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.”

A few weeks ago, maybe not even, we received one of those random calls you often get in a newsroom. The long-shot “this happened, and I think it could make a story” type of tip. But it was from a woman in Texas. And it was just crazy enough but also “feel good” that we pursued it.

You can read my complete story or find the AP version of my story pretty much anywhere by Googling the woman’s name (or on CNN.com to make it easy for you).

Basically, the woman took off her rings to make homemade fudge for a company bake sale. Forgot about the rings until several days later, when she discovered her mother’s diamond ring was missing. After searching every where, even emptying the garbage, she tracked down the name and e-mail of the woman who’d purchased the fudge thinking it a long shot. The buyer, meanwhile, had given the fudge to her sister-in-law’s father in another city. He had discovered the diamond ring during a midnight snack. The woman who bought the fudge got the ring from him, noticed the similarity to her own mother’s diamond ring and set out on a quest to find its owner as well. Though the two worked in the same office, they were in different departments and merely knew of each other before. They exchanged e-mails and the woman got her mom’s diamond back.

So, that’s a funny and heartwarming story, right? Yet, when I was finally able to track down e-mail addresses and phone numbers for the women — not as easy as it sounds — and they called me back they were like, “I don’t really see why this would be a story.” And I explained to them that, well, people just don’t do that. Not everyone finds a diamond and then goes hunting for its owner. At first reluctant, they gave me the interview but declined a photo.

My story ran on our front page and, as I noted above, the wires picked it up (tightening and rewriting a bit, but using my reporting and quotes, etc.). It spread to pretty much … everywhere. (Which hey is cool by me!)

My ME flagged something for me today on our opinion page. The woman who lost the ring wrote a letter to the editor praising us for the story (which led to several TV appearances and the articles spreading around the world). That made me feel good. As she notes, she now realizes why it’s important to tell these feel good stories. Here’s her letter:

Public eager to hear positive news stories

When Meranda Watling contacted me about how I lost my ring in a batch of fudge, I thought she was making a mistake (Journal and Courier, Dec. 29). Who would care?

Was I wrong.

After the story ran here, we saw the article online all over the world: China, Australia and Germany. I have done interviews for WLFI and Fox & Friends so I could publicly thank Linda Rhoades and Red Matson for their kindness, and have now been contacted by a national talk show.

This tells me people want to be told that good things still happen in this world. We hear so much negative news that we forget we are surrounded by wonderful people every day.

I just wanted you to know how right Meranda was in choosing to write a positive, up-lifting article. All the attention has reaffirmed to me just how starved we are for positive news.

We need to be reminded that most people are honest and willing to be good to one another. How many acts of kindness occur daily that we do not hear about?

I am so very grateful to have my mom’s ring back. To me, it is my own personal miracle. I feel very humbled and blessed by this whole experience.

I know this story brought joy to many people, for I have been inundated with e-mails and phone calls. So, please, keep up the good work by including other positive stories in your paper on a regular basis.

Linda Vancel
West Lafayette

I am constantly reminding people who complain that we’re always slamming this or writing about the negative that most of what I write is positive (or at the least and most often, neutral). For every story you hear about low graduation rates or a failing school, I probably write three times as many “this great new opportunity is being offered to students,” or “third-graders at City Elementary School are learning about engineering as part of a grant the teacher received …” you get the idea. But, yeah, people remember the negative. Which makes it all the more imperative that we do strive to balance it with these stories that just remind you there are good people in the world and in our communities.

It seems as if every time the clouds around here even think they might let moisture escape, the rivers flood. I swear, it seems as if Lafayette is in at perpetual flood-stage, though usually not significant. (For those not familiar with the topography of this area, basically the West Lafayette levee area and um, downtown Lafayette, are built down in the valley right on the Wabash River.)

But this was different. Not here, but in parts of our northern coverage area, on the Tippecanoe River that feeds into the Wabash, the river was flowing so high and so fast that it was about as close as possible without going over the 100-year flood level. (That means, for those keeping score at home, the likelihood of such a flood happening in a year is about 1 percent. That is, it might happen once in 100 years.)

I should have taken it as an omen when I woke up at 6 a.m. to howling wind, rumbles of thunder and glints of lightning. I never wake up in the middle of the night. I know 6 a.m. isn’t night. But when you go to bed at 2 a.m. or later and set your alarm for 8 a.m., that’s the middle of the sleep cycle. I remember thinking at that point even how weird it was I was woken up by the weather. Little did I know, I wasn’t the only one. I went back to bed.

When my alarm went off for real. I hit snooze, and then reluctantly got out of bed at 8:15 a.m. thinking I would have plenty of time to shower, eat breakfast and iron the outfit I picked.

Not even five minutes after I crawled out of bed my phone rang again. I thought I must have hit snooze or set a second alarm on accident. Then I saw it come up from the paper. My immediate reaction — which is horrible but true — was “Oh, crap. I got something wrong in my story.” I had written the lead story on front for Tuesday after chasing down details and documents and squirreling some information, reluctantly, out of officials. Though I thought it solid, there was always that chance as a pit in my stomach, “What if I got it wrong?” Well, I didn’t. (Though I did get a call from a less than pleased official re: that story.)

The call was actually my editor. His plea, which he was sending out to every reporter at that moment, was I needed to get in ASAP. We had major flooding and need to mobilize. I told him I could be there in 15 minutes. He told me to wear boots.

So, without a shower and throwing on jeans and a sweater under my coat, I headed out into the drizzle.

I didn’t even have my coat off before I had orders and assignments. (I was among the first reporters to get there since I live closest.) Over the first hour and a half, I called the National Weather Service and the emergency management agency directors in three counties and the power company that owns the dams and I don’t even remember who else trying to find out where everybody was working from, where the flooding was at, how much flooding, what else was coming and more. As reporters came in, they were dispatched, some with photogs and others with point & shoots, to the places we were hearing were worst affected. Meanwhile, I was being handed releases as my editor got them and hearing things on the scanner to check into.

I wrote three Web updates before I even got in my car to head out to the flooded lands. Before I left, we probably had a dozen updates, easy. All told, I don’t know, we had at least 30 related updates today. Plus photo galleries and call-outs for stories and pictures.

As I was driving toward the staging area in a nearby county to find some personal stories and see with my own eyes how bad it was near the dam, I heard the radio come on with “the latest information we’ve gathered.” Only, they didn’t say where they gathered it from. It had been our Web site. I would have been suspicious anyway, because it was information I got from one of the emergency directors as he was leaving a meeting and fueling his truck, not something he sent out in a release. But when they read, verbatim, the quote he said to me (and it was pretty distinctive, which was why I used it), I had to laugh out loud. But I figured, whatever, I’d rather people be aware. Still funny though.

So I drove along the river and through a few water-filled/covered roads (that my mom would not like to hear about and my editor pretended not to approve of either, though they were between me and the story). I spent about an hour and a half talking to people coming off rescue boats or standing on their property watching as the water level rose and came literally to their door. As shocked as these people were, for me, it was my first time ever seeing this type of disaster in person.

Floods are one of those things you hear about elsewhere. And even here, as much as we hear about roads closed due to flooding or the river at flood stage or even as high as I see the water creep into the tree line, this was different. I mean, I was standing on a bridge with water crashing into it and a boat tethered to it. I was told there was a boat dock below that bridge off to one side. But you couldn’t have gotten a toy sail boat between the river and the bridge when I was there. And in the distance, I could see the dam just gushing and gushing. On the other side of the bridge, downstream, I could see homes submerged as far as my eyes allowed me along both sides of the river. It was a site for me to take in as much as it was for anyone else. I had to force myself to pause and breathe and acknowledge the “Wow” factor even before I started flagging down people getting off the boats.

I don’t know who said it, but someone once described a journalist as someone who runs toward what everyone else is running from. It might be stupid or dangerous, even. But I won’t deny it is fun to be right there, to see it in person not just on the news or in the papers. But more than any of those things, it’s important. For the stranded families who needed to evacuate or know when to evacuate and to where, and for the drivers looking to avoid getting swept away, and for the family members near and far who wanted to make sure their loved ones were OK, the information we could only get by being there was worth it.

As rumors swirled — would the dams hold? — and unexpected problems occurred — a fire in a home where the fire department had to be “shipped” in? — a voice of calm and reason was needed. That’s kind of what I saw our role as being. We didn’t need to sensationalize the flood of the century. We just needed to get the facts out, as quick as possible, to as many people as possible. And we did. So I’m heading to bed now, wiped out, but proud of our work today. And hoping tomorrow doesn’t bring the flood downstream.

More: jconline is “flooded” with flood-related coverage now and will be for awhile. Also, take a look at the editor’s take on covering the flood in her blog.

I spent a good chunk of yesterday/today trying to figure out how to get the J&C on the school closing contact lists of area districts.

Living in the Midwest, school closings and two-hour delays (a term I’d never heard of until I moved here) are fairly common. In the fall, schools without AC sometimes cancel class when temperatures/heat index top out in the 90s. In the winter, snow drifts out in the county or a not-so-impressive-or-efficient street crew in the cities can keep schools closed several days a year.

For years, when you woke up in the morning and looked out the window to a “marshmallow world,” you ran to your TV to catch the school closings ticker at the bottom of the local news station. Maybe you turned the radio on to the local radio station. Either way, the last place you looked or would ever think to look would be the newspaper stuck in the snow drift on your front porch.

Now, you don’t need to open your door to access the newspaper. And we can get the school closings posted online as fast if not faster than the TV stations can program them to scroll.

We’ve been working on training, for lack of a better word, local schools to call us since I got here. But nobody yet made a concentrated effort to get it done. When you have more than two dozen districts, let me tell you, it takes awhile to find the right person and get in contact with them and then figure out a system that works. The schools in this county are pretty good about calling. The superintendents/their designees often call me when they have cancellations. The outlying counties, especially those on the fringe or those with their own smaller town papers, aren’t as good. Yet. I’m working on it.

I had to actually pause when one of the outlying superintendent’s replied back to my e-mail that he would be glad to call us. But he said, it likely won’t be helpful since the decision is usually made when it’s too late to get in the paper. Yeah, I wrote back, but there is no deadline for the Web.

It’s a process. We’re working on finding ways to get the news in faster (for example, our morning reporting gets in at 5:45 a.m., so we have nothing posted between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.) and figuring out what news we should get up (everything?). And while we’re working on training the districts to give us a call/shoot us an e-mail, we’re also just as much training our readers to rely on us for that news.

My greatest weakness as a writer, and I suppose reporter, is my propensity to over-report. I’ve always been like this. I always end up with 10x what I actually need. It’s a good thing to have too much, or at least, better than not enough. Right?

Turns out, not always. But man, it’s a hard habit to shake.

Part of it is my approach to stories. Sometimes, I guess, I’m like a kid in a candy store; my eyes are much bigger than my stomach. I can think of 10 great angles to every story but need to work on narrowing it down to one angle at a time so I can better focus. Then, I can come back and hit some of the other angles separately, which my editor says (probably rightly) would better serve our readers. I’ll also be less likely to be paralyzed/overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of work to be done.

Focus has always been an issue of mine. Not just the “man I can’t focus with the scanner, the TV, the phones, e-mail and the other dozen reporters constantly chattering,” which yeah can be difficult, too. But focusing a story that I’ve over reported can be daunting. What doesn’t make the cut? What great story remains untold for another day? How many unanswered questions are OK? And how many of these questions, which I have indeed answered in my reporting, are the story chatters going to call me out on tomorrow because they didn’t make it to print?

I guess, to use another food-related cliche: I sometimes bite off more than I can chew. Which leads to “indigestion,” when it comes time to report and I end up chasing down angles I don’t use or need, or when I’m stressed trying to pull together a single coherent story from 10 story lines. (Oh, and throw in phrases like “hold to cover” or “12 inches” or my personal favorite, “a charticle out front and the impact inside,” and this makes the process that much more complicated.) By better focusing my ideas (there we go with focus again), I guess it would help me focus my reporting and hone in on just the specifics necessary to tell *this* story. As I said before, I can come back to the other angles. Sometimes, I forget that.

Worst of all? This tendency is compounded by something I really, really, really do need to get over. ASAP. That is, I can’t write until I’ve reported. Until I know who I have talked to, what they’ve said, who can be grouped together, what data opposes what or supports whom, where each piece fits together with the whole. This helps me discover gaps in my logic or my reporting. But I’m told actually writing as soon as I’m reporting each piece would do the same, probably more effectively, and writing earlier would help lead me down the path in a more narrow and, get this, focused manner.

I can bang the story out, usually, once I have all the ducks in a row. Sometimes, on more in-depth or bigger pieces these ducks take on the form of a rough outline, usually scribbled on a post-in stuck to my monitor. But like I said, I tend to over-report, so it’s more complicated than that. I have to sort out the ducks, decide which ones make the cut, which get relegated to the file cabinet, which to the trash and which bits actually make it through to the story I file and ultimately, the paper/Web site. If I had fewer ducks or was better as picking the ducks early on, this step would likely be easier. I wouldn’t have to “kill my darlings” so often. I’d also have more drafts, which would allow more revisions until I was pleased with exactly how it was phrased and ordered.

The other problem with over reporting? It takes time. Time isn’t really a luxury I have when writing two or so stories a day, plus any online updates that may pop up. It isn’t a luxury I’m likely to ever have. So managing what time I do have is paramount.

I both love and hate the emphasis on enterprise reporting here. I love it because I am pushed to constantly assess my beat for these issues worth looking at more in-depth. But I resent it because there’s never enough time to do the stories as well as I think they could be. Maybe I’m a perfectionist. (OK, that’s a big “maybe” and is more likely just “I am.”) But I don’t know. I have written several stories that I liked, but when I look at them in retrospect, I think them merely OK. Nothing stands out. When I look at my writing, rather than being proud of it, I constantly see what I could have or should have done instead. It’s a poor way to live. My sense of accomplishment lasts only as long as I have filed the story and am not on deadline for the next one. It’s really odd because I am such an optimist. But I guess I live in perpetual self-improvement mode, that is I’m always assessing how I did and how I can do better next time. Does this go away as I become even more confident in my writing and reporting? I’m banking on that. I don’t want to get complacent, but I would like to see the good in my work.

Why am I relaying my personal faults here? Well, you all are smarter than I am. (At least collectively.) Surely, I’m not the first person to go through this. I know I’m not, because my editor tried to give me some tips to combat it during my recent annual review (where we discussed some of these weaknesses, but which generally went well.) Maybe some of you much-experienced journalists can weigh in with tips that helped you solve these problems. Here’s one sheet I’ve already found about writing while reporting, which has some good tips to get me started.

So to recap, things to work on now that my rookie year as a reporter is behind me: more focused story pitches, and consequently tighter-focused reporting and writing; following up those big-picture stories through several shorter stories rather than one big piece; writing sooner and reworking/revising more often; confidence that I am in fact doing all right in my job.

All of those are reporting/writing technical issues. Yes, I know. We did talk about some of the other things I’d like to do. I’m going to keep pushing to be involved in things like NPD and to get some multimedia work experience here. But as I’ve told everyone all along, I see this job as the foundation of my career. I need to be a strong reporter before I can be a strong anything else.

What’s really important in all of this, and which I haven’t mentioned yet: I survived. I was scared when I was in school that I’d graduate, get a job and hate journalism. I was fearful I’d hate the city I ended up in or the beat I landed. I wasn’t sure I would like doing this every day, or that I wouldn’t stumble, fall and embarrass myself by even trying. I always left myself the out that I don’t get paid enough to hate my job, and if I didn’t like it, I’d quit and do something else. But, man, it’s been an interesting year. I love it, as much, perhaps more, than I hoped I would. And I’m pretty confident, there’s a whole world out there beyond this city and my beat waiting to be conquered. Once I nail down these basics as well as I’d like to, I’m sure it’ll be ready for me.

I have been taking a deliberate “hands off” and “mouth shut” approach to the 2008 presidential election so far. Not even my closest friends can tell you who I’d like to see enter the Oval Office in 2009. Part of it was I felt it was too early to choose my allegiance, and part of it was, I’m not into talking politics like I used to be.

Tonight, I happened upon some T-shirts supporting the candidate that I really, really want. And it saddens me that I can’t wear them.

I’ve never kept my political affiliations a secret, but I’ve grown increasingly less willing to discuss them. I even removed that slot from my Facebook profile, and unjoined groups I’d been part of more for laughs than anything else. I even removed my “support” for office holders in my home state, Ohio, because it’s fairly obvious to follow that line to my political beliefs.

Do I think all this is necessary? Actually, no. I know other reporters who think expressing any opinion is tantamount to an ethical breech. I don’t think it’s that much of an issue for someone to know I lean liberal, or that much of a surprise. If you ask, I will tell you.

But part of being a journalist is maintaining that objectivity, or at least maintaining professional distance and not giving anyone a reason to question your ability to be objective and unbiased. So by removing those items, I am not showing support to one side or the other. If that makes sense, I can still hold the same opinions without wearing my opinions on my sleeve, so to speak.

A few weeks ago, I was tapped to cover a meeting for a new group whose cause could not possibly have been farther from my own belief system. When I got the assignment, I paused for a second to reflect on it and how it made me feel. I covered it as I would any other assignment. I was neither more nor less critical than I would have been were it a rally for a cause I care deeply about. In fact, I got several e-mails the following day/week from the group’s founders and members commending me for my professionalism and for a fair story. That’s the key I realized when I accepted the assignment: I knew I could be professional about it and reserve judgment for the reader/community member. That’s how I approached it.

Those community members do not know and could not tell from my reporting where I stand on that issue. That’s important. Were I to wear my politics on my sleeve, they would have, rightfully, raised flags. Instead, I showed I could maintain a professional distance both in my coverage of things I am fully in support of and those with whom I couldn’t disagree more.

When I became a journalist, I did not sign over my rights to join civil discourse or to vote and have an opinion. But I did take on the responsibility knowing that I wouldn’t be volunteering for political campaigns or pasting candidate bumper stickers on my car.

The last presidential election was the first I could vote in. Living in Ohio, I had the great fortune of seeing many candidates come through. I did volunteer some time working on mailings for at least one and registering people to vote. I had plenty of T-shirts, buttons and more telling the world where my allegiance lie.

Now, I’m in an entirely different place in my life and career. And though this election is just as important, perhaps more, I know that I won’t be doing any of those things. I never know when I may get called on to cover someone I do support or to handle a story on something I don’t. I have to maintain my professionalism in either instance, and part of that means keeping my mouth shut and my hands off in the political races. No matter how much I want that T-shirt.

I saw this post about the Cleveland Plain Dealer shifting to all local fronts.

That both surprises and excites me.

While I always respected the journalism the PD did, it was never my paper of choice. I favored the Akron Beacon Journal because it felt more like “my” paper. Even though I realized it was a metro — not as major as the PD, but a pretty respectable size — it also wasn’t afraid to be Akron’s community paper. That “community” mission was not a vibe I ever got reading the PD. (And not just because Akron wasn’t their community — they laid claim to all of NE Ohio — but it was just their approach. I don’t know how to explain it. It almost felt like it was trying to be something it wasn’t, at least to me.)

Either way, I never felt a “connection” with the PD. That’s why I still read Ohio.com almost daily, but I can’t remember the last time I stopped in at Cleveland.com. I still gleefully pick up the Beacon every time I’m home. The PD? Not so much.

I’m glad to see the PD embracing the hyper-local, which is what newspapers are best at providing and the one thing readers can’t get anywhere else.

For me? I like that we nearly always run all-local fronts. We do run occasional stories from the GNS Washington bureau, but specific to Indiana and often with further localization added. When a national story breaks, it’s online during the day, and if it’s big enough, we follow-up with something local for the paper. Sometimes, on major issues of national importance, we’ll run a charticle version of the wire story with some quick hit points: news, impact, reaction — all held to the cover for maximum readability.

Recently, I read a post with the idea that we should abolish the idea of the A-section being considered the “most important” and yet stuffed with national wire stories that many people have already read, seen or heard before the paper lands on their stoop in favor of pushing more local stories.

I don’t know where I stand on that one, but it’s something to ponder. I both agree that it’s silly to fill our papers with national wire copy many people have already read, but I also think there’s a place for that there. Lots of people haven’t heard, or they saw it on TV and want more than the sound-bite version. I know, it’s growing increasingly less necessary with the Internet, etc., but I do think we should fill that need as much as possible as well.

On the other hand, there is so much news every day — and the amount is only growing — that it’s overwhelming to many people. It’s easy to become apathetic when you try and keep track of everything. Newspapers have always done the job of filtering down a list of most important or I guess, “If you don’t pay any other attention to the national news, these are things you should probably know” stories that occupy a few pages in the paper. To charge a premium on the ads to accompany those stories, I do agree, is disingenuous because their importance continues to dwindle, but I’m not ready to throw out all the national wire stories. They still serve a purpose.

I usually read the paper “Front page, Opinions page (inside A), back of A (jump from front), Local cover, Local inside, glance at Biz…” I’m not the typical news consumer, but notice I still spend the most time with the local news. I also read a lot more news than most people and more frequently. I skip national wire in the paper because I’ve already read or seen most of that news elsewhere. State wire I’m more apt to at least glance through in print, but we run that in our local section not our A-section. This is also assuming I read in print, which I do probably 4/7 days a week. Otherwise online, it’s top 10 slots, local news beyond those stories and then opinions. And that’s about where it ends.

As for getting more local content? I couldn’t agree more. Though I’m not sure where the man-power for that will come from. I don’t believe the “we’re doing more with less” garbage. No, something’s got to give. I digress. Something I’ve come to love here in Lafayette, for better or worse, is that people read what we write. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been out at a meeting, event, whatever and heard the phrase “Well I read in the newspaper that…” And as much as people will complain about us not covering this or doing too much on that, they read it. They talk about it. Months later, people still remember me from “that column you wrote about moving to Lafayette.” Last week, I was at one of the schools attending a parent booster club meeting. One of the mothers, whom I’d used to illustrate a story on parent involvement the week prior and who’d had her picture on A1, told me everyone commented on it to her. She said she was even stopped by a total stranger in Wal-Mart to talk about it.

People want to feel connected to their communities. The New York Times isn’t going to write about the fire that took the families Christmas presents away in a town smaller than my elementary school. But that’s all those townspeople are talking about for weeks. The Washington Post isn’t going to write about your local standout basketball player signing with a university. But when you stop in the school and ask what’s going on, that’s the first thing anyone will mention.

I know we hear a lot about the demise of foreign reporting. I don’t necessarily disagree. But I do think that newspapers like the PD do a better service to local communities by writing about what they know best: their own people and places. If you have more resources devoted to local reporting, you’ll find more people with stories to tell. It’s bound to happen. And those are the ones people clip out and paste up in their scrapbook to keep forever. That’s the kind of news people want anyway.

(Also this post’s title is a reference to the “Dawg pound“, i.e. the Browns, in Cleveland. Get it? It occurred to me most people wouldn’t. So I wanted to point that out. lol.)

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?

It’s that time of year when journalists reflect on the top stories of the year. Today, I saw Time’s edition on the newsstand blasting its top picks. And the J&C exec. editor’s Sunday column this week was about how the top story really differs from person to person.

The top picks we have were up for debate via a poll at the bottom of jconline. My vote — in agreement with more than 50 percent of the about people to vote by the time I did (I can’t find the polll or its results now to compare) — is the Wade Steffey story.

That story began just as I started here. He went missing the day I moved to this town. Though my part in the ongoing coverage wasn’t much, I do feel proud of all our efforts and the work we did on that story and my own work on it. I just think it touched so many people here in so many ways — from volunteers to friends to Purdue policies to just casual readers, students and strangers — and went on for so long, that of the list it probably left the biggest impact.

It’s not that I don’t think property tax is a big issue. It’s huge. Even though I don’t pay the taxes, the delays here are wreaking havoc on the schools I cover. Plus it’s just an ongoing mess. I just don’t think we’ve actually gotten to the crest of that story. There’s a lot more to come. I’d keep it on my list of stories to watch in ‘08 — which is where I’ll throw Iraq — which would, for the record, be my No. 2 pick among the list. (I would place it No. 1, except that by this point many people have sadly become immune to the news.)

I also think a change in leadership at Purdue is a big deal for the school and I guess the community at large. But really, not as big a deal as we and many others made it out to be. And the ongoing financial troubles at area non-profits is sad, but isn’t financial trouble for non-profits practically the norm? Ditto on the health insurance debacle.

Local municipal elections, eh. Though there were some interesting results and some changes worth watching, it’s not such a big deal to me. Vote centers and a smoking ban, likewise, seemed much ado about nothing.

And the snowstorm in February that practically shut down everything in the county except the J&C was a huge inconvenience at the time, but it came and went. No lasting impact. As evidenced by this weekend’s wintry blast, no lessons learned either. It will go down as nothing more than a punchline to tales of “This is nothing compared to the blizzard of ‘07″ during future storms.

In considering the top stories the J&C covered and also thinking about what the heck I did this year worth even mentioning (it’s hard to remember all the stories I wrote even in the past week!) I’m going to list what I think are/were my 10 biggest stories (or more so issues since it’s hard for anything to be taken alone) I covered this year on the education beat:

1. School funding issues: A new state formula meant some districts (big, growing ones — like TSC) benefited and saw more money, but left others (ones with stagnant, declining enrollment — almost everyone in this region except TSC) to adjust to less state money. Also, the property tax delays are going to cost tax payers hundreds of thousands of additional dollars.
2. Changes in school leadership: West Lafayette has a new superintendent, who has come in and recently proposed some ideas that could be construed as radical. That will be fun to follow. The search for him was not so much fun on my end. Likewise, Benton’s superintendent has just a few weeks left before his replacement steps up to bat. And the county’s largest district is searching for the perfect new guy to fill the very big shoes of the current 18-year incumbant when he retires this summer.
3. Consolidation talks: The three Tippecanoe County districts commissioned a study to look at whether it would be feasible, cost-effective or in their best interest to consolidate resources. Pretty much what came out of it is a collaboration committee to meet annually. This year they met, rehashed what they already work together on and discussed the possibility of a joint charter school. Schools in White County have commissioned a study to look at the same issues. And a recent state report is encouraging these discussions, even suggesting such consolidations (for districts smaller than 2,000 at least) ought to be required. Definitely a trend to follow in 2008.
4. Full-day kindergarten: The legislature offered it to more students than ever this fall as the governor pushed it through. More implementation is on the way. This has caused a glut at some of our local space-starved schools. But generally has good support. Will be an ongoing issue.
5. ISTEP/NCLB/PL221 fall-out: Seems every month or so someone was failing at something according to these numbers/results. I’m working on a few bigger stories that look at some of what the numbers mean — achievement gaps, how poverty/transiency/race affect them, etc. The implications of these numbers, what they say about the schools and the community and what they may mean for both’s future, is interesting and telling about how well students are being reached. Again, something to keep an eye on.
6. Teacher contracts: Benton and WL both finally came to an agreements after a few years of ongoing disagreements as teacher’s finally backlashed. TSC had a relatively minor (compared to those) scuttle with its teachers, approving a contract they rejected, but it did take state intervention to settle 3/4 through the first semester.
7. Graduation rates: Too low in this city, according to the state’s formula which was used for the first time in the rates released in 07 for 2006. Disparities not just between our city high school (which posted a 65 percent) but surprisingly also among two otherwise equal and pretty similar county high schools.
8. School construction, renovation, reuse, demolition: To build or not to build. If not, to put portables outside growing schools or renovate and add another wing. To consolidate schools and close some or restructure/redistrict. To refinance old bonds or not to. What to do with buildings no longer of use/when to just tear them down. What old schools are being/can be used for. What to name new schools as they come on line. Etc. I wrote all those stories, mostly within this county but also in some outlying counties. I suppose this is an always ongoing issue. But taken all together, it is crazy to think how many different hands are being played all at once and how vast the differences between each player (i.e. district) is in their approach.
9. Private/charter schools gaining traction: The one charter in this county is growing. So are all the private schools — especially one of the high schools which of late has become a major player. Another small private school is seeking a charter — from a school district that’s never done it before. Virtual schools were OK’d, then denied, then … well who knows where they’ll end up eventually.
10. School safety: “Hit lists”, accidents and more sprinkled the year. Additional security cameras went up in several schools. Grants for more sidewalks and cross walks were won. Crossing guard times were reconsidered after a fatal accident on the way to school.

So as you can see, I would say I got a pretty amazing schooling on the education beat this year. (That pun was entirely intended, how could I resist?) I’m looking forward to following these and other stories this coming year with a little less “Wait, what does this mean? I’ve never covered this before can you start at zero?” and a bit more in-depth probing on my part.

In addition, I could write a novel of “firsts” I covered this year off my beat — from bank robberies to court sentencings to county commissioners and enterprise looks at some of those non-profits’ issues. I won’t, but the point is, I have grown a lot this year. In a good way.

Enough about me: What were your top stories or projects this year?