Decisions, decisions – netbook or laptop?

I got my long-awaited new netbook on Friday at Best Buy — a Toshiba NB505. It cost me more than I’d hoped — over $400 with the memory upgrade to 2MB, the upgrade to Win7 full instead of the starter edition.

It’s quite cute. But it does take a bit getting used to the smaller screen and the half-sized shift key.

It’s under 3 lbs and sure … handy.

Then today, looking at the BB online circular (they are closed for Easter Sunday) I saw… a full-sized, HP dual-core (AMD) laptop for… $349. All five reviews so far are five-star (hey, this one was 4.7 stars on average so not bad;-)

So now I get to decide whether to go back and ask to swap or not. At least put my fingers on the other one, or … keep this? I don’t want cute, I want productive. And at max 2GB of memory here, what are the odds of bumping into that, doing what I do? I’m not sure, but typing this post here shows I can sure type fast on this lil guy I call Blue Max (for its blue lid, and in honor of Eugene Kaza, our band teacher at John Adams HS in Portland, and his electric blue violin — he played in the Oregon Symphony, no less.)

But as always, I digress. (Wow, unplug the AC and the screen is half as bright – maybe THAT’s why the power lasts longer, too.) I’ll try to be objective, weigh the pros and cons and … the feel of the choice.

I think one pro for the smaller machine is maybe I’ll take it more places – and blog more often. But my 6-year-old laptop was getting pretty wheezy, so either way, I’m blessed, thanks to my sweet wife and place I work, for being able to do this upgrade, whichever path I take. So a double thanks;-)

Exclusives can happen oddly

“Stephen Trono’s on the phone for you!”

Ted Taylor, our 6pm show producer, saw my jaw drop to the floor when I entered the newsroom and he said that.

Thus began a mad scramble to get a phone-recording system running so we could talk – and we did, for almost a half-hour.

I’ve written all about that at the Website but one thing Stephen – we’re not close friends, but we’ve talked over the years – wanted me to know, about why he called me.

This Bend developer who’d been shot five (or is it six?) times by his wife – and lived, and is still with her – had been back in Bend and able to speak since mid-October.

Why hadn’t he talked to any reporters? Because not a single one called him to ask if he’d talk!

Seriously. I mean, he could be fibbing, but why fib about that?

I know reporters have this all-too-often reputation of rushing up to someone who’s house is burning down, sticking a microphone and camera in their face and saying “how do you feel watching your life ruined?”

Or something like that.

But the words “sensitive” and “journalist” are not mutually exclusive.

This was just a very vivid reminder that we should never, ever assume someone does NOT want to talk. And should always make the attempt. The worst that can happen is screamed obscenities in your ear and a hang-up on the other end of the phone line.

I think I’ve quoted the grizzled old editor’s line here before: “If your mother says she loves ya, check it out!”

Point being, it’s worth those hang-ups for the one time someone says, “Finally, I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me!”

But that has to be the first time I can recall in a local, high-profile story that someone, after months of waiting for someone to call them, called me. I’m sure glad it was me, of course, and the final chapter of this somewhat bizarre tale has yet to play itself out. But as I approach 20 years in Central Oregon, sometimes just being here the longest (and trying my hardest always to get it right while getting it first, and trying to be fair and accurate) can bring good stories my way. and I’m grateful for that.

Right and wrong and speed, 1981-2011

Man, deja vu and not in a good way.

AP quoted NPR and CNN (if I remember correctly) in reporting an Arizona congresswoman’s death after a mass shooting.

She did not.

No doubt, there will be mass dissection of how the mega-error happened, but what will be just as sadly interesting is how, 30 years after the Reagan assassination try and AP’s in-error report of James Brady’s death (I worked for UPI, which got it right), such a rare, major human breaking-news error is still possible — but that the world of the Internet spreads the error far and wide in milliseconds.

Drat. Humans will make mistakes, and communication errors will exist as long as there are humans.

But the much greater speed of today’s communication networks means even more care and caution must be used before unsubstantiated info is spread around the globe.

Whatever the specifics may be, this will be another excuse to blame the media as sloppy and reckless. When really, all we are is … human.

Mistakes are big or small. This one is very big, and very sad, and … never 100 percent preventable. But boy do we have to keep trying.

‘I don’t know how you sleep at night…’: Journalism Ethics 101

Wow, what a week. Awful, tragic news — and editorial judgment calls for our news staff.

On the one hand, it’s ‘exciting’ and energizing to have breaking news to cover, in an area where we blessedly have relatively little major crime, etc. compared to bigger cities.

Still, it can be frustrating when people think we make every decision based on whose lives we can invade or pain we can exploit.

It’s not true, but to be defensive in such situations only makes a difficult situation worse.

When someone dies in an awful way, we need to try to tell how they died – but more importantly, how they lived.

We don’t, contrary to the critics’ claims, go ringing up or knocking on the door of every crime victim, stick a camera and mike in their face and say, ‘How do you feel?”

The worst calls I’ve ever made are to folks in pain. I always hope and pray a family friend or representative will answer the phone, that those dealing with tragedy have been helped by others who are taking our inevitable calls for a photo, word of a fund in their name, etc.

A Bend man died this week in an example of the awfully named term, ‘Freak accident’ – a tree slammed down on the van in which he was sleeping. A Roseburg TV station kindly shared photos clearly taken hours after the discovery (tree was off the van and cut up etc.)

Still, it was shocking. Not graphic or lurid, but jolting.

We used the photos. A few close friends asked ‘have you no shame,’ etc.

After a day, I removed the photos from our front page. I can always see both sides of these things. The image was known, and to put his smiling face there again seemed right, and we followed with another story talking to friends about how he lived.

Then there’s the awful possible murder-suicide in Bend.

Facebook has two sides for people – the private one only friends can see, and the public one anyone can see using a search box.

We found two heartbreakingly normal photos of the family on the mother’s and father’s Facebook pages.

We used them and soon heard from a very upset family member.

I tried, best I could, not to get defensive, and to explain why we felt they were OK and even good to use – again, as I say, to show how folks live, not just how they die.

It didn’t end with a slammed-down phone, so I should be grateful.

But then came the note today, saying “shame on you” and asking why we felt it was OK to put the photos (and names – hey, we waited almost a full day to use the names, when property tax records indicated the homeowners and the paper felt fine running that right away – we waited until police issued the names to be sure family members were notified first.)

But Facebook is a public source of info, and we wanted to share MORE than names – to tell who these people are. In the immediate aftermath of tragedy, that is a very difficult time to glean those details, and we’re more successful in some cases than others.

But I hope that, God forbid, I ever face such a tragedy, I’ll understand why the media is doing what it’s doing – unless we/they cross the line, and then I also hope I’d make my point without lashing out. But it’s human, and we all are that.

We don’t revel in others’ pain, nor wish to intrude on a family’s grief. I have been deleting many comments that go too far in supposition or worse (man, there are some scary folks out there). But … it’s tough, and we have to try to be both sensitive and consistent. I hope and pray most folks understand that.

The ‘right’ to use info or a photo or the like doesn’t always clash with the issue of ‘rightness’ (propriety), but it can. Just now, police passed along the family’s request to remove info gleaned from public Facebook pages from the story. They are distraught, but I can’t help thinking they have far bigger things to be distraught about.

These were not damning or in any way negative pieces of information about the family – in fact, they were heartbreakingly normal and upbeat. But of course, I removed them, after touching base with the news director on his call on the issue.

But as I said, it’s ‘right’ vs. ‘rightness.’ Tough balancing act for all concerned in such terrible cases.

May you never be in such a situation – but may you also think about it whenever you make info publicly available, intentionally or otherwise. As society and the definition of privacy evolves, maybe, just maybe it’ll be less of an issue. I’m not expecting it, though.

Pet Peeve No. 2,304,405: Unreadable gray on white type

Where in the world did basic design rules go?

Why do so many sites do as this one does http://www.regrettheerror.com/2010/12/03/they-sullied-his-good-name/#disqus_thread and http://www.poynter.org – and go with gray or worse, light gray on white type?

It CAN’T be just I who has to squint to read the words displayed like that. Whatever happened to good ol’ black on white? (A related issue is – why do so many make the type too small – but I can tell you, black on white type is a LOT more readable than gray on white, at ANY type size!)
Anyone have a clue where this trend began, and how we can reverse it, for the sake of all of our eyesight?

PS – Found this lil forum thread on the topic, so I’m not alone, yay! http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showthread.php?2259365-Why-Do-Web-Designers-use-Light-Gray-Type-on-a-White-Background

Of Typos and Corrections (Glass Houses, Stones, Etc.)

Karma can be a thing of wonder.

Picked up the morning Bulletin off my sidewalk and opened it up to find a P. 1 headline that reads: “How do local kids fair at COCC, Oregon universities?” (Side note: I wish our Web provider would go to downstyle headlines rather than Capping Most Words. But I digress, as usual;-)

Anyway, I chuckled a bit at the prominent typo (they meant how do those students fare not fair) – as I often do when others show they are human, or a group of humans who are not perfect in catching such things (though most of us are always better at catching other folks’ typos than our own. We don’t fall in love with our words, necessarily — but they sure look right to us!)

So I thought I’d blog a bit about the issue today – but before I could get around to doing that, wouldn’t you know but … last night, in writing up a Crime Stoppers story about a stolen painting, I said the thing was 30-by-30 feet.

Whoops.

As one of several article commenters on the screwup pointed out, “30 by 30 feet is a wall.”

Uh, yep. The TV script simply said “30-by-30.” I added the dumb error.

And the other day, in writing up President Obama’s upcoming Oregon visit, I typed “White” but left out “House.”

Heh;-/

Some point out typos kindly, others do so in slamming fashion: “Don’t you have any editors over there?” (Well, yes, but a lot of my online writing is edited by … me. Dangerous, huh?) Or “Don’t you ever use spell check?”

Why yes, but that only goes so far. Spell- or grammar-check wouldn’t catch the wrong measurement term, or the missing word “House.”

For all the technological advances of the world, there’s some things only humans can catch. Or not catch.

So I always try to politely respond, something like “Oy vey, yes, that was bad, sorry, fixed, thanks,” etc.

And many are kind enough to say that, with the volume of words I put out in a day, I do pretty darn well, typo-wise.

To the others, I quote my John Adams High School mentor Chuck Heil’s little coat-lapel button from all those years ago: PBPGINFWMY.

“Please Be Patient – God Is Not Finished With Me Yet.”

You, neither;-)

Before Facebook, There Was the Phone Book

OK, I know, comparing Facebook to the ol’ phone book is a little odd, but I’ll try.

First, a funny image – that of Steve Martin in The Jerk, running through the neighborhood, shouting, ‘The new phone books are here!”

Well, I wasn’t THAT over the moon about them, but let me tell you, few things were a reporter’s best friend as much as those always-growing (til now) collections of pulp with shiny covers. We learned to keep the old ones, because sometimes, people paid the EXTRA fee to get themselves unlisted (see some parallels there to the world of headaches of ‘opting out’ of having your name all over the Web?)

I even wrote stories, honestly, where I tracked the growth of a community – this one – by comparing the previous year’s phone book pages to the new one’s. Twenty more pages, etc. Or look for new Yellow Pages categories, like ‘Internet Service Providers.’ Sometimes they’d throw me off by changing the font size or columns, but tallying the pages was just another simple way to see how fast we are – whoops, make that – were  – growing.

I bring this up in a not-totally-random fashion. Last week, trying to help someone with a potential news story, I used Google to find a name, then someone local related to them. Twice, I thought I hit pay dirt – turning to the phone book, they were listed!

But alas, both were disconnected.

Why? Odds are, because they now live their lives on cell phones, so who needs an old ‘land line’ phone to pay for? The terms ‘boat anchor’ (or even ‘buggy whip’) come to mind.

I do understand. We switched to the cheaper cable-modem version of a land line, but I just can’t quite bring myself to cut the cord, one that’s fed me like an umbilical cord so much news over the years.

But you watch – phone books will start to shrink, unless there’s some societal revolution that tells people they want their cell number to be found in one, communal place, rather than catch as catch can in Internet phone number search sites.

This, I highly doubt will happen.

So is the rise of the cell phone a triumph of privacy, in a way? Spam and junk calls still find their way to them – usually by ‘robo-calls,’ where an automated dialer hits EVERY number. (I have to explain that to folks who call about a scam and wonder, ‘How did they get my number?’ They didn’t – they call EVERY number, in a row.)

But in a way, the future dimunition, even possible demise of the lowly phone book as a place everyone turned to as a place to find your and just about everyone’s name, address and phone number is sad, and perhaps another piece of the loss of community – as we all go our separate ways, for better and/or worse.

And that’s a shame. Not just for reporters, but for those young rascals who used to flip through it, eyes closed, randomly point at a number to call and say, ‘Pardon me, but do you have Prince Albert in a can?” (Rimshot.)

It’s not the kind of societal change many will have heartburn over (unless you work for what used to be THE Phone Co.) But it’s sad, nonetheless. To me, anyway.

I mean, not everyone in the phone book was your ‘friend,’ Facebook style. But somehow, connecting only to ‘friends’ seems a bit … insular. (Especially when people ‘friend’ you on Facebook and you have NO clue who they are, then you are stuck on that dilemma of accepting, rejecting or ignoring.)

(Another phone book plus – no profile photo required. Leaves more to the imagination, which is something we need to cultivate in these days of amazing movie special effects that can outshine our wildest dreams. Besides, if you have a ‘face for radio’ like yours truly, who needs everyone knowing what you look like?;-)

I remember reading of a reporter who used to randomly point at names in the phone book, call them and turn their lives into wonderful features. I know that’s possible, because everyone has at least one story to tell – the story of their lives, which can be as fascinating as any novel or movie.

Yes, you can probably do the same thing online. But it’s not the same – and these days, I daresay, the percentage who would agree to share some intimate details with a stranger over the phone are probably dropping even faster than those old-fogey landline phones.

No, now we share more such details of our lives than ever before – the crises, the joys, the random day-to-day thoughts (such as this!) with people who are our online “friends.” More open, in a way, than ever before, but more closed as well.

Such is the paradox of modern life, I suppose.

The Week in News: All Fired Up

Can I get myself into a pattern of regular blogging? Not sure, but will try.

I do enjoy, in its own way, wildfire season. Many people turn to our Website for the latest fire news, and I’ve been doing this long enough I know just what to ask and how to assemble it, fast.

One tricky thing is when a fire gets big enough that the local firefighters and Central Oregon Interagency Dispatch hand off to an incident management team. They do a great job, but the transition can be … messy.

I love what InciWeb brings to the table, for the bigger fires – a uniform presentation, and the ability to get photos, maps etc. I don’t think the government has thrown enough servers at it – it’s awfully slow most of the time – and I get to hear how the Forest Service, etc. folks wrestle with trying to make it work. (Heck, most in govt. aren’t allowed to access Facebook/Twitter, for fear of them wasting time yakking with friends. Those are getting to be crucial info platforms, folks – you really should find ways to make sure they can use it – for work, of course – but why not for other things during breaks?)

Anyway, I digress, as usual. We have a new group of ‘KTVZ freshmen’ (and women) you might say, learning the ropes. Today, Joe Burns got his first taste of reporting from the fire lines. He was nervous – who could blame him? – but I’m sure he did fine.

When the Rooster Rock Fire blew up near Plainview, we got TONS of great photos from amateurs and a few pros, and assembled a wonderful, ever-growing slide show. These fires now are in more remote areas, but still have caused damage. Hopefully not much more of that.

As a reporter, you get to know the people you deal with quite frequently, like the folks at Prineville fire dispatch. They help us out a lot, and I try to do the same, when I spot info they might not have, or some conflicting info, or holes in a news release (like I do withour local police agencies – hey, their main job is to catch bad guys and gals, not to write news releases!).

But the shorthand sometimes comes at a cost of less-than-totally-accurate writing. For example, if we say “24 thousand acres are burning on the Warm Springs Reservation,” it’s not really true. If a fire or group of fires reaches such a size, it usually means far less than that acreage burning at any one time. Add in the fact that it often will include unburned islands within the perimter – and land set ablaze by firefighters in burnouts, to rob the fire of fuel – and it’s as imprecise as anything that’s fast-changing and dealt with by fallible humans as best they can.

But the extra eyeballs that come to our Website – I hope we reward them with the best, most accurate roundup of info we have, as updated as can be, day or night. Makes for long hours, but also helps build a reputation that we’re the place to turn to learn the latest. And that can stand us in good stead when the news turns to ice on the roads, instead of fires in the canyons. After all, to get a lot of page views in summer, when smart, sane folks spend time away from their computers, is very satisfying – because when the chill returns (it’s 59 out now!), they’ll come back and hang out, we hope.

Speaking of hanging out, the embryonic High Desert Forum is still in soft-opening test mode. Hope you give it a try, as a place to talk that’s more focused than the scattershot message threads on articles that rise and fall, come and go off the home page.  It’s likely to change more in coming days, weeks and months as we seek out the right answer for such a need. Hopefully you’ll take the ride along with us, as we try to create a conversation spot – an online coffee shop/pub, if you will – that complements the Facebooks, Twitters, etc. I very much hope to keep the emphasis on the positive there – talking about great places, people, groups, companies etc. – and of course, the political debates/arguments too. The same rules as the Website will apply, with more tools to thumbs-up the great discussions and … we’ll see how it goes.

The blessed – and ever-shrinking – middle ground

Nowadays, compromise is out of fashion – shrillness, finger-pointing and finding who to blame for our troubles is, alas, the way to go.

I just read a great, reasoned, ‘middle ground’ posting on the still-burning timber/wildfire issue.

I hold such postings precious, because it shows a mind is at work, rather than reflexes (yes, I’d use the term knee-jerk, but calling people ‘jerks’ just goes back to the name-calling, finger-pointing that gets so very old).

President Jimmy Carter was branded as a “waffler” because he refused to take a stand and hold to it, no matter what new facts came into view. That is sad.

President Obama no doubt is getting intense heat already for backing the proposal for a mosque – an education center, really – near, not at Ground Zero.

A former, fired Bend city manager told me once – before he was fired by the council, I recall – that ‘friends come and go, but enemies attract.’ And when you’re the Leader of the Free World, that’s more true than for anyone else on the planet. Everyone can find something a president does to make them mad. Put it all together, and it’s … politics as usual.

We have too few discussions and far too many arguments these days — situations where the debate becomes so shrill, everyone is talking or waiting to talk (or interrupt) and usually so busy getting in their talking points, listening to the other side doesn’t seem to be happening.

Imagine such a discussion going much slower, calmer, the one not talking REALLY listening and even occasionally saying — gasp — “you have a good point, there — I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

I know, I know: Dream on.

Immigration is the grand example of the Blame Society at its zenith. We were the ‘good immigrants’ who followed the laws (bet there were a lot fewer of them those days, too). These are the “bad immigrants,” who are all (there’s the flaw) breaking the law, taking jobs from hard-working Americans, filling our schools and hospitals and refusing to learn English and and and….

Sigh.

Yes, put up a better wall. (How about an electric fence, machine-gun turrets and a moat with gators?) But don’t blame them for our lack of one. And don’t think the images of mass deportation, families torn asunder, etc. wouldn’t hurt our country – not just its reputation, but its belief in what we’re here for, how we’re a bright, shining beacon to the oppressed. Now some want to change the rule that says if you’re born here, you’re a citizen. Is anyone thinking through what that really means, other than that we’re, as usual, “mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more”?)

Acting out of pure emotion is a slippery slope to … well, we just might find out one of these days, much to our regret.

The Blame Society: It’s All the Rage (Unfortunately)

I Googled the term first. It’s not really out there. I should write a book. But I’ll start with this:

“The Blame Society: The Real Threat to Civilization”

Or something like that.

I get so sick of it – and not because I deal with the flamers, trolls, venters and other folks who abuse free forums, and scream ‘censorship’ if not allowed to spew (I tell them, ‘Go to Rants and Raves.’)

No, I don’t blame them. (Get it?) Well, not entirely. One frequent poster who rankles my nerves refers to most folks as “sheeple.” Prone to want to blame someone or something — politicians, Greedy Big Business, and of course, today’s big Blamee, Illegal Immigrants — for the problems of society.

Taken to the extreme, it seems these people are saying, “If everyone just thought like me, the world would be perfect.”

It almost doesn’t matter whether they believe it. The venom factor in today’s society is so high, it’s approaching global warming status. (Oh my, there’s another fine controversy. It reminds me of abortion, or the Middle East, or name any war – a never-ending, no-win blamefest.)

Compromise has never been a dirtier word. Why discuss when you can argue? Why listen when you can make others listen? Why solve problems when you really succeed by stirring up our most base passions to … blame the other side for all of our problems?

It is so maddening, so frustrating, so exasperating.

So who do we blame for this state of affairs? Do we look in the mirror, or smash it and use the broken pieces to cut our competition?

I’ve said it before — I’m a moderate, the right-wing talk show host’s worst enemy. But I listen to left-wing talk show hosts, and they make me mad, too. I don’t WANT msnbc to be one-sided, as if to counter-balance the apparent (to them) one sidedness of Fox News. Yes, I believe CNN tries to go down the middle of the road, and probably gets villified for doing so.

In a no-win Blame Society, our favorite hobby is to tear down those who disagree with us and send money or love notes to those on “our side.” To just wait until the next election to throw the bums out, to send a message that… what’s the message again? That we want it go back to the way it was before, under “our party’s” time of rule?

Times are tough, and that breeds anger and fear — and the powers that be want to channel that anger and fear to achieve their aims. Whatever happened to thinking for yourself, to calm, rational discussion, to being open to the notion that the other side has a point worth considering? No, that’s now seen as a sign of weakness, a chink in the armor, a chance to prevail over the weak wafflers, the Jimmy Carters, the … Obamas, of course, in some eyes.

A plague on both your houses? Vote for None of the Above? Where does that get us? Does a third party or independent candidate just hand an elected seat to the other side? Is that what it’s come down to?

The Blame Society. I blame it for our ills. I blame those who propogated it for our inability to reach consensus any more. I pray for a way to move beyond the blame game, to find some structure, online, on-air or in person, to realize that negotiation, give-and-take, compromise isn’t hopeless Pollyanna kumbaya. It’s our only hope of survival.

It’s a mindset as real and even more valuable than the one we’ve allowed ourselves to be trapped in today.

Stop blaming. Start listening. Realize anyone who sells you a simple answer knows better, and is playing you like a Stradivarius.

Take the best of all positions and mold a new one. Sell it through the benefits, not the fears.

Who’s with me?