Posting our blogs on Facebook

We've made a small adjustment to our Facebook page; now, in addition to news updates and other straight-to-page posts that we add, all of the posts onto our blogs will appear as well. We've put together a nice stable of writers over the past year, and we think you'll enjoy checking them out here.

The commentary continues

The latest commentary on the Phoebe Prince case came today via a Boston Globe column by Kevin Cullen, who spoke with all-but certain incoming Northwestern DA David Sullivan about his stance and also writes about the newest response from Prince's parents.

Heading to the Winter Olympics? Let us know

Are you heading to Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics in any capacity -- spectator, official, interested observer? Give us a shout if you are.

Editor's Pick: My most memorable video of the year

One thing we've been able to do this year on GazetteNET -- and a thing that's been a long-held goal of this news organization -- is to really ramp up our ability to tell a wide variety of stories on video, a medium that certainly befits a Website and complements a print newspaper well. Over the past couple of years, and particularly in 2009, we've tackled breaking news and a wide range of features with an eye toward extending the value of stories for our audience. Our numbers say you approve, so we'll stick with it.

A big reason for that is the contributions of a wide variety of staffers and college interns. All of our photographers (Carol Lollis, Jerrey Roberts, Gordon Daniels and Kevin Gutting) now shoot video, and with predictable excellence given their excellent eyes for images and how they can tell a story; a couple of them have mastered production as well, and 2010 should yield a full raft of fully produced video stories from that department. Similarly, our staff reporter Catherine Baum has taken to the world of video with a fresh eye and meticulous attention to storytelling and detail. And it looks like we have a couple more staffers in the pipeline.

We also rely quite a bit on interns from the college community -- mainly the Five Colleges, of course, but also from other institutions. Modern journalism students are being taught (and correctly so) that simply scribbling it down for print isn't a full approach to their professional futures anymore, and they're responding with a solid interest in multimedia forms of storytelling. I was fortunate in 2009 to have the chance to work with a couple of interns exclusively assigned to GazetteNET multimedia; throughout the summer, UMass senior Kylie Jelley took every oddball assignment I threw at her and came back with some sterling video work and a lot of improvements to our overall presentation. I also got some good contributions from interns assigned to other departments in the newsroom who sought a chance to do some multimedia work. This wonderful piece from summer features desk intern Chelsey Pollock is actually my favorite from the entire year; she really caught a great look at the women who are skating in the revival of Roller Derby and why they're motivated to go after such a rough, demanding sport.

But I think the most memorable video of our year here came from my fall GazetteNET intern, UMass senior Sara Cody. Early in her excellent stint here, I assigned Sara to go to the Amherst 250th anniversary parade on a rainy late-September Sunday and see what she could bring back. The result was a great look at a once-in-a-generation event that will serve as a solid record of a rare milestone in that storied town's history -- not just any old parade, but one that both marked the depth of Amherst's history and captured the people and places of its current moment. It really was one for the books, both for Amherst and for GazetteNET. Great job, Sara.

All of our videos remain available at our GazetteNET Videos page and at GazetteNET's YouTube channel, and we hope you'll keep watching and sending us your feedback. See you in 2010...

GazetteNET's late Saturday morning

As one reader noted, it would have been a perfect morning to read GazetteNET online rather than going out into the subzero cold to get the print edition off the driveway. Unfortunately, a key computer process failed overnight, meaning that we had to post GazetteNET's stories manually -- and late. Our apologies for the wait; we're already working on the problem.

Bolstering the ranks

Hey, the Cube is a little more full again! We welcomed a new web developer, R.J. Steiner, onto the staff last week to replace our recently departed colleague Chad Mazzola, who was the guy who brainstormed the initial implementation of this site. That once again brings the New Media department here up to its full complement of four + intern -- counting myself as a full New Media person, that is, although I'm also a full Editorial person too. It's a bit of an odd slot I inhabit here (is it possible to be a 200% person?), although entirely logical in its way.

Anyway, R.J's arrival is most welcome here. I didn't sit in on his interviews, although I could hear them well enough right behind me, and we could tell immediately that he was seriously into Drupal, our Web software. That's still kind of unusual in the developer community (although we think it'll be the hot platform for this stuff a year or two out), so we were happy to bring him aboard. He'll be working mainly on pioneervalley.com, one of our new sites here -- that's a work in progress that'll focus mainly on entertainment and lifestyle in the Valley, with some forward-looking search at its core. A very basic version of that exists now, but R.J. and ace web developer Chip Kaye will be building that out far more extensively, while also tending to this humble little site.

One of these days, I'll remember my point-and-shoot and give you all a View into the Cube....

Elastic

The Cube is big. Really, really big. As big as I need it to be. For instance, yesterday (as it will again tomorrow) it stretched all the way to Stratford, Connecticut, in southwest CT on Long Island Sound, where is where I worked from to get the day's initial site live.

What was I doing in Connecticut, anyway? Here's the answer...

Lots of news organizations are decentralized. In a sense, they always have been; major newspapers had bureaus all over the world. Ironically, papers like the Boston Globe are now retrenching and closing many of those as they look to relocalize and keep their costs down; foreign offices are an easy target for cost-cutters. A paper like the Gazette, on the other hand, is already inherently local -- the Valley is the area, and we have to be here to cover that well. But the Web makes it simpler to do under-the-hood work from pretty much anywhere that has a broadband connection. Now, if I can find out that Tahiti does, I can lobby for a bureau there. (Although my bosses may decide that Bangalore is a better idea.....)