Code names update

So I just learned that what I wrote about two posts ago is standard procedure for calling into the Saratoga Springs Police Department's tip line. My rant still stands.

I would think the concern about reprisal for giving up information in a case would override any desire to call into police TWICE to offer up details on how, where and when you want your reward money to be delivered. If a person is concerned they will be targeted for putting a call into the police with their real name and a specified request for anonymity, I would imagine they'd be just as paranoid operating under a fictional guise.

But I don't know. Maybe there's comfort under a mask, even if it's only imagined. Regardless, if you know who vandalized the senior citizens' center van, you should tell authorities.

So I learned something today. And I upped my total posts this month to 10.

Analyzing myself

If you check out the right-most column of this blog, you'll see the number of posts I've made each month. For November of this year and including this post, I'm currently up to nine. My record thus far is 10 per month.

Which strikes me as kind of sad.

So I hope to break my current record and get a few more posts in before December (and my one year anniversary with this newspaper) rolls around.

I think part of my renewed interest in blogging is my self-competitive nature, in this case fueled by tracking traffic on this page. I've been using Google Analytics for several months now, but during most of that time there wasn't much to see - my visits per day were in the single digits, sometimes a big fat zero. Since the relaunch of the site earlier this month though, my traffic has exploded - in relative terms - and I'm eager to develop an audience. Let's take a peek:


That big spike in the middle corresponds to the site revamp, where, under the "Latest Updates" section of the homepage, I had directed people to my blog to learn more. As you can see, 60 people took me up on the offer.

Traffic has been so-so since then, but as you can see, better than I'd received prior to Nov. 12. The spike at the very left is yesterday (33 visitors), again prompted by a notice under "Latest Updates" that I had posted a new entry here. The plummet from 30 to two immediately after is because today is still young.

I recommend Google Analytics. One of these days I need to play around with it even more to see what kind of neat tricks are available, because I'm sure I'm only scrapping the surface of what I can do. I know there's plenty of other offerings out there to monitor site traffic, so anyone with recommendations is welcome to leave them here for others.

What will your code name be?

I couldn't stop chuckling as I wrote this up: Reward offered for info on van vandals.

Part of the humor is the sheer roundabout inanity of the entire process, and part is comic speculation about the creative, inappropriate code names under which people will offer up information - accurate or otherwise. And of course, the other part is the examples given in the press release: Donald Duck and Magic Girl.

As for sportswriter Stan Hudy: He'll be operating under the code name "Client No. 9."

I'm not faulting the intent behind the effort, but the whole thing is just silly. It strikes me as a plot cooked up after a weekend spent watching too many spy-genre spoofs.

Oh, and just to respond to the comment left under the original article that appeared on Nov. 20: You're correct, "graffiti" is not an established verb in any dictionary I checked. However, I think its use in this instance stands for a few reasons: First, the rules of style and grammar are more flexible in headlines, which traditionally are limited by space restrictions.

Granted, that's not the case in the online realm, which brings me to my second point: It's the same usage one might find other common nouns in: Take "I'm going to pencil you into my schedule" or "Fork the money over" or "I'm going to pen an angry missive to the editor about the paper's use of grammar" as examples. According to the 10th edition of Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, those verb variants of the words came into usage in the 16th, 15th and 13th centuries, respectively.

So you see, we're just on the cutting edge of language evolution.

Grammarian zealots and style purists are free to argue with me on this point, but I think those who make their living by the word are responsible for finding a balance that both upholds established form and embraces language's perpetual creation.

First podcast

I meant to write more last week, but it just wasn't in the cards. With our assistant managing editor on vacation, her daily tasks fell to me. Between keeping the site up, coordinating with reporters and photographers about the the day's coverage and planning the next day's paper, I just couldn't fit a blog post in.

Anyhow, hopefully by now you've listened, but in case you missed it, be sure to check out The Saratogian's first podcast. Reporter Andrew J. Bernstein and I sat down last Thursday to discuss the recent developments concerning the flow of VLT aid money to the city of Saratoga Springs and Saratoga County.

Technical difficulties kept the file from getting uploaded on Thursday, but our company's online go-getters worked the code on the site so the file would play in a little browser plug-in, and it was up and running late Friday morning. Eventually I'd like to add the option of having files downloadable in various formats (Windows media, Quicktime, mp3) so users can listen to them on the go. For now though, this is just fine.

I'd like these podcasts to become a regular feature. For now I envision a roundable of sorts: open discussion about the biggest local headlines between myself and our reporting/news staff, ideally working in details or information that didn't necessarily make it into printed articles. I think the beauty of this format is that, from the production standpoint, it's pretty straighforward: Turn voice recorder on, talk, turn voice recorder off, pull file from voice recorder, upload. As much as I enjoy editing video, it can be time consuming.

Andrew described the experience as "very college radio" when we were finished. Admittedly, but there's nothing wrong with that given the goal of the exercise. We'll see how the concept grows as we do more.

That said, I don't anticipate one this week, primarily because I'm working today and Tuesday and taking the rest of the week off for the holiday. But we'll try and jump right back in next week.

Saratogian Web polls

I just wanted to let people know the poll question hasn't disappeared from our site. It's just moved locations.

It's no longer displayed on the home page. Rather, each section's main page will be able to host its own poll. With our clean URLs, it's just a matter of navigating to the appropriate page.

For example: Our current poll question is "Do you support city and county officials' efforts to get VLT aid funding restored to the 2009-2010 state budget?" (If you haven't already: Read about it here, check out Andrew Bernstein's recent blog entry about it, or look for more coverage on the matter coming Wednesday.)

To answer the poll, simply go to www.saratogian.com/news

Of X-mas and the Beatles

So it's Sunday afternoon as I write, and I'm sitting in one of my favorite coffee shops in the area, Professor Java's Coffee Sanctuary on Wolf Road in Colonie.

For some reason, their radio is tuned to a station that's already playing Christmas music.

Look, I realize the economy is in the tank, and that the holiday creep has pushed the unofficial start of the "X-mas" season earlier and earlier, but to be playing ALL CHRISTMAS, ALL THE TIME in the middle of November is just too much.

My idea was to throw a quick refer to a feature story appearing on the site today (and in the paper, of course) with a glib comment about how I'll inevitably hear either John Lennon's "So This is Christmas" or Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time" before I left the establishment. Sure enough, even as I opened my browser three minutes later, John's voice was filtering through the speakers.

Anyhow, check out the story about Skidmore professor Gordon Thompson, whose love for the Beatles' music led him down his career path and to the publication of his first book, on 60s British pop.

And strangely enough, as my homepage opened, I saw this coincidental headline in the list: 'Lost' Beatles track could finally be heard.'

As for myself, I'm not much of a Beatles fan, but I like to think I appreciate the role they played in shaping the musical and pop cultural landscapes.

Addendum: Monday, 10:39 a.m.

Read more about this weekend's "BeatleMore Skidmania" over at the Skidmore Unoffocial blog.

Literate parrots

I had the opportunity last night to participate in the Scrabble fundraiser for Literacy of Northeastern New York, held at the Saratoga Elks Lodge on Maple Avenue. While I had expected my evening to be akin to a rollicking round of Thursday night bingo at the local church hall, I was sorely mistaken.

The place was packed with participants who were feted with dinner, drinks, dessert and coffee, and a fairly intense, 30-minute round of team Scrabble. Teams could "cheat" by buying individual letters for $1-per-letter-score, a cup of seven random letters for $5, or glance at the dictionary for $5. There was also a silent auction in which my $10 worth of raffle tickets wasn't enough to win me the acoustic guitar and stand donated by Saratoga Guitar. I don't play, but I've been thinking I'd like to learn, and winning would have gotten me on my way. Oh well.

It was a good time, and a nice opportunity to participate in a beneficial community event.

- - - - -

One of my biggest fears is computers becoming self-aware and exerting control over humanity, but it seems I might also be wise to fear the parrots.

During Wednesday evening's "Fresh Air" program on NPR, I listened as Irene Pepperberg, an adjunct professor of psychology at Brandeis University, discussed her work with Alex, her pet parrot and research subject. Her research delved into the parrot's understanding of spatial, descriptive, quantitative and even linguistic relationships.

At one point in the conversation with host Terri Gross, Pepperberg talks about conducting a basic test with Alex, the simplicity and repetition of which he has increasingly become bored. Not only does he continually repeat the wrong answer to Pepperberg's prompts - he does it intentionally so as to manipulate her into asking the question HE wants her to ask.

Chilling. You can listen to the interview here.

On hand for absentee ballots

I meant to write yesterday, but as often happens in this business, got sidetracked every time I settled my fingers on the keyboard. There was plenty of stuff to keep me busy, including the confirmation of Jeffery Wait's victory in the race for Saratoga Springs city court judge.

As I mentioned in my last post, the plan was to go down and shoot video of the absentee ballot count. The end result can be viewed in the above story, by clicking here, or just clicking on the Multimedia tab on the Saratogian homepage. Thanks to Nancy Goldberg for taking a few minutes out of her duties to talk with me.

As thrilling as I thought video of people counting ballots in a room would be (read: I was not thrilled by the prospect of shooting this), I found the time spent down there to be quite informative (I also thought the room provided a visually interesting backdrop for the video). Republican Election Commissioner Diane Wade and I chatted about the process and she raised a very good point: There's a general misconception among the populace that absentee ballots are only counted if an election is very close, as a sort of tie-breaker.

Not true. ALL ballots are counted, and until absentee ballots are counted and verified, NO election is officially over - even national elections. While absentee votes supposedly break in the same direction as machine-cast votes (as evidenced once again in Wait's win), they're still an important part of the process. These facts never really occurred to me, and I admit I bought into that same misconception.

I also found myself reflecting on how it was over a week since Election Day. In this age of instant information and immediate results, this important aspect of the democratic process is one that takes old-fashioned time. There's something comforting about that.

Getting on with it

Feedback on the site, though limited so far, seems fairly positive.

We're still getting familiar with some aspects of the operation, such as how stories move into the archive. So if you see headlines appearing twice on the same page, or under two consecutive dates, that's why. These wrinkles should be ironed out in due time as we develop our in-house best practices.

I made use of the Multimedia tab on the homepage to post the video of the most recent horse statue vandalization. I realize this video is over a week old, but the three chumps seen in the footage are still out there reveling in their stupidity and inability to mount a horse. Really though, I just put it up just to see how the video looked in the tab.

The letter to the editor written by the sculpture's artist received a lot of comments before we made the Web site switch yesterday evening, probably the most story comments we ever got for an article since I've been here. Of course, all of them got lost in the nebulous ether between sites. But I encourage you to leave your thoughts and opinions on our stories now, since it's so much easier.

- - - - - -

I thought our story on yesterday's Veterans Day ceremony at Saratoga National Cemetary was a terrific example of what I was talking about in the post below. We were able to highlight some really great photos taken by our chief photographer, Rick Gargiulo, with very little effort.

- - - - - -

So tomorrow the county Board of Elections is counting absentee ballots, which could make a difference in the race for Saratoga Springs city court judge between candidates Jeffery Wait and Matt Dorsey. We'll be on hand and I should be shooting video on the subject, so be on the lookout for that.

New Site the Third

For the third time in less than a year, The Saratogian is launching a new Web site, as of 5 p.m. Tues., Nov. 11 (today, in other words).

This is really the continuation of a process that began this summer when we switched from the then-new-site-provider to our old, reliable site provider. What's launching Tuesday into Wednesday is just an updated platform by the same, reliable provider, offering some newer bells and whistles to bring us into a more 2.0 vision of the Web.

I know there are curmudgeons out there who believe terms like "media" and "bells and whistles" shouldn't be combined. But these applications are nothing new to the savviest of surfers on the Internet, and with luck, these slick, new-to-us, unobtrusive features will enhance our readers' experience while on the site (and perhaps attract new readers). That's the plan, anyhow.

So here's some things to be on the lookout for while browsing stories. In this first photo (click to enlarge), you'll see an article as it appears after you open the full story:

Pretty basic stuff. Main story photo off to the right near the top, additional photos down the story along the left (which is a nice feature. Now it's so much easier to showcase the work of our amazing staff photographers - though this story is a bad example, since these photos were all submitted). Click any image in an article to enlarge it, as shown below:

You have to admit, for us, that's pretty fancy stuff. And in an age when e-mail has become passe and sites like this one (Blogger) and their ilk, and social networking rule, readers of the Saratogian online have many, many more choices to spread the word to their friends, relatives, lovers, enemies, frenemies and that Abe Lincoln look-alike that sites behind you in the office:



The "Post" category (shown above) gives you a choice of 10 popular sites (all but two of which I've heard of) at which to post links to stories, while "Social Web" gives you a list of 24 social networking sites to chose from (again, several of which I haven't heard of. "Mr. Wong"?). Of course, for those still stuck in the first few years of the third millenium A.D. (or C.E. if you're a non-denominational historian), the "E-mail to a friend" and "Printer Friendly" options are still available, as are story comments.

A note on story comments: No longer should you have to wait for approval for your comments to be posted. Comments will be community moderated, with users able to flag comments for abuse. Flagged comments will be reviewed by staff here at the paper, and as always, we reserve the right to remove a comment entirely.

Another nice feature (for us) is that we finally have clean URLs. As opposed to a News page with an address that looks like www.saratogian.com/site/news.asp?brd=1169&pag=460&dept_id=602469, our news page will be the wonderfully simple www.saratogian.com/news. The Sports page will be www.saratogian.com/sports. Et cetera.

Stories from the past seven days should be easier to find on each section's page. Oh, and the archives are immediately available, going back to 1999. I make no guarantees that the format from our previous platforms translated very cleanly (some stories I saw looked fine, others had large spaces between paragraphs or odd characters in the text), but they should all be readable.

Finally, the home page, from my perspective, serves as a more functional gateway to the rest of the site.

And for those that care, the classic "Saratogian" wordmark is back, serifs and all.

There are other new features I haven't had a chance to try out yet (like embedded Flash video right in the stories), and some coming soon, including user-submitted photos, video and audio. More on those features as they become available. In the meantime, enjoy getting familiar with the new site (give it a chance, we think it's a big improvement visually and, more importantly, functionally) and send your feedback to web@saratogian.com