Megan Taylor

Article Skimmer

A while ago I wrote about the Article Skimmer interface that the New York Times had developed.

Times Wire

Those people just don't quit - the Times Wire was recently launched to provide a constantly updating "river of news," including pictures.

This comes in the wake of a few other news visualization updates:

Google News Timeline

Google's News Timeline searches multiple data sources and places the results in chronological order, allowing the user to scroll, drag or click through the evolution of a topic.

Google News

Google News has also been redesigned, with more videos and photos on section pages and some clutter clean-up.

Old Newsmap

The Newsmap, by Marcos Weskamp, also received an update recently.

New in Newsmap, from the blog:

• rectangularized treemap layout: To accommodate text properly, cells are as rectangular as possible, this there's more room for headlines without chopping them off in several lines.
• search as you type: try the new search on the top right, see how newsmap updates.
• deep linking: you can now deep link to any state of the app. just try updating your view, and notice how the url changes. You can grab and share that url with anyone.

New Newsmap

I really like these different ways of seeing news. They are each targeted toward a purpose: seeing the most recent news, seeing news from different sources or seeing news over time.

What other news visualizations are out there? Which do you prefer? Or, do you prefer to browse through news Web sites instead?

For the past month or so, I've been looking for data sets to play with. As a journalist, I really enjoy finding interesting ways to visualize data, and I needed some to play with.

I came across Visualize This: Days Spent Working to Pay Taxes, a challenge posted to Flowing Data:

About 28.2% of the average American's income goes towards taxes, which means the first 103 days of the year is to pay for government. At the end of these 103 days - April 13 - is Tax Freedom Day. However, because of varying state-by-state tax burdens and average incomes, Tax Freedom Day varies by state. Alaska, for example, has the earliest Tax Freedom Day (March 23) because it has low state and local taxes while Connecticut is last on April 30, because of "extraordinarily high federal income taxes." For this Visualize This we're looking at the number of days each state spends paying taxes this year (2009).

FlowingData explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better - mainly through data visualization. Money spent, reps at the gym, time you waste, and personal information you enter online are all forms of data. How can we understand these data flows? Data visualization lets non-experts make sense of it all.

So, I didn't get mine done in time for the contest, and the results were posted today.

Edit: These two are my favorites:

an interactive Adobe Flex based visualization

Tax Freedom Day by State 1977-2009 from Alex Lundry on Vimeo.

Here is my belated attempt (click for larger view):

I wanted to do something with the state median incomes as well, but I'm having trouble getting the numbers to make sense.

Thinking more about programming in journalism (not computer programming, the one we associate more with radio and television) I realized there are a few things news organizations are doing that are really similar to the concept of packaging news with an identity: blogs.

At most organizations, news blogs aren't structured around an identity. Instead they are topical. Which could be better, in some ways, what I really hate about TV news is all the self-promoting, self-congratulatory anchors and show hosts. Sometimes, identity is a bad thing.

So I was poking around several news Web sites looking for good blogs, when I stumbled upon USA Today's "communities." The Community Center blog (keeping you apprised of conversations and opportunities on the site where readers are getting involved with USATODAY's daily journalism) is a hub for the other blogs on the site, which look suspiciously like beatblogs to me.

Each blog has a designated author (or small group of authors) and appear to be updated several times a day.

But something bothers me. Which of these things is at all like the other?

I really like the Interactivity blog - just wish it looked as nice as some of the others.

Over the past few months, I've been picking up quite a bit of freelance work. Most of it has been on the technical side of building Web sites. For the most part, I've been working with WordPress, so I can send a client a list of appropriate themes and let them decide.

In the scenario that I'm not using an easily theme-able framework, I'm stuck.

So, I've been spending some more time looking at design elements on various blogs, how colors and typography and borders are used to make even a simple layout look amazing. I've also been collecting resources to keep in mind when working on Web sites.

Six Blogs

1. Authentic Boredom: Cameron Moll's design blog.
2. 24 Ways: 24 ways is the advent calendar for web geeks. Each day throughout December we publish a daily dose of web design and development goodness to bring you all a little Christmas cheer.
3. Designm.ag: DesignM.ag is a new site that is aimed at providing a wide variety of resources for web designers and developers. The purpose of the site is to keep many useful elements, such as a blog, community news, design gallery, and job board all at one place.
4. i love typography: iLT is designed to inspire its readers, to make people more aware of the typography that’s around them. We really cannot escape type; it's everywhere: on road signs, shampoo bottles, toothpaste, and even on billboard posters, in books and magazines, online ... the list is endless, and the possibilities equally so.
5. Jason Santa Maria: This site represents an experiment in art direction online. Rather than allowing the content to flow from a content management system into the same page layout every time, I’ve created a system for fast design direction based on the needs of the content.
6. Mark Boulton: This is primarily designed to be a portfolio presence for Mark but it also acts as a notebook, journal, experimental space and general dumping ground for designs, commentary and ideas.

Three Cheat Sheets

1. How a Simple Layout Can Be Mixed ‘n’ Matched with Patterns, Photos and Backgrounds:It's pretty amazing how much color and background can change the look and feel of a website. In this tutorial we're going to put together a quick, simple but effective layout and then create variations using backgrounds, photos and patterns. We'll also look at how to make seamless tiled backgrounds out of a photo, methods for ending a single photo and simple ways to create pixel patterns. In short it's a jam packed tutorial!
2. 8 Simple Ways to Improve Typography In Your Designs:Many people, designers included, think that typography consists of only selecting a typeface, choosing a font size and whether it should be regular or bold. For most people it ends there. But there is much more to achieving good typography and it’s in the details that designers often neglect.
3. 10 Simple and Impressive Design Techniques: Simple effects and techniques are the building blocks of today’s designs. With a “less is more” mentality, we’ve selected 10 very simple and impressive design techniques that can drastically improve the performance and appearance of your designs.

One Web Design Degree

1. The Personal Web Design Degree: The personal web design degree is the response of one designer to the question “What do I need to study to become a web designer?” The truth is that all the information needed to obtain a functional knowledge of web design is out there just waiting to be read. The only thing stopping most designers from doing so is sifting through all the information and knowing what is worth reading.

What are your favorite design resources? Where do you get inspiration?

Poynter is hosting another conference in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Journalism That Matters: Adapting Journalism to the New News Ecology

The conference will take place March 1 - 4, 2009.

The New News Ecology means new jobs, new tools, new relationships, new
businesses.

But journalism's very survival -- at least its values and functions -- depends
on the ability of news organizations -- and citizens -- to adapt to a
dramatically evolving landscape.

Where, now, does the news industry end, and begin? As some newsrooms shrink and
morph, what -- and where -- are the new roles for journalists -- and journalism --
in a broader civic sphere? How do we match journalism with the work of
non-profit organizations, government, civic and even advocacy groups . . .
without abandoning its core values and functions to democracy? Is it time for a
national journalism service corp?

Links:
Media Giraffe Project - Newsecology
Register
Slideshow

I really miss going to conferences. Hopefully soon I'll be able to afford them again.

A few days ago the Washington Post put together a section looking back on George W. Bush's presidency.

It's a bit soon, but given the zeitgeist, totally understandable. Hopefully as time goes by we'll get more analysis of what the effects of the past 8 years really are.

The section puts me in mind of Jeff Jarvis' "Topic Theory." Whether we can call topics the "building block of journalism," topic pages are an important way for users to keep track of a paper's coverage, catch up on unfamiliar stories and gather context on an issue.

The Post's Legacy page includes "video interviews with Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Barton Gellman, a timetable of significant news events and policy decisions, and opportunities for users to submit their own views." (from the press release I forgot I had received) There are also graphs, articles, and photo galleries.

I have a complaint, though: clutter. There is so much stuffed into this one page, with no clear hierarchy. It's just a bunch of stuff on a page, when it could have been designed to lead a reader through the events of the presidency.

Great how 10 Useful Web Application Interface Techniques appears in Google Reader after I was thinking about news Web site UI.

Applicable points:

• Simplify navigation and action items
• Context-sensitive navigation

I wonder what a UI expert would say about how news Web sites should work?

Patrick Thornton wrote about user interfaces today, and how news Web sites are so loath to move away from an interface that mimicks the print product.

The last time I visited a news Web site, I was an employee of the paper working on code changes. I'm not counting clicking through to articles, but deliberately going to the home page of a site.

So Where Do I Get News?

I get my news from a couple of sources:

• Google Reader, where I'm subscribed to over 400 blogs and news sites (including a personalized version of Google News), in addition to recieving shared content from all my friends
• Twitter, where I follow over 400 users, mostly journalists
• The AP Mobile News application on my phone. Great for the long commute to work.

Why Don't I Go To News Sites?

Because they don't give me what I want. Because I prefer serendipity.

I'm interested in a lot of things and a lot of places and a lot of people. There isn't one place where I can get all the information I want. And I'm busy, I don't have time to spend all day bouncing from site to site, hoping someone wrote or produced something I care about.

The other reason is this: A lot of people complain about the Internet being an echo chamber. To some degree, this sucks. I have to scroll through a bunch of work that is the same concept iterated over and over.

But, since I don't visit news sites, I also don't see the hierarchy that editors and readers have placed on certain stories. The echo chamber mitigates this problem for me, because I can gurantee that if something is important (or even important only to a certain group of people...people I chose to follow because I care about what's important to them...) I'll see it at least 5 times in Google Reader and another 20 on Twitter.

Is a different UI (user interface) really going to change my behavior? I'll still have to visit multiple sites. The river of news (a la Facebook or Twitter) can get really annoying when I'm looking for something specific. For me, that only works seredipitously. And those cool mapping UI are just cluttery and hard to focus on. To be honest, if I'm looking for articles on a specific topic, I'll just do a Google search.

Thornton is right, though: news Web sites need to stop emulating print. But they need to do it in a way that actually helps the users. We've learned certain behaviors when looking for content online. There are rules that we expect Web sites to follow, and when those are bent too much, we get frustrated. Not good for news sites.

So the question is, without breaking basic UI rules or being gimmicky, how should news sites be designed differently?

Edit: Check out the comments for a discussion between Aron Pilhofer and myself about user interface vs. user interaction.

I deliberately left something out of my resolutions post last week.

I left out my recent efforts to defeat my greatest weakness: Design.

Forget about when I started building Web sites (age 11), my relationship with design didn't start until I got into online journalism.

And I learned that I couldn't design my way out of a keg. ::shudder::

For a while I thought I could get away without being able to design visual elements. I could shoot photos and video, I could program in Flash and code a site from a .pdf. After all, there's a reason for having designers, right?

I was wrong. I learned that sometimes, there just isn't enough designer to go around, and you have to be able to make your own decisions. Things move faster and more smoothly if I don't have to go ask the designer about an element.

Also, there are design elements to everything else I do online, from customizing a Twitter page to visualizing data. I was going to have to learn.

But how do you learn design?

I didn't take a class, or sign up for a workshop. I just started reading design blogs. Following designers on Twitter. Paying attention to what I liked about certain Web sites and what made them ugly.

And I've made progress. I'm not good at details, but I can spec an overall design that doesn't make people wish for blindness. I'd say I've reached paper bag status (as in can design my way out of), but anything more is beyond me.

I want to get better, because I hate not being able to do things. And because Web deisgn is important. I know I'll never be a designer, but it would be nice to have a touch of the craft.

So if you've got resources, blogs, Web sites, or people that I should be paying attention to, please let me know in the comments.

Edit: I decided to add in a list of what I'm reading.

• 24 Ways
• A Brief Message
• An Event Apart
• Authentic Boredom
• DesignM.ag
• Fuel Your Creativity
• Garrett Dimon
• i love typography
• Jason Santa Maria
• Mark Boulton
• The Grid System
• Web Designer Wall

Awhile ago I realized that somehow I ended up on the Washington Post's press release e-mail list. I'm not complaining, it's a good way for me to find out about what they're doing.

Today, the World section launched an app has has been around for a bit (I think they had a elections version) in beta. It's called TimeSpace: World.

It's pretty freakin' cool, although sadly loading page page also loads a ginormous ad above the application. This is not quite what people mean when they talk about making web apps pay.

From the e-mail I got:

Using innovative technology, TimeSpace: World compiles all world news content from The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com, PostGlobal, Foreign Policy magazine, and partner sites including The Associated Press and Reuters onto one, customizable map.

Here’s how it works: coverage is collected into clusters around hot-spots on an interactive map. By clicking a cluster, users can view articles, blog posts, photos, videos, and even reporter twitter feeds (without leaving the page). A timeline below the map illustrates peaks in coverage and allows users to customize news searches to a specific day or hour.

They also made a widget for the app, and individual items have unique URLs for easy sharing. The content includes articles, blogs, photos and video.

I really like the idea, though unless you're looking for something specific, it can get overwhelming to look at. The map is designed really well, with a neat sliding timeline function that also shows how much content there is for a specific time. Looks like there are some tracking possibilities here.

I've been wanting to write a bit about what I'm doing and where I'm working, but had trouble figuring out how to approach the subject.

You see, I work for a PR company.

I can hear you all gasping. No, I have NOT crossed over to the "dark side."

PR companies are scrambling like most other institutional businesses to figure out this whole "Internet thing." My job as "Digital Media Intern" is to move Quinn & Co. forward by teaching how social media works. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, the whole kit and caboodle.

So I've been doing lots of research: what's the best blogging platform for their purposes, how can the company and their clients build loyalty through Twitter and Facebook, how to monitor brands with Google Alerts, optimizing press releases and websites for search engines, and building lists of bloggers and micro-bloggers for Real Estate, Travel and Food, Wine & Spirits.

I've also been doing some multimedia work: a video from a media panel, working on an interactive email design.

All of which is very helpful in getting to my goal.

I want to work in news. No question. I don't care if it's a newspaper, magazine, radio station, because when you get to the website, it's all the same.

Ultimately, news outlets have to learn the kinds of things I'm learning now. How do you build niche audiences online? How do you manage an online community? And so on.

While my true love is reporting through multimedia (including data), this is fun, too. I've never liked the black hat/white hat metaphor, so I'm working in shades of gray.

Last night was one of most exciting of my life. I got to watch America do something special.

I got home around 6:30, right after the first polls closed. I stayed hooked to television and computer until just after President-elect Barack Obama's acceptance speech. It was an amazing experience.

During past elections, information was sought largely from television news. This time, I paid more attention to a large selection of Web sites than to the obnoxious commentary of political analysts. Apparently, so did a lot of other people:

According to Akamai, which is the content delivery network for most major news sites including CNN (which had a record day on its own), NBC, Reuters, and the BBC, global visitors to news sites peaked last night at 11 PM with 8,572,042 visitors per minute.
That is double the normal traffic level, and 18 percent above the previous peak of 7.3 million visitors per minute achieved during the World Cup back in June, 2006. (The third biggest peak to news sites was last March during the first day of the U.S. college basketball playoffs when it hit 7 million visitors per minute).(TechCrunch)

Most of the links below aren't to news sites, though. These are passionate and creative people who found different ways to reflect on what we all saw last night. A little bit of meta-coverage, if you will.

Mark Luckie put together a time-lapse video of the NYTimes home page from last night. It starts while voters are still at the polls and ends with Obama's victory. "In the Hall of the Mountain King" was an inspired musical choice.

Mark Newman and his cartogram software showed how skewing the normal red/blue map according to population or electoral votes is a better graphical representation of how America voted.

Daily Kos collected headlines and newspaper front pages in the US and elsewhere. Excellent collection with some really creative designs.

My friend Matthew Gonzalez grabbed some screen shots from news Web sites' home pages. I really love the NYTimes treatment.

Designer Robb Montgomery collects his best picks of front pages. I have to agree, the Chicago Sun-Times front is amazingly powerful. He also brings us "a video tour and spot critique of top U.S. media Web sites and their election graphics at the moment when Sen. Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election."

ReadWriteWeb put together a really cool slideshow of election coverage online, showing resources from Twitter to Ustream, news sites and more.

Mindy McAdams put together her own slideshow of voting maps and home pages.

A few days ago I got an email from Daniel Bachhuber, who is working with the Oregon Daily Emerald.

He wanted to know if I was interested in discussion content management system options for college media. After my time as online managing editor at The Independent Florida Alligator, struggling with a CMS that liked to fight dirty, I've daydreamed of building a modular open-source system myself.

The problem:

College Publisher is an inappropriate platform for student newspapers
but most newspapers don't have the resources to custom roll their own
CMS.

The Alligator uses TownNews, but the idea is the same.

Daniel started a wiki, College News Press, as well as a mailing group to keep track of ideas and coordinate discussion. The wiki includes tasks, benchmarks and platform comparisons.

His vision:

• To create an easy to deploy, simple to use (open source?) content management system (CMS) with varying levels of sophistication that is specifically geared towards the student newspaper and local news market.
• To provide abundant knowledge resources to student newspapers interested in switching platforms that have minimal IT manpower.

Daniel is even submitting an application for the Knight News Challenge!

I'm really excited to work on this, even though I'm no longer a member of the college media sector. The two biggest problems with newspaper Web sites are site design and CMS limitations. Hacking a CMS should not be among the things we have to do to be innovative.

This week I've been thinking about restructuring some areas of this site, as well as getting into a more stable posting schedule.

The first area of concern is the sidebar of this blog. I've already started messing with a few things, for example the blogroll. I had the blogroll pulling automatically from a folder in Google Reader. But I think its more serviceable to have links to things I've read or bookmarked recently, instead of a list of sites I may or may not have updated in months. What do you think?

What items are actually useful in a blog sidebar? What should go higher or lower? What do you look for?

I'm also going to change the postings from Delicious. I've been having problems with their auto-posting service for my bookmarks, and I'd rather have real content on here and put bookmarks in the sidebar. Besides, you can always grab the feed from my Delicious page or add me to your network.

My Twitter account is basically my "lifestream," and I don't want to duplicate that too much here. But I still want to provide easy access to all that information. Maybe a separate page that displays that?

I also need to update the Clips section. I want to provide a little more context, maybe break it up into sections for text, video, programming, etc.

I'd love any suggestions, and you'll notice a few changes as I figure out what I want to do this week.

Ever since I made my relationship with journalism official - I finally committed on paper as a junior in college - I've been trolling JournalismJobs.com. That obsession only grew when I graduated 2 months ago.

I keep an eye out for opportunities for myself and people I know, but also for trends: what skills are wanted, what kinds of jobs are open, where papers are hiring.

The first two things I noticed were that the average years of experience desired had gone up, and there were more upper-echelon jobs open. Years of experience went from 2-3 to 5-and-up over the past year or so. Just out of college, that's not good news for me. I also see a lot more ____ Editor jobs - not counting the ubiquitous "Web" or "online" editor position (usually a cut-and-paste job!) - and sports writing positions. Why are there so many sports positions open when that's one of the most popular beats in the newsroom?

More interesting than the job titles are the job descriptions. Lists of skills and vague descriptions of expected duties tell us almost as much about the state of journalism as the recent spate of layoffs.

My favorite job description is the search for "computer jesus". These are the job descriptions that list 100 programming languages plus multimedia skills. Yea, right. Am I running the entire news site and producing content all by myself?

Then there's the "we don't know what we want you to do but we're supposed to hire an online person" job description. This one, from The Times-News in Idaho, actually made me want to cry:

Must have visual design skills and be knowledgeable on Internet concepts and the latest developments on the Web. Must be proficient in PHP, HTML, Javascript, XML, Macromedia Flash, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. Writing skills are a plus. (emphasis added)

Writing skills are a plus? Are you serious? Hiring a journalist - you're doing it wrong.

I realize that a lot of these are written by people who really don't know enough to narrow down what they want. And I'm not trying to put those people down. But between this post on putting together a Web team and this one on journalism job salaries, I thought there was a place for a little something on the chaotic state of journalism job descriptions.

Well, my first project is live! The Health section of the Miami Herald's Web site has been redesigned.

My contribution is that slick-looking sidebar on the right. I had some help from Stephanie Rosenblatt for the graphics, and of course she put together the Doctor Sleuth. (They are using Caspio and I have been too busy for training!) The tabs on the results pages are mine though.

There's some more projects on the table for the Health section, so hopefully I'll get to be more involved over the next few weeks.

I finished working on a little PHP script today, with Rob Barry's help, that queries, parses and geocodes some data. Hopefully we'll have that into the DataSleuth system soon.

Mark Luckie at 10,000 Words isn't "just a blogger," he's a print journalist gone online. Luckie has been looking at college journalism this week, and The Independent Florida Alligator got some awesome mentions:

Online Student Journalism: Best of the Best

1. The Independent Florida Alligator, University of Florida
The Alligator is hands down the best online student newspaper and rivals the pros in its news coverage and use of multimedia elements. Just listing the stellar components that make up the site warrant its own individual post. The Alligator's standout features are the Gainesville
Explorer , a look at the surrounding city using video and audio slideshows, the use of Google Maps mashups to illustrate problems like apartment overcrowding and rising gas prices, and its 11 blogsthat cover pretty much every spectrum of news. Admittedly The Alligator works on a larger scale than most student newspapers, but it is nevertheless an exceptional example of the possibility of online student journalism.

What a payoff for all the hard work we've done!

Online Student Journalism: Outstanding Use of Multimedia or Social Networking

7. Twitter, The Independent Florida Alligator, University of Florida

It seems everyone is Twitteringthese days, but The Alligator is one of very few student newspapers doing so. The site uses twitterfeed to broadcast news stories and links, almost 2,500 of which have been sent since The Alligator began using the service.

Personally, I think we should have gotten more mention of our amazing multimedia, but at least my Twitter obsession has been justified.

Online Student Journalism: Best Site Design

4. The Independent Florida Alligator, University of Florida

The Alligator is an incredible example of the potential greatness of an online student newspaper. Its black and white design makes the fine journalism happening on the site look even better. Sections and stories are easily scannable and the site's headlines are large enough to catch the eye. The Alligator also makes great use of its footer -- a contrasting black to
the rest of the page -- something that is rare in online student paper design.

That's so totally what we were going for!

The sessions for this morning:

Session 1
1. What are the keys to successfully operating a converged newsroom, especially for student media?
Facilitators: Brett Erickson, Kathy Stofer, Sharon Brooks
2. How can design of space promote innovation in the newsroom?
Facilitator: John Keefe
3. What productivity tools can transform the newsroom?
Facilitator: Christian Oliver
4. What is the role of social networking in the newsroom?
Facilitator: Kara Andrade

I want to go to all of them!

A lot of people tell me I'm really good at this Web stuff. Yea, I'm a geek. I love to program and play and diddle around with technology, especially if it can be made useful.

But I've really only had 2 years of this. I fell in love with journalism late in my sophomore year. I'm the managing editor for the Web site of a student-run paper and I'm making it all up as I go along.

OK, I spend hours every day scanning blogs, newspapers, Twitter and other Web sites learning as much as I can about this thing called online journalism. For me, there is no ivory.

But rarely do I get a chance to sit down with someone more experienced than I and discuss what I'm doing and how I should be doing it differently. (Maybe that's a new direction to take this blog in?)

Last week, the Journalism Advisory Council sat down for lunch with us budding journos. It was a really cool experience.

I talked to one member about data potential for B2B magazines.

Another responded to my questions about the Web site by listing the things they do and then shoving me into a conversation with someone else.

I discussed eye-tracking studies and the difference between print and Web design, fairly eloquently for someone who can't...well, I can design my way out of a paper bag, but it's not one of my strengths.

Another member wanted to look at The Independent Florida Alligator's Web site. My baby. No sooner had the site loaded than suggestions for improvements were being made.

Yes, we need to label our multimedia so that readers know what's what. Yes, we should be publishing online as soon as we know something. Yes, I need to make Opinions, Sports and Avenue headlines as Web-friendly as the News heds have become. Yep, that event on the calendar shouldn't be labeled TBA, it's an all day event. Must fix the PHP.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

As soon as school is back in session, I'm going to find some unofficial guidance. The print managing editor and the editor go over the paper with one of the professors once a week. The Web site needs similar help. (Mindy, Dave, you up for this?) And I'm going to make sure the guidance continues, because one simple conversation can change so much.

I don't remember the rest of the song. But that's what was playing in my head while I read Steve Klein's "Revenge of the 'Web People.'" He's writing about definitions and how "print people" and "Web people" need to be just "journalists."

Klein argues against the concept that "Web people" are somehow inferior to "print people."

Online journalists must have all the skills of print and broadcast journalists, as well as digital production skills. They need a far more diverse skill set than journalists who work in vertical disciplines. They must have horizontal skill sets that they then practice on an online platform.
So, any hint that an online journalist is less capable or less qualified than a print or broadcast journalist is just plain wrong and unfair. It really ruffles my feathers (do ducks have feathers?)!

I recently found out that my position at The Alligator was created after a series of editors tried to do away with the Web site completely (in the early to mid-1990s). It apparently diverted important resources from the "real paper." Think where we'd be now if they had taken the Web seriously!

Back to my point. One of the things that pisses me off the most about the gulf between print and online is how one-sided it seems to be. I read the paper. In both mediums. I care about the paper. In both mediums. I can write and edit just as well as I can create a Google map, edit audio, or design a Web site. I just happen to work in the online department because of the linear structure of the newsroom.

Don't pigeonhole me just because I can do some things you don't understand. I enjoy all of the aspects of being a journalist - from finding and reporting a story to producing a Web package. Let me learn all that I can, I'll bet you learn a few things too.