Archive for April, 2008
April 21st, 2008
Photo by Susan Moran: Alexandria Reza, 5, stands outside Seth Whitman Elementary in Belvidere.
we get calls on a daily and weekly basis: “can i buy this photo for reprint?”
well, yes.
in a little-known reader service, the register star sells photos and photo-imprinted merchandise (mousepads, shirts, etc.). only on photos for which we own the copyright, of course. in our galleries, if you see the red “purchase this photo” tag, click on it to see all of the options.
in the coming months, we plan to make this service more accessible and prominent.
people often want to purchase reprints when — you guessed it — their children are featured.
April 18th, 2008
thanks to a google alert this morning, i found out that my boss, linda grist cunningham, said that quote in the top of a forbes article about newspapers. she recently spoke at an american society of newspaper editors meeting in washington (so did the presidential candidates, btw).
the point of the story? to succeed in launching products, newsrooms and advertising departments have to work together from the start, to be on the same team because we both want to connect with readers.
this does NOT mean that journalists have to sell out their credibility. but it’s a pretty foreign concept in an industry that treats the news-ad division like church-state. it requires trust and conversation.
update: linda told me that she made the “aa” remark after the speaker before her had said the same thing…
April 17th, 2008
for those of you who remember andre smith, our former high school sports writer who liked to do things like wrestle and shoot photos in his spare time:
he had the opportunity yeseterday to photograph the pope for the wilmington, del., newspaper. he told me he shot video, too. it’s in today’s 1 p.m. newscast. “it was something else!” he said.
April 17th, 2008
next week (april 25), we’ll have our biggest rockford woman magazine yet — 84 pages.
you may notice two changes:
1. instead of being stapled together, the magazine is “perfect bound,” which means it has a spine.
2. we’ve added a spring health section, 16 pages, focused on how we women can look and feel good. we’ll also do the same in the fall. above is an alternate photo of verlinda hendricks we shot but did not use for the section’s cover.
meanwhile, we plan to do an upcoming cover story on elder care, since women often face overwhelming situations when they have to handle important life and health care decisions for their parents. i’ve gotten a bunch of feedback already from my advisory board, but if you have any suggestions on resources or angles, i’ll take them here….
April 15th, 2008
i managed to watch “the paper” last night, the show i wrote about yesterday.
as i suspected, while the newspaper is the setting, and there’s a two-minute argument over grayscale, the show focuses on the drama of teenagers, which is a nice preview for me. i need to be reminded that my sweet little girls will be young ladies in another decade.
the pilot episode focuses on the fight to be editor-in-chief, and while most of her peers don’t want her to win, ashley is named to the top job by the teacher.
her “friends” were pretty mean to her through the process, but maybe i was like that in high school and didn’t even realize it. at least one of the girls told ashley to her face how she really felt: that she thought ashley was power-trippy. most of the others were just sarcastic or lied.
p.s. i was the editor of my high school newspaper (and i don’t remember how i was named, though in college i was “elected” to the editor’s job). and to show you how long ago that was, we printed out my high school paper on a dot-matrix printer.
April 14th, 2008
i’m a member of the music video generation. you know, back when mtv actually showed videos in the 1980s and geeky kids like me recorded “friday night videos” because i couldn’t stay up that late.
i’m no longer in mtv’s target audience (at age 35), so it’s a miracle i found out about its new reality show “the paper.” it starts tonight at 9:30. the trailer is here.
it’s about a competitive high school newspaper staff. while there appears to be a lot of typical high school stuff, it’s good to see that these students say they take journalism seriously. i might have to record this, but who knows when i will have time to watch it.
(footnote: i didn’t get my mtv until i went to college because we lived “out in the country,” so i’d have to visit my friends who lived “in town” to see it! the horror!)
April 11th, 2008
In this biz, we have slow news days. Today must be one of ‘em. The Associated Press, other national media and bloggers are going nuts over this photograph of VP Dick Cheney.
The photo, which was posted on the White House Web site, shows Cheney wearing sunglasses. Here’s the story from AP:
Cheney sunglasses show reflection that some think is naked woman
It’s not
WASHINGTON — Get real, people.
That is not a naked woman reflected in Vice President Dick Cheney’s sunglasses. Although it kind of appears to be.
If you blow up the picture, you can see it is Cheney’s hand gripping the handle of a fishing rod.
The picture was posted on the White House Web site as one in a series of photos of Cheney outdoors. It created a buzz on the Internet on Friday and some cable television shows.
I don’t see it, but the image ignited discussions across the WWW.
Read more:
Wake up America
Mom Logic
BumpShack
Political Machine
Spin Cycle
We could have posted this as a news story on rrstar.com. Decided it against it. Even though we’re having a slow news day.
Instead, I posted the story here on the blog to see what you all think. Is this news?
April 10th, 2008
While reading another blog today, I found this link to Shawn Smith’s New Media Bytes.
Smith says David Cook’s run on “American Idol” provides lessons to those of us who gather and post content on news Web sites. I buy it.
Cook has taken risks, done his homework and done things differently than other “Idol” singers, according to Smith.
April 10th, 2008
I’ve been out of the office a lot in the last couple weeks. I was catching up yesterday when I came across this post on the Why We Vote blog. I learned that community blogger Jeff Rushing died of a brain aneurysm March 25.
Jeff was a member of our voters panel and contributor to the Why We Vote blog. His last post predicted a Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama ticket in the fall.
I “met” Jeff when he called the newsroom one day this year. Jeff, a vocal conservative, was upset about two stories we ran in the Nation/World section that day. I happened to be the editor who answered the phone.
Jeff wanted to know why we didn’t identify embattled Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick as a Democrat in one story, and why we didn’t publish a photo of Mitt Romney in a story about the race for the Republican and Democratic nominations. We had published pictures of John McCain, Clinton and Obama, if memory serves.
Jeff wasn’t a typical angry caller. He was thoughtful and nice, and before I knew it I was on the phone with him for 20 minutes. I said he made good points and that I would share with other editors. Before we hung up, I asked him if he would be interested in serving on a voters’ panel we were assembling. He jumped at the chance.
We brought the panel together at the News Tower in late February. Jeff was vocal during the discussion but didn’t dominate. It was clear he was a conservative Republican. During that meeting, I asked the group if any of them would be willing to blog their opinions during this election year. Jeff didn’t hesitate. He came up to talk with me afterward to see if there was a way he could start blogging that night.
Once I got the blog set up, Jeff was the first to post. The topic was energy. I enjoyed reading his viewpoints and exchanging e-mails with him. I was so sad to hear of his unexpected death.
We posted this story on rrstar.com. Mary Kaull blogged about Jeff yesterday on A Seat at the Table. You’ll find a copy of his obituary there, too.
In the news business, I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting and interacting with wonderful people. Jeff was one of ‘em. One phone call, and I was sold on him. I knew he would add a lot to our panel. And in the short time I knew him it was obvious he was passionate about our country and its future.
Oh, by the way, the next time we published a story about that Detroit mayor, we labeled him a Democrat.
April 8th, 2008
This weekend, sports reporter Doug Goodman decided to use video to tell two stories. Both published online Monday. Doug took a Handycam and a tripod to Rockford Speedway and Kent Creek and got this:
Enduro race opens Rockford Speedway’s season
Spring trout season opens at Kent Creek
I asked Doug if I could share his thoughts with newsroom staffers on what it was like to take a new approach when telling these stories. Here’s what he had to say:
I’m hoping this doesn’t sound too much like a pep rally for the march from traditional newspaper reporting to the world of multi-media reporting, but it might.
I’ve been a sports reporter for eight years now, and after covering the same sports that long it becomes slightly boring. It’s not like sitting on a wooden chair for hours covering a city council or school board meeting, but more of a job than a fun experience.
When I heard we were going to videotape events, it sounded interesting. I’ve never had a video camera but used them in high school and college in classes — many, many years ago.
Last week I told Chris (Soprych, multimedia editor) I wanted to shoot Rockford Speedway’s season-opening enduro race. Billy (Kulpa, multimedia journalist) gave me a 10-minute intro to the camera, and I was ready to go. It’s that easy.
I was covering the spring trout season opener Saturday morning and threw the video camera and tripod into the car. After doing my reporting for the newspaper story, I shot about 15 minutes of video. It was an enjoyable challenge. The footage was not the best — a tripod leg in the frame on one segment — but usable and gave people a feel of what it was like to be there at 6 a.m. Saturday. Kelley Simms (multimedia journalist) edited the video Monday, and I did a voice over for the one-minute video.
The enduro race was more involved. I shot for a couple of hours from different angles on the track. I also interviewed the winners and a loser.
Billy edited the action and interviews into a nice three-minute video.
These are events I would normally cover for the newspaper, but they were made more fun by shooting videos. I was excited about coming to work Monday morning to work on the videos.
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