the first place.)

Personally, just about everything I know about computers was learned by tinkering around. I taught myself HTML, CSS and everything that follows. I learned how layers work in Photoshop and how to edit audio with audacity without taking a formal class. I spent hours with my legs crossed and MacBook on my lap trying to figure out the movie editing functions the first time I used the software. The list goes on.

When I wanted to know, I sought out the answers or solutions. The very first tag of HTML I learned was the font tag because I wanted to make my comments stand out in the then HTML-based chat room (yeah that tells you how old-school I am). Then, I learned to put up images with my chats. Then I learned about links. Then, I learned about things like body and title and how to take all those other tags I learned and work them together into a .html site. Later on, I learned about tables and frames (yes, God help me, but I was the freaking QUEEN of frames). Eventually, I stumbled on CSS. The rest is well, history.

There are three things to note about my informal education in Web design/new media:

1. I taught myself everything through a little bit of searching and a lot of guess and check/trial and error.

2. Each thing I learned built upon things I had previously taught myself.
3. I taught myself on a need to know basis.

That last item is the most important, though many would contend the first is. When I wanted to know how to make my chat stand out, I asked around and then looked up the font tags. When frames were all the rage (and they once were, trust me I was there), I actually used the AOL homepage creator to build a site with frames and then analyzed the code to figure out how it worked and changed so I could build my own from scratch. And later, when I wanted to know how to add layers so I could provide absolute positioning on my layouts and abandon frames? I spent weeks designing the perfect site and then figuring out how to get CSS to cooperate as it was supposed to (this was before most browsers were CSS friendly).

Everything I learned was because I reached a level where I wanted to try something new that I didn’t know how to do before, but that I knew was possible because I had seen or heard of other people doing it.

I think the same thing can be applied to journalism, especially online journalism. You look at other awesome packages or blogs or micro-sites or whatever it is you want to do and you see how they are doing it, what you like and what you don’t. This leads you down the road to your own possibilities. The thought process follows something like this:

They did it.
So that means it’s possible to do. Right?
I wonder if it would work here.
How did they do it?
Is that the best way or is anyone else doing it differently?
How?
What is the best method to achieve what we want?
Well, that didn’t work.
OK, that’s better.
Still needs tweaked, but let’s go with it.
That wasn’t so hard.
Holy s— it worked.
What else can we do with this?

In short, I think what it comes down to is the same thing that makes a good journalist: You have to be curious and You have to be brave enough to follow that curiosity.

On one hand, you have to have that inner “I want to try that” instinct, which makes you want to spend time analyzing video clips to see what works and what doesn’t, what left you in awe and what made you yawn. You have to be willing to take time to interact with different flash packages to understand how they work (or why they don’t) as a user before you ever sit down to compile your own. It’s like the writer who proclaims he isn’t a reader. It’s a waste of time. How can you be good at something when your exposure to the best of it is limited? I think you need something to aspire to and something to rise above. If that makes sense.

On the other hand, you have to have the courage to try and fail. This is the part that I think holds back many of those “dinosaurs.” When you’ve been doing something the same way for so long, it’s scary to be a beginner. You also have more to lose. If I, one year out of college, take on a new job or task and realize “This blows” I have less to lose than if I’d wagered my whole career on taking that chance. If that also makes sense.

I have so much yet to learn about all of these things. I’m not waiting for training, but I wouldn’t pass any up that was offered. I’m just waiting for an opportunity to teach myself.

I am very much a part of the Web culture. Nobody taught it to me, I’m just innately interested. But I know some damn good journalists who aren’t. They’ll come around, or I think, likely self-select themselves out when they realize they aren’t swimming in the same direction. I really don’t think they need to be forced out by my generation. I think we need them now more than ever to rein us in and show us what good journalism is. And we can repay them by teaching them about blogs and twitter and del.ico.us and YouTube and RSS feeds and everything that will one day be obsolete.

Do I think everyone is going to be as motivated as I am? Absolutely not. But their motivation might be different. Maybe they’re really hungry to dig into crime statistics or to tear through the city budget looking for extravagance? Maybe they’re a photojournalist or reporter honestly looking to report on the human condition and just tell the story of this time and place. I think those things are just as important as being willing to sit for hours trying to figure out why your video isn’t encoding properly or how to narrow down an hour long talk into a two-minute podcast. Should we likewise say to all these aspiring online journalists who would rather die than cover City Council that we have no room for you in our news organization? No. There is a place and a need for both sets. They can complement and learn from each other. And to some extent, as with my covering the education beat, they can even be one in the same. Someday, they all may be. We’re not there yet. I think that’s OK.

There is and will always be a place in this business for those journalists who have a desire to find and tell good stories. As demands on journalists grow, in fact, they will be the only ones for whom there is room.

But just because some of them aren’t the ones chomping at the bits to delve into new media doesn’t mean you should dismiss them as a lost cause. At least offer them the chance to prove you wrong. I’m not an advocate of forcing anything down someone’s throat. But reluctance or fear are not good enough reasons for a good journalist to be turned away. Hell, I’ve been afraid of and reluctant to do more stories than I’d like to admit. And each time I got over my fear. Each time, I became a little more confident, a little more comfortable. Should I have been fired because I wasn’t comfortable writing about a child molester? Should my boss have reassigned me when I didn’t know what to look for at my first bank robbery? The amazing thing about journalism, the thing that probably more than anything attracted me to this field, is every day is a learning experience. Why is online journalism any different? Sometimes the only way to learn is to jump in, and sometimes it takes a shove to get you to try something you end up loving. You never know if you give up on even trying.

I noticed a weird headline among the IndyStar’s top read stories tonight: “Note to Sunday Newspaper Readers”

It said:

Due to massive computer problems, several news stories planned for Sunday’s newspaper did not appear this morning. The problems, related to computer storage issues, required us to reprint some stories from Saturday’s newspaper, and leave out stories we had planned to publish.

We apologize for the problems which we believe are now fixed. Local news and sports stories we had planned for Sunday’s paper will be published in Monday’s Star.

I guess there’s always that risk, right? The problem with computers is that they crash sometimes. But the paper always comes out right? Right. At least the ads did in this case. I guess that says a lot. Not necessarily good things, either. They can’t get the news out, but the ads can be delivered to your front door step packaged in yesterday’s news. Oy vey.

It just strikes me as supremely odd that they would opt to reprint stories that already ran. How does that make any sense? If anything, just run wire. Or take some of the stories slated to run in the other papers in the chain (there are several in Indiana, including the one where I work). Or reverse publish some of your blogs. Or shift around some of that advertising and tighten the paper to make it seem less empty.

I remember how much we used to curse and cry and freak out when the system would eat our stories on deadline at the Stater, and before we replaced the printer, when we couldn’t get the proofs to print and had to rely on our eyes looking over the screen. And when the PDFs wouldn’t FTP to the printer and we were already past deadline? Oh those nights were a blast, too. For all the ease technology has allowed, it hasn’t been without its own problems.

I don’t pretend to be as smart or experienced as the folks at the Star. But I’m just baffled — as too, apparently, are the readers — as to why you’d re-run yesterday’s content?

To their credit, it does appear some of those stories are online today. But there’s the rub. Tomorrow’s paper will be full of yesterday’s news, again. The news that should have run but didn’t will run a day past its prime. Not as bad as a complete reprint, but an odd conundrum to be sure. I’ve never heard of anything like this, though certainly it can’t be unprecedented?

On the other hand, though this isn’t a correction, I think I may forward it on to Regret the Error because it’s just so odd.

UPDATE:

Editor & Publisher wrote about the glitch in a piece I just stumbled upon. I do feel bad for the Star. I mean, yikes, you can’t access your content? What do you do?

The glitch resulted in numerous pages worth of news and advertising planned for the Sunday paper being left out and replaced by other content, said Managing Editor Pam Fine. She said the problem occurred after the paper’s CCI Publishing System went down and content placed in it was not accessible.

“We wound up running a lot of wire we would ordinarily not run,” Fine told E&P, citing as an example a Page One wire story on the Blackwater security firm and a Web story about a local congressional caucus that ran inside. “We also had a place holder for an enterprise piece that will now run on Tuesday.”