Our Town goes daily with you in mind

Something new is on Pages 11 and 12 today. A bit of Saturday’s Our Town has spilled into the daily Tracy Press.

We hear from a lot of readers, and few are shy about expressing themselves. Some want more sports coverage; some want less. Some want more state, national, world and business news; some want less. Some want all the news on the Internet; some want none of that.

Readers are a divergent mix here, which is challenging for a newspaper editor. But one thing is certain: When folks move to town, unpack their boxes and settle in, they eventually come to appreciate what we call community news — the happy stuff of Our Town.
That’s why we’re going to put some Our Town into each day’s Tracy Press.

Tuesdays will be school days — or youth, as we’ve called it today. Wednesdays will be local biz, which gives us a chance to run a business profile, a column and some briefs. Thursdays will be reserved for church and religion items. Fridays will be for seniors, with Remember When, Twice Told Tales and news from Lolly Hansen Senior Center.

We might mix those pages up a bit — run Health one day, or Neighborhoods on another. You’ll probably have some other ideas as time goes on.

And we’ll keep Our Town as a separate Saturday section — for the Spotlight, to introduce you to an interesting person in town; for the columnists, who continue to enlighten us; for some color comics, for fun; for engagements, births, weddings and anniversaries; for animals that need rescuing; for Scene & Heard photos; and for Datebook — which will be even beefier, starting this week.

The beauty of Our Town is that it relies on the generosity of volunteers who send us e-mails, drop off notes on napkins, bring us photos, leave phone messages, stop us on the street or meet us for coffee. Sometimes they write full stories — and we give them bylines.

As newspapers face cutbacks, they often cut community news first.
We don’t want to do that.

Thank you for all your support — and for being part of Our Town.

Posted by cmatthews at February 27, 2006 10:07 PM

Well, I have to tell you I do MISS my monday am Tracy Press while on the ACE train.. The ACE train does have wireless access so I could access the Tracy Press via computer, but it's similiar to a really bad dial up experience.. So I guess I'll use the time to catch up on my sleep. Regarding the sports section, I was just getting used to switching the paper around and now you want to change it? Seriously though, it really doesn't matter to me which way it faces as long as you have coverage!
One thing I do wish you would publish is weekly paper that is ads.. In the midwest we had a weekly "Xchanger" paper where all the want ads were in it. It reached out to several towns listing everything from real estate, cars, personals, to livestock, hay and farm equipment. I don't know where everyone is placing their ads today for these items, but it doesn't appear they are using the Press all that much for it. It could be a county wide type of paper and with all the recent acquistions that the Press has made, I would think that you would have the area to pull these into one weekly paper. Keep up the good work!

Posted by: rzellmer at March 9, 2006 03:15 PM

News from Iraq

Like many of you, I'm waiting for some good news about Jill Carroll, the kidnapped journalist on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor. This is where I'm finding the best updates on her.

Unfortunately, the news from Iraq today is much, much closer to home. Brandon Dewey was one of two Marines killed Friday in a suicide bomber attack in Iraq. He was a 2003 graduate of West High School, and his family lives in Tracy. We will have a story with more details in Monday's Tracy Press.

Busy in Our Town

Wow. Where has January gone? Having a blog really makes me aware how time flies — and how long it's been since I last created an entry here.

I've been brainstorming how we can freshen up the Our Town section (in Saturday's TP). Here are two ideas you may see in the weeks to come:
• A weekly man-on-the-street Q&A called Lip Service
• A new feature called "Only in Our Town"

If you have any thoughts about Our Town — what you like, what you don't like, what you'd like to see — feel free to express yourself here!

Posted by cmatthews at January 19, 2006 06:48 PM

Miss seeing Jack Elliott's column and the father's column accounting his first birth.

From CHERI: Jack's "Thinking Out Loud" column is running every other week. James Leonard's parenting column no longer runs, because James went to work for The Modesto Bee.

Kakuro is coming

Puzzle lovers: We've signed up for Kakuro on the Tracy Press Laugh pages. It's a new numbers puzzle that starts in national syndication on Feb. 6. The puzzle is similar to Sudoku but is slightly more challenging. Most people I know who have tried both say they prefer Kakuro. Let me know in February!

- Cheri

12 miners — not found alive

Newspapers throughout the country, including the Tracy Press, reported in today's papers that 12 trapped West Virginia miners were found alive.

All day, we'll have to live with our headline, which reads, "12 trapped miners reported alive." Unfortunately, by the time most of us woke up this morning and got our first news reports, we found out that we got it wrong.

When I went home last night, the story that was planned to run on the missing miners in West Virginia led with the news that the body of one miner had been found by rescue crews. Then around 11:15 p.m., right before we went to press, the Associated Press issued an alert and then a story about how, in an extraordinary twist of fate, 12 of 13 miners were found alive.

One of our copy editors called the newsroom shortly afterward from out of town to make sure we had the revised story, and slot editor Goldie VanHeel was quick to reply, "We're on top of it!"

Another copy editor, Jon Mendelson, was hesitant, though, in declaring with such certainty that the miners were alive. He suggested that the headline should say that the 12 coal miners were reportedly found alive.

For the next several hours, the AP sent repeated updates, with more details from the scene, including celebration and expressions of gratitude from family members. Each update reported that the mine's owner, International Coal Group, had not confirmed that the 12 were alive."

But it wasn't until 2:59 a.m. — well after Tracy Press editors had gone home for the night and Wednesday's papers had been printed — that the AP moved this alert:

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. (AP) — Family members report that 11 of the 12 coal miners who were initially thought to have survived an explosion in a coal mine have died. The sole survivor is hospitalized."

Early this morning, we got this e-mail from a reader, who is absolutely right:

"I would like to correct your newspaper on the fact that
in today's paper (01-04-06) there was an article written by Allen Breed about some miners that were trapped in a Virginia coal mine. In this article, it stated that 12 out of the 13 miners were found alive, (but) the opposite is true. Only one out of the 13 miners were found alive. I believe that this was an honest mistake and nonetheless should be corrected for respect of the 12 miners who lost their lives."

And so we will.

Posted by cmatthews at January 4, 2006 02:42 PM

Kudos to the TP for adding the word reportedly to the headline. That showed a journalistic instinct that others lacked.
I turned on the TV news sometime shortly after the first networks started reporting that there were 12 miners alive. In hindsight, it is now obvious that the journalists on the scene should have reported and repeated that they had no official confirmation that the men were alive. I didn't see any of the reporters who were on at that time adding a mention that all of the reports were unconfirmed.
Any journalist who reported that these 12 miners were alive without being able to attribute it to an official source should be penalized for it. We will enforce this the old-fashioned way. Each offender will have to write on paper 100 times, with a number-two pencil, "I will not publish facts without a source.". If the same person was also assigned to Hurricane Katrina reporting, make them write it 500 times. Mr Cooper, get to work!

Posted by: Jim Freeman at January 5, 2006 12:37 PM

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Posted by: hydrocodone online at October 3, 2006 12:54 AM

Splogs: The next new thing

Here's another new word: splog, a blog that's actually spam.
Umbria Communications recently reported that of the 80,000 blogs created each day, about one in five is spam, created only for marketing purposes.
Speaking of spam, I'm getting it on my comments to this blog. But I've learned how to quickly hit my delete key.

Posted by cmatthews at January 3, 2006 02:48 PM

Here is another new word, actually a phrase I stumbled upon, "jump the couch" The Internet writing Journal website describes it here:

http://www.internetwritingjournal.com/iwjblogaug05/

Posted by: Glenn Moore at January 3, 2006 07:37 PM

I note that you use Movable Type for this blog. It is what I use for PomboWatch. Since updating to the most recent level 3.2, I have not had any of the comment spam get through.

As for new words, the Internet jargon that comes to mind is "freep," derived from the name of the far-right conservative site, Free Republic, which uses fake postings to other blogs and discussion lists as a standard procedure to create a false impression of popular support.

Posted by: Wes Rolley at January 6, 2006 07:05 AM

Also, splogs or spam blogs are mirror images of actual legitimate blogs, thus creating confusion.

It is possible for this blog to be hosted in another site, containing similar content but maybe the title changed.

Thus, they can be both very annoying and harmful.

Posted by: Amadeo at February 14, 2006 12:55 PM

That's a shame. It's bound to happen, but the blogs with unique content and actual opinions will thrive. Also, if you are a big blogger with great OG content, then you should copyright yourself. I would be really mad if someone did this to me. I would do all in my power to shut the blog down, including bombarding them with comments like FAKERS.
I may be marketing myself in my blog, but I also try to make content interesting, unique and valuable, atleast from my prospective. I try to keep shamless self-promotion to a minumum because people don't want that.

Posted by: Brian Barringer at March 2, 2006 11:33 AM

Creative lawyering punches loophole in open-meeting law

Worth reading, from the California First Amendment Coalition: City council closed sessions to discuss "pending litigation" are an excuse for conducting important business in secret.