Electric Fishwrap

Occasionally I attend SPJ meetup events. Usually held once a month on the first Friday of the month, we sit around, drink beer and eat incredibly unhealthy food.

This one was different.

On Monday, the staff at the Seattle P-I was told that the paper was being put up for sale. If a buyer was not found, the paper would either fold or it would move to an online-only production.

Feel free to watch the entire heartbreaking announcement.

Editor Dave McCumber has started a blog called Sixty Days. It’s a really good read, by the way. For years the P-I has told the stories of Seattleites. Now, McCumber tells the stories of the newsroom. With only 60 53(?) days, you can be sure he won’t have time to tell them all.

With this in mind, an emergency SPJ meetup was called (like we ever need an excuse to get together and drink beer, hah). I wanted to show support for friends who work there. So after work I drove to the Whym Diner, not sure what to expect.

It was a somber gathering. But there was also hope. Monica Guzman told me about a plan while holding a ball gown she planned to take with her to the inauguration in D.C.

Thursday, a group of people got together and brainstormed ideas to save the P-I. The result is this page, no news is bad news. It’s pretty bare bones so far, but there’s a lot of potential. I signed up, and am waiting to see if I can do anything to help.

They’ve already got a Twitter hash tag, #nnbn, and a Flickr Page.

Toward the end of my time at the meetup, I was talking with a Seattle Times online worker, whom I’ve never met. As we were talking, I saw the Seattle P-I globe peeking out from between two buildings. If I hadn’t stood in that exact spot, the globe would not have been visible.

The text that rotates around the globe usually states “It’s in the P-I,”but due to damage from winter weather, the “t” in “It’s” was unlit. Will the globe go completely dark? I would like to think not. There are a lot of passionate people who want to see the P-I continue, and I am among them.

But for me, it’s not because it’s the P-I, though I love their online content and the several friends I’ve made there. For every news organization that folds, fewer stories are told and fewer governments and organizations are held accountable. Who will be the voice of record? The PR people? The spin doctors? They won’t get away with that if a good journalist is doing his or her job.

I know the Times will still be around, and that guy I talked to seemed frustrated that nobody cared about the Times. The Times newsroom has probably had probably about 80 layoffs or buyouts in 2008 alone and is likely relying on attrition to balance the 2009 budget. The challenge of the Times is more subtle. Competition makes everyone stronger, and the Times will be less by the loss of the P-I.

Keep an eye on no news is bad news, folks. There are a lot of people who talk the talk about saving journalism. It’s time to walk the walk. We have 53 days and counting.

This write up is mostly for coworkers, who could not attend the Twitter and social networking class sponsored by Western Washington SPJ in November.

First up, Twitter. Here are some terms:

• Twitter: The platform wherein the writer uses 140 characters to answer a simple question: What are you doing?
• Tweet: An individual post to Twitter
• Tweeps, Tweeple: People who follow you on Twitter

Last month I went to a workshop about Twitter, hosted by the Seattle PI’s Mónica Guzmán. She runs the PI’s Big Blog and uses Twitter to connect with sources and find stories. (Read her writeup of the event.) She said writing the blog lends itself to using social media.

She encouraged people who attended to dive in and start using Twitter. I’ll admit it’s a little awkward at first. I started a few months ago by following other journalists in the area that I knew, and then some across the country whose blogs I read. Then as I started tweeting other people started following me. Then I found a local teacher in one of the school districts I cover.

Guzmán said using Twitter is about being open and finding your boundaries. Share things you find interesting, or what you are doing. You have to talk with your tweeps or they will ignore you.

Here are some other links for using Twitter as a reporting tool:

• TwitScoop: What’s hot on Twitter right now. Watching the tag clouds expand and contract live is somewhat addicting
• Twitter Local: Find people within a certain geographic area who use Twitter.

Guzmán says you should follow people who follow you, but I am not sure I agree with that 100 percent. Yes, it’s polite. But the time it takes to sift through all of that information could be intimidating. I’m following less than 100 people, and Guzmán has more than 1,000.
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Ron Sylvester has a great analysis of his Twitter experiment on Technolo-J. I must admit I was one of those people hitting refresh as much as time allowed. At times watching the tweets roll in was addictive.

One day, I cut and pasted all my “tweet” updates into a traditional story file. It measured 80 inches. Now, I don’t think anyone would have read an 80-inch story from the newspaper on this trial, as compelling as it was. My editors certainly wouldn’t have run a story that long. But what I found is that people will read an 80-inch story, given to them a paragraph at a time, 140 characters long.

Man, I’m cringing about a 30-inch story I am writing for Monday, yet people were glued to his tweets (when Twitter was up in any case). And he didn’t just sit there and tweet all day. He also did multimedia presentations for the Web site the next day:

Between the text descriptions from the courtroom over Twitter, and the multimedia, we were able to give people a feeling of being there that I had never before been able to do in my career. This trial had a “press room” in the law library of an adjoining courtroom.

Watching Ron tweet inspired me as well. I started tweeting on April 30, back when he posted about Twitterlocal. Right then, I decided to try Twitter and see what all the fuss is about. I’ve been sorta tweeting about school board meetings as they happen on Twitter. My newsroom has a Macbook with a Verizon Internet card, which is awesome for researching past stories, file during meetings and saving a ton of time because I have my notes typed out. (Ever want to hit ctrl + F to search your paper notes? But I digress.)

I should also mention Ron Sylvester is running for president-elect of SPJ national.

First off, I am very relieved that my former colleagues at the Loveland Reporter-Herald in Colorado are safe. A half-mile-wide wedge tornado bore down on the town of Windsor, Colo. Thursday morning and carved a wide swath of damage. Only one person was killed and it’s a miracle more were not taken. I believe this is a testament to the strength of our early warning systems and to the construction quality of our buildings.

Stormtrack storm chasers (here and here) had been watching the supercell (posts include technical jargon, also with great pics of radar with the hook echo visible), which had a rare northwest track, since it formed. It put on quite a show, gouging a path through Windsor and then headed toward Fort Collins.

Loveland was also under tornado warning for some time, and staff at the Reporter-Herald huddled in the downstairs hallway for about 15-20 minutes. (Guys, I hate to say it, but if that tornado was anything above an EF-3 that hallway isn’t going to cut it.)

—EDIT: Adding info from Jeff Masters’ Wunderblog. Masters says the damage appeared to be at least EF-3. Check out the great pictures and explanations of the hook echo on his site (animation of reflectivity here).—

Based on the damage from aerial shots from the Rocky Mountain News, Windsor has a long road to recovery ahead of them.

Some incredible video from KUSA is posted on the CNN site. Halfway through the video you can see egg-sized hail pelting the reporter, who is on an overpass of US 34 west of Greeley (I think?). Check out the other videos on that page as well. Just watching the video gives me chills and makes me thankful that Loveland didn’t sustain a direct hit from this monster.

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Last year Ron Sylvester blogged for his newspaper’s Web site for the murder of a small-town sheriff (EDIT: Added link). I read along as the trial unfolded, and it was incredibly riveting. But sometimes it took a while for blog posts to appear on the Web site due to editing resources.

This time, Sylvester is covering another murder trial. The copy desk said “no more.”

People are going on vacation. We’re short-staffed. There was no time to sort through my updates each hour.

The trial: Ted Burnett is accused of killing Chelsea Brooks, a 14-year-old girl who was nine months pregnant, in June 2006, during a murder-for-hire.

Like any journalist with a passion, he thought around the problem. He started posting updates on Twitter. Usually his paper doesn’t cover jury selection, but this time they did. It was a capital murder trial. He wanted to know who was going to be on the jury.

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