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Missed it … by that much

By lgiguere on September 6, 2010

Earl missed us, and it seemed, by a lot. And by Saturday it seemed all the attention we gave the storm was unwarranted. We put out tips on how to prepare on Wednesday afternoon to be sure you’d have a good day to get ready. Well, all I can say now is, keep your storm gear on hand; there’s still a couple months to go in the hurricane season. Better safe than sorry.

I’m old enough to remember the hurricanes of the early- and mid-50s when my home state of Rhode Island took some big hits each fall. And the in Connecticut there was Gloria in 1985, which struck a pretty tough blow in Connecticut. I was around for that one.

Of course the storm against which we can measure all others was the Great Hurricane of 1938, which barreled up the East Coast to catch Long Island, Connecticut, and Rhode Island unawares. Back in the storms of the 50s, flooding in Providence still was measured against the marks of 1938. For more on the 1938 storm, check out Wikipedia’s article at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_Hurricane_of_1938

Or read this dramatic account of the storm’s impact on Rhode Island:

Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938. R.A. Scotti.Back Bay Books; Little, Brown and Company, New York, Boston.$14.95, 280 pages

We’ve been lucky. Let’s hope these big storms keep missing, but however much.

Lee Giguere, Assistant Managing Editor

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Why did we cover that?

By lgiguere on September 1, 2010

I hope you’re not disappointed if our reporters and photographers haven’t visited your child’s school this year. This is one of those times we brace ourselves for those calls that begin: “How come you didn’t … ” Usually, there’s really no answer to that question, and I don’t think most people who call us with it expect one. You just want us to know you’re disappointed and wish we’d done something differently. But we just can’t make it to every school, even though we’d like to; we just don’t have that many reporters and photographers, and we don’t have enough newsprint for all the stories and photos they would come back with. So how do we pick, you wonder?

The paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould stressed the importance of contingency in the development of species. The particular characteristics of a species is the result of the specific circumstances it lived in. A newspaper is like that (no, Gould didn’t say that too). But what goes into your newspaper every day is the result of a whole bunch of circumstances, from which editor is doing which task — for we all have slightly different tastes for news — to what else is happening that day.

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Speaking of gambling in Manchester . . .

By dhardy on August 27, 2010

As we’ve been covering the opening of the new OTB parlor at Shea’s American Bar & Grill here in Manchester, it occurred to me that a section of the JI’s regular news website actually functions a lot like a one-armed bandit of sorts. If you’ve seen the JIBlogs tab on our home page, you’ll know what I mean. But let’s face it – turning the JI’s home page into a slot machine is right up there among our best ideas for a new business model. It goes hand-in-hand with putting nicotine in the ink we use to print the paper. Which we haven’t tried. Yet.

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Sometimes a photo says it all

By dhardy on August 26, 2010

JI photo editor Jessica Hill was on a freelance assignment for the Associated Press on Wednesday in Windsor Locks, where about 110 soldiers of the Connecticut National Guard’s 250th Engineer Co. were returning home after being deployed to Iraq last winter.

Hill said today that these types of homecoming events are chaotic and difficult to shoot because people tend to leave quickly, so on Wednesday she picked out a few people before the troops arrived and managed to come up with an absolute gem of an image. The N.Y. Times saw the picture on the AP wire and featured the shot today on their Lens blog.

And the big bonus was that this woman is from the JI-land town of Ellington . . .  It wasn’t the only great shot from the assignment, either. Check out the rest of her images from Windsor Locks here.

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The same, but different

By lgiguere on August 26, 2010

The first day of school reminds me of the cyclic nature of the news business: seasons and holidays, elections and budgets come one after another each year. (The first “first day of school” for the JI this year is today in Windsor.) When we embrace these repetitions, we honor them as traditions; when we dislike them, we call our days tedious. Our work as journalists at the JI is to find the fresh expression of these cycles and bring them to you. Today, we’ll be looking for children who are anxious or eager, and adults who recognize the newness of the day and understand that it’s just one moment of many in life. So here’s to finding what’s different and new about today’s start of the school year while acknowledging its place in our personal and community traditions.

Lee Giguere, Assistant Managing Editor

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Cheesy or newsy?

By lgiguere on August 25, 2010

Every editor has a personal calculus for computing newsworthiness. My includes significance, interest (to the reader .. and the editor), unexpectedness, proximity, and readability. Well, the “crispy cheese crisis” might not rank high in signficance, but it certainly was close to home and readable. I’m glad we were able to give you something enjoyable at the end of your day Tuesday — something to balance the troubling news of a fatal crash and the distant anger of China over the botched hostage rescue in the Philippines.

We’ll be watching for your feedback, as Doug mentioned. It’s good to hear that readers liked what we did. Your response will help us adjust that newsworthiness calculus we depend on each day.

Lee Giguere, Assistant Managing Editor

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Of cheese, iconic burgers, and use of the word ‘crisis’

By dhardy on August 25, 2010

I have to admit that I was a little concerned about the headline on Tuesday’s lead story out of Manchester. For a while I thought we might get calls or letters suggesting that we were insensitive to publish a tongue-in-check headline about Shady Glen’s difficulties maintaining the taste of it’s renowned crispy cheese.

Why? Because Kym Soper’s Crispy Cheese Crisis story shared Page One with a standalone image of police investigating the death of a man on the railroad tracks in Enfield, as well as an AP story about a hostage situation in the Philippines that ended with nine people killed.

Cheese crisis? Really?

And then there’s the real kicker – the idea that former New York Yankee Johnny Damon might return to the Red Sox. Now that, friends, is a crisis.

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Welcome to The Newsroom, a collaborative JI staff blog

By dhardy on August 23, 2010

COPYEDISAURUS

Journalism is changing quickly these days. The Internet has opened up a Pandora’s box of potential for the news industry in every format available. Enterprising reporters can cut out the middle and market information directly to readers, listeners, and viewers.

But what’s often missing in web-only news products is fact-based writing and perspective. Institutional knowledge of a topic can only be gained over a long period, and it is generally passed on from one generation to the next. There are community-generated tools designed to replace this – like wikipedia – but good journalism needs to come directly from the source.

Either way, the guard is changing quicker than ever in the print news industry as reporters arrive from college and stay for shorter and shorter stints. There was a time when employers would frown upon an applicant who had stayed only six months at a previous job. These days, it would take a lot of misguided chutzpah to refuse a good applicant on that basis. The economy and the dwindling prospects of mainstream news organizations require journalists to stay busy, flexible, and to think ahead. The more you can learn – quickly – the better off you’ll be down the road.

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