The Morning Delivery

Hurricane Sandy Resource Page

According to the latest from the Associated Press , Hurricane Sandy, a Category 1 hurricane already blamed for 69 deaths in the Caribbean, was 110 miles southeast of Atlantic City with sustained winds at 90 mph and is expected to blow ashore in New Jersey early this evening, sooner than previously expected.

The Washington Post reported that federal offices in the nation’s capital will be closed on Tuesday for the second consecutive day because of Hurricane Sandy.  Non-emergency employees will be granted administrative leave; emergency employees will be required to report to work as usual.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently issued a news release on what to expect in terms of coastal change during the storm, primarily in the form of beach erosion.

According to Vic Hines, chief of communications (Eastern Studies) from USGS, the likelihoods of erosion and overwash increased for all areas. Approximately 95 percent of the coast between the Eastern Shore of Virginia and the south shore of Long Island, NY, is very likely to experience dune erosion.  Overwash is very likely along 50 percent of the Delmarva and NJ sandy beaches and 12 percent of the Long Island barriers.

As Sandy begins its violent path inland, a worthwhile online tool featured by USGS is a  a Hurricane Sandy Storm Tide Mapper which allows users to look at what real-time storm sensors and streamgages are reading in order to track water levels before and after the storm.

USGS additionally features a splendid resource page, highlighting key USGS links for those wanting to track what's happening with water levels; the page also includes the latest information on storm-related activities, and the most recently issued news releases.

In order to keep up on the latest news developments on Hurricane Sandy, readers should keep in mind, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have torn down their pay walls for at least the next couple of days (Monday and Tuesday) so that readers can stayed informed on the latest developments.

The New York Times, by the way, features a tremendous interactive storm tracker for keeping informed on the latest weather information from Albany to Washington D.C..; while the Wall Street Journal  is doing an equally superb job  streaming  the latest photos, tweets, and other updated hurricane information. from their reporters and photographers out in the trenches. And The Washington Post, not to be outdone, is featuring  The Grid a special presentation of tweets and photos about the storm.

Other Resources related to Hurricane Sandy to keep in mind.

• The Red Cross: Is featuring a Hurricane App in which from your mobile phone, you can call "**REDCROSS" (**73327677) and they’ll send you a link to download the app to your phone. Red Cross additionally has a ``Safe and Well’’ feature in which residents can register in order to let loved ones know their safe.

• For the latest hurricane advisories, check in on the National Hurricane Center home page.

• The Google Crisis Response Team has launched a Hurricane Sandy map  to help online users follow the trajectory of the storm.

• NASA provides the latest storm image and data, which includes Hurricane Sandy images, videos, public advisory alerts, and Sandy images on Flickr.

• As usual, the Weather Channel has the most up-to-date developments at their Hurricane Central    with frequent updates at Twitter @TWC_hurricane. The Weather Channel has also rolled out an interactive map and radar at Weather Underground . In addition, online users can receive severe weather alerts in their area on their mobile devices.

• NYC Hurricane Evacuation Zone Finder

• NJ.Com lists key contacts: phone numbers, websites, and social media for Morris County, NJ, which is located about 25 miles west of New York City. 

• Hurricane Sandy By the Numbers  from U.S. News on NBCNews.com

• How to Prepare for a Hurricane: Ready.gov 

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
October 29, 2012

 

Seattle's oldest newspaper remembers their Irish Wake

 
Usually St Patrick’s Day is a day of celebration: whether it’s wearing different shades of green, nibbling on soda bread, taking in a parade, tipping back a few cold ones, reciting Irish proverbs or belting out popular Irish songs with the sounds of bagpipes and drums filling the air.

But for employees of the Seattle-Post Intelligencer, St Patrick’s Day, 2009 was a day for doing only one thing; crying in their beer and wondering what the future holds as Seattle’s oldest newspaper rolled off the presses for the final time.

We are rapidly approaching the one-year anniversary when 150 newsroom employees were told the Seattle Post Intelligencer would cease publishing as a print edition, bringing to a screeching halt its 146-year tradition and leaving Seattle, like so many other major cities, a one newspaper town.

The Hearst newspaper which had accumulated $14 million in red ink the previous year, decided to slice their staff down to 20 newsroom employees (another 20 to sell advertising) and remain an Internet edition only.

Last year, other print editions met a similar fate: the Rocky Mountain News, the Baltimore Examiner, the Washington Blade, the Detroit Daily Press, the Tucson Citizen all folded; and similar to the Post-Intelligencer, the Christian Science Monitor shed its print edition on March 27th of last year, leaving only an online edition with updates posted throughout the day.

When journalists see their profession crumbling before them, left without jobs and stripped of what they love to do (some without much of a warning)--it can only be disheartening and deflating with a feeling of helplessness.

Kristen Millares Young, a business and metro reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, devastated as she was to learn she was without a job on March 16, 2009, refused to give up on her passion for reporting and exposing corruption and government fraud. So Young teamed with other Seattle staffers to form Investigate West, a non-profit organization dedicated to investigative journalism covering the Pacific Northwest and the West.

In addition to Young, I.W. has four other former Post-Intelligencer staffers on board: Rita Hibbard serves as executive director and editor. Hibbard was assistant managing editor for news and led the investigative team at the Post-Intelligencer; Daniel Lathrop, a former member of the P.I.’s investigative projects team is I.W.’s chief digital strategist and investigative reporter;  Robert McClure, a Pulitzer-Prize finalist, who exposed a glaring loophole in the Endangered Species Act, is I.W’s chief environmental correspondent; and Carol Smith, who covered science and medicine for the P-I, now reports on health and social justice for I.W. Two news photographers, Paul Joseph Brown and Mike Kane are additionally part of I.W’s news team.

Investigate West operates on the same non-profit model as National Public Radio, which receives funding from pledge drives and donations from other journalism organizations. I.W, for example, was recently the beneficiary of a $100,000 grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

On her way to an assignment, Young, who previously worked for TIME Magazine, the Buenos Aires Herald and The Miami Herald before landing at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, called me on my cell to chat about I.W., her commitment to aggressive journalism and the sorry state of the newspaper industry.

Young encourages any reporter, editor, or photographer, who has been laid-off, not to lose heart; as long as the passion is still there, and you love what you were reporting on, whether it was food, politics, jazz music—and you’re willing to get along with little pay (at least for a while)—there’s no reason why your love for journalism should wither away. But Young stresses that unless you’re passionate about your subject—burn-out will likely set in--because flying solo or collaborating with others requires a committement to make it work; meaning, long hours with most independent sites taking as long as a year or even two years before getting noticed or building an established audience.

I.W, incorporated as a nonprofit 501(c) (3) produces journalism for the public trust, by conducting investigative projects and then selling content to other news outlets, such as MSNBC, the Spokesman Review, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and KUOW, a founding member of NPR; and an affiliate of Public Radio International (PRI).

Whether this new non-profit investigative journalism model will catch on is still an open question, but it has certainly earned the respect of seasoned professionals, such as Walt Bogdanich, assistant editor for the New York Times Investigations Desk, and adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. `` I'm a big supporter of the nonprofit model.  It's too early to tell how successful that approach will be over time, but right now it shows great promise’’ the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner wrote in an email. The encouraging news for investigative journalism sites like I.W. according to Bogdanich is that ``as these groups develop track records, the established media will be more inclined to consider their offerings.’’

Paul Steiger, editor-in-chief, president and chief executive of ProPublica. an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest, and whose work has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, the Denver Post, among other news publications, while encouraged by the investigative journalism undertaken by non-profits, observes that it’s a little more difficult for someone age 45-50 whose been laid-off to match what they were doing as far as compensation goes and the reporting tools they were accustomed to using at their former newspapers.

``Younger journalists’’, Steiger points out, ``don’t need as much income, they don’t have kids, they don’t have mortgages to worry about, so they can experiment and work for modest wages at startups.’’

Despite the limited field, Steiger, a former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, is mightily impressed with a number non-profit investigative ventures, namely:  The Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting, California Watch, and the Huffington Post Investigative Fund   based in Washington D.C.

Doug Clifton, former executive editor of The Miami Herald and most recently, editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland before retiring in 2007, is also encouraged by the non-profit journalism model, but cautions it only fills part of a need. `` Those sources’’ Clifton wrote in an email, ``don't seem able to replace the dollars that for-profit enterprises used to apply to investigative journalism. The non-profit groups may be able to partially fill a void on a temporary basis but the long-run answer is a new model for the traditional media. ‘’

Clifton is now involved with The Vermont Journalism Trust, whose goal is to produce the kind of hard-hitting journalism that for profit news organizations are finding too costly to produce amid staff reductions and shrinking budgets.

With newspapers folding, other newsroom employees falling like dominoes as more and more newspapers downsize through buyouts and layoffs, what worries Young the most is ``that their won’t be enough people [reporters] left in regional markets to connect the dots’’ when a major investigative project or aggressive reporting is sorely needed.

Even if investigative reporting isn’t your area of expertise, Young shared with me examples of former P-I colleagues of hers who are now doing exactly what they love to do in their respective fields, such as Gene Stout, the former Post-Intelligencer music critic who has started his own site , as have Rebecca Denn, former writer and restaurant critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer with ``Eat All About It’’ ,  and for breaking news, The Seattle Post Globe was launched by former P-I. reporters, photographers, and copy editors, including Sally Deneen who contributes environment stories, Kathy George, a public interest lawyer and former government and politics editor at the Intelligencer, Grant Haller, a photographer who worked at the Intelligencer for 35 years, and John Hickey who spent the better part of two decades covering West Coast baseball.

For those laid-off, downsized and left for dead--let’s just hope that those reporters, writers, bloggers, photographers, page designers-whatever their medium may be-will one day be properly compensated for staying the course and pursuing their passion.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]

Oscar Coverage on the Web

 
The clock is now ticking.

On Sunday, March 7, 2010, ABC will televise the 82nd annual Academy Awards from the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, beginning at 5 p.m. PT/ 8 p.m. ET with hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

If you find yourself away from your television set and still want to catch the live experience of Hollywood’s big night, don’t stress, there’s plenty of available options to you online. This is the age of the Internet, after all; when all things are possible as long as you have access to a computer or a smart phone.

At Oscar.com , for instance, the official site for the 82nd Academy Awards, users will be provided with an interactive Red Carpet experience through ``Facebook Connect’’, beginning Sunday from 3:00 to 5:00 pm PT, an online event which will be hosted by Lisa Guerrero and Brett Chukerman, along with “Modern Family” star Rico Rodriguez (‘Manny’), who will be reporting live from the Red Carpet Bleachers waiting anxiously for the arrivals and the crowds’ reactions.

In addition to watching stars parade down the Red Carpet, users will be able to read what other viewers are saying about the event through Facebook’s Connect application, while sharing their comments with other Facebook members.

And during the Sunday night ceremony, those logging on to Oscars.com will be able to view exclusive footage of backstage coverage of the night’s events from the ``Backstage Cam’’, capturing behind-the-scenes action,; a ``Thank You Cam’’ which allows Oscar winners an opportunity to thank their supporters immediately after they’ve left the stage; along with the ``Press Room Cam’’, featuring winners in the press area after they leave the stage.

As usual, The New York Times have rolled out a banquet of online coverage for viewers to feast on.

For beginners, The Carperbagger, Melena Ryzik is out in LA, and will be blogging throughout the weekend; as will A.O. Scott and others; and just on Friday, The Times launched an impressive interactive graphic that shows users all the major winners stretching back to 1975.

For those who like to compete, The Times has posted an interactive ``Oscar Ballot’’ , that let’s viewers see how they’re doing with their picks compared with other Times' users.

The Times also will be featuring their robust Twitter module in which staffers like David Carr, Dave Itzkoff, Ryzik, Scott and others will providing up to the minute updates, comments, and observations.

Meanwhile, The L.A. Times, has raised the curtain on a new celebrity blog,``Ministry of Gossip’’ in which a group of bloggers provide users with the latest from the Red Carpet, inside tips during the ceremony; and slices of gossip from the Oscar parties.

The Times additionally unveiled a new film blog ``24 Frames’’, which features the latest Hollywood news, videos from staffers, Oscar predictions and a ton of other useful tidbits.

The Times has assembled a striking blog `Gold Derby’’ in gathering links to some of the best Oscar reporting from not only the Times but from other national publications as well. Viewers will also want to pop in on Pete Hammond’s ``Daily Dose of Awards’’  for the latest Oscar buzz.

The Washington Post will be feeding readers with Red Carpet updates and chime in about things as they happen on their Celebritolgy blog

And for those who only watch the Oscars to see which designers the celebrities chose, both The Washington Post and L.A. Times will be featuring fashion galleries on Sunday night.

While Hulu.com won’t be providing live streaming, they do have a collection on of ``Oscar Picks’’ on their homepage; and on Monday they will feature Barbara Walters Oscar special, including Red Carpet footage provided by E! and TV Guide as it comes in. A small collection of short clips will be streamed live on Hulu as early as Sunday night; with the longer versions available on Monday.

E! Online have a fun new gallery,  Real Men Take (Red Carpet) Risks; and a Prediction Quiz, which allows user to find out  they’re a Box Office Brainiac, Red Carpet Rebel or Total Indie Nut . And beginning Sunday, E! Online will begin posting their TwitPics.

Finally, the popular entertainment blog, Gawker will be blogging away beginning on Friday night.

If you’re miffed I missed pointing out any other major Oscar night blogs, write your Congressman or Congresswoman; I did my best.

Enjoy the show!

-Bill Lucey
WPLucey@gmail.com

***

Oscar Footnotes:

• Douglas Fairbanks Sr. served as host when the first annual Academy Awards was held at the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on May 16, 1929.
The winners had been announced three months prior to this black-tie awards ceremony, where approximately 300 guests were in attendance.

• In the 3rd year of the Academy Awards (November 5, 1930), a new selection criterion for selecting nominees had been established: winners would now be chosen by the full members of the Academy, numbering over 400, instead of a handful of judges. This policy would continue until 1936

• Song and Film Editing were introduced as new categories beginning with the 7th annual Academy Awards (February 27, 1935).

• Cinematographer Hal Mohr became the only write-in Academy Award winner during the 8th year of the awards (March 5, 1936). Write-ins on the ballot were discontinued the following year.

• Best supporting actors were recognized for the first time during the 9th annual Academy Awards (March 4, 1937) --but the awards came in the form of plagues, not full-sized statues. The first winners were Walter Brennan in Come and Get It and Gale Sondergaard in Anthony Adverse. Full-sized statutes for supporting roles would not be handed out until 1943.

• Beginning with the 13th annual Academy Awards (February 27, 1941), the winners were not made known to anyone in advance, except a select few from the certified public accounting firm of Price Waterhouse & Co, until the envelopes were unsealed on the night of the awards. Thus, the Oscar tradition: ``The envelope please!'' came into being.

• During the 13th annual Academy Awards presentation (February 27, 1941), FDR addressed the Academy through a piped in radio address that lasted 6 minutes, making him the first U.S. president to address the academy.
NOTE: In order to give the Republicans equal time, Wendell L. Wilkie, the Republican nominee during the 1940 presidential election, was the principal speaker at the Academy Awards the following year.

• On March 13, 1947, for the first time in the Academy's history, the general public was allowed to buy tickets and attend the awards ceremony, which was held at the Shrine Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles.

• During the Academy's 25th Anniversary show (March 19, 1953), the awards were broadcast on television for the first time.

• Sophia Loren earned an industry milestone during the 34th annual Academy Awards (April 9, 1962), when she became the first Hollywood actress to win an Oscar in the best actress category for a non-English speaking film, for her role in the Italian film (Two Women).

• Make-up artists were recognized in a new category beginning with the 54th annual Academy Awards (March 29, 1982). The first film honored in that category was An American Werewolf in London.

Showstoppers

• April 9, 1962: During the 34th annual Academy Award ceremony, Stan Berman, a notorious gatecrasher, managed to slip past 125 police guards and presented MC Bob Hope with a hand-made Oscar.

• March 27, 1973: During the 45th annual Academy Awards, a shocked worldwide television watched as an Indian woman: Sachen Little-Feather (later identified as actress Maria Cruz) stepped to the podium and informed the audience that Marlon Brando, whose name had just been announced as best actor for his role playing Don Vito Corleone in the Godfather, was turning down the award due to the film industry's distorted depiction of American Indians.

• April 2, 1974: During the 46th annual Academy Awards, Ropert Opal, 33, came on stage directly behind presenter David Niven and dashed naked across the stage in front of an astonished auditorium and live television audience. As if on cue, Niven shot back in what is considered to be one of the best ad libs in Academy history, when he replied: ``Isn't it fascinating, to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off his clothes and showing his shortcomings.''
NOTE: Opal was found murdered five years later in a paraphernalia sex shop in San Francisco.

Crimes and Misdemeanors

• When Zbigniew Rybczynski won an Oscar during the 55th annual Academy Awards (April 11, 1983) for an animated Short Film (Tango), he became the first Oscar winner to spend time in jail the night of the Oscars. Rybczynski got into a fight with security guards after he tried to re-enter the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion after stepping out for a cigarette break. He was arrested and sent to jail. It was a brief stay. Once he was identified, charges were dropped.

• The 60th annual Academy Awards (April 11, 1988), made history for having a nominee on the ballot, who was actively being sought by police for grand theft involving an extensive collection of library books. Gustav Hasford, who was nominated but didn't win in the screenplay division for Full Metal Jacket, was either a no-show or he didn't make his presence known.

• On March 20, 2000, two employees of the Roadway Express Co., in Bell Ca., Anthony Keith Hart and Edward Ledent, both 38, were arrested for stealing 55 Oscar statutes. Willie Fulgear, a junk salvager, eventually found 52 of those statutes as he sifted through a garbage bin in L.A.'s Koreatown.

Other Oscar Records:

• Wings is the only silent film to win an Academy Award (1927-1928).

• Cimarron (1930-1) was the only western ever to win best picture.

• It Happened One Night became the first comedy to win best picture; and additionally became the first motion picture to sweep all 5 major awards.

• Gone with the Wind (1939) was the first motion picture in color to win an Oscar.

• Haitti McDaniel became the first African American to win an Oscar (Gone With The Wind, 1939); and Rita Moreno, the first Latina to win an Oscar (West Side Story. 1961).

• The only person to actually go home with an Oscar for playing a character who lost at the Academy Awards was Maggie Smith for California Suite (1978.)

• Ben Hur (1959) became the only remake to win Best Picture.

• The Apartment (1960) was the last black and white film to win an Oscar.
Note: Schindler's List (1993), another Oscar recipient, was partially shot in black and white

Oscar Primer

Who makes the Oscar?

R.S. Owens Co. of Chicago

Dodge Tropy Co., in Carson Calif., about 20 miles from Hollywood, originally began manufacturing the statutes in 1931 until it closed its operations in 1984.

How big is the statute?

13 and one half inches tall; it weighs 8 pounds and one half pounds

What is it made of?

The exterior is gold plated.: 92.5 percent tin and 7.5 percent copper

What happened to the statutes George C. Scott and Marlon Brando refused?

In reality, their names were never engraved. They were immediately returned and put back in stock.

Are the statues copyrighted?

Yes. As of September 2, 1941, when the statute officially became copyrighted, Oscar winners were prohibited from selling their statute without first offering it back to the Academy for $10.00.

Also, since 1949, the statutes were issued a number, which started with the number 501.

-Bill Lucey

Source: 70 Years of the Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards'' By Robert Osborne

Looking For the Best Baseball Blogs on the Web?

Now that the Winter Olympics are behind us, baseball fans (and especially fantasy baseball fans) will soon begin checking in on their favorite Major League Baseball teams and players to see how they’re coming along in Florida and Arizona.

With the Internet, and in particular, blogosphere monopolizing practically ever phase of our daily reading habits, I decided to venture deep into the recesses of the Web, hoping to come up with some of the best baseball blogs available from coast-to-coast.

Here is what I was able to find.

One of the most popular baseball blogs is mlbtraderumors.com, a site not affiliated with Major League Baseball, but rather maintained by Tim Dierkes, a die-hard Cubs’ fan and resident of Roselle, Illinois.

Trade Rumors (more or less aggregated news) links to noteworthy and timely baseball news from a variety of leading U.S. newspapers, archives trade rumors by individual teams, informs readers of contract negotiations and even lets fans know what beat writers, like Joel Sherman of the N.Y. Post are tweeting about.

Another must read baseball blog is Joe Posnanski, a Cleveland native and senior writer at Sports Illustrated, who regularly posts interesting notes (not all baseball related), typically dealing with some obscure footnotes that he didn’t have room to fit into his regular SI column. Posnanski, for instance, shares with readers meeting legendary NFL broadcaster Al Michaels for the first time, who reveals to Posnanski his favorite all-time baseball game, along with his life long love affair with baseball, beginning at an early age, growing up in Brooklyn in a neighborhood just around the corner from Ebbett’s Field.

Major League Baseball maintains blogs by all their beat writers, which is regularly updated with spring training news and which players are fighting for positions, such as word that Mike Lowell is spending a lot of time at first base, presumably to increase his market value.

MLB also features MSNBC Keith Olbermann’s reflections on baseball; that is, when the liberal talking head isn’t exchanging blows with the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

If you took a random survey with baseball fans on a``must read blog’’; ESPN’s Buster Onley’s  would more than likely top the list. Onley, a senior writer for ESPN Magazine, who has been covering baseball since 1989, regularly maintains up-to-date baseball news; he seems particularly plugged into trade rumors and gives readers insight on what ‘s taking place at spring training with direct quotes from managers and players.

NOTE: Unfortunately, Onley’s blog is so popular; users will have to pass through a toll booth on ESPN’s Website, which costs $3.33 a month, and includes a one-year subscription to ESPN, the magazine.

ESPN additionally maintains  a wide collection of spring training blogs by staff writers, who file daily updates on individual teams from Florida and Arizona.

Also at ESPN is the ``SweetSpot Blog Network’’ which made its debut during the 2009 baseball playoffs with posts from Rob Neyer, a senior writer at ESPN.com , along with a team of other writers who report the latest MLB news. Right now, ``SweetSpot’’ is limited to six teams (accessible through a drop-down menu): the Red Sox, Dodgers, Twins, Yankees, Phillies, and Cardinals; but an ESPN spokesperson tells me there are plans to expand their coverage.

Yahoo takes great pride with its ``Big League Stew, which is ranked the 5th best blog by Ballhype.com, In addition to timely player and team news from spring training, ``Big League Stew’’ regularly posts interesting items about the business of baseball, such as a post on Friday, which reported MLB grossed a record $6.6 billion in 2009, a rare success story during the Great Recession.

 NBC Sports and Rotoworld have joined forces with ``Hardball Talk'', a wildly popular blog that used to be known as ``Circling the Bases’’ before being renamed. The blog is maintained by Craig Calcaterra, a lawyer and former District Attorney from Columbus, Ohio, who said goodbye to the dusty legal briefs to write full-time for NBC from the comfort of his home. Nice work if you can get it.

 Fox Sports, meanwhile, showcases its ``Baseball Buzz’’ blog,  which a Fox spokesperson said became an instant hit when it launched during the free agency period.

 And in a new feature, Fox Sports rolls out ``GM Corner” with Jim Bowden  who will conduct interviews with some of  baseball’s top brass on issues they confront every day, like the first installment, which deals with arbitration cases.

 Popular FS writers Ken Rosenthal and John Paul Morosi are back providing expert analysis and updates from both the Junior and Senior circuits.

 Another popular baseball blog making noise on the Web, is CBS Sports’ Scott Miller’s ``Bull Pennings’’   His signature ``Likes and Dislikes’’ at the end of each post is a nice touch, as is his``Rock 'N' Roll Lyric of the Day’’

 And for those statistical junkies and fantasy baseball participants, you might be interested to know that CBS Sports has teamed with Tableau Software (a leading provider of fast analytics and data visualization software) where fantasy baseball players on CBSSports.com will have access to a variety of interactive data visualizations, reports and analytics around fantasy baseball, making it possible to scrutinize numbers closer than ever before.

 If you’re preparing for fantasy baseball, you won’t want to miss John Sucich’s column, who provides spring training roundups, players to watch, and division by division analysis and notes.

Finally, curtain calls for the most innovative name for a blog, belongs to Peter Schmuck's ``The Schmuck Stops Here'' from The Baltimore Sun, who provides readers with short bite size, but always informative, slices of information on professional sports in Baltimore, including the Orioles.

 After spending the last couple days searching for the best baseball blogs on the Web and getting recommendations from other experts, I can now see why the newspaper industry is struggling the way that it is. 

How can print newspapers possibly compete with this high-speed analysis, team updates at the blink of an eye, along with all these other online stastical bells and whistles found on so many Websites?

It didn’t seem all that long ago when I used to have to call a 1-800 number for baseball updates, stay glued to the bottom of my television screen for ticker updates on ESPN, or wait for the morning newspaper, hoping it got the West Coast and extra-inning games in on time.\

However much the Internet has changed our daily newspaper habits, I still have too much respect for so many seasoned baseball writers to give up on them, even with the glut of information available on the Web.

In particular, I read with great regularity, Paul Hoynes and Terry Pluto from The Plain Dealer in Cleveland; Dan Shaughnessy and Bob Ryan from the Boston Globe; Yankees and Mets coverage from The New York Times , The N.Y. Daily News;  from the N.Y. Post,  Joel Sherman’s ``Hardball’’  and Mike Vaccaro’s ``Vac’s Whacks’’

 For those living in the Northeast and enduring this miserably cold snow-filled winter, remember Opening Day is only 35 days away;  maybe just the thought of it might warm your heart and lift your spirits.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
 

How Do Laid-Off Journalists Reinvent Their Careers?

 
It’s not exactly breaking news to report how the newspaper industry has suffered immeasurable damage during the rapid migration to the Internet, made all the worse by the Great Recession, with lost advertising revenue translating into the shedding of jobs at an alarming rate.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, newsrooms have lost 9,700 jobs from 2001 through 2009, representing a 17 percent decline from 56,400 to 46,700.

With stacks of newsroom employees having been laid-off or forced to accept buyouts from their companies; a large restless battalion of reporters, copy editors, layout editors, and news researchers find themselves out of work, looking for new careers or ways to reinvent themselves in a new competitive technology-based environment without knowing which way to turn.

It can be a frightening, to be sure, not knowing what the future holds in a labor market with unemployment stuck at a grim 9.7 percent, with limited jobs available, especially within the media industry.

Typically, the sage words given to newsroom employees on their way out the door is to find a way to reinvent yourself.

Splendid advice. But unless you’re Houdini or David Copperfield, it can be quite the challenge for someone in their late 40’s 50’s, or even 60’s for example, to find ways to reinvent themselves.

But before raising the white flag and crying uncle, there are plenty of resources available online, offering video tutorials, webinars, and career tips to those out of work newspaper employees’ trying to acquire new skills and become more marketable.

The Poynter Institute, a school and resource depository for journalists, located in St. Petersburg Fla, offers a variety of journalism courses through their News University website from journalism basics to photo journalism, producing news with your mobile phone, and variety of other ways to develop new skill sets.

Many of these offerings, moreover, are free. And during the coming year, Poynter will begin offering entrepreneurial courses for journalists and citizens interested in creating their own startups.

An often overlooked organization that offers a treasure of training tools is the Special Libraries Association (SLA), a professional organization for librarian information specialists working in media, government, law and non-profit organizations.

Membership is $185 for those making between $34,000-75,000 a year. However, if you are unemployed or underemployed, and make less than $18,000, an SLA membership is only $40.000. Membership then gives you access to SLA’s online programs, which offers a number of online tutorials, including social networking training, how to create podcasts, setting up your own Wikipedia, converting your articles and text into Adobe, and searching public records.

One major hurdle many former newspaper employees are finding by going it alone on their own websites and personal blogs is they are without many of the handy tools they had in the newsroom, such as Nexis and Factiva. Searching through Google News and the New York Times historical archives, can only carry you so far.

If you are under a tight budget, buying a subscription to Nexis is practically out of the question.

Thankfully, however, there are some options worth pursuing.

LexisNexis and MediaBistro have partnered to offer access to Nexis’ archives, a perfect tool for independent journalists. Once establishing a membership with AvantGuild, Nexis archives, which includes thousands of national and international sources, are available to members for $59.00 a month.

Even if this package is still too rich for your blood, a spokesperson from Nexis said the company ``will work with independent journalists directly to try and put together a package that makes sense for their unique needs.’’

Aside from offering Nexis archives, MediaBistro also features a variety of online courses taught through their ``On Demand Video’’ section, which offers hundreds of tutorials on using social media platforms or building a media business through user content and engagement.

Yet another alternative available to independent journalists and news researchers looking for news articles is through NewsLibrary,  where millions of full-text articles nationwide are available for $19.95 a month or $2.95 per article.

And for those hard to find news articles, Newsbank Inc. additionally offers News in History, featuring news articles from all 50 U.S. states published from 1800 through 2000 and searchable through a single database. The subscription is $9.95 a month or $69.95 for an annual membership.

But even with all these new online searching tools, photo gadgets, and social media platforms saturating journalism, and being embraced by newspapers, seasoned professionals caution that news professionals shouldn’t neglect the basics of being a good reporter or a sound news researcher.

Contacted on her cell phone, Dana Canedy, a senior editor at The New York Times, whose job responsibilities also include recruiting, tells me ``despite the painful time the industry is going through, we shouldn’t forget that whatever the medium and whatever kind of delivery system, whether it be through the Internet or print publications, the same principles apply, the same skills sets still apply.’’

While all the bells and whistles of the new journalism (twittering, social networking, capturing images with your cell phone are certainly an added bonus to any newsroom); Canedy thinks they are only part of the package of what most newspapers are looking for from their newsroom staff.

It was reporters fluent in French, Canedy points out, that became indispensable to editors with the Haiti earthquake; and strong vivid concise reporting skills that led to staffers being dispatched to Iran that became important, more important than podcasts and social networking.

Colleen Eddy, Director of the Career Center at Poynter, tells me the most common attributes editors’ tell her they are looking for are those individuals who are ``adaptable to change, able to learn on the fly, have technical savvy, and know the value of teamwork and collaboration.’’

And for those out of work journalists, who think they are being pushed aside by a younger breed of tech journalists, Eddy says, forget about age. Instead, focus on your value by getting a career coach who will help you list your most transferable skills and market yourself. ``Network, network, network! and stay young at heart’’ Eddy stresses.

Who can argue with staying young at heart?

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]