The sun of the South, in a can

Sun Drop must be enjoyed with Southern style.

Six years of journalism school can prepare you for covering a fatal accident. It can prepare you for covering a dull news conference. It can prepare you for designing the front page, shooting a video and editing lots of horribly written stories.

It cannot prepare you for layoffs. And, unfortunately, it's a big part of the newspaper industry.

On Tuesday, I saw a co-worker, Beth, who had been on vacation for a week. She gave me a can of Sun Drop, a soft drink that, by looking at it, would remind you of Mountain Dew or Mello Yello. She did this after I - on Jan. 29, the day of primary elections in Florida - brought in Maine's official soft drink, Moxie. It was greeted with wrinkled noses.

Sun Drop is the Moxie of the South. It was developed in Missouri, and I know for sure you can't find it up in the Northeast, just as you can't find Moxie down here in Florida. The Sun Drop Web site says it's popular in the Southeast and that it's known as a "community drink." Pockets of popularity are scattered throughout the region.

The can was somewhat warm, and Beth warned that it had been shaken as it rode with her on her bike. Yes, she commutes with two wheels. I put it into the refrigerator.

"Sun Drop is best when chilled," Beth said in a Facebook message later.

By now, you're wondering what a sweet drink has to do with bitter newspaper layoffs. Beth was laid off a matter of minutes after she gave me the can, and I never had a chance to taste the soda before she left.

The least I owe her is a critique.

Sun Drop is packed with caffeine, but it doesn't taste like caffeine, as Mountain Dew does. Instead, it has a natural citrus flavor from the orange juice concentrate listed in its ingredients. Other components include high fructose corn syrup, which gets an undeserved bad rap, and glycerol of ester wood rosin, which pulls all the citrus flavors together. Mmm mmm.

It's incredibly sweet - unlike the bitter Moxie - but the impressive orange flavor comes through boisterously. In the exclusive Facebook message, Beth said, "It also complements any Southern cuisine."

In the end, though, Sun Drop is deficient because it cannot dull the sting of losing a co-worker and a friend, as well as a boss. Employees throughout Gannett have the same sense of loss this week after thousands were laid off. It's consuming. It's hard to shake.

So, I will keep this can. It will remind me of good times with co-workers before the Great Layoff.

When the news is the same, the headlines are the same

I thought this headline was original when I wrote it. Six hours later, I saw the first copy of USA Today, and my jaw dropped to the floor.

Since President Bush's televised address about the economy Wednesday night, The Associated Press has been referring to the White House summit he arranged as an "extraordinary" event.

So it's no wonder that most newspapers treated it as such Friday morning, when they printed stories about the meeting and negotiations on Capitol Hill for a $700 billion economic bailout package.

And the headlines that those news outlets used to describe what was happening also were quite in agreement. Sixteen newspapers used "Deal or no deal?" to express how political leaders led the public to believe they were close to a deal, but later on, said the talks had collapsed. Four of those were Florida papers in Miami, Orlando, Ocala and Melbourne. Some papers had variations on the headline. The Rocky Mountain News inserted a handy comma after the first "deal," creating a natural pause. But, interestingly, the Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., omitted the question mark. I would think it's necessary in such a headline.

But 41 newspapers, according to my survey of front pages on display on the Newseum's Web site, used some form of "breakdown," "break down" or "breaks down" as their headline for the bailout package.

What this sameness indicates to me is a sameness in today's news reporting. For the past several years, newspapers have been eliminating their bureaus in Washington, D.C. So, with most newspapers depending on their corporate wire services - such as Gannett News Service or McClatchy Tribune Information Services - along with the AP, many stories coming out of this summit were the same and, naturally, a similar headline came from the copy editors reading the stories. Relying on a single news service eliminates the likelihood that off-beat stories and more unique headlines would arise from this historic occasion.

FLORIDA TODAY was not immune to this, of course. We've been relying on the AP for much of our copy throughout this economic debacle. During late-breaking news situations, the AP is especially good at running stories early so we can make deadline.

I was charged with designing the front page for the bailout summit package. Usually, I would design around the art, but the photos coming from Washington have been particularly ho-hum during this crisis. Bush, Nancy Pelosi and Roy Blunt aren't very high on the sexiness meter. So, with this package, I first thought of a headline that came naturally from the story, which had this lede: "A Republican revolt stalled urgent efforts to lash together a national economic rescue plan Thursday, a chaotic turnaround on a day that had seemed headed for a success that President Bush, both political parties and their presidential candidates could celebrate at an extraordinary White House meeting." And I had it on the page early: 6:30 p.m., about five hours before deadline.

After a scurry toward the finish (deadline), I took a sigh of relief that the page was sent to the press. But about an hour later, my heart jumped again. That's when one of the pre-press workers came out with a copy of FLORIDA TODAY and an edition of USA Today, which is printed in Melbourne, too. Both had the same headline.

Does this mean that both newspapers covered the news the way it should have been - straightforwardly? Or does it mean that all media are blending into one giant entity, creating little need to pay attention to more than one news source? It used to be that you could read two different newspapers about the same topic and get two antithetical stories. Is that a bygone era?

If I could do it all again, I still would probably choose the "Deal or no deal?" headline. It's more engaging for the reader than "Bailout breaks down" or "Bailout stalls," another word used widely Friday.

Update: Executive Editor Bob Stover writes a column that mentions the headline issue and asks similar questions: Cliche? Appropriate?






I created a few galleries with the 16 and 41 headlines.

"Deal or no deal?"




"Breaks down" or "breakdown"

The Offlede gets sweet mention on New York Times blog

I was briefly dumbfounded as to why the unique visitors on The Offlede suddenly jumped. Then I saw that City Room, a blog of The New York Times, had linked to my posts about -30-.

Go here for the City Room post.

It was Bob Basler of Reuters who gave me the idea to investigate the big screen version of -30-, "-30-."

Who would have known that a number could be such a popular topic?

Unfortunately, the entry about The Offlede was the last item of City Room's post. But honestly, what can I expect for a post about -30-?

-30-

Academic blogging should be an epidemic

More journalism educators should blog. Professionals, professors and students could learn a lot from blogs by j-school insiders.

Two of the foremost blogging professors are Doug Fisher of the University of South Carolina and Andy Bechtel, left, of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

I'm especially eager to see what Bechtel writes about his upcoming summer as an intern at the Los Angeles Times. That's right: a 40-year-old intern. (It's nice to have connections.) Go here for more.

Yesterday, Bechtel became the second of the aforementioned j-profs to mention The Offlede's work at the American Copy Editors Society conference in Denver. For the sake of gratitude and cross-promotion, here's a link to that post, which links to my Smokin' ACES home page. He gave me "The Last Word from Denver."

Thanks, professor.

Video: Smokin' ACES: An overview of my time in Denver

I shot this video using my Canon point-and-shoot digital camera, so again, the quality of sound and picture just isn't there. At least I finally mastered video exporting in Final Cut. My videos can only get better after this.

I used Viddler for this one because it allows larger files than YouTube. But if you want to see the YouTube version, go here.

Oh, and if I knew how to change that stupid look on the preview frame, I would.

Smokin' ACES: Rocky Mountain News-Denver Post tour

On the final day of the American Copy Editors Society conference in Denver, a few nice guys from the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post took a large group of editors on a tour of their not-so-humble abodes. Through a joint operating agreement that formed the Denver Newspaper Agency, the two papers share a $100 million, 318,400-square-foot building they moved into in August 2006. (For more about the building, go here.) Interestingly, neither of our guides had seen the opposition newspaper's side of the building (or so they said). Their business ends may cooperate, but they are not allowed in each other's space. Their editorial independence is obvious, too: They guard and pride their own journalism.



Even the elevators display the papers' journalism history. Behind the elevator directional arrow is a collage of historic front pages from the Rocky.

The first stop on our tour of the Rocky was in the break room. The Rocky doesn't print a paper on Sunday, so it was empty on this Saturday. But imagine having a view of the Rocky Mountains, including Pikes Peak, while you're chomping on your bologna sandwich or dry leftover spaghetti. I wouldn't mind. (The view, that is. I could do without my own "cooking.")

John Boogert, Internet news editor at the Rocky, was our tour guide for his part. He participated in the same panel about online editing that I did. He was determined to show us how much better the Rocky's side of the building is. Each paper designed its space independently of the other. Above, Boogert points out the view from the rooftop of Pikes Peak and the assorted government buildings.

The Denver newspapers are right in the thick of the capital. Above are some more government buildings with the mountains in the background.

Here's the gold dome of the Capitol.

I was leaning over the side of the building to take a photo of the mounted statue below when the people walking by it thought I was trying to shoot them. They stopped and posed, so I had to take the photo.

The lone stool in the middle of the Rocky's photog studio has a simple beauty.

This is the view of the Rocky newsroom from the online department. They have nice TVs. But they aren't as nice as my roommate's.

Apparently, every good newspaper must have a Mardi Gras bear. The caution tape probably is hiding all the beer stains.

The Rocky displays its Pulitzer Prizes proudly. The above composition is of the Columbine shootings.

The walls in the newsroom lobby at The Post are covered with punctuation marks. But I don't see an interrobang on this wall?!



Each newspaper did some interesting things with lighting. Above, wall lights line the passageway to the Post newsroom.

Marc Chamberland, head of business copy editing at The Post, was our guide for his part of the building. Above, he stands next to the copy desk.

My bias shows in the number of photos I posted of each newspaper. The score is: Rocky, 10; Post, 3. The Rocky definitely had the polished, sleek, cool newsroom. Sorry, Post.

Smokin' ACES home

Smokin' ACES: Premier editing professor Ed Trayes gets it

Temple University professor and Offlede mentor Ed Trayes delivers the keynote address at the 2008 American Copy Editors Society national convention in Denver.

If it weren't for a single person, I wouldn't be where I am today. I might be reporting at some tiny community newspaper in North Dakota.

But because of Temple University professor Ed Trayes, I'm a copy editor. And I'm proud of it.

I had the privilege of being taught by Trayes for two weeks as part of my training for The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund editing program. As a fund co-founder, he has led more than 50 such residencies.

After that boot camp last spring, I spent the summer at Newsday as probably its last Dow Jones intern.

It's because of Trayes that I value my role as a copy editor more than I would as a reporter. Copy editors are the quality controllers. We know a lot so that nothing will slip by us, whether it's about Brad Pitt or George Bush.

It was appropriate that Trayes was the keynote speaker for my first American Copy Editors Society national convention. And for a guy who has spent decades training young journalists, he knows that it is our flexibility in adapting to new media that will determine our future.

"No journalist's job has changed more than the copy editor's," he said. "And no group has handled change better, been more nimble, ever going forward, ever adapting, succeeding."

Trayes said that some publications have shot themselves in the foot by trying to attract all audiences through the "slicing and dicing" of content. A focus on a broader readership results in a poorer diet of news.

"So often the competition is we - ourselves," he said.

Today's world is one of shorter attention spans. Instead of actively seeking it, readers want the news to come to them. Commuters at metropolitan train stations will check a box of free newspapers, find it empty, then walk away disappointed - all as a box of 50-cent papers sits full, forlorn, almost untouched.

Trayes said publishers should give away newspapers. Maybe then, we could make those commuters happy.

But the greatest challenge to newspapers, to journalism, is not price; it is time. Technology has trimmed the news cycle from 24 hours to 24 minutes, "probably less," he said. But copy editors will not, must not, get lost in this frenzy.

"Technology ... will not kill us," Trayes said. "As long as there are words to be written, there will be copy editors with whatever at the time is the technological equivalent of a sharp pencil. ... With this in mind, technology and the lifestyles of today - how people choose to get news and information, how they choose to spend their time - will change us."

Technology certainly has changed me.

In the past several months, I have gone from a copy editor of words to a copy editor of media. The new tools that make the news richer - tools such as video, photos, blogs and the general wide world of the Web - must be viewed with the unique and critical eye of a copy editor. We know the genuine from the contrived, the worthy from the weak. When I trained in video editing, I said it is a job that is natural for a copy editor because video is also about details.

After Newsday, I took a job at a company with forethought, with a vision for the future's journalism that is dominated by new media. Copy editors' jobs have changed from the strict editing of words to pagination and design. Now, we must adapt to the online world. And we can't sit back. We must speak up to ensure quality.

"It is up to each of you to meet the challenges as they come while taking an active role in determining what copy editors can and must do in the years ahead," Trayes said.

Some people have criticized my views that traditional copy editors have fallen behind because they have not met the challenges of today's technology. They do not understand how to use it. They do not even understand its uses.

"For at least some of you, if not most of you, the next great battle is online editing," Trayes said. "Editing for Web sites and other venues must have the same standards as print. There is no doubt about copy editing being under attack in this area."

Trayes arrived the morning of his keynote address at the convention's host, the Marriott in Denver. He attended the panel discussion about online editing at which I spoke. I thought his presence would make me nervous, but it put me at ease: I knew he would support, if not agree with, what I said.

In my closing words, I said, "Because of the scrutiny that our Web sites are subjected to, it’s absolute that the next generation of online news producers should be us – traditional, well-grounded, smart and unreasonably critical copy editors. Our reputations are at stake."

In his closing words, Trayes said, "Readers, online and otherwise, count on, depend on, what copy editors pass along as true, accurate and fair."

We may be ignored, but we are not insignificant. We are not powerless.

We are copy editors. We balance the scales of journalism justice. That will never change.

Bill Connolly, formerly of The New York Times, spoke after Trayes.

Trayes and I after his keynote.

Smokin' ACES home

Offlede finally finds answer to newspapers' problems

Buyouts. Folding newspapers. The Internet.

Woe is we.

The secret to calming our fears? A stress ball. I bought mine for $1 at ACES in Denver.

They sold out.

Smokin' ACES: Florida Today, small papers stand among giants of online editing

From left to right: John Russial, University of Oregon; Valerie Mass, The Denver Post; John Boogert, Rocky Mountain News; Andrew Knapp, The Offlede (and FLORIDA TODAY); and Amy Hubbard, the Los Angeles Times. Michael Roehrman of The Wichita Eagle is hiding behind Hubbard. Boogert gave Mass a difficult time throughout the session because they're cutthroat, but friendly competitors.

Photos by Daniel Hunt, Flickr

Several weeks ago, after being in my first full-time job for six months, I was preparing for the American Copy Editors Society national conference. It would be my first.

So when University of Oregon professor John Russial asked me to participate in a panel about online editing, I was hesitant to accept. I told him that I was inexperienced and relatively immature, but he still thought I would be "a good addition." So I accepted. And I'm glad.

I presented my opening statement alongside Amy Hubbard, the copy desk chief for Travel, Real Estate and Books at the Los Angeles Times, and John Boogert, Internet news editor at the Rocky Mountain News. Even Hubbard was nervous when she gave her speech, so that put me at ease.

Russial first presented his study about the editing of online products at newspapers. He surveyed 210 publications and divided them into three size categories. I don't have many details, but these are a few things I jotted down.

Twenty percent of the largest newspapers said they don't edit online stories.

Of all papers that do edit online, there's a 2-1 ratio of editors who have editing experience to those who don't. But copy editors would say "editing" experience doesn't mean "copy editing" experience.

Of the newspapers that don't edit online stories, 59 percent said they don't because it delays posting, and 42 percent said they don't have enough employees.

But the most striking result in Russial's study is that smaller newspapers are, for the most part, doing just as well as the larger ones when it comes to online editing.

For example, Michael Roehrman of The Wichita Eagle, which is about the size of FLORIDA TODAY, said that all stories are given to the day or night copy desk to be edited, then sent to the Web site. The Eagle was surveyed in Russial's study. FLORIDA TODAY was, too, and that's why Russial asked me to join the panel.


Represent!

At FLORIDA TODAY, online producers are responsible for editing and for the technical maintenance of the site's function and aesthetics.

My opening statement about how editing is done in Brevard County was well-received. People came up to me several times for the rest of the conference to talk about FLORIDA TODAY. I was a proud ambassador.

To look at my speech, click on either the Word version or the PDF version.


Editing blogs

In Russial's sample, one of three newspapers did not edit blogs. Of the sites that didn't edit blogs, 70 percent said blogs were solely the writer's responsibility.

Hubbard said the Times assigns blogs to copy editors to edit whenever they have time. It's not a regular part of their duties. This seems like a good way to handle blog editing.

Some people argue against blog editors because they risk taking away the writer's voice. But what about accuracy? What about embarrassing errors? Andy Bechtel of the University of North Carolina talks more about blog editing here.

Copy editors don't edit FLORIDA TODAY blogs. Instead, an assigning editor oversees them, so there is some quality control.

It isn't always practical to have a copy editor for a blog, such as in the case of FLORIDA TODAY's space team. Some blogs are 24-hour features that are updated from home or from the field. For example, our NASA reporters blog from Mission Control in Houston at 3 a.m. when no one is on duty in Florida.

The only thing that I ask, however, is that bloggers learn to write headlines.

Session information

• Title: "Online Copy Editing: What’s Being Done, What Could Be Done"
• Time: 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Friday
• Panelists: John Russial, University of Oregon; John Boogert, Rocky Mountain News; Amy Hubbard, Los Angeles Times; Michael Roehrman, Wichita Eagle; Valerie Mass, Denver Post; Andrew Knapp, Florida Today
• Description: "A look at who’s editing what online, and how little copy actually is being edited before being posted. The problem runs from small to large publications. But some newsrooms have created online copy editing positions, and others are experimenting with schedules, desk structures and other things as a way to get online copy read."

Smokin' ACES home

It's official: No. 1 sign you should rewrite that headline

The Detroit Free Press is guilty of using the pointless "it's official." And this headline was taken directly from the lede. Can it get any worse?

This post comes directly from the Rip Your Hair Out Department at The Offlede. "It's official" has to be one of the most grossly overused, unnecessary phrases in newspaper and online headlines. Why?

• It rarely adds anything.
• You can always drop it from a headline without losing any vital information.
• You could probably add it to most any headline without making it incorrect.
  

So, when you can add Something or take Something away from a headline without destroying its meaning, that's a big sign that Something is pointless (and not capitalized).

To illustrate how perpetual it is, I did a quick survey. "It's official" appeared in 212 article headlines on Google News over the last two weeks. The unpunctuated "Its official" (the "its" still meaning "it is") even appeared six times.

Here are some of the star examples:

It's official: Jake Long is a Miami Dolphin (The Palm Beach Post)

• Can't you just say that he's a Dolphin?
  

It's Official: Brauchli Out At WSJ (The Washington Post)

• No. It's not that it's official now: It's that it actually happened. Everything else before the actual happening was just speculation through "sources with knowledge of the situation but without the authority to speak with the press."

It's official: Hasek benched (Detroit Free Press)

• When he was unofficially benched, where was he exactly? On the bench? The Freep was an especially egregious violator of the no-it's official rule. This particular one was taken from the story's lede. That's horrible and horribly uncreative headline writing.
  

It's official: Olive Garden is coming (Bismarck Tribune, N.D.)

• Oh, thank goodness! There was that unofficial limbo period, and I was so worried it wouldn't really happen. Soup, salad and bread sticks for everyone!
  

It's Official: User-Generated Content is By and For Corny, Backward Philistines (Wired magazine)

• A good, vindicating, strangely biblical one for some of you traditional journalists.
  

It's official: Sex therapists suck in bed (San Francisco Chronicle)

• Because everyone knew that before anyway. And finally, it has been written down.
  

Yup, it's official: Flint has shrinkage (The Flint Journal, Mich.)

• Everyone knows it's cold up there.
  

It's official -- The Masters will forever be ESPNized (Orlando Sentinel)

• Before it became official, the tournament was covertly ESPNized. Isn't that better than CBSized anyway?
  

It's official -- no state-sponsored cocktail (The McDowell News, N.C.)
It's official -- no clothesline ban (Oakville Beaver, Ontario)

• Wait. Things can officially NOT happen?!
  

It's Official: Jenna Bush To Wed At Ranch (The ShowBuzz)

• This must have been the lede: Despite his earlier threats of a veto, President Bush today signed a bill compelling his daughter to marry at his crib in Crawford, Texas.
  

It's Official: Mount Snow's Closing Date is Unofficial (AlpineZone News, Conn.)

• There's nothing like unofficial officialism.
  

It's official, Alabama is the Soviet Union (The Huffington Post)

• That's expected from Arianna.
  

It's official: Mountain named in honor of combat fatality (Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.)
It's official: Piestewa Peak name OK'd (East Valley Tribune, Ariz.)
It's Official: Piestewa Peak (Reznet News, Mont.)
Squaw Peak officially Piestewa Peak (The Arizona Republic)

• Same story. Different newspapers. Same official headline. This was the fault of none other than The Associated Press. Other newspapers thought it necessary to keep the AP editor's "official" in their versions of the headline.
  

It's official: FairPoint closes Verizon deal (Mainebiz Daily)

• When did they unofficially close it?

It's official: Rangers vs. Devils in playoffs (Newsday)

• Like, so, yeah, it became official when the teams advanced to the next round, right? Or what?

Smokin' ACES: Ex-Freep editor is fond of the weird and short

"On guard for 176 years," and Alex Cruden was there for almost 40 years of it.

Alex Cruden, longtime editor at another Gannett publication, the Detroit Free Press, reflected on his 40 years in daily journalism. He just took a buyout in March.

This was actually the last session I attended at ACES, but it was one of the best. Oddly enough, however, I didn't take many notes. I must have been too engrossed in his wisdom. (Cruden is at left. Photo by Daniel Hunt, Flickr.)

This is the one thing I wrote down, and it's a quote from Cruden: "Be willing to not only tolerate the unusual; try to enhance it." He was talking about the editing process and how it's paramount to accentuate what makes news, news.

Cruden distributed a handout about how to edit on a tight deadline. He offers a 14-step process. For the Word version of the guide, go here. For the PDF version, go here. Click it. Print it. Learn from it.

The closing two sentences of his biography in the ACES conference program were: "As an editor, he has a fondness for short sentences. And irony."

I know a few flowery-writing reporters who could benefit from his insight.

Session information

• Title: "40 Years in 90 Minutes"
• Time: 2:15 to 3:45 p.m. Saturday
• Presenter: Alex Cruden, Detroit Free Press (retired)
• Description: "Cruden will offer a one-page handout and lead a discussion based on distillation of four decades of daily journalism. What’s most valuable amid the tread of deadlines and the blare of online? What skills should an editor cherish, and expect to be rewarded for?"

Smokin' ACES home

Earnings are up at Offlede (again), down at Gannett (again)

I took my camera on a jog through the neighborhood, and it didn't take me long to shoot enough for sale signs for a Photoshop collage. The bottom sign has been out in a yard so long that it's rusted and faded to the point of near illegibility. If real estate brokers can't make money on real estate, it's no wonder that newspaper also can't.

As ad revenue at The Offlede continues to soar (another Lincoln collected this week, up from 22 cents to 23 cents total), it continues to fall at Gannett, the parent company of FLORIDA TODAY.

Gannett earnings dropped 9 percent in the first three months of the year. You could say the earnings were "nearly decimated." (Click that link, please. You might learn something.) The weak economy likely attributed to fewer ads being sold. According to The Associated Press:

Gannett chairman and chief executive Craig Dubow (who made $7.5 million last year) said the difficulties are particularly acute at Gannett's 11 newspapers in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada, where the real estate downturn has been sharper. Full story.

Heck, it's so bad here in Florida that my roommate, who owns the house I live in, left his place off the market after his Realtor said she didn't want it anymore. It isn't worth the hassle of listing it because it's not going to sell anytime soon.

The economic doldrum really hit home a few months ago when FLORIDA TODAY "awarded" buyouts to six newsroom employees. The announcement by our executive editor wasn't a shock to me. At the moment the staff meeting was announced via e-mail, I knew it would be about layoffs.

Real estate in Florida is continuing to founder. This state lives for homes. It's a retirement community, after all. And the declining revenues for newspapers exacerbate the economic climate for journalism.

This is the first time I've been at a publication as it laid off people.

Not long after I left the Bangor Daily News in Maine, 11 employees and the internship program were dropped.

The Pew Research Center, where I worked as a reporter, has been cost-cutting, though not necessarily laying off people.

My intrepid and beloved former co-workers at Newsday told me that the internship program had been cut in addition to the 40 buyouts that were distributed throughout the more-than-decimated newsroom.

But I can't do much more right now than just complain and continue to do my job. Copy editors are good at both of those things. Especially the former.

Smokin' ACES: Copy editors are stuck in middle of new media

There's our dull pencil, somewhere near the middle of all the confusion.

Doug Fisher, a journalism professor at the University of South Carolina and blogger at Common Sense Journalism, blogged a few of my posts about the American Copy Editors Society conference in Denver.

It's interesting to see how someone from an older generation with knowledge of the new tools of the trade reacts to the sometimes naive thoughts of yours truly, a self-proclaimed "next-gen" journalist. I like to be snarky and blunt, a tactic that runs the risk of seeming less intellectual at times, especially when I use words such as "stupid" and "dumb."

But it's difficult to avoid those terms when today's journalism, Dumb, still learns from yesterday's journalism, Dumber. Times are changing, and words and attitudes are changing with them.

So that's why I found it a bit humorous how some people reacted to the tools and concepts Fisher presented at ACES. If you look at his handout, which I posted earlier, there are many of them - too many to divulge to any great extent in the 90 minutes he had.

By listening to the questions asked of Fisher, I thought there were some misperceptions among the audience members about why copy editors need to know about Web 2.0. They also had a very basic knowledge of social media and its positive and negative influences on journalism. That's why I said copy editors' collective pencil is a bit dull when it comes to new media.

The overarching of these misunderstandings is that copy editors think they are going to edit Twitter entries, "citizen" blogs and online reader comments as though they are newspaper articles. After all, that's what copy editors do: They edit. Unfortunately, I don't think people were thinking about my "masters of all" theory of copy editing, which states that we must know it "all," whether it's by reading books or by monitoring Joe Schmoe's Twitter page.

Despite the urge to edit Schmoe's ungrammatical and libelous Tweets, as Fisher mentioned during another session ("Moderating Online Communities: A Potential New Job for the Desk"), it's better to take a hands-off approach. I've even heard FLORIDA TODAY's lawyer say it: If you touch something a reader writes, it's yours, and you're liable for it. But if you leave it alone, you're simply an innocent host.

On Floridatoday.com, people who register with the site can published their own blogs through the Pluck platform. It's in its infancy here in Brevard County, but the service should stimulate a robust community conversation. It already has shown promise toward this end in the humorous, critical and sometimes good blogs started by FLORIDA TODAY readers.

Copy editors - no matter how strong their editing urge is - won't be able to touch this conversation unless it's to contribute, as I have done, or to wholly prevent comments on a news story.

Fisher mentioned the comments last year of The Ithaca Journal publisher: Once I give you a voice, I have to accept that voice. Journalists are no longer the only people with a voice. We must get that into our heads.

But he said online communities create so many legal conundrums that cannot easily be answered outside court. "Someone's going to get sued and lose," he said. "I just hope it's not me."

I hope he's wrong (about the first part).


No, seriously, 'What's RSS?'

Misperception No. 2 (though it's more of a misconception) in the first Fisher session was more technical than theoretical. It's about how RSS works, hence the "What's RSS?" question I portrayed copy editors as posing (my headline for that session post was "Know-it-all copy editors ask, 'What's RSS?'").

It seemed that many editors in attendance thought that an online story must be perfectly edited with a perfect headline before it goes live because, as it's posted, an RSS headline goes out, and it cannot be changed later. False. If you rewrite the headline and recache the story, the new headline will overwrite the old.

I know this is the case with The Offlede headlines, but I wanted to see if it were true for a real news site, too. So I experimented with Floridatoday.com. Here are the results:

Headline No. 2 in this list - which is a screenshot of my RSS reader, iGoogle - "Students scurry to shine for their last dance" was too long. "Dance" bumped over to the second line. So I decided to take out "their" to shorten it. I went into our online content manager and took it out. Then I waited.

Sure enough, about 30 minutes later, a new headline showed up on my iGoogle desktop via RSS. It was "Students scurry to shine for last dance." So don't worry, newbie online editors, you can change a headline, and RSS readers everywhere will know about it.

Of course, if you have subscribers who get automatically generated e-mails containing RSS headlines (through a service such as Feedblitz), you'll want to make sure the headlines are all right before that e-mail goes out. But really, how many people do this; how many people want more e-mail in their inbox?

It's difficult to say what role copy editors will play in this new-mingled-media landscape. Will we be editing more? Will we be sitting on the sidelines waiting for something big to happen before we step in? Or will we take our usual, humble position as we have in the newsroom for years: Will we be stuck, somewhere in the middle?


Some terms for online conversation communities:

• Flamer: person who posts just to make people mad
• Sock puppet: person who creates multiple identities or monikers and starts conversations with themselves
• Troll: someone who posts off-topic or off-the-wall remarks to make others become emotionally charged or to kill the forum discussion
• Troll whisperer: moderator, not editor, who deals with difficult posters without depressing the conversation
  

Session information

• Title: "Moderating Online Communities: A Potential New Job for the Desk"
• Time: 2:15 to 3:45 p.m. Friday
• Panelists: Doug Fisher, University of South Carolina; Travis Henry, Examiner.com
• Description: "Social networks and comments on stories are all the rage - and rage sometimes is the operative word as conversations get out of hand. As news organizations open their sites to comments, blogs and other community-generated content, this might be a new opportunity for savvy copy editors, or just something else the desk will have to handle. So you want to be a troll whisperer? Find out what has been learned from sites like YourHub and Hartsville Today."

Smokin' ACES home

Smokin' ACES: Life after journalism would be the death of me

Being a low-level celebrity and meeting high-level celebrities such as Dan Rather (too bad he's a shabby reporter) is a cool part about being a journalist. These moments make journalism a difficult career to abandon. (Photo by Stacy Alexander)

On Feb. 23, editors at a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper in Albuquerque, N.M., put the paper to bed for the last time. After 86 years of great, hearty journalism, The Albuquerque Tribune was dead.

"That's when my life after journalism began," former Tribune writer and editor J.A. Montalbano said during a panel discussion last week at the American Copy Editors Society convention in Denver.

Montalbano and a few other former editors at the defunct paper talked about ways in which journalists should prepare themselves for making a living outside of journalism. Montalbano now teaches at the University of New Mexico and at Central New Mexico Community College.

The state of newspapers has forced me into thinking about the territory outside the Fourth Estate. But it's not the first time. There have been several junctures when I questioned the direction in which my career was heading.

In high school, I was all about math and science. I thought engineering would surely be my fate because the University of Maine, the school I was bound for, was known for it; it wasn't where all the wannabe journalists were going. And when I graduated as the valedictorian, I got science awards, not writing accolades.

But it was my interest in and my flair for writing about sports that got me into journalism. I decided on a whim to declare it as my major. And I tell people that I never changed it because I was just too lazy.

I strayed from sports and started to write exclusively about hard news. Then, when I graduated with a journalism degree, I wanted to further my education, either by going to law school or to graduate j-school. I had even started to study for the LSAT when I decided I couldn't stand being away from journalism. So I went to American University to study it yet again.

And then, when it came time to get a real job, I looked into government editing, public relations work and even military service. I started to apply for a few of them when - just as it did during my LSAT studies - that feeling of withdrawal came over me: I could not live without the news and without being a part of the news. (By the way, the federal job application is enough to change your mind about working for the government.)

But while I was in Denver, my vigor was tested again. I was courted to become under the employ of a non-newspaper employer. It would've been an editorial job, but not one that I would consider journalism, or at least, the type of journalism that I would appreciate.

Though the salary would've been more than twice what I get now, I'm not about to abandon the six years that I invested in journalism education for a non-journalism job - especially after I've been a full-time journalist for only seven months. This industry still offers too much for me to ignore.

Besides, I wouldn't enjoy my job as much. I'm sure of that. I thrive under the gun of deadline. I live for breaking news. I love shaping the information readers get.

Some fellow editors at the conference said they revel in the sort of low-level celebrity they enjoy by working at a newspaper. That's manifest in the supermarket-type conversations when someone notices your newspaper ID badge:

Cashier (at World Market): "Oh, you work at FLORIDA TODAY. That's cool."

Me: "Yeah, it's OK."

Me: "You're cute. You wanna go on a date?"

Cashier: "Tee hee. Sure."

Well, the last two lines of that exchange are contrived. But that's beside the point.

The former journalists who talked about life after journalism at the ACES conference said it is important to diversify your job skills.

For one, copy editors - many of whom work nights - are able to devote daylight hours to teaching at a local college or university. Once I get more professional experience, I plan to do that. I already have some teaching experience.

They said the skills of reporters and editors are especially conducive to careers in law, academia and public policy, all of which happen to be areas of interest to me.

"I thought journalism was all I ever wanted to do," said Kelly Brewer, a former executive editor at The Albuquerque Tribune who now blogs and consults from Redding, Calif. "But I discovered there's more out there."

That may be true. And there's nothing stopping me from sampling the outside world. I write. I blog. I take photos. I talk Democrats, Republicans and health care. I do research. I could brief a legal case in five minutes. I even argue like a lawyer.

But it's not my time. Not yet. I'm not ready.

Session information

• Title: "Is There Life After Newspapers?"
• Time: 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Saturday
• Panelists: J.A. Montalbano, Kelly Brewer, Zachary Shank
• Description: Refugees from the Albuquerque Tribune talk about options beyond the newsroom, including law, academia and public policy.

Smokin' ACES home

Smokin' ACES: Know-it-all copy editors ask, 'What's RSS?'

Many copy editors at a session I attended were clueless as to how programs such as iGoogle gather headlines through RSS, or really simple syndication.

Copy editors are supposed to know a lot. We are the masters of all. We know politics, news, sports, business, literature. You name it.

But with the Web, we're not exactly the sharpest pencils in the basket. That's cause for concern.

One of the sessions I attended at the American Copy Editors Society conference was called "Web 2.0." I was expecting presenter Doug Fisher of the University of South Carolina to go deep into the world of social media.

Fisher certainly has the capacity to do that, but he was held back by many of the old people in the audience who couldn't grasp concepts such as Twitter, RSS feeds and the YouTube.

These are some of the points I gathered from what Fisher said:

• Two-thirds of all traffic to Web sites doesn't originate at the home page. Instead, the Web hits are through sharing services such as Digg, Facebook and del.i.cious. "Share," Fisher said, "is not a four-letter word." (It's nice to know copy editors still know math.)
• Each news story should come with a 150-word summary attached. This gives Web surfers a teaser that could persuade them to read the story. At FLORIDA TODAY, this summary is called a "digest." Editors who know what it does actually care about what it says. For those who don't, they wonder why it's there.
• “If the news is that important, it will find me," Fisher said, quoting a New York Times article. RSS syndicates news from multiple sources by bringing headlines onto a single Web page. When a common reader logs onto his RSS aggregating program - such as Bloglines, Netvibes or Google Reader - he is getting news on a single page instead of visiting external news sites.
• By the questions copy editors were asking, most traditional journalists don't know what RSS is. More on that in another post.
  

"Why do we need to know about all this?" was the question asked over and over. Besides that "masters of all" thing I mentioned above, Web 2.0 is pretty important for the delivery and receipt of news and information in today's new media world. Not knowing it is dulling our pencils even further.

Fisher mentioned how reporters and editors can monitor residents' pages on Twitter, a microblogging service, to find out what's happening in the community. He did not mentionstress, however, how Twitter - which permits blog posts up to 140 characters - is being used as a news delivery medium by reporters such as John Dickerson, chief political correspondent for Slate.

And hey! I use Twitter and RSS together on Offlede.com. On the right sidebar, under "Offlede Tweets," you'll see my latest Twitter postings brought to the Offlede home page via RSS. How about that?

But because Web 2.0 doesn't have anything to do with that pile of inky newsprint that shows up on their doorsteps each morning, most attendees just didn't get it. Allison, a friend of mine from my Newsday days, and I jokingly toyed with asking questions such as "What is the blog? What is the Google? What is the YouTube?"

We probably would have been taken seriously, so we settled with simply laughing at everyone else. But ignorance, in this case, isn't really funny: It's a nefarious mark on journalism.

Here is the PDF handout that Fisher distributed during the session.

Session information

• Title: "Web 2.0"
• Time: 2:15 to 3:45 p.m. Thursday
• Panelists: Doug Fisher, University of South Carolina; Chuck Moozakis, Newspapers & Technology
• Description: How do you navigate the brave new(-media) world? And when it comes to technology, where are newsrooms now and what's ahead? Get a rundown of some of the top Web 2.0 tools that can make your life easier and help you navigate social media. Blogs, wikis, RSS, tags, Technorati, Furl, Newsvibes and more. Bring some of your favorite sites, too, to share.

Smokin' ACES home

Smokin' ACES: Newspapers must get dumb to make us smart

When you viewed this Web page just now, what did you see first? Headlines? Photos? Googly eyes? The links to take you away from here?

That’s what the folks at the Poynter Institute think they’ve figured out.

Chances are that your eyes were drawn to the “nav” bar to the right that allows you navigate elsewhere. The bar combines a little text with several visual aids, such as photos, to make for a more appealing, readable presentation. And apparently, this significantly "dumbed-down" approach to the news is the key to the future.

Poynter, a media research organization based in St. Petersburg, Fla., last year completed an intensive study called EyeTrack. Researchers retrofitted subjects with high-tech goggles that record where their eyes are looking when they view a newspaper or Web page. It also records how long they look at it.

I first learned of the results during last spring’s American Society of Newspaper Editors convention, left, in Washington. Sara Quinn, who directed the study for Poynter, presented preliminary results.

She said large photos attract newspaper and Web readers more than small ones. No surprise there.

She said people read farther into a story on the Web, but stop reading sooner in newspapers. Now wait a second. I thought people who read newspapers were methodical and deliberate. Maybe not.

But Quinn is still at it, further spreading the gospel of EyeTrack at the American Copy Editors Society national conference last week in Denver. She talked about how the study pertains to alternative story forms – such as fact boxes, graphics and numbers – in newspapers.

She said alternative forms aid comprehension of information in print and online. Quinn and the Poynter researchers gave people three pages: one with a traditional story, one with a shorter story and a few fact boxes, and one without a story and just boxes, numbers and photos. Researchers then quizzed the readers.

“People who read the page without the traditional narrative were able to answer most questions correctly,” Quinn said.

Here are three points she made clear about the benefit of these broken-down story formats:

• They help readers understand and remember facts. (Hey, dumbing down information makes people smarter. Who would've thunk it?)
  
• They attract a lot of attention.
• Newspapers don’t do them very often. Only 4 percent of newspapers studied in EyeTrack used them.
  

The biggest problem for newspapers these days is that people can’t take time out of their day to read them. As an example, I edited a story a few weeks ago that was 40 inches long and came with an 8-inch sidebar, a 20-inch graphic and two fact boxes. People don’t have time for all of that. You probably don't have time to read this post. If you are reading it, you're a sucker.

No one really knows how to fix this readability issue yet. But “bitesizing” information into digestible pieces is at least part of the equation. Yes, it may be dumbing down the information, but honestly, we just don’t have time to be smart these days.

So as the Black Eyed Peas would say, let’s get retarded.


Not rules, but guidelines for getting stupid

Josh Crutchmer, the deputy presentation editor at the Omaha World-Herald, says newspapers' ability to find the most effective way to communicate information is how they're going to compete with blogs.

If that were true, the industry wouldn't be having the problems it is right now.

Nevertheless, Crutchmer offered a few points to keep in mind when bitesizing traditional journalistic pot roasts.

• Do it for the readers. (Cliche.)
• Don't design just to design. It's not about what looks cool; you need content to back it up.
• Words make an alternative form work.
• Don't say something in two paragraphs that you can say in one.
• Criticize before, not after, something goes to print.

Session information

• Title: "Working Together: Alternative Story Forms, Designers and the Desk"
• Time: 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Thursday
• Panelists: Andy Bechtel, University of North Carolina; Josh Crutchmer, Omaha World-Herald; Sara Quinn, Poynter Institue; Katie Schwing, (Colorado Springs) Gazette
• Description: How is the rise of timelines, Q&A material and other nontraditional storytelling affecting the copy and design desks? This panel discussion will examine what ASFs mean for collaboration and work flow, and how readers notice and learn from these forms. Come ready to talk about what works at your publication and what needs help.

Smokin' ACES home

Smokin' ACES: Copy editing honcho rails against 'wacko' ideas and the people who think them out loud

ACES President Chris Weinandt of the Dallas Morning News kicked off the ACES conference with a little rabble-rousing - well, as much "rabble-rousing" that is possible for copy editors. He's from Texas: Doesn't he look like Walker, Texas Ranger? He even wears cowboy boots.

This is the first post in a series that explains what my employer was paying me to do in Denver last week.

I attended the 12th national conference of the American Copy Editors Society. It was a three-day "learning time" in which hundreds of editors nationwide gathered to commiserate about their obscure and thankless jobs at newspapers big and small, at magazines and at governmental agencies such as the CIA and Department of Defense. Yes, copy editors are defending America ... from the scourge of bad writing and information gathering.

On a side note, I heard one story about a CIA copy editor. A newspaper counterpart asked him, Who is your target audience? "The president," he said. (Must not be too much pressure to get his grammar right with the current commander in chief!)

The opening session was a pity party put on by a few ACES higher-ups and the audience, which included one journalism educator who came all the way from Australia to ask me a question during the panel I paneled for (more about that later).

ACES President Chris Weinandt of the Dallas Morning News kicked it off on a real down note: Society membership has dipped into the 600s from a higher number (I don't know what), and national conference attendance this year was only 300, down from 400 at last year's meeting in Miami. Much of that, I suspect, had to do with belt-tightening newspapers not willing to pony up the funds for a great training opportunity. Luckily, I work at a newspaper that values training.

But Weinandt said copy editors are "as essential to newspapers' success as their stockholders are." Yet, we are too often ignored. Of 200 letters about the value of copy editing that he sent this year to upper-level newspaper editors, he received one response. He usually gets five (all at once now: OOOOOOOOOOO).

Some of Weinandt's meandering thoughts and trepidations are better summed up and commented on in bullet form:

• One newspaper's idea to outsource copy editing to India was totally "wacko." Editors need local knowledge to edit. New Dehli isn't exactly a suburb of Orlando. Any upper-level manager who disagrees is clueless, stupid and should go home to Neverland ... or move to India.
  
• We're expected to do more with less. There's a reason we're working more overtime: We don't have enough workers to do the needed work.
• Copy editors are "criminally overlooked" by management and the rest of journalism. The scope of our job isn't realized in the outside world, probably because we work nights or that we're just quiet and too good for bickering.
• We need to raise our profile, speak out against "wacko" ideas in trade journals, on Web sites and in major media, and partner with other organizations such as the Online News Association to blaze a trail into a future that has so far skipped over us. (I'm all for partnering with the ONA.)
  

It's better to end a post on a high note, so for that, I'll resort to the comments of John Temple, editor, president and publisher of ACES co-host Rocky Mountain News. He said that at the first ACES conference, the fear was pagination in which traditional editors of words were forced to design and polish newspaper pages. I do that, and I'm not scared.

But today (and yesterday and the day before that and the day before that), the fear is (and was and will be) the Web. Journalism hasn't quite figured out how to use it profitably. And old, traditional journalists haven't quite figured out how to use it. I have, and I'm not scared.

But with the proliferation of diffuse, unadulterated and unedited voices on the Internet, will copy editors become even more insignificant and forgotten?

Temple said, "I'm optimistic as long as we stick to journalism."

The best journalists I know are copy editors.

Blogger's note on the headline: The Offlede Stylebook says "copy editing" is not hyphenated as an adjective because it is easily recognized as a two-word word and that adding a hyphen would not add any meaning or ease of readability.

Session information

• Title: "Opening General Session"
• Time: 9-10:30 a.m. Thursday
• Speakers: Chris Wienandt, president of American Copy Editors Society; John Temple, editor of the Rocky Mountain News

Smokin' ACES home

Readers ask what '30' means; The Offlede answers

I have received a few e-mails from puzzled people wondering why I put the "!!!30!!!" at the end of the live blog at the MCO food court. I have the answer.

The exclamation points actually mean nothing. They're exclamation points. They never mean anything.

But the "30" actually does mean something. It's an old-fashion journalism tool to signal the end of a story. I thought it was especially appropriate to tell people the live blog was finally over because it dragged on forever.

This is one of the best corrections The New York Times has printed, and it explains a bit about "30." I love it when newspaper corrections are stories in and of themselves - and when they correct something as ridiculous as "Feb. 30."

Corrections: For the Record
Published: July 30, 2007

An article on Thursday about the arraignment of three men in the shooting of two New York police officers, one of whom died, misstated the schedule set by a judge for a trial in the case. The trial is expected to begin by February, not by “Feb. 30.” The error occurred when an editor saw the symbol “— 30 —” typed at the bottom of the reporter’s article and combined it with the last word, “February.” It is actually a notation that journalists have used through the years to denote the end of an article. Although many no longer use it or even know what it means, some journalists continue to debate its origin. A popular theory is that it was a sign-off code developed by telegraph operators. Another tale is that reporters began signing their articles with “30” to demand a living wage of $30 per week. Most dictionaries still include the symbol in the definition of thirty, noting that it means “conclusion” or “end of a news story.”

— 30 —

Copy editing = great; copy editing with a view = even better

John Boogert, news editor at the Rocky Mountain News with whom I joined on a panel about online editing, took a large group of copy editors on a tour of the building that houses the Rocky and The Denver Post. I'll post more about it later and more about the technical side of editing, but I just wanted to pass on a few photos of the view from atop the building. Rocky Mountain High, Colorado!

Smokin' ACES home

Convergence at Gannett: Florida Today journalists learn video

My video training bible.

Convergence is an icky word for traditional print journalists. They don't want to get near it because they don't want to get dirty.

Convergence is defined generally as the movement through nonspecific methods toward a definite value or equilibrium state. This definition represents a battle for and against convergence and an icky "I dunno, I’m scared" attitude in the journalism industry. The object is to find peace, to find a way for newspapers to survive.

In a high-tech world, media consumers look toward new information sources that bring together diverse media such as text, photography, video and audio. In this way, convergence is equal parts (equilibrium) of content that is produced through various (nonspecific) technologies. This entails information gathering and storytelling techniques and using multimedia platforms to deliver the product.

But this is where the most heated debate arises.

Much of the problem with convergence is either the inability or the stubbornness to keep up with it. The (Baltimore) Sun of the particularly embattled Tribune chain of newspapers last year lashed out against the corporate move to compel reporters to take photographs – probably the first step toward convergence.

That is why I could not imagine a better opportunity to train in a new skill set with any other company than Gannett and FLORIDA TODAY. This week, about 20 traditional print journalists – photographers, assigning editors, reporters – subjected themselves to a 42-hour, 3.5-day "Video Convergence Training." As a copy editor – a position focused mostly on words – it is amazing that I got such an opportunity.

Lane Michaelsen and Harvey Mars, vice presidents from Gannett's broadcasting division, were our teachers. They instructed the pilot video group of newspaper trainees two years ago here at FLORIDA TODAY. After visiting dozens of Gannett newspapers nationwide and teaching hundreds of traditional journalists to be proficient in video shooting and editing, they returned to Melbourne, Fla., for an encore.

Participants were divided into eight groups. I was grouped with a beat reporter and a business reporter from FLORIDA TODAY and a TV news producer from Gannett’s KARE in Minneapolis who flew in with the equipment we used for training.

Michaelsen explained the basic anatomy of our expensive Sony video cameras, starting with the on-off switch and moving to functions such as the iris, white balance and various focusing mechanisms.

On our first day, we shot staged news events, including a car accident in which our executive editor, Terry Eberle, was killed by a disgruntled and drunken FLORIDA TODAY employee in the parking lot. My group battled infighting during the editing process, and we eventually produced a piece that was lacking proper natural sounds and B-roll, or shots of objects such as beer bottles and security cameras that were pertinent to the story. I, however, was featured in my group’s video as the culprit, an exclusive that none of the other groups were able to catch.

Our in-house assignment was to create a video of the printing press at FLORIDA TODAY. We followed an operator around the machinery as he explained each step of the process. We shot forklifts positioning heavy rolls of newsprint, recorded the nat sound of the alarm when the press started and edited our sound and video into a coherent and rather good piece. I have experience in Apple's Final Cut editing software, but FLORIDA TODAY uses Avid. Many of the editing functions are similar, however, so I was able to pick it up easily. Mars made it even simpler with his down-to-earth, humorous teaching style.

Finally, in what was probably the least compelling assignment received by any group, my team was charged with a story about gas prices. It's a cliche and rather routine task to tell people that prices are high, as if they don’t already know. But my group made it interesting and managed to get a few of the stereotypical Southern characters saying silly things about oil and the federal government as they filled up their tanks. Other groups produced stories about a NASA attraction, a local thrill park and those annoying saltwater critters called the man-of-war.

When we played our final assignment for the rest of the class to see, Anne Saul, who oversees the training for Gannett, said, "Now wasn’t this 300 percent better than your accident video?"

It was more like 400 percent.

Before this session, I had some instruction in shooting and editing at American University, where USA TODAY video director, Steve Elfers, was my teacher. I already had grasped the basics, and it was easy to pick them up again. But before this training, I lacked the enthusiasm for videography.

Now, I actually respect TV journalists. My first experience with them had soured me. I was a reporter at the Bangor (Maine) Daily News when I was interviewing a man who had capsized his fishing boat in the river and was rescued by firefighters. As I chatted with him and scribbled in my notebook, a videographer from the local CBS affiliate, WABI, walked up to us, started shooting my interviewee and told me, "Do you mind getting out of my shot?"

"Do you mind getting out of my interview?" I said.

But now, I can’t wait to get into the field to be that pain in the butt, too. Just think: I now know how to report, write stories, edit words and sentences, write headlines, design pages, heckle other editors and reporters, blog, produce Web content, take still photos on an SLR camera, edit those photos, shoot video, record audio and edit a video story. Am I missing something?

"Now you can learn how to sell ads," a co-worker told me.

I think I'll skip that part.

Traditionally trained print journalists cannot be stubborn. They cannot ignore new content delivery systems. Twitter, YouTube, Blogger, Flickr, RSS, text messaging, podcasts and Facebook are our friends, not our enemies.

It does not take a long time to earn new skills. The video training was my third journalism boot camp. The first was a two-week crash course in Washington reporting, which was my first class at American University. The second was two weeks of 20-hour days of copy editing at Temple University last summer. They were tiring (I got five hours of sleep each night this week), but they were the most exciting aspects of my early multimedia (not newspaper) journalism career.

The training may take money, but I consider it a great investment. I compare the Gannett training with the Travel Channel's program, which similarly teaches the basics of shooting and editing in four days. But it's $2,500.

The answer to convergence's introduction of new gadgets is training. With any new media technology, we have to change to survive. It's journalistic Darwinism: Those who don’t adapt and don’t learn new skills will fall behind and fail.

Gannett is not falling behind; it is not failing. It is leading; it is surviving.

After our amazingly resurrected editor, Eberle, handed us certificates of completion, instructor Mars said, "You're way out ahead of everyone else."