I’ve commented before about how every turn in the wind seems to merit a weather story. And if you’ll recall, that means pretty much every weather story ever conceived has been written.

Now, let’s talk about another reporting phenomenon that’s quickly displacing the *eye roll*-inducing weather story: gas prices.

Why is it so tempting to report on gas prices? For the same reason weather is such a journalism staple. It’s easy to find a few real people to complain about it and throw in the national weather service forecast and totals (or in gas prices debate, AAA fuel gauge/Gas Buddy averages). Like severe weather, when gas prices spike, that’s all anybody wants to talk about. Including those of us in the newsroom.

A month ago, my twitter followers may remember, I noted that my jaw dropped to see $3.64/gal. It had jumped from about $3.44 to that new high mid-day. That $3.40 mark had steadily been reached. It had been inching its way there for weeks, perhaps months, years even. It was still a bit of a sticker shock to me because I remember just last year being utterly annoyed every time a $3 went out front. I even remember the summer I interned, when gas hit $3.15 randomly one day, I called my roommate at work (I was out taking a walk) to see if we’d been bombed or something because that was so high.

I know those in other countries or other parts of the country pay more, substantially more, and I shouldn’t complain. (I’m going to anyway, my mileage rate is 28 cents, and my schools are all over the place in this county and others.) It’d be one thing if it was always this expensive. But consider this, I’ve seen the price of gas nearly triple since I’ve been driving. And I’ve only been driving since I graduated high school — five years ago.

So back to the journalism. We report often when it reaches a record high. In fact, we keep tabs every day of the average price on our business page. But how does one report gas reaching a record high when two or three times a week it peaks again? Today for instance, we saw a $4+ gallon in the Greater Lafayette area.

I agree that is a huge deal, and regardless of records, the $4 mark represents a huge mental hurdle. How many people said they’d reduce consumption at $3/gal? I don’t think that many actually did. $4/gallon is just, well a lot. And put it in the context of the national debate about everything from alternative fuels — hello, that $4.05/gallon was in the same county as Biotown USA — to a gas-tax holiday, and there is definitely interest and likely some news.

But here’s the challenge: How do you make and keep it relevant? How many times can you write about Joe Schmoo spending $80 to fill up his pick-up and how hard it hits city budgets? What angles, what interesting standing features can we come up with to make a timely topic remain fresh and new? And when is it time to reign in the daily feature and put someone on an enterprise, long-term look into some of those ideas and this trend?

I don’t have the answers. But I think it’s a challenge that every paper and news organization really needs to consider. And I’m open to suggestions. I’ve already mentioned a few angles.

I’m going to throw out a few ideas here, and I’m just brainstorming right now. I’m sure many have been done. Some probably done to death. So, if you have any novel or different ideas, share them. I’m sure more than one reporter or editor is going to type in google “gas price story idea” or something of that sort in the coming months looking for an idea his/her paper hasn’t hit on yet. Let’s come up with a few good ones. Maybe then we won’t, and the readers won’t, need to roll their eyes are they read about “pain at the pump” for the umpteenth time this summer.

• Tomorrow, our paper has a story on cities busting their already tight budgets with gas for their police cruisers/city vehicles and street sweepers who aren’t sweeping as often. What’s your city doing? Anything innovative? Are the cops patrolling as often? Is the dog warden out? Are they cutting back on cutting the park grass? Was their budget prepared with $4 gas in mind? If not, what will get cut?
• What about schools? If you have rural counties like we do, consider how much it costs to bus those kids. Did your district budget for this jump? Are they considering charging more for field trips using school transportation? (One of my districts just discussed this at its meeting last night. In fact the two geographically largest school districts in my state are in my coverage area.)
• How’s it impacting businesses:
  • Landscapers need to drive to their jobs and they need gas for their equipment. Are they charging more or cutting corners? What about farmers plowing, planting, harvesting their fields?

  • Other companies do a lot of driving may see a big impact: repairmen, pizza deliveries, florists?
  • Do you have a lake nearby? Are boat or jet ski rentals headed up?
  • Are RV sales down as fewer families take to the open road for road trips? ALSO: What about high school and college kids who might have taken a road trip this summer. Are they opting out or taking different routes?
  • What about taxi cab drivers who are especially impacted by a volatile market? (My father is a cab driver, and they haven’t lowered the lease he has to pay daily because gas has gone up. He’s absorbing the difference and just making significantly less.)
  • What about truckers? Are their profits down as their miles increase?
  • Similarly, will the ice cream man be making fewer rounds this summer due to higher gas prices?
  • Will churches/non-profits who serve elderly patients or make food deliveries need to scale back those efforts? What does it mean for social services in your community?
  • Are there more people working from home or telecommuting to work? Or are they carpooling? Are companies upping gas mileage or are they recruiting less from the suburbs?
  • Are gas stations seeing less sales on extras, like sodas and gum, as people struggle just to pay for the gas? What types of incentives are they trying to offer?
  • Car dealerships, at least around here, are offering things like $2.99 gas for three years or free gas for a year or whatever when you buy a new car or trade it in. Here’s a few things to look at related to this: How good is the deal. If you trade in your new SUV at a lower trade-in than it’s really worth you may be losing more money than saving. Alternately, check out those dealer specials. How much would you really save if you could secure free gas for six months or whatever the terms are. Dealers aren’t going to take a major loss. Arm readers with the knowledge they need to not get duped.
  • Is the local AAA seeing more people running out of gas as they tried to stretch out each fill-up? Could be interesting to follow them out to some people to find out their reasons for running out.
• And don’t forget who’s benefiting in your community:
  • Are the “tree huggers” happy and getting more believers to join their cause?

  • Are car dealers selling more hybrids or economy cars?
  • Are bicycle shops seeing renewed interest?
  • Is ridership up on your city buses?
  • Has there suddenly been a renewed interest in mopeds or motorcycle riding? Or are you seeing more scooters and segways?
  • Local museums, parks, camp sites, etc. may see a boost in attendance when fewer people opt to go so far away.
• Want to do human interest? Here’s a few quick ideas:
  • Go out and find five people to tell you about their very first car. When did they get their license? How much did it cost to fill it up? What did they do then that kids can’t do now? OR…

  • Find some individuals doing innovative things to avoid high gas prices. Chances are they’re out there installing solar panels or transforming restaurant oil. If you haven’t come across it, put a call out online or in the paper to ask people for suggestions/ideas. You’d be surprised some of the things you never thought of before.
  • Stand at a gas station or two and just do the following exercise. Fill in the blank: “Gas prices are ____.” Then ask the person to explain. Get a name and head shot, throw the question in a fancy, big font out front and then just have the head shots and answers carry the package. Not earth-shattering, but the answers would be unpredictable and fun.

Any of those stories could have a video or package to accompany it online. Some are more visual than others. Or just put together a fuel price map, which would be useful if you cull the Gas Buddy data or get really active users to offer input so it’s constantly updated.

Anyway, that’s just a quick brainstorming session so later this summer when my editor taps me for a gas price update I have a jumping off point. Any great ideas — especially non-traditional ideas since many of mine are quick-hit features — you guys have are welcome and would be awesome to add to my list.

There’s a quick read about how to handle intern or reporters blogs at Poynter’s Every Day Ethics column from Thursday.

The cliff notes version of the entry is this: have a policy, make it known and don’t make it “no blogs.”

As a proponent of journalists blogging and a member of a newsroom with a pretty loose policy (which I think has a lot to do with my editors’ comfort with the technology: the publisher, executive editor & managing editor all blog themselves for the Web site), I think all the suggestions about the policies in the column are reasonable:

Write one. Maybe start a blog about policies. But do it now. It’s way too late to claim that blogging is just too new of a phenomenon to merit a policy.

Reconsider your policy if it states: No personal blogs. Telling a 20-year-old he can’t blog is like telling a 50-year-old she can’t write a holiday letter. You won’t win that one.

Consider what you’re comfortable having employees discuss in public:

• Nothing about the newsroom at all? That might be unrealistic.
• Nothing about stories in development? That seems fair.
• Nothing that puts the company in a negative light? Sure, you’ve got a right to require that, but you might define negative carefully.
• Nothing about sources? Good idea. Journalists who say things about their sources that they wouldn’t put into their stories are treading in dangerous territory.
• Nothing embarrassing or negative about your colleagues.

I counsel journalists who keep personal blogs to employ a no-surprises rule. Always let your boss know if you have a blog. Ask for guidelines, if they don’t exist. Never say anything in the blog that you wouldn’t say out loud, to the primary stakeholders.

I agree most with the items I underlined in those suggestions.

The first made me laugh, but it’s true. Don’t say I can’t do it, but do set guidelines for me to follow. If you don’t set guidelines, don’t blame me if down the road you’re upset.

But by the same token, the ultimate responsibility is NOT on the editors to foresee every instance that could need guidance. They have better more important things to do than micro-manage their employees personal time. So if you want to blog, you need to be reasonable and responsible. Never, never, never post anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable defending. Assume Google will archive it. Assume it will be the top hit someone (like your boss or your sources) sees when they Google you down the road. Would you be comfortable standing behind it? If not, don’t say it. If you’re not sure, wait a day. You can’t always take it back.

When they first heard I had a blog, some of the other reporters and editors told me a story about a group of former interns who had kept blogs that they thought no one read. They were honest, uninhibited. Turns out, the whole newsroom was reading. Assume this will be the case. Think about your reasons for wanting to hide it. Then, think about my last paragraph and find a way to reconcile those differences.

That goes along with the “ask for guidelines” approach. Although I’d already started the blog when I started my job, I wasn’t sure what if any policy my paper had. I approached the editor about it. Later on, when someone in corporate came across the blog and included a reference in a corporate media strategy blog, she wasn’t caught off-guard by the existence or content of this site. She thought it was cool I got the mention. If she didn’t know about the site, I don’t think she’d have been so happy for me.

The tagline version of my point is this: As with most things in life, blog responsibly.

Today I got to cover the last of the Clintons. This one is the one that really matters, at least for now. Hillary Clinton was here in town. She spoke for about an hour in Riehle Plaza in downtown Lafayette.

Previously, as you’ll recall, I wrote about our coverage of Bill Clinton when he visited a local high school.

In the intermediate, as Indiana has become a Democratic political battleground (no seriously, someone pinch me because I never thought I’d see that happen when I took this job), we’ve also hosted Chelsea Clinton.

(Barack Obama came too, but he came the day I went home for my mother’s birthday. I told her that was how much I loved her that I gave up the chance to cover a potential future president to spend time with her. She told me I should have stayed. Ungrateful. Er proud? Several others have also stumped for Obama, but other than covering his economic policy advisers in a Q&A discussion, I haven’t been assigned to any of those. — Rumor mill is telling me that Obama may be back this week, so perhaps I’ll get my chance before next Tuesday?)

Well, I got my chance today to cover a potential future president (no I’m not taking sides here, I’m just saying, regardless of which side of the partisan isle or which Democrat you support, they’re all potential until one of them folds or loses for good). My assignment to cover Hillary Clinton was the same as bill: fast and frequent updates online preceding and during the event.

With Bill Clinton, it was our first attempt at live blogging. I’d say it was a success, but it was imperfect.

Since then, when I covered Chelsea, I couldn’t send as many live updates because of the set-up. I offered a few updates before, as it started and immediately after. It was a much smaller event, so not worth blowing out of the water like the others. I was also tasked that day with writing the A1 package about that event, unlike with Bill & Hillary, where my main role was simply keep the content fresh and help if other reporters need it.

At Obama, we threw the kitchen sink again. They sent live updates, but I was on vacation and wasn’t paying attention so I’m not sure how frequent or what they consisted of in terms of writing. They also tested live video streaming for the first time that night and it was, er, less than successful.

Tonight, again, I was tasked with the live updates (the time stamped ones in the middle of the page). And tonight, we had live video playing on the homepage. (We were actually working with a local high school student to do the live video. A great example of working with the talents of your citizens!) Throw in a video package and a photo gallery plus three other reporters — and Clinton got the kitchen sink as well.

More as an aside to the “real” journalism, but I also updated twitter throughout. I’m looking at Twitter in that case as more stream of consciousness and scene setting. The meat and potatoes of the speech was definitely going (quickly!) into jconline.

I noted last time that pressure for quick turnaround hampered my creativity and that nearly ever update began “Clinton discussed.” I’m proud to report not a single update tonight began with those words. In fact, because I was self-conscious about it, only four of the 16 updates I sent began with any form of “Clinton said…”

I tried to make it more engaging by not starting everything the same way. I also spent more time writing through some of the items rather than try to get everything verbatim. I’m not a court reporter in this case, I’m still a journalist. And a reporter’s job is to help readers make sense of not simply transcribe an event. I had a few typos, but overall, I’d still put this in the win category.

I think this is the type of thing you get better at as you do it more. I hope. I still felt a bit overwhelmed trying to get it all processed and written so quickly. It was fun, but I mean, literally it was non-stop for an hour. And that was all after I’d come in and reported and written the local page centerpiece this afternoon — plus already written several updates at the scene.

While I don’t anticipate any political powerhouses will be visiting the Hoosier state beyond next Tuesday’s primary election, I do think the groundwork we’ve laid during this campaign is vital.

We were training our own reporters and photographers to create this online content. That is definitely important. We know now what works and doesn’t, and we know what we are capable of when it comes to this type of coverage for other things down the line.

Perhaps even more important than training our staff, we were training our readers to expect it and to look to us for it. At points more than 250 people were watching jconline’s live video. I don’t know how many stopped by our live updates, but I suspect it drew at least some. I know I gained a few twitter followers during the event.

Long post short: Another win for the future of journalism. Another awesome adventure in reporting.

How would you sum up journalism in six words? Poynter asked this question a few weeks back (maybe not even). I meant to comment on this earlier, but now’s as good a time as ever. You can go vote on which if the finalists you think is the best six-word summary of/motto for journalism.

Here are the top 10 finalists to choose from:

• Doing more with less since 1690
• We’ll always have Paris … or Britney
• It’s how I change the world.
• Get it right, write it tight
• They’ll miss us when we’re gone
• Feed the watchdog, euthanize the lapdog
• Who, what, when, where, why, Web*
• Facts, schmacts … how is my hair?
• Dirty commie latte-sipping liberal scum
• Please stop griping, now start typing

I bolded my personal favorites. The asterisk is the one for which I actually cast my vote.

Also, on the Poynter story there are several honorable mentions. Here are my favorites among those:

• We’re sorry about all the trees

• No news is not good news
• How many inches is the truth?
• Seek the truth, not the money
• We don’t make this shit up
• Dead wood floats. So can we
• A journalist’s work is never done
• History’s first version, updated every minute
• It beats working for a living
• Speak truth to power, or else
• But this IS my day job!
• Mainstream media: We’re your grandfather’s blog
• Filling the space between the ads

So, what’s your favorite? (Vote at the Poynter story. Right now it looks like “Doing more with less since 1690″ is leading, followed by “They’ll miss us when we’re gone.”)

I didn’t submit any to the contest, but here are a few humble attempts I just came up with:

• Been there. Done that. Rinse. Repeat.

• Every day something new to learn.
• Speak up or hold your peace.
• Who’s watching your government?
• Nothing is worth more than today.
• Tomorrow this will be forgotten.
• I couldn’t make this stuff up.
• As read about on Romenesko.
• Blogs: Repurposing real journalism since 1997.

Have any contributions or ideas for your own six-word motto for journalism? It’s harder than it seems.

Ohio is one of those states with lots of cities. I grew up in Akron, which is a respectable size city, but is just one of several in a state of many. There’s Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown. And those are only the largest. And they all have a major daily paper, many which aspire to be more than just the local paper of record.

So in a time where state capitol bureau’s are being cut, where getting someone to break the news half a state away isn’t always financially viable and where the locals can probably lend better context to that story anyway… Ohio’s newspapers are taking a step forward.

They’re sharing their stories. Yeah, there’s the AP. But if my reading of the PD’s editor column is right, this goes beyond that.

So the ultimate winner is you because, under this system, you will be able to see the best work written by the best reporters in Ohio’s largest cities in The Plain Dealer or on Cleveland.com. And you’ll be getting it at the same time as the folks in those cities do.

It took a bit of doing because the competitive instinct is in every good journalist’s DNA, and most of us would swallow our notebooks before we’d share what’s in them with another reporter. We’ve spent our professional lives trying to keep other newspapers from getting our good stories. Now, we’re giving them away.

Here’s why:

The way that news from The Plain Dealer and other big papers used to find its way around the state was this: We would report and write our stories, wait until late in the day, and then turn them over to the Associated Press. The AP would then either rewrite them into wire service story format for general consumption; report and write its own stories later; or decide that the news was not of statewide interest and do nothing. If we had a breaking-news story all to ourselves, we would try to keep it away from the wire until the following day. So did everyone else.

That’s not good enough anymore. In fact, I’m not sure it ever was. Competition is a wonderful thing. It keeps everyone sharp. But we don’t compete for readers with the newspapers in Cincinnati or Columbus, except in the most tangential way, and never did.

We almost always break our stories online now as soon as they happen, so they’re not exactly a secret from the other newspapers anyway. So why not give readers all over Ohio the benefit of the best work from each corner of the state?

In today’s world, breaking news is measured in minutes, not days. It’s important that we provide our readers with the best news report we can, as soon as we can, on our Web site and in the best and most current newspaper possible each day.

I’m all for spreading the content and breaking down barriers to good journalism. Kudos to the news orgs for recognizing and addressing that. This is good news for Ohioans.

I stole this amazing quote from the Facebook of a good friend. I just had to share it.

“For that alone, I can have no regrets. Nah, son, fuck law school. And fuck the M.B.A. I’ll never have. And fuck all that Chaucer and Cervantes and Proust I might never get around to reading. On a given day, I learn something that you didn’t know and then, my authority drawn only from scrawl on pages of a pocket notebook, I write it up clean so the rest of you can get your hands filthy with ink, reading my righteous shit. In the less fevered lobes of my brain, it was as pure as that.”
— David Simon

Simon, btw, is an author and former Baltimore Sun reporter. He’s the brain behind HBO’s The Wire (which I’ve never seen but sounds cool). The quote is from his recent Esquire essay, “A Newspaper Can’t Love You Back,” which is worth the read.

Recently, I’ve been asked by several people — job-shadowing teens, co-workers, friends, sources, strangers — “Why journalism?”

I always spout off a half-dozen reasons I love my job, love my beat, love this business.

In thinking about it, I’ve come up with a single line that I think kind of sums up what’s at the heart of my desire to do this. It incorporates everything, my love of meeting new and interesting people, being the first to know, seeking out answers to my questions, getting out information important to people’s lives and trying new experiences.

Here’s what I’m telling people keeps me doing this: “I get to experience things that most people, literally, only get to read about.”

So, guys, how do you answer the “Why journalism?” question?

If you’re a Twitter follower, you likely already know I discovered a new site about an hour ago.

It made me actually “LOL” several times, so I thought I’d pass along the joy of NotHired.com. Here are a couple of the journalism/writing related postings you may find as amusing as I did:

Here are a few typos from one applicant’s cover letter:

“I also teach an SAT prep course—the students their love me!”

. . .and. . .

“I can speak without thinking and right even better.”

Saving the best for last.

I’ll take “What not to call your potential employers?” for $1,000. Note the last graf:

It reminds me partly of Joe Grimm’s News Recruiter blog (the less formal journalism asides to his Ask the Recruiter column). In particular his Friday postings amuse me.

My two personal favorite lines from cover letters I proofread in college:

• Opening line of a cover letter from a photographer at my college paper in Kent, Ohio, to the Cleveland (Ohio) Plain Dealer: “Greetings from Ohio!”

• In a cover letter from a designer to the Gannett recruiter conducting on-campus interviews: “I want to get with Gannett.”

I’m sure there are others. But those both stick out in my mind as the funniest. Your Turn: What’s the funniest mistake you’ve made or seen?

If you know Indiana, you know we’re usually fly-over territory for presidential candidates.

That’s why, when we heard late Friday that not only was Hillary Clinton’s campaign coming to Indiana, but Lafayette was going to host her husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, we became, to quote my editor describing me and another reporter, “Giddy.”

I was in college in Ohio during the last election. So I have seen several presidential hopefuls in person. But tonight was the first time I’ve been in the same room as anyone who ever commanded this country.

Let me say this, the experience was intense. But not because of what he said or the 3,000+ crowd in the gym, another gym and the school auditorium. It was intense because of my assignment.

The only story I wrote for tomorrow’s paper was a look at the preparations the high school underwent and the excitement from the students. That makes sense, since I’m the education reporter and all. I headed to the school at lunch and talked to the principal and some students. I came back and wrote an online version of the story to kind of give a feel during the day of the atmosphere. Then, before 3 p.m., I’d filed that story for print and moved on.

Today was also a big day on my beat, so I worked a little on another MAJOR story on my beat that will go online early tomorrow morning, followed with a more in-depth story for Wednesday print. The Adequate Yearly Progress results — basically, whether a school is failing or not under NCLB — were released with a 10 a.m. Tuesday embargo.

I was also, throughout the day, talking to the campaign, the schools, etc. checking on information we were hearing and answering questions our readers asked. Lining up logistics with my editor, other reporters and photographers.

And then, at 4 p.m., it was time to really tackle my assignment: Updates from the scene throughout the night. That was three hours before doors opened and four hours and 40 minutes before Clinton took the stage.

All told, I sent my editor 18 updates from my laptop at the scene. I know because I counted the number of e-mails when all was said and done, and I could finally breathe.

I had started them with subjects, “Clinton update #1,” “Clinton update #2,” etc. By number 11, I’d lost track. That was also about the time he actually arrived. My subjects became: Clinton arrives, clinton iraq, clinton economy, clinton education, etc.

Some of the updates were detailed narratives, describing the crowd, the atmosphere and talking to people lined up. Some were just a short synopsis of where it stood: Police chief says Clinton left previous stop, expected by 8:30.

I adapted my method in the middle. I wasn’t looking at jconline throughout the event, so I didn’t really know how my editor was playing what I submitted. I was trying to get my next update reported and keep the information fresh. There were a few other reporters in the crowd as the event start approached, and they were also there helping catch some color from the lines and feeding it to me to send in with my updates. By about 7:30, I just started typing them with time stamps and then jumping in with what I was hearing and what was occurring. This, as it turns out, was a pretty efficient way of writing the event backwards, much like a twitter stream.

Actually, at the same time I was writing for and filing updates to jconline, I was also trying to post updates on Twitter. Though, obviously, my priority was on the J&C, which reaches far more people than my Twitter account. Though it was cool, and you kind of see it in my updates, I was even interacting with other people back at the J&C and also across the room from me.

You can look at jconline and see, my updates were fairly regular. As Clinton began to speak — an hour and forty minutes after doors opened and the crowd started streaming in — I started to chunk the topics into five or six graph break downs. I tried to mirror that while the e-mails sent with my snappy posts on twitter. What Clinton said, a little context and any crowd reaction.

It was difficult, as you’ll see I noted in one of the twitter updates, to both be there and not be there. I was present, but I spent a lot of time basically taking diction and then trying to make it digestible, readable updates. While stream of consciousness might work for twitter, it wouldn’t cut it for the J&C. So I was using a skill I’m not sure I’ve ever had a chance to practice: I was both listening to what he was saying in the present and writing a story live about what he had just said while monitoring the discussion for what would come next.

I’m sure my writing wasn’t my best work — for one thing I used the word crowd entirely too often, and most of the speech updates start “Bill Clinton discussed.” But I wrote fast, and I wrote a lot. And give me some slack, I’ve never — in fact I don’t think my news organization has ever — done anything like this.

Twitter aside, my work for J&C was half live blogging and half writing for the newspaper audience online. All my work was funneled through my editor to be posted. So there was about a five-minute delay. But considering how furiously I was filing, I am glad he was there to read over my shoulder and relay any questions or fix obvious mistakes.

As you can see from my Gmail outbox above, a few of my updates, especially early on, included e-mail exchanges with my editor. I talked to him twice, after I sent the first update and once immediately after I sent the last one. None of those updates, by the way, will appear in tomorrow’s newspaper. Some of the reporting may in another reporter’s story, but my entire assignment/direction on this, as taken from the budget, was:

• After school lets out: Are people lining up. Meranda
• At 7: An updates as crowd assembles. Meranda
• Update from the scene as Clinton speaks. Meranda

So there was a lot of figuring it out on the fly. And you know what, like I said, it was intense. But it was awesome! It was even quite a bit of fun.

I don’t know if every event deserves such rapid-fire updates, but this was something that was changing by the minute early on, and which had a great deal of interest in our community. It’s not every day a president drops by small-town Indiana. I’m not sure how many page views we generated today or if that even matters. I’m not sure what part my updates played in any of that, but I hope our readers who were planning to attend, did attend or couldn’t attend benefited from the pretty comprehensive look at the day the former president visited our community.

With that said, it’s now approaching midnight. I worked from 10 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. today coming off a 2 to 10 p.m. shift Sunday. I need to get in around 8 a.m. tomorrow to finish the AYP story for online.

In short, though I’m pumped with all that journalism-is-alive adrenaline from my day, I’m also exhausted. I think it’s time to put the computer away and wind down from probably the most exciting day of journalism career to date.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, or in case you don’t look at Gannett newspaper Web sites… They’re all going to the GO4 design. There will be a definite Gannett feel from Palm Springs, Calif., to White Plains, N.Y.

My paper’s redesign is supposed to go live on March 31. I’ve been told it will most closely resemble the Asbury Park Press in color scheme and design. But I haven’t actually seen it yet to compare.

The Indy Star, my paper’s big sister in Indiana, has posted a link to view its beta version of the redesign. You can view that here. They have a FAQ about the design here.

Here’s the before and after screen shot earlier today (click for larger):

Before:

and

After:

Note: That big beige blob is a blocked ad, not a design flaw.

What Indy did right

I trolled through most of the Gannett newspaper Web sites this afternoon to see how Indy compared to others. I’d seen several on the new design before. But Indy is the first I’ve noticed that took the concept and really made it its own thing, not its own version of the template. If that makes sense.

Even the Detroit Free Press, which appears to have gone with the same basic color scheme and fonts as Indy, just looks like a version of the template. Whereas, Indy really owns its design.

Here’s what the Star’s staff thinks are the 10 things you need to know about it’s redesign. (You should especially watch video #4 because they feature MY story about the Hoosier Youth Challenge Academy — which spent about half that day as their top featured story as well as the J&C’s — to show off their readability. Awesome.)

Here are a few features that jumped out or intrigued me about the new site and why:

You can move and reorder the content boxes on the home page.

This feature is far and away my favorite take on the boxes. It puts me in control of what news appears at the top of the page. For instance, I can move sports to the bottom. I can move entertainment to the top. Or I can leave Community News but I can pick only news relevant to my community (if I were in the Indy Star area that is). Note the blue arrows in the corner of the Community and Biz sections in this image.

Back to the top…

The find it menu bar at the top:

and

Sure it’s simple. But this item at the very top of every page is sleek. The images are inviting and show me what I’m clicking on. It’s a nice touch.

Dropping from the top of the page to the very bottom…

This site index appears at the end of every page. I like it because it gives me a comprehensive guide to what all is available at IndyStar.com. Also handy if I’m looking for something specific, like education or crime stories.

On a related note…

I’m a fan of the drop down menus at the top. They let you drill down the content from any page. You can choose to see your news if you’re into a specific region of Indy, for example, as in this screenshot:

There are similar drop downs on the other communities and sections on that top menu. In News, for example, you can break down by the type of coverage. So if you’re into politics, you can click that or go even more specific with legislature.

(This feature, btw, isn’t unique to Indy or even new to that version of the site. It’s just one of the things I like about the GO4 design.)

A few other things to note:

•Video on the story page?! According to Numero 3 in their top 10 things to know package at least. I couldn’t find it in my searches.

I have to say this is my biggest pet peeve after annoying drop-down advertisements about the Star and any newspaper Web site that sends me to another page to view video. I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate — I’m not sure hate is even a strong enough word for my animosity — the way the videos are currently handled at the Star and most Gannett sites (my own paper’s included). Where they throw up the videos all on one page with a one paragraph note (sometimes) and a byline and it just plays. Sure, there’s a place for that type of depository for videos. It’s not what I want when I’m specifically interested in one specific video related to one specific story.

•Reporters pictures with their bylines on stories? It appears that way, at least on some stories:

I’m kind of curious if one of the Indy reporters wasn’t the one who wrote into Ask The Recruiter last month with a concern about reporters pictures. Even if it was, it was an interesting conundrum then as it is now. But that’s the topic of another, and I’ll even go ahead and say forthcoming, post. Suffice to say me personally, I wouldn’t mind. But I don’t cover high profile murder or gang cases either. Yes it can be annoying to be stopped by wackos who recognize I work for the newspaper, but it can also be a great source of story ideas when parents randomly recognize me in the hallways.

I’m not sure that was the reasoning behind the Star’s move. I’m guessing it had more to do with creating that social-networking feel of everybody being everybody’s friend and neighbor. Or something like that. I haven’t really dug into many of the other GO4 designs to see if this is standard practice or a unique Indy element.

OK, OK. Enough. That’s just a quick summary of some of the things I liked. There are bound to be plenty of other cool things below the surface once I start to interact with the site more. For now, that’s a general overview of things that are different from before.

About GO4

It could be worse. It could be the old Knight-Ridder template that was never innovative and really served no purpose except to throw up as many links on the front page as possible. It could be as ugly as the old Gannett template many papers still have as their backbone. It’s really not.

In many ways I really like the design. It will take some getting used to, but it’s aesthetically pleasing. The color choices I’ve seen seem to work well together. There’s a lot of information, but it’s not link-happy. It’s both more and less restrictive than many papers’ current designs. It’s more engaging and interactive for the readers as well.

It will also feature social networking platform(?) Pluck, a la USA Today, instead of the myriad methods patched together based on forums, topix, Get Published, etc.

My only hold-back is I still don’t know how much I like taking the power to determine the best design for the local readers out of the local hands. For many papers, especially smaller papers, this will be a God-send and get them out of the 1990s design-wise. For others, like the IndyStar, this has meant really working hard to work within the system without being a slave to it. I hope we see more papers going the Indy way.

If you care, here’s a list of the sites across Gannett where I’ve seen the redesign go live:

• The Indianapolis Star (Indiana) beta site
• Detroit Free Press (Michigan)*
• The Journal News (New York)
• Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (NY)
• Asbury Park Press (New Jersey)
• Courier-Post (NJ)
• The News Journal (Delaware)beta site**
• Courier-Journal (Kentucky) beta site**
• The Tennessean (Tennessee)
• The Clarion-Ledger (Mississippi)
• The News-Press (Florida)
• Tallahassee Democrat (FL)
• Florida Today (FL) beta site**
• The Greenville News (South Carolina) beta site**
• The Des Moines Register (Iowa)
• The Desert Sun (California)
• Argus Leader (North Dakota)
• Reno Gazette-Journal (Nevada) beta site

(* The Freep has the design live, but its header image says beta still.
** These sites don’t have “live” beta sites featured just yet.)

I’m sure that’s not a complete list. But it’s good enough to show a range of the color schemes and how similar they all look.