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August 2008
Three cheers for the parkway
Gary Harmon, my longtime colleague, the guy you love to hate or hate to love, the newsroom contrarian, and one of the best writers I’ve ever worked with, got it wrong about the new Riverside Parkway.
As those of you who read him know, he’s not a fan.But in one humble editor’s opinion, it’s the best thing the city’s done since it put all the curves in Main Street way back in the 1960s.
For nearly three decades, I’ve labored daily on the wrong side of the tracks. Daily Sentinel workers know how well the coal industry is in Delta County without reading any news accounts. We know by the number of coal trains that we get stuck behind trying to get to and from work. The coal industry is doing just fine, thank you.
But no longer will we have to worry about the trains. The Parkway takes us conveniently over the longest coal trains in the world.
I timed it this weekend, and it takes exactly two minutes — two minutes consumed by a very pleasant drive — longer to get from my house to The Daily Sentinel via the parkway than my old route. And that’s if there’s no train. Add as much as 20 minutes if there’s a long coal train.
I can’t wait for the day when I pull into the parking lot from the south, having arrived via the parkway, only to see my friend Gary, waiting on the other side while the train passes. Maybe I can get him to write a column about that.
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Udall’s missed vote
An editorial we published over the weekend has a lot of Mark Udall supporters calling foul.
In it, we said that Udall, after saying he would be on the House floor to vote against adjourning without debating energy legislation, in fact missed the vote.
The people taking us to task point to a House vote to adjourn and note that Udall was there for that vote.
We’re both correct.
Apparently there were two votes for adjournment. The first one, and the most critical, was a vote to decide whether to vote. It passed by one vote. Udall missed it. Had he been there, as he said he would, and had he voted as he said he would have, there never would have been a second vote, the House would still be in session, and we may have had a chance to see how Udall would have voted on domestic energy production.
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A new look to The Daily Sentinel
A group of editors has been working hard for the past few weeks, thinking about how to best package The Daily Sentinel to make it more useful to readers.
The fruits of their labors will be unveiled next month, when your Daily Sentinel will, while still containing all the news and features you’re used to, plus some, have a different look and feel.
Already you’ve probably noticed that our front page doesn’t look like it used to. It’s much more graphically intense, and every day we pick one story and, as we say in this business, “go deep” with it.
But beginning Sept. 1, the changes will become even more profound. I won’t give away all the details here. Our marketing department is hard at work on promotional ads to do that, and I’ll be writing more about the changes in the coming weeks both here and in the newspaper. But I will say that, among other things, the news will flow much more logically than it does now.
In the meantime, I’d like to thank Managing Editor Laurena Davis, News Editor Brian Harvey, City Editor Tim Harty and Copy Editor Erik Lincoln for all the hard work they’ve put into this project.
We all think it will be a much improved newspaper, and, as always, we’ll be anxious to hear what you think.
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Time out for training
One of the many advantages of working for the company that I do is that it is full of very talented people. And the company does everything it can to spread that talent around.
One of those things is what has come to be known as Cox Academy.
Every year Mike Schwartz, an all-around good guy who hails from Atlanta and is Cox Newspapers’ training guru, contacts editors at all Cox papers and asks them about their training needs.
Then he finds people in the company who can provide the training we need and brings them to our locations. It’s a great opportunity for all of our staffs. We get world-class training and don’t have to pay to send people somewhere else.
Over the years we’ve had seminars on all manner of things — story telling, photography, page design, headline writing, feature writing, media law and a host of other topics.
This week about half The Daily Sentinel staff is being tutored in how to create compelling video for GJSentinel.com. Teaching the class is John Lopinot of the Palm Beach Post.
Video is a new medium for those of us who grew up in the newspaper business. Some might say one has about as much chance of teaching newspaper people how to shoot and edit video as one would have teaching a dog to fly.
My age is showing.
In fact, the younger members of this staff — and even a few of the long-time staffers — are both able and eager to learn new skills. New skills and new ways of telling stories are what the newspaper business is all about in 2008. Video, in particular, is becoming more and more important as we move into the digital world. John is among the best. He’s a great videographer and a great teacher. He’s also a great photographer. Check out his website and see for yourself.
He’ll be followed later this week by Rick Crotts, a page designer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Rick’s been here before and we know that he knows his stuff. I expect many of you have noticed that our front pages have had a new look in recent weeks. They have been much more colorful and more graphically intense. That is largely the work of a talented young page designer by the name of Erik Lincoln. (More about Erik in a future post.) We expect Rick to take that effort to yet another level.
Look for the results from this week’s Cox Academy in future editions of The Daily Sentinel and on GJSentinel.com.
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The world of Washington spin
Sen. Ken Salazar, who has one of the more active and imaginative press operations of any politician we deal with, apparently was alarmed Monday when he got wind that we were doing a story and an editorial about his objection to offshore drilling even if gas prices rise to $10 a gallon.
We were tipped to the senator’s comments on the Senate floor by readers who were not happy with the senator’s position on offshore drilling.
The Salazar spin machine revved into high gear, telling reporter Gary Harmon that the senator’s comments were not a story at all (we disagreed) and telling Editorial Page Editor Bob Silbernagel that the youtube video of the senator objecting to offshore drilling was heavily edited and had the entire video been posted viewers would see that his real position is that any offshore drilling has to be tied to development of renewable energy sources.
To prove that, Salazar’s main press guy, Matt Lee-Ashley, said he would provide the rest of the video and we could see for ourselves that the senator is in favor of offshore drilling that is tied to renewable energy development. We took the guy at his word and inserted a line saying as much in the editorial.
We should have listened to the video first. Here it is. We’ve listened to it a number of times and nowhere do we hear Sen. Salazar saying he’s for offshore drilling if we also develop renewable energy sources.
To the contrary, we hear nothing but what Democrats have been saying all along: Developing new offshore oil is a waste of time because if we begin today it will take years and years before any of it comes on-line and then it will have minimal effect on pump prices. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
What we are sure of is that the Washington spin machine is an Alice in Wonderlandian behemoth, one that pays little attention to facts.
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Salazar and $10 gas
This youtube video is making the rounds of GOP and right-wing blogs. It’s also being e-mailed to us by readers. In it, if you don’t care to watch, Sen. Ken Salazar objects to allowing a vote on offshore drilling, even if gas prices reach $10 a gallon. Reporter Gary Harmon is trying to get in touch with Salazar to see if he really means that. Stay tuned.
