Update your bookmarks

I'm transitioning to a WordPress blog. I'll keep this one up for a while, but please see my new blog for updated posts.

I hope the new change of scenery in blog software will encourage me to post more often.

Upcoming posts on my new blog include a new approach to deadlines that we're taking at my newspaper, and a little social media experiment I hope to have complete within a month.

Thanks!

Shannan Bowen

Election migraine, selling papers, social media excitement

Thank God last week is over. I remember last year on Election Day I got a few weird looks after saying, "I freaking love Election Day."

This year it seems like Election Day lasted, well, all year. Strange thing was most of our reporters were finished writing by 11:30 p.m. instead of 1 a.m. like last year's municipal elections. I know I usually don't blog about work and what my company is doing, but I am extremely proud of all our reporters, editors and multimedia producers who put together a smooth package, feed from the state board of election's results to a map on our Web site and a really good Election Day plan. The day was really easy, although tiring. And the only reason I said "election migraine" in the title of this post was because I actually did have a migraine on Election Day. It was awful. And I was out of my prescription migraine medicine... luckily Excedrin did the trick after a few doses. Then I hit a deer coming back from the local Democratic Party headquarters. No damage to my car, but it was very scary. Poor deer.

And here's what our editor Robyn Tomlin had to say about our papers selling out after Election Day. (This is via our company's Wire Tapping newsletter):
"We published an extra 3,500 copies at about 2 p.m. after selling out.
Our pressroom also started selling the press plates for $5 each. We had
people at our office buying 20 and 25 copies each," said ROBYN TOMLIN,
executive editor at the Star-News in Wilmington. "It was really great to
see people feeling the need to hold history in their hands."

It's true. This is one good use of newsprint... for keepsakes, scrapbooks, etc. I kept a couple copies of our paper, but I didn't go out chasing down the New York Times or other newspapers. It's fine.

We also used CoverItlive.com on election night to host a live blog about the election. I was so excited that more than 300 people joined in!! That's awesome for our community. Speaking of this live blog, I am more than excited that our executive editor, who started just a couple of months ago, has just energized our newsroom by using and encouraging social media. Even if it's experimental, she's been behind every idea I and others have had. We hosted our first local blogger meetup, which I was unable to attend because I was in Chapel Hill that weekend, but it brought together a couple dozen local bloggers and some staffers to talk about how to promote local blogs. And we've created a blog standards committee at our newspaper, which I'm a part of. We're trying to come up with a list of ethics, policies and best practices that our staff and guest bloggers can follow. And we launched a virtual site host and blogs that have different topics relating to transparency, reaching out to our audience, interacting with other local bloggers, etc. I'm really lucky to be part of a news organization that is not scared to embrace social media and move forward with things that might not turn out to be the best way to do things, but are worth experimenting.

Speaking of social media, I'm starting to think in tweets these days. I'm starting to refer to people with the @ symbol beside their names. ha ha ha. This definitely applies to me: http://thislusciouslife.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/you-know-you-twitter-too-much-when/


By the way, I'm transitioning to a Wordpress site real soon, but will keep blogging here until that's up.

Have a great week,
@shanbow

October

My favorite season has started off busy. A case I've been covering for a year and a half is finally wrapping up - that's the federal grand jury investigation into the office of the (now) ex-sheriff here. After I left the federal courthouse in Raleigh on Monday, the court marshals, who have come to know me a little since I visited quite often over the past year, said they were going to miss seeing me around. I told them they probably wouldn't miss me - there might be another investigation I'm looking into. Federal grand jury investigations should be my beat.

Oh, and it's election season. And the economy is crazy. Things like these keep a young reporter busy.
We had a newsroom meeting today about localizing economical news. There are so many ideas, but we really need to find out what our readers want to know. I'm thinking our job will be to explain the financial crisis through our stories, make the news on Wall Street hit home and put a face to what impact people are likely to feel. We had a lot of success with a frugal cook we wrote about, and I think a lot of people want to know more about how they can save money and tips for coping.
Currently I'm using our newspaper's Twitter account (@CaptainStarNews) to reach out to readers and ask them how they're coping. I think our newsroom, and most newspapers I'm reading, have mastered - or should by now - the concept of reporting online first. We need to move on and catch up to news organizations, bloggers or others who use the Web to push content through different social networking avenues, for example. Our editor emailed this chart showing the "evolution of newspaper web sites." But, I think we need to look beyond step 6 - now:

Twittering and mobile reporting on the storm

The storm's coming to N.C.! Tropical Storm #Hanna, that is. And if you don't know why I used a hashtag before Hanna, then you're not Twittering enough!

I'm actually kind of excited to be covering my first could-be hurricane. I know that sounds bad, and I'll be really embarrassed to have said that if our area gets a lot of damage. But, most people don't expect Tropical Storm Hanna to be too bad. If anything, it will probably be a good practice run for Hurricane Ike, a category 4 hurricane lurking out in the Atlantic Ocean.

Our newspaper has a hurricane plan ready in advance. We review it at the beginning of each summer and then keep it on our intranet for our viewing pleasures. We had a newsroom meeting again today to go over how we're going to cover the storm. I'm staking it out at a county's emergency services department, where I'll be spending the night Friday and staying until Saturday morning. I'll be taking a sleeping bag, change of clothes, food, lap top, blackberry, camera, audio recording equipment, and paper and pens.

We'll be doing the usual reporting - reporters out in the field will be emailing in their vignettes and stories and photos. But what I'm really excited about is Twittering the storm!
We set up a Twitter account called SNOhurricane, where reporters can log in and post updates about what we see in the field. We've also advertised this and asked readers to contribute their Twitter updates by replying to @SNOhurricane. Earlier today, I created a widget to feed our Twitter updates to our newspaper's Web site, and I believe we're going to reverse publish some of those to our print edition.
It's all an experiment, and it should be exciting! Just hope I don't blow away...

And that, sir, is the Law.

I'm constantly schoolin' a couple of agencies on the law. One of these agencies (which I will not name ... not that it's hard to figure out if you know me and what I cover) actually enforces the law.

Put aside the facts that this county I cover doesn't have very large cities nor a majority of highly educated people and that these agencies are used to dealing with reporters that don't push them. This is actually a great training ground for a young journalist, and I love the challenge of getting the public officials or record keepers to take a look at N.C. Public Records Law and debating whether they have control over our information.

This happens quite often. The usual situation is that I need public records, make a request and then wait for the documents and records. What should take a few minutes to retrieve... since the records are already in the system, right?, usually turns into a days-long debate about whether I can have these records. Oh, I know, every reporter is used to this. But no matter how many times I prove my case, it never fails that the agencies in question stick to their old excuses. So we go back to the debate table, pull open the law books and have at it ... again.
The scene sounds a little like this:

Record holder: "You cannot have the incident report, arrest report or 911 recordings of the homicide because it's part of an investigation."
Reporter (Me): "Well, sir, the public records law says a criminal investigation does not affect the standing of a public record. That is, unless, there's a court order sealing these records."
Record holder: "Well I still have to check with XXX to get that agency's approval to give you the records."
Me: "You don't need their approval."
Record Holder: "Well I don't want to do anything that will jeopardize their investigation."
Me: "Well then they should have obtained a court order preventing me from getting these records."
Record Holder: "Ummm"
Silence. Wait. Talk to upset agency officials. Get records. Answer angry phone calls. New event happens. Repeat scene.

Yeah, so I'm sick of it. And yes, my editor and I have sat down with officials to discuss openness and access to information. (Forgot to mention they still black out public information on the public documents).

My next step is to ask everyone to come to the table with legal representatives. The directors of these agencies, the record holders, their lawyers, me, my editor, our executive and managing editors and either our attorney or our press association's counsel will all come together to flesh out our problems, discuss the law and outline ways to make sure we don't have these sorts of issues in the future. Maybe we'll do a little process mapping.

I'm looking forward to setting this up, and I'll definitely blog the results.

Great day to get out of the office

So today I took a break from analyzing migration data and headed out to sea! Well, actually only out in the Intracoastal Waterway.

But it was on Navy combat boats, not leisurely ski or fishing boats. It was very exciting and a different kind of story... I don't know much about the Navy. As my story points out, the Navy is practicing off the state's coast, so a media day was held and we got to tour their camp and ride on their combat boats for a couple of hours.

I definitely tested my sea legs today... I didn't fall down, but got soaked. And I'm exhausted!

I know some young curmudgeons

A lot of us have been discussing curmudgeons in the newsroom, and there's the misconception that curmudgeons are old and hopeless. Most media bloggers who have been discussing curmudgeons in the newsroom agree that the newsroom curmudgeon is a type, not *necessarily* a generation.
I agree, and I am ashamed to say that I recently had dinner with some young curmudgeonly journalists. Some were my friends/acquaintances. I won't name names or describe what we discussed, but I bet it's not hard to imagine. Do I blame the burn out?
I don't know, but it bothered me. Just thought I'd share.