Real Name: Chris Cobler Address: 311 E. Constitution St. Victoria, TX 77901 Gender: male Member Since: September 16, 2007 Last Signed In: August 29, 2008 Profile Views: 2066 Blog Views: 12256 Your guide to Gustav and football debuts today How do you know when to say goodbye? What are you doing at 10 a.m.? We've reserved a seat for you at our morning planning meetings What headline would you put on the Ratcliff story? Will newspapers be the last mass medium? Ethics board discusses how we handle tough photographs, stories Are you wild about the Texas Zoo? I'd say the future is in good hands What comments do you have for next ethics board meeting? September 07 October 07 November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 
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As an avid newspaper reader, I've subscribed to multiple papers most of my adult life. Even as I child, I read the morning Topeka Capital and the evening Topeka Journal. That's no longer possible since the Houston Chronicle stopped serving the Crossroads region. In an article Monday, the Chronicle cited high gas prices and newsprint costs and low advertiser interest in our area. The San Antonio Express-News also stopped delivery in our region at the start of this year. In some respects, the move is good news for the Advocate. However, those two metro newspapers had a very low penetration in our market anyway, and most of those readers also took the Advocate. I talked to a Victoria resident last week who was bemoaning the loss of the Chronicle. He emphasized he always reads the Advocate but misses having a second newspaper to read. I told him I understood. As a community newspaper, we don't aim to be another Chronicle, but what elements of these metro papers would you like to see incorporated into the Advocate? How have you been satisfying your news fix? In the latest circulation report we have, the Chronicle had 616 daily subscribers and 890 Sunday readers in Victoria County. Monday's Chronicle story reports the paper's total circulation dropped 1.8 percent daily and 6.6 percent Sunday. By comparison, the Advocate's circulation was flat daily and grew by half a percent on Sundays. Online, readership of all newspapers continues to grow significantly -- a statistic often lost when people express doom and gloom about the industry. People remain interested in news that matters to them. The challenge is to keep reporting that relevant news and delivering it in the most convenient platform.
If you're like me, you probably find yourself looking less and less often into a phone book. Actually, I almost never do. Leafing through pages containing tons of small type just isn't as easy for me as clicking on my computer to find a phone number. With this user in mind, we've created CrossroadsDining.com. It's a handy, searchable guide to all of our region's restaurants. Data Desk Editor Karla Woodward has updated it with handy information such as prices, wifi availability and cuisine. You also have the ability to offer your review of the restaurants, which is a particularly exciting feature. Online director Terry Owen and programmer Shawn Willmon built into the site a handy Google map. What phone book provides all of this information? The advantage our service has over any national listing is that we're much closer to the local scene and can update the listings quickly. If you search Yahoo or Google, you're likely to find restaurants that have closed. The restaurant business is a volatile one. This use of data is one of the many exciting new ways newspapers can grow and serve our audience even better. We'll be looking at ways we can connect these listings with news stories and related advertising. For example, I could see links to the health inspection reports we publish each Wednesday as being useful for diners. I ate at Hu-Dat for lunch today and highly recommend the Mongolian beef stir-fry. How about you? What restaurants do you recommend? Please let us know how you like CrossroadsDining.com. We flipped the switch today on the Victoria Advocate's version of craigslist featuring free online listings. We hope you'll check it out here on our community site. Scroll down the page to find the listings. The power of craigslist is the community it attracts. VictoriaAdvocate.com now has, by far, the largest online community in our region. We hope to maintain that with your help. If you value local newsgathering in any form, we hope you'll post your listings here rather than craigslist and tell your friends about our free service. Craigslist does not support local communities in any way shape or form. We recognize you can't beat the value of free, so we're making this offer. At the same time, we'll continue to promote the value of paid advertising that reaches a targeted audience. With our free online listings, please let us know what you think and how we can improve them. We're learning as we go. P.S. My middle name is Craig. Does that help? :) When you have a boy and a girl, you can't help but notice gender differences. While attending the Victoria Independent School District's academic awards ceremony recently, I found myself counting the number of elementary-age boys being honored vs. the number of girls. I wondered how it could be that three times as many girls were honored as boys. At several schools, all of the top students were girls. Are the boys that dumb? By middle school and high school, the ratio was closer to 50-50. Various national studies and new stories have examined this question in recent years. Do you think a local story would be appropriate? If so, would you be willing to share your experiences? Here are a couple of national stories that caught my eye: On the flip side, here' a story that suggests teachers favor boys: - Co-ed classrooms favor boys. What do you think? Along with commenting here, please e-mail or call me if you'd like to be quoted in a story on the subject. On a lighter note, I noticed at the same awards assembly that two honored Crain Middle School students were named Howell. However, no Howell Middle School students were named Crain. For our Monday story on the possibility of school uniforms, a creative copy editor came up with the headline of "What's in, what's verboten." As an editor, my first reaction when picking up the front page in the morning was, "I hope we spelled verboten right." My next reaction: "I wonder if we'll get any calls about using a German word in a front-page headline. When former President Bill Clinton came to Victoria in February, we used the headline, "Bienvenidos, Bill." The reaction against using a Spanish word in a front-page headline prompted me to write a post explaining our reasoning. So far, 28 have people have commented online about Monday's article, and not one has mentioned the German word. All are discussing the pros and cons of the toughening the dress code. No one has called or written a letter to the editor about straying from English. What do you think about this difference in our readers' reaction? To be fair, I would hardly describe the reaction about "bienvenidos" as an outpouring -- essentially we received a letter to the editor and a few calls and Web comments.
We waited a day after the suicide attempt of a former Victoria County commissioner to be sure we were handling the story well. Even so, you're never sure you're doing the right thing when reporting about such sensitive and sad matters.
We look to the experts for guidance in such situations. Although all experts never agree on anything, the American Psychiatric Association says reports on deaths by suicide should include the cause of death. Click here for a full story on the subject. The article also encourages the media not to glamorize suicide or try to simplify the reasons for it. In terms of the latter issue, our headline and story today could have been better. It's natural for people to wonder why a 24-year public official would take such an action, but it's beyond the realm of a news story to explain it. Increasingly, mental illness is a subject people talk about more openly. Reporting responsibly on suicide is a step toward keeping the issue in the public consciousness. If it's never reported, the problem doesn't go away. It may even get worse because people don't realize what's happening. In our coverage today, we also neglected to include information about the crisis hotline available at Hope of South Texas, 573-3600 or 1-800-365-7345. We should report this information with every story about suicide. We also should regularly remind people of the warning signs. One such list is available at the American Association of Suicidology. The site also has guidelines for the media that we shared today in the newsroom as a reminder. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of the former commissioner. In our newsroom, we were touched last Christmas by the suicide of a co-worker. We know the pain and confusion that results. While working on a story last week about the shortage of wait staffs, reporter Allison Miles picked up several menus from the new Hu Dat restaurant. Inside were invitations to a special lunch in which Hu Dat offered free food as a training exercise for its new staff.
Miles asked whether she or anyone in the newsroom should use the invitation to attend the lunch. We posed the question to our ethics board. I'd like to hear your thoughts, too. Rather than call a special meeting for a relatively minor issue, we discussed the issue via e-mail exchanges. Most ethics board members thought it was OK because the dollar value was relatively small and the offer was extended to many community members with no expectation of favorable news coverage. Here's how one member put it: "If Allison did a regular restaurant review, there would be a question, in my mind. But I don't see any conflict at all here. Whatever news coverage she creates will be about the shortage of waiters, not the quality of the dining experience." A few members, though, said they were concerned about the public perception of accepting the invitation. One reporter said he wouldn't even accept a Coke from a source for this reason. The reporter put it this way: "I don't think Allison would be influenced by the gift. But what would the public's perception be?" That's clearly the question. What would your perception be? The Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics instructs journalists to act independently. The Advocate's supplementary code tries to apply a "reasonable person" standard as opposed to zero tolerance. As it turns out, Miles was busy with work and didn't attend the invitation-only meal anyway. If she or another journalist had, what would you think about any coverage or the newspaper?
... but I've turned my son into a die-hard Jayhawks fan, too. Through the help of generous grandparents, we managed to score tickets to Saturday night's to the NCAA Final Four semi-final games in San Antonio.
Sharing the experience with my son is a memory that will last a lifetime. I swear the face paint was his idea. It looked better when we set out in the morning from Victoria. North Carolina's comeback had us both sweating in the second half, but goodness prevailed. We don't have tickets to Monday night's game, but we'll be jumping up and down in front of the TV, pulling for a victory on the 20th anniversary of KU's last national championship. Rock chalk. Remember your Big 12 allegiance, Longhorn and Aggie fans. You may have missed the small item in Monday's paper and online about the Advocate's Texas Associated Press Managing Editors awards, but they're a big deal to us. And we have you to thank for one top honor: the best Web site in Texas for newspapers with circulations from 30,000 to 124,999. Here's what the contest judge from the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World had to say about the Advocate's site: "Excellent combination of text stories and video, and reader interaction with polls, photos and blogs. This site is clearly not a shovel-ware print product but rather embraces online native thinking and community involvement. That's reflected in the home page content quite well, and the tag-cloud like "Things they like" is a nice touch." As you can see, the judge focused in on all of your contributions. We set out to make VictoriaAdvocate.com a place for you to interact with each other and with us. It wouldn't work without you. We're also proud of our first-place award in community service. As I said in the short story about our awards, “These two awards are the best ones we could have won. The entire staff has focused on our digital future. At the same time, we recognize that what sets a newspaper apart from other news sources is how well we serve our community.” Here’s what the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle judge had to say about our community service entry: "The Victoria Advocate’s reporters did an outstanding job of showing through ongoing, persistent reporting how the dysfunctional relationship between the district attorney and city and county law enforcement was a problem of urgent public concern. What started as some letters leaked from law enforcement continued to snowball through the Advocate’s determined coverage, eventually raising concerns about a power struggle that called into question the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in the county. Credit also the newspaper’s successful efforts to quash a subpoena from the D.A. and to force, through the attorney general, an open records issue with the D.A.’s office. Throughout coverage, the newspaper also consistently posted original documents online for readers -- an excellent use of the Web to layer print coverage. This body of work is the true spirit of community service, steadily pushing and prodding for truth where no one but the newspaper has the will and resource to stay the course." We think our individual award winners are pretty special, too. Here's a reminder of their recognized work: ------------------------------------------------ Sports Editor Coy Slavik, 2nd place for sports columns "Ty's game face" - Gabe Semenza, 2nd place for general column writing "Technology still can't replace life's simplest lesson" "The Good, the Bad and The Ugg-ly" - Robert Zavala, honorable mention, infographics: "How Uranium Mining Works" -------------------------------------- In a big state like Texas, any honor is extra special. My thanks go to a special staff and to all of you (or is that all y'all?) for making it happen. For the full list of winners, visit the Texas APME site. |
