We here at the Messenger pride ourselves on trying to be as technically savvy as possible. We’re working as hard and as fast (as deadlines will allow…) to make WCMessenger.com even bigger and better. We’re posting to Facebook virtually every day, and our Twitter following has now grown to 176 (thanks everyone for the follows!). Flickr will (hopefully) be the new home to the photography of the great Joe Duty and everyone else here on staff, and our YouTube channel is getting lots of hits.

And now we’re working on something new that will hopefully take our flagship online product, Update, to the next level:

http://www.wcmessenger.com/update/beta/

This new format will allow for bigger photos, larger video, improved RSS feeds, social-networking integration, and… wait for it… wait for it… reader comments!

It’s still a work in progress, but if anyone gets a chance to check it out and give us your feedback on it, please contact me at webmaster@wcmessenger.com

Again, this is a pre-launch beta, so you won’t find a link to it on our homepage just yet, but it is live and active, so if you feel like it, please try reading Update this way if it suits your tastes.

Thanks everyone for reading!

Todd A. Griffith
Webmaster/Production Manager
Wise County Messenger

Stephen Colbert

Among the several journalism publications I receive regularly is the bi-monthly International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors. The publication always has a journalism-related quote on the front page, and this month’s quote comes from the host of show that is a guilty pleasure of mine: Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report. The phrase was no doubt uttered at some point during his satirical show. Here’s his take on the state of newspapers:

“The impending death of the newspaper industry: where will they print the obituary?”

Ironically, the obituary page might be the last place you will see cuts from newspapers. They are traditionally one of the most read pages in the paper. Newspapers can change up their paper’s format, but they’d better think long and hard about making changes to obits. Even on our Web page, if you look at our most read stories each week, you will normally see at least one or two obituaries.

Here’s a copy of an e-mail I got from a reader last month regarding obituaries: “I wish the Messenger would tell more obituaries earlier. I don’t get my Messenger until one day later and after 3 o’clock in the afternoon — too late for me to know who and more about deaths in our town. The information about funerals and family are too late to attend. Please put the obits earlier in the update.”

We do, of course, list funerals in the Update Monday through Friday. As one familiar face in the Messenger is known to say, “I had to look at the Update to see if I was in there.”

Find peace any way you can in the face of road work.

We kicked off a new feature in the paper Sunday that we hope readers will find informative. We are trying to compile information about road construction or maintenance projects, or any other situation where traffic might be impacted, throughout Wise County. The plan is to publish a map each Sunday for the traffic situations motorists might expect for the coming week.

I’ll also try to put the report in written form in Monday’s Update.

Of course, as we learn of traffic situations, we will post them on Update as well throughout the week.

But we also need your help. You can help be our eyes on the road. If you come across a road construction project, road closure or other traffic situation we might have missed, let us know. Call or e-mail news@wcmessenger.com.

We’re also working on getting the map on our Web site that we can update as we hear of road situations.

By the way, the photo above was taken a couple of years ago in a construction area near New Fairview, I believe. The man striking the Lotus-like position (no doubt on a dare from photographer Joe Duty) is reporter Brandon Evans, who has been gone for a year but plans on returning to the Messenger this July. It will be great to have Brandon back - let’s just hope Joe doesn’t have him sitting in the middle of too many roadways.

It sometimes seems like the “bad news” comes in bunches around here. Just take a look at our front page today and you’ll see what I mean. It reminds me of a week last spring that it seems like Update was filled with tragic news. My wife called me and, half-jokingly, said she wanted to see “rainbows, puppies and sunshine” in her Update. So I made her up a “mock” Update with such headlines as “BREAKING NEWS - PUPPIES ARE CUTE” and “SUN TO COME UP TODAY.” My last entry was “WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY? – Please use the rest of Update to draw pictures of what makes you happy.”

I still have that “mock” Update tacked up next to my computer for weeks such as this. In the span of 36 hours last weekend, we had the death of a 15-year-old in Aurora in an accident with a fence, a family of five lost their home and all their possessions in a fire in Alvord (see above photo) and a 5-year-old (her birthday is today) killed in a car wreck near Lake Bridgeport. I’ve recently written about the challenge of covering fatalities, especially children, so I won’t go into that topic too much again.

Even in the midst of the tragedy, I can see good. The good often comes from readers who see our reports and e-mail or call the office asking how they can help. Here is an e-mail I received just hours after we posted the news this weekend about the fire:

“This article that is found in the update online-other than the red cross helping the family-has there been a fund for donations set up yet? Or could this family need some furniture or clothing? We have a sofa and a chair and a coffee table that could use a new home. These pieces are in excellent condition-they just need to be picked up. Best of all they are free. I know how it is to do without-especially after a fire; I just want to help if I can. Please contact me via email if you know of any specifics.”

If we hear of any ways you can help out with any of these families who have undergone tremendous loss, we will let you know.

As reporters, one of the first things we learn is how to handle the emotions of a fatal wreck. Just like police and rescue workers, you have to develop a mindset to handle what you see and hear at these scenes. This mindset can often be viewed by some as “callousness,” and maybe it is in a way. I can tell you for sure that despite what many people think about the media, no one “enjoys” covering these events.

The challenge becomes even greater when the fatal wreck involves a child or teenager, as the one this morning did. A Decatur High School sophomore was killed less than a mile away from school. We broke the news in Update this morning, then followed up with more later that morning. We do not publish the names of victims until the next of kin is notified. And in this morning’s case, when we learned the name from officers after the family was notified, we waited just a little longer in order for the school to have time to let students know.

It’s always a delicate situation, and reporting information of this nature is a huge responsibility that we do not take lightly. We decided to go ahead and publish a brief story on our Web site so readers would know as much information as we know - especially since our next printed edition of the newspaper won’t hit newsstands until Saturday. Our sports editor even found a photo of Chelsea we published on the cover of All Around Wise last September. Our job is to keep the public informed, and often breaking news on the Web is the best way to do that.

As many of our readers have already commented at the end of our story, our thoughts and prayers are with the family and classmates during this difficult time. This is indeed some of the hardest reporting journalists have to make, but we will do our best.

If you haven’t checked out our multimedia presentation of our “Up from the Ashes” project, I’d encourage you to do so. Our photographer Joe Duty has done excellent work on his 10-month long project following a Paradise couple who lost their home in the large grass fire last January. The Web site also features photos, stories and video from the original fire. Our summer intern, Erika Pedroza, wrote an accompanying story in last Sunday’s Messenger. Production Manager Todd Griffith also did excellent work designing the layout for the story and creating the Up from the Ashes Web site.

In a way, it is fitting that our most in-depth soundslide video feature would be about the fire. The Paradise fire was our very first breaking news video posted on our Web site. It proved to be so popular that it crashed our server (the problem has since been corrected.) We hope you enjoy this new feature. Let us know what you think of it and offer your suggestions of the types of video you would like to see.

Our daily Update (produced each morning Monday through Friday) may be our most popular product. Usually when someone calls to have an event listed, the request is for Update first before the newspaper.

We often get requests from people to run the Update item “every day this week” or “two or three times this week and again next week.” Some are disappointed to learn that we only run Update items two times.

Here’s why we do it: space and impact.

Our printed Update is a single sheet of paper. Once we start getting many items into the Update, we have two options: make the point size smaller or start cutting. You can only make the text so small before it becomes a real pain to read. The better option is to move items into the next day’s Update if possible.

Also, once you’ve read an Update item a couple of times, it starts to lose its impact. Your eyes begin to skip over that item because you are already familiar with it. That space would be better served by a new Update item.

By best advice is to make an Update request a week or two before an event so it has a better chance of making it in. If you e-mail an item, be sure and mention “update” in the subject line.

I’ll talk more about Update in future posts.