SR.com Blogs: News is a Conversation

NIAC is going away (Steven A. Smith)

Good afternoon,

I am saddened to say that News is a Conversation is closing down for now, although it may return in some other form later.

All blogs have a lifespan and I believe this blog has reached its end with me serving as lead poster and admin. ( Full post )

Walking is a game of dodge and run (Steven A. Smith)

Good morning,

I find myself in a position where I can walk to the office -- 20 minutes to a half hour each way depending on pace.

But in the few weeks I've been doing this, I find myself essentially running for my life as often as I stroll. ( Full post )

The Content Study Group's addendum (Steven A. Smith)

Warning: The following is "inside baseball" and will be of interest to only those few really interested in knowing what is going on inside our newsroom.

As you will recall, I've had two staff groups studying our processes, priorities and structure with an eye to yet another newsroom reorganization mandated by our downsizing late last year. ( Full post )

The Joseph Duncan appeals (Steven A. Smith)

Good afternoon,

U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge ruled today on several motions filed in the Joseph Duncan sentencing case by regional news media, led by The Spokesman-Review.

In his first rulings of the day, the judge ordered the unsealing of several documents previously closed to public scutiny. He denied access to others, including the one document most sought by the media -- the results of Duncan's mental evaluation which prompted the judge to allow Duncan to represent himself in court. ( Full post )

No more hopeless (Steven A. Smith)

Good evening,

I just returned home from the three-day innovators summit in Stevenson, WA.

I need some time to synthesize what I learned. Suffice it to say for now the innovations most helpful to newspapers probably won't come from our own industry. This conference was a chance to spend time with innovators in a variety of business and non-profit roles. The ideas I will steal from them will help push our own transformational change, I hope. ( Full post )

On the Record with Rebecca Mack (Steven A. Smith)

Good evening,

Our new hour-long radio show, On the Record with Rebecca mack, debuts Monday at 11 a.m. on KJRB, 790 AM.

Here's the the story describing the show:http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=15975

We started our daily, on the half-hour newscasts in April. The new show, which will air each weekday, represents a major step forward in developing a more substantive radio platform for SR journalism. ( Full post )

OK, my last word on Still a Newspaperman (Steven A. Smith)

Good evening,

I'm writing from Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, WA, at the annual Public Innovators Summit organized by The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation. Of the 50 or so participatns, I am one of only a handful of journalists and the only active editor in the commercial newspaper business. Most here are from the non-profit world, organizations dedicated to fostering democracy, protecting children and doing any number of other good things for their communities. ( Full post )

Still a newspaperman Pt. 2 (Steven A. Smith)

Good evening,

Well, first my thanks to all who have weighed in on this thread. And thanks to the dozens of people who have sent me personal e-mails. It will take some time to wade through it all and recycle some of it to this blog.

I didn't intend for this post to take on such an astonishing life. I was in a nostalgic mood, saddened at the loss of so many good journalists from newspapers all over the country and by the loss of yet another of my mentors from the early days. ( Full post )

Still a newspaperman (Steven A. Smith)

I am a newspaperman.

For some unexplainable reason, I am compelled to say that tonight.

Something is coming, some turn in the media universe, a turn in the future of my newspaper. A turn that will mean the end of me, of us. There will be reporters. Editors. Something called online producers and multi-media coordinators. Mojos. Slojos and Nojos. Bloggers, froggers and twitters. ( Full post )

A stunning ruling (Steven A. Smith)

Good afternoon,

By now, I hope you have seen the story today on the Washington Supreme Court ruling protecting the names of teachers who have been accused of sexual misconduct. (Link here) ( Full post )

Avista rates (Steven A. Smith)

Good afternoon,

The story is still developing, of course. But I suspect many of you saw the online report that Avista's second quarter profits rose 69% year over year. (Link here) ( Full post )

Content study group report (Steven A. Smith)

Good evening,

As promised, here is a link to the report from the second of our newsroom task forces, the content study group.

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/conversation/media/content_report_20080728.pdf ( Full post )

The diploma mill list (Steven A. Smith)

Good afternoon,

If you haven't seen it yet, we have just posted the full list of recipients of the phony degrees handed out like candy through the now-defunt Spokane diploma mill.

Here is the link to Bill Morlin's exclusive report and the link to the actual list. ( Full post )

J-Camp (Steven A. Smith)

Good morning,

We have 14 young people in our newsroom this week, participants in our first-ever J-Camp.

It's a journalism boot camp for young people in grades 7 through 12. Erin Daniels, our Vox advisor, will run the camp with the help of several Vox editors. ( Full post )

Multi-platform coverage of the Joel building fire (Carla Savalli, asst. managing editor)

The newsroom sprung into action very early this morning to cover the three-alarm fire in the downtown Spokane Joel building.

Our coverage plan was textbook; this newsroom definitely knows how to cover breaking news. We mobilized reporters and photographers. We pulled in a videographer, a graphics artist, and online producers to package all the story elements online. ( Full post )

Too liberal? (Steven A. Smith)

I know we have the "too liberal/too conservative" debate frequently in this space.

But I received the following e-mail from someone from West Palm, FL, in response to earlier posts on the future of the newsroom.

Steve, I'm afraid that it is your "news values" that are killing you. Why don't you try a "Conservative and Liberal" point of view for a change. As long as most newspapers in this country ignore the Conservative side of the news, more and more will go out of business -- which, by the way, is happening here in my home state of Florida. Ask the Orlando Sentinel, Sun Sentinel and the Palm Beach Post how many people they are laying off. We are tired of the Associated Press running your newspapers. So, we Conservatives cancel our newspapers and go on the internet. We can't even get our news from TV -- it's all the same crap. Look at all this drooling over Obama, the Messiah. Doesn't that tell you something?

L. Graham
West Palm Beach, FL

( Full post )

The VA suicides. We need your help. (Steven A. Smith)

Good afternoon,

Even in these tough times, this newsroom and its reporters can produce provocative, insightful and world-changing journalism.

Kevin Graman's Sunday story, "Lives Lost at Home," about veterans who have killed themselves this year while under the VA's care, has been picked up by blogs and websites around the country and was the basis for a speech today by Sen. Patty Murray on the Senate floor. ( Full post )

Satire of satire (Steven A. Smith)

Vanity Fair, sister publication to The New Yorker, satirized the misguided, misjudged satire of the latter's Obama cover from last week with a McCain cover of its own this week.

It's really quite clever.

Here is a link to the VF site where the cover is posted along with a funny editor's note. ( Full post )

The niche paper (Steven A. Smith)

Good afternoon,

In a post Friday, I suggested the SR is becoming -- make that will become more of a niche publication.

That term -- niche -- caused a bit of a firestorm in our newsroom. We have talked about a smaller, more focused paper for some time. And we have talked about placing more emphasis on the mobile and web news platforms. ( Full post )

The Changing Face of newspapers (Steven A. Smith)

Good morning,

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released today a long-awaited survey of American editors looking at the rapidly changing face of American newspapers.

It seems, on a first, quick read, the most comprehensive survey ever looking at the unprecdented, seismic shifts in our industry. (I was one of the 250 editors surveyed.) ( Full post )