So, I’m finally getting around to joining LinkedIn.

But I have a dilemma. I don’t know what industry to choose. It says to “Choose the industry that best describes your primary expertise,” but that is kind of hard.

I work for a newspaper. So, should I put newspapers? But does that brand me as old school and out of touch with the new media realities? There’s also online media, which might work for where I want to be in the future, but as I said in the beginning of this paragraph, I work for a newspaper. Most of my work goes to print, even if it hits the Web first.

There’s also media production, but that seems to sound more like radio or TV. Maybe it’s just the connotation I carry from the names of the sequences at my university. There’s also a broadcast media section, which obviously I don’t fit in.

I could just stick to writing and editing, or the even broader publishing. But even those don’t quite fit.

I ended up choosing newspapers, for now. You can see my page here, and connect with me if you like.

Before deciding on newspapers, I searched for several people I know or work with to see what they listed, and they’re kind of all over the place. There really isn’t one broad “news” or “media” section, which kind of threw me off as it forced me to pick a camp I’m not entirely comfortable picking. I may reevaluate that decision later on. Any thoughts on whether it was the best pick for now?

I like that the Indiana BMV is asking Hoosiers to vote on their favorite of four license plate designs. The most popular plate will be chosen as the standard plate beginning next year. (Full story here.)

I don’t like that they’re not letting us see which ones are leading the pack. I don’t want to wait until May to see which wins.

When I voted yesterday (which was around 4 p.m. according to my twitter update about it) it told me more than 14,000 people had already voted. But I want to know how many have voted so far and what other residents are leaning toward. My man-on-the-street interviewing for the story at the J&C revealed that many were favoring the solid blue one with the torch on it. It was “simple.” But it reminds me too much of Michigan, and isn’t Michigan changing its plate because it’s more difficult to read light text on a dark background? My favorite design is the one I have displayed with this post.

Still, the greenish license plates in Indiana currently are pretty ugly. But then, Ohio’s license plate is straight-up boring.

(Side rant: I still reject the state nickname Hoosier. It sounds silly. And not that Ohio buckeyes are any better, but at least a buckeye is a real thing. As far as I can tell, a Hoosier is nothing except someone from Indiana. What’s up with that?)

OK. So I was quick to dismiss Twitter as another fad, another waste of my precious time.

But tonight, I had an epiphany. I’ve decided it’s worth at least trying before I dismiss it. That’s my philosophy on life. Why shouldn’t it apply not just to foods or hobbies, but to social networking as well? Though, I’ll have to recruit other friends to do the same or its pretty much pointless, and none of my friends is on it now. (This is an open invite to all your readers out there to add me as your friend.)

What brought about this realization? Facebook.

See, a friend commented on my wall about my status. For those not in the know (i.e. the few not on facebook — which you should be, I’ve been over this), on your Facebook wall there is a spot for your status. It says… “Meranda is…” and then whatever it is I’m doing, thinking, whatever.

Usually mine is filled with random updates: “Meranda is wondering when someone’s gonna come visit her in Lafayette.” “Meranda is __not__ on spring break.” “Meranda is enjoying a beautiful day off.”

Sometimes I get slightly more detailed, “Meranda is seriously not happy about working an 8 a.m. Sunday shift. And incredibly creeped out by the idea of being alone at the J&C and in charge of updating jconline.” or “Meranda is feeling like crap and not feeling like going to work tonight. :(.” There is a character limit, though I don’t know exactly what it is.

Often it’s pretty vague. Sometimes, it’s pretty funny: “Meranda is learning whether finding the bones of Jesus Christ would be a good thing… Gotta love the Discovery Channel.” or “Meranda is surfing facebook and myspace… for work purposes. seriously.” or my personal favorite Meranda is laughing at the use of the phrase “tricked out” on the scanner.”

All of these are actual status updates culled from my own Facebook account in the past month. Yeah, I usually update once or twice a week. (For those who care and aren’t privvy to my facebook account, my current status is: “Meranda is got a hair cut. uh oh.” So much for the grammar, but you can’t change the first two words.)

As you can see, I update it pretty regularly. And people respond to it. Personally, I read my other friends status updates like it’s my job, especially now that I don’t see half of them 10 hours a day like I used to. Then, there are the compulsive AIM away message checkers. The people who keep a running commentary on their life through AIM away messages. Come now, you know you’re one of them. I used to be. But it’s been so long since I logged on to iChat anyway. I should dust off my screen name. Anyway, it dawned on me tonight, Oh… that’s what Twitter is good for. So, I’m going to give it a try. I’ll keep you all posted.

If you haven’t the slightest idea what Twitter is, other than go to the Web site, I’m going to recommend this video (as stolen from Mindy McAdams who found it somewhere else… you get the idea.)

I’m still not seeing the “point” except that it’s a fun little tool I can see myself becoming addicted to if I can get enough people to join. Other than that, this post did lay some pretty good ideas of the potential. My favorite was “friendsourcing” — think phone a friend on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, only you phone your whole friends list instead of having to pick.

My URL for anyone interested is http://twitter.com/meranduh. Find out what I’m up to now. Chances are it’s work or sleep or perhaps trying to fall alseep but worrying about work or trying to work but thinking about sleep. Those are the two dominant forces in my life right now. And I’m about to succumb to one of them extremely early tonight.

If you haven’t already read the 10 newspaper myths deconstructed post yet, do it now. (Via Journerdism.) There isn’t one point I disagree with, but there are several that kind of made a light go off in my head. Also a great link list at the end of the post for further reading.

Among the myths being propagated:

• We pay for printed content. Reality: News content was always free
• Newspapers need closed archives. Reality: Closed archives destroy access
• People are stupid, Journalists are smart. Reality: The collective is smarter than you
• The web is just a trend. No need to panic. Reality: Change or die
• And half a dozen more good points.

It’s worth mentioning, just because I haven’t yet, the Stater is blogging from Biloxi this week.

Check out the Back to Biloxi blog.

They have Stater reporters and a photographer down there updating and shooting. They also have other volunteers posting several updates a day.

For background: Last year several hundred KSU students went to Biloxi for spring break to help clean up after Hurricane Katrina. Kent has kind of taken on this project as a major service program for the school, sending another delegation over winter break and this group now.

I think it’s most interesting to read the posts and see kind of a snapshot of what’s going through the individuals’ minds. It’s worth checking out. I like the idea of the temporary blog, too. There is no pressure to keep this up or need to. Use the blog as a standalone feature as you might any other project.

Last year, we did some blogging from Biloxi, but not this detailed or this much. Mostly, we threw a lot into the packages that came out the following week. We put out a special section with profiles on interesting people and several photo pages of the photographer’s favorite photos from the week as well as a blurb about their experiences. (There were probably half a dozen photogs on that trip last year documenting the sights.) I’m interested to see what they have planned for next week.

Today, I took a complaint from a 70-year-old woman.

The woman was completely level-headed and polite in her call. She wasn’t lodging a complaint against me or even against the paper, per se. She was mad about our Web site. She was mad that our Web site existed. And she was really mad that we are always referring to it in the print edition.

“I’m 70 years old,” she began. “I don’t have a computer. I’m never going to get a computer. I’m not interested in whatever .com. I just want my news.”

She referred to a specific column that always runs online as what put her over today. There was a blurb from it in the print edition with a refer to the site to read the rest.

I wasn’t sure what to say, really. This complaint was so counter-intuitive to my training and thinking. I just explained to her that what we put online is supplemental to what runs in the paper. There is still just as much news in the paper as ever before — more, actually, following a complete overhaul of the paper last summer. And I told her that what the Internet allows us to do is add more information that in the past we wouldn’t have been able to fit in the printed paper at all.

Her reply? “If there isn’t enough space to run it in the paper, it shouldn’t run at all.”

Sigh. I don’t know if I made her feel any better, but I think she just wanted to make sure she vented her frustration (and that of her “friends who are also elderly and aren’t interested in the Internet or computers”). Not that it will impact anything, but I did tell the managing editor after I hung up. I figured I should at least let her point be known.

But, this really struck a chord with me. I wonder how many people there are out there like her? In our rush to get more, faster, online… who are we actually leaving behind? Does a 70-year-old reader mean any less than a 27-year-old one? (If you ask the advertisers, yes. But that is beside the point.) I don’t know. True the 27-something has much more potential for future readership, and the 70-year-old has already established a lifetime reading habit she’s unlikely to just quit now. But should we punish her for being old-fashioned or uncomfortable with technology? Should we punish her for being loyal to the dead-tree edition as we lament the declining circulations?

There really isn’t a solution. And unfortunately, this woman and others like her are on the losing side of a battle that’s going to continue for a very long time. The woman’s argument that “computers will be the downfall of us” isn’t new. But for the first time, she made me actually think that there was an opposite to the movement toward online journalism. It doesn’t change my views or opinions, but it has made me more aware and sensitive to the fact that there is a whole facet of the world, including my community, that can’t or simply doesn’t want to “check out more at jconline.com.” It’s worth considering.

I want one of these:

New Products: Flash IMs to fellow drivers

DEBORAH PORTERFIELD, Gannett News Service

Want to flash a message to the tailgating car behind you? With Roadmaster’s Scrolling Rear Deck Message System, you can tell the car to “Slow Down,” or one of nearly 10 other messages. by Roadmaster

Want to flash a message to the tailgating car behind you? With Roadmaster’s Scrolling Rear Deck Message System, you can tell the offending driver to “Slow Down.” With more than 99 preset words and phrases, you also can ask for “Help,” tell drivers you’re “Turning Left” or create your own message to share. Using the included remote control, you can adjust the message’s speed and brightness as it scrolls across the LED display. Just be careful where you drive as not all states allow scrolling displays in moving vehicles. Roadmaster also makes a Scrolling Digital License Plate Frame. Both items cost about $60 each.

www.roadmasterusa.com

Of course mine would probably include a few phrases like “WTF? Back off” or “That was a stop sign, moron.” I could have so much fun with that. Genius.

To answer the question in my title, I don’t think so. But, to read this item, you might think so. (Well, maybe it’s more optimistic than that, but you get the idea.)

Apparently, MySpace is looking to jump into the news aggregator business in digg-like fashion. Seems natural to me. They have a huge userbase built it. Why not harness it to let people see “these are the stories most popular with your friends” or “these are the top stories voted on by other MySpace users.”

The Poynter column says:

Now I’m wondering how that audience would use the service — especially with the option for posting articles to personal pages.

What kind of news would the largely young audience post? Would the service, as Heaton predicts, help us understand what kind of news they’re interested in? Would it help engage young people in the news?

WASHINGTONPOST.COM

What bothers me about this is I don’t remember similar questions being raised when Facebook quietly added this ability months and months ago. Yeah, Facebook already allows you to share stories and videos or pretty much anything with your friends. You can post them to your wall. You can pass them along to friends. You can comment on their shared items, and so forth. Although not a rate-the-item community like digg, I do see a number of my own friends posting items or sending me videos or stories they come across.

NYTIMES.COM

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have a Facebook icon in their share selection. That in itself is significant. The NYTimes has only three icons, digg, facebook and newsvine. Of all the sites available to post stories, it views facebook as one of the top three. For the Washington Post, it’s in the top six. Think about that and what it already says about the value of word-of-mouth (or click) to reach young people in an online world.

Do I think this will be bad for the news business? Not at all. It will get the stories in front of more eyes, eyes that typically shy away from traditional media companies. As the column states:

It seems we could learn a lot from users’ interactions with the news service — not just for getting a better picture of news consumption habits, but for generating story ideas as well.

Agreed.

Last week, I sent my editor a huge list of ideas for ways we could use interactive maps to beef up our Web content on our site. Most of them are pretty straight forward and could be applied anywhere.

One of my ideas was to map wi-fi hot spots in Lafayette and West Lafayette. This was purely self-motivated. I like to take my MacBook and get out of the house/office. As I even said in my e-mail, I may just do it myself. So, I started it. I’ll post it here when it’s worth showing. Unfortunately, that thing called my actual job intervenes for eight or more hours each day, and I can’t just play with new technologies like I otherwise would. (That’s what weekends are for and why you see spikes in posts Friday through Sunday.)

I began my map with the handful of free wi-fi places I know. Then I added Border’s, Starbucks, Barnes & Noble. But I knew short of going through the entire phone book, I wasn’t going to be able to get them all. So I did a Google search to find a base list, which, being the good journalist I am, I will call and confirm specifics.

What struck me as odd was that McDonald’s is a wi-fi hot spot.

Yeah, the fast food restaurant with the golden arches. Call me weird, but I associate dining in at McDonalds with screaming kids running around with their new toy and seniors sipping coffee and hanging out with old friends. Not somewhere I’d want to take my laptop or spend any more time than necessary.

I wanted to find the local restaurants’ phone numbers and also to see if the corporate site had any details on the wi-fi access. So, I typed in McDonalds.com.

I did find the details, but also, across the bottom of the page I noticed a link I never would expect on a fast-food chain’s Web site: podcasts. I know it’s just another form of marketing and advertising for them, and I didn’t actually listen to or watch any of the items. Though, the featured one, “The McDonald’s You Don’t Know: Ever wonder what it’s like to have a McJob?” did pique my interest. I know probably a dozen people who currently or at some point have held that “McJob” and none of them was “lovin’ it.”

But, yeah, McDonald’s does podcasts and wi-fi. What next?

So, I saw this post on E-Media Tidbits. Being curious, I decided to test the Great Firewall of China to see if my blog was blocked. To my surprise, apparently it is.

I’m not quite sure I did to offend the government, but I suspect maybe they just blanket block everything until it’s been approved? Or (look at the disclaimer on bottom) it could be a fluke. Either way, it’s kind of odd. I don’t know.

Want to know if you should feel censored as well? Type in your URL to see if you’re blocked as well.