Editors' Corner

The national flareup over former (maybe future) presidential candidate John Kerry's remarks about education at Pasadena City College gives a glimpse into the 24 hour news cycle. Shortly after Kerry told the students that if they were able to navigate the education system, they could get comfortable jobs - "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq," he said to a mixture of laughter and gasps," it was on Youtube and ringing around the blogosphere. National newspapers were mentioning our sister paper, the Pasadena Star News, which covered the event, and prompted President Bush to slam the remarks. We talked about it again in our editorial meeting this morning to see if it should have prominent play - which would make it three days in a row. A “botched joke� it may be, but with the carnivorous Internet news hole, this is the type of fury that may come to a city hall near you as more people get a hang of new media.

UPDATE: Kerry apologizes.

Posted by Edward at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Continuing to look for local bloggers who are covering events we don't, and they don't have to be text oriented. Tim from Covina has Time slices with a catalogue of photos, including a San Dimas Native American video.

Posted by Edward at 6:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Sharesleuth.com, bankrolled by billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, debuted in August with an unlikely mission statement: to enrich Cuban by rooting out wrongdoing inside publicly traded companies he has shorted. Investors who take a short position on a stock are betting that its price will go down. The site's first target was Xethanol Corp., a New York-based ethanol company."

Part of our challenge online is how to create revenue. Some reporters have migrated with the backing of investors like this one. This is not advocacy journalism at its best, but 'gotcha' reporting at its worst and slimes all of us.

Posted by Edward at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve been here for nearly seven weeks, and I’ve been overwhelmed, in a mostly good way, by readers’ responses to the latest changes in the paper, story placement or even lack of stories. It’s not the type of interaction I’ve ever had to deal with. As a reporter, you can decide, for the most part, what stories you write. But you still had to follow an editor’s command, the news cycle or time. As a part-time freelance editor, I just dealt with grammar, spelling and flow of story.

have received calls from irate readers over dropping stock listings. Something people above my pay grade did to save costs. With most people getting their stock news online, it appeared to be a sound business decision. But some readers said it was the only reason they picked up our paper. (Not something you really want to hear as an editor.)
One caller questioned why we didn’t put the death of a soldier who died in Iraq and was posthumously awarded a medal for bravery. We had a story in the paper about the man, but it was inside. We usually don’t put that type of news on our front page, unless the soldier is from our area. That reasoning didn’t really mollify the caller.
Other callers have asked me why we haven’t covered anti-war rallies in Los Angeles or contentious school employee situations. Once again, limited resources and geography, unless it’s a story that is regional, are the boundaries the paper is constrained by.
We try to pick the stories that are important, sometimes we get it wrong, but mostly we get it right. I encourage people to keep calling. The messages I can’t or don’t deal with are always passed on to the appropriate hands.

Posted by Edward at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not that I care, but the Cardinals just beat the Detroit Tigers, 7-2. I have barely been able to talk baseball since my beloved Mets lost after Carlos Beltran struck out with the bases loaded in the ninth inning Thursday. Reporters were gentle with me the next day. (I wish).

Posted by Edward at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We had a story a few days ago about a La Mirada blogger, Tony Aeillo, who wanted to get comments for the community about a proposed aquatic center. Our political columnist Mike Sprague wondered if it was a little too late to stop the project from going forward. It’s a small step into more community-like reporting online (albeit very small with only about 30 votes in, mostly in favor.) The Aquatic Center is slated to open late 2007.

Posted by Edward at 6:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm starting to look for community blogs throughout the San Gabriel Valley, and maybe start a blog roll. Two problems: it's sometimes difficult to guage where a blogger lives, so at first I'll be going on the honor system and blogger profiles. The other issue is as the editor I will decide who is on the blog roll. It's not censorship, because you can continue to blog elsewhere. I just won't link to you. So far I found a few that aren't very interesting or up to date. Send me any that you might read.

Update: Here's a blog about the homelessness problems in Los Angeles County.

Posted by Edward at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the LA Times blog, they soliciting opinions on how to better the paper. While we cover the same area, our papers are not rivals. One reason is that they don't cover the San Gabriel Valley all that much. Just this past week, with the the Cory Lidle and Tyler Stanger plane crash, the Times barely covered it. I even got calls from their sister paper Newsday asking for some help.

Posted by Edward at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's the merging of small town journalism and the global web that will get us there.

" New newsroom rule: Answer phone calls. Respond to e-mails. On weekends and vacations, talk to real people."

"Fire any reporter or editor who refuses to learn how to use the Web to its greatest advantage, or to experiment with what works on Web vs. what works in print"

Update: See this is what happens when I don't go to LAobserved first. The above items are mocking the LATimes "Manhattan Project." My problem with the paper is that it doesn't cover LA all that well. Fix that, and maybe then they have a chance.

Posted by Edward at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've spend most of the day working on stories on the death of Cory Lidle and his flight instructor, Tyler Stanger. It's a sad story all the way around, especially hard for the family.

Posted by Edward at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

BrooWaha is a LA-based collaborative online newspaper.(LAobserved) Interesting concept, but two things: the stories are rated by a popularity contest; and it doesn't appear to pay. No offense, but who is going to work for free?
On the otherhand, a much larger outfit , OhmyNews, a South Korean, web-based news operation has had profound affect on journalism in that country using the same concept, and they do pay certain writers. They also pay a number of editors. Well...I guess it can't be all bad.

Posted by Edward at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Interesting http://greaterorange.blogspot.com/that serve the community and are written by the community.

Posted by Edward at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Want to protect and improve the quality of local journalism in Southern California? Great. Then go hire some of those folks that Tribune's about to lay off and start up your own newsroom. Worried about the high cost of starting up a new print newspaper, in an era when print's losing readers to the Web? Why bother? Simply start a Web newsroom instead. Worried about the loss of influence publishing online instead of in print? Um, didn't we just say that print was losing readers to the Web?"

Posted by Edward at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"blogs are largely the habitat of unemployed writers, enraged misanthropes, retired teachers, aging journalists and people who normally pass their time doodling or making obscene telephone calls."

Posted by Edward at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't know what people did before the invention of the Internet. It gives a news junkie a plethora of options to quickly get what we need to read. Sites such as Rough and Tumble and Slate's Today's Papers get the news I want quickly. I want to do something similar for news that affects the Valley that would include local bloggers. I swear it's on my list.

Posted by Edward at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Leading several countries in time spent online and watching television is good news, right? Of course, the three hours reading print a week is humbling.

Posted by Edward at 7:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunlight Foundation has started a research and reporting project that will enable
citizen journalists to find out how many members of the House of Representatives
have their spouses on the payroll.

- The question is how can we localize this kind of research to do more indepth reporting in the San Gabriel Valley.

Update: Could it be 'Crowd Sourcing?'

Posted by Edward at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We miss stories every day. Events that are important to local communities come and go without getting into the newspaper. Not because we want that to happen, but because, simply put, we don’t have the resources. The Internet gives us a whole new arena to change that. But we can’t do that without your help. This will be a space dedicated to find another way to connect with you. We already are moving with lightening speed to create different ways to provide content (check out our weekday webcasts at 9 a.m.). This blog will be attempting to find local bloggers and Web sites that cover things we don’t or don’t do enough of. I’ll also be pointing to journalism projects throughout the state, country and world that may, one day, be duplicated here. We don’t know if our experiments online will work, but journalism is too important not to try. I’m looking forward to the discussions.

Posted by Edward at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)