As I was editing All Around Wise this morning, I came across an education brief about a local student who had been named to a nation-wide “honor.”

I decided to look into it a little deeper and realized it was one of those “honors” where you are included in a book and, for a price, you and your family can own the book as a memento.

We see this quite a bit, and we decided how to handle it a few years back. For these types of honors, we will list the student’s name and say he or she is honored by a “for-profit” publication. We still want to honor the students for performing well enough to be selected, but the press releases designed by these companies, filled out by the recipient and sent to the newspaper, are thinly veiled advertising products. Also, many times the list of students are sold to marketing companies.

The education newspaper Education Week published this article a few years back regarding these types of honors.

Punctuation is delicious

Is a question mark in the shape of meatloaf forming over your head right now? Read on.

Today is National Punctuation Day. According to the official Web site of the event, National Punctuation Day is “a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotes, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis.” Or, as the Web site goes on to say, “the holiday that reminds America that a semicolon is not a surgical procedure.”

I found out about this one through one of the hundreds of e-mails I get per day. For all the silliness, the site does have some good information on the correct usage of punctuation - handy information for both journalists and non-journalists alike.

And if you are looking for an early Christmas present for your high school English teacher, click here

By the way, the Web site contains the recipe for that delicious-looking, question mark-shaped meatloaf pictured above.

Sometimes ideas turn out good and sometimes, not so much.

About a month or two ago, I hatched a plan that I thought was sure to be popular with the readers of our sports pages. After meeting with Sports Editor Robert Morgan, Web master Todd Griffith, Graphic Artist Andrew May and Photographer Joe Duty, we came up with a promotion aimed at high school football fans. Our goal was to find the most passionate fan in Wise County. We envisioned readers being able to log onto our Web site each week to vote on their favorite fan, have selected contestants make a video and crown a winner as the Super Fan of Wise County.

It sounded good, but we weren’t sure about what kind of response we would get.

Now we know.

After a month of promoting the project, we have received only one entry. Maybe we misjudged the passions of our local fans. Or maybe people are more concerned with politics since this is a presidential election year. Whatever the reason, we didn’t get the response we had hoped for.

So I guess we’ll scrap this idea, but that won’t keep us from trying to come up with new ways to get readers involved with their local newspaper.

As always, we welcome ideas from readers. Tell us what you’d 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.

We deal with ethical decisions nearly every week at the newspaper, and I will talk about them from time to time on this blog. Last week, the news that the late Decatur Catholic priest Francis A. Zimmerer had been accused of sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy in 1978 brought up a question I don’t think I’ve dealt with since I’ve been editor: how do you handle a story where the accused has been dead for 25 years?

Like any story, we had to weigh many factors, including the “newsworthiness” vs. any ethical dilema in reporting a serious criminal accusation against someone who obviously can not defend himself.

Is the story newsworthy? Definitely.

Does the information come from a credible source? Yes, the press release we received was from the Fort Worth Catholic Diocese, and reporter Chris Butler called the Diocese for additional information.

Does the information serve a purpose? Yes, the press release itself asked that anybody else who was abused by Zimmerer should call a sexual abuse hotline at (817) 560-2452 ext. 900.

One anonymous commenter on local attorney Barry Green’s blog, Liberally Lean from the Land of Dairy Queen, took us to task for making the priest story our lead story. He did not say what he thought should have been the lead story.

On Monday, we saw why it was important to lead with the priest story. Since we and other news outlets reported the abuse allegation, two more people have come forward who say they were abused by Zimmerer. Again, as was the case last week, the Catholic Diocese would only say the accusations were “credible” and would not comment on specific evidence.

I would like to know what you thought about this story and how we handled it.

Today's front page of the Houston Chronicle

We’ve heard quite a bit about the power outages, flooding and incredible damage Hurricane Ike left in its wake. Here is a message center to keep up with how our print journalist family handled the storm. And be sure to check out the Chronicle’s Web site.

Newark command center

We tried something a little new this weekend, and I’d like to get your feedback on it.

Last Friday, knowing Hurricane Ike was about to make a direct hit on the Houston and Galveston areas, our Web master, Todd Griffith, came up with the idea of creating a blog dedicated to Wise County’s response to the hurricane. We knew shelters were being set up and volunteers were mobilizing to help.

The potential for a major story was forming, but the story would not be in the paper until the following Wednesday since we went to press with the weekend paper Friday night just hours before the hurricane hit. By Wednesday, the news would be old.

A blog allowed us to keep readers informed with up-to-the-minute updates and photos.
Photographer Joe Duty did great work throughout the weekend in capturing the images and words of those who evacuated from the Gulf Coast. And Todd did great work keeping the blog updated.

So my question to you is was it helpful? Did you check back regularly to see what was going on? Did you like the content? Were there areas that we missed?
Do you have your own Hurricane Ike story to tell? Share it here.

Let me admit right off the bat, I’m brand new to the blogging arena. Sure, I’ve read blogs for years, but this is the first time I’ve been a blog author.

My name is Brian Knox, and I’m the editor of the Wise County Messenger. I’ve tossed around the idea of an editor’s blog for some time now. I’ve even been a regular visitor to a couple of editor’s blogs from a few daily newspapers. What I like about the concept is it gives the editor another tool to communicate with readers, and isn’t that what our business is all about?

I envision this blog to be a place you can go to get a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on with a community newspaper. I’ll explain why we do some of the things we do. This will also be a place where I’ll pose questions to readers and seek feedback on ideas. Readers can also pose questions or suggest topics to me.

Other than that, I’ll try to keep the posts somewhat journalism-related.

So to end my first post as a blogger, I’d like to share one of my favorite journalism quotes from Thomas Jefferson:
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”