If you tour their website you can see the experience in so many ways… But the most amazing piece of video tops their site and I think it’s worth sharing in so many ways. The newsroom started this video the day Scripps announced the paper was up for sale on December 4th. The sudden end of the paper rushed the video to final production and posted to Vimeo around 11:00PM on February 26th.

Poynter started a support page on their site for the Rocky employees and made it a place for the journalism community to reach out and help. There’s a live chat in a few minutes as well.

It hurts even more knowing this isn’t the last paper to fall.

(One other thing I just found. Someone is trying to make a little money and let out some steam with the website, Who Killed The Rocky?)

After a huge revolt against Facebook’s Terms of Service the company announced it plans to go about things differently.

In the Facebook Blog, we learn that members will be asked to vote on new Facebook Principals and a new Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. I will be very curious to see how many people read it, post comments and then see what comes of this process.

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg writes:
History tells us that systems are most fairly governed when there is an open and transparent dialogue between the people who make decisions and those who are affected by them. We believe history will one day show that this principle holds true for companies as well, and we’re looking to moving in this direction with you.

I’ll be interested in seeing if that actually happens. (Yes… You can hear a slight note of pessimism. It’s the journalist in me) Are you going to join those groups to put your five cents into the process? Will anyone take the time to do the reading and giving input? Is Facebook that important to you?

Okay. I have a lot of energy.

So when I present the faculty with a new idea or a great concept… Some of them tune me out because they assume they won’t understand what the heck I’m talking about. I get excited about new ways journalists can share information. I get really excited when journalists are only a piece of the news gathering process. I get super excited when life is simplified with the help of technology.

So after enough professors and students asked… I’m putting together a presentation on how journalists can use Twitter next Monday. I’d love to hear the ways you use Twitter so my presentation isn’t JUST my ideas. There are so many different ways, it would be wonderful to get input from places beyond my world so I can prove that I’m not the only person who thinks Twitter is a helpful tool. So please leave comments here or on Twitter or even on my Facebook page if we’re friends. I would love links and stories about successes and failures when it came down to journalists using Twitter. Thanks!!

So I hit the keyboard macro to add a new tab (you know, Open Apple T) and instead I see this:

The Safari 4 beta doesn’t launch a new blank page, instead it gives you a peek at your top sites! Obviously Twitter and Facebook come up on top… along with a kid blog and followed by work – a new site I’m building, a Ning site we’re working on for KOMU.com , the actual KOMU.com site and then this site. I could go on but I don’t want to bore you. But it was kind of cool to find a visual display of my online obsessions. You can move the windows around and click and choose. I dig it. Another item I’ve noticed: when you type a URL into the browser, it instantly pops up your history with that site. Also, tabs are at the very top of the window instead of right above the website. That confused me for a minute since I wasn’t sure if I was actually getting new tabs when I asked for it until I looked up a little higher on the screen. The only problem I’ve come up with it so far is it crashed when I tried to add a link in WordPress 2.7 when I was using the visual tab. If you don’t use WordPress, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about and that’s really okay. Just know that the screen freezes and I haven’t figured out a way to fix that!

Anyway – let me know if you’ve found any other cool things the new Safari beta can do. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, here’s a place you can do that.

And for you the blog reader, I want to let you know that I am going to try a lot harder to share my busy and nerdy mind as best I can for you here on this blog space. I’ll do that as long as you talk back to me!! Obviously we don’t have to chat here. Many of us talk on Twitter as well… But as long as we can keep talking, I’ll promise to you that I’ll keep blogging. Thanks again for all of your input!

1. My new found obsession with health (I’m working out 6-7 days a week)
2. I love Twitter
3. I have two blogs that talk about my kids
4. I teach a class
5. I manage a website
6. I have to sleep at least 4-5 hours a night
7. I co-moderate a special needs Yahoo Group and keep watch over a couple of discussion groups at BabyCenter 

But I aspire to be a helpful source and a reason to keep great conversation. My little rant about “forced twitter use” got things rolling. It was wonderful to watch a conversation that originated on Twitter continued onto this blog. I’d love to do that more often.

So how can I commit to this page? How can I get you interested in visiting and commenting? That’s a part of what Matt is talking about to the students in this meeting room. But what do you think? I have a thousand ideas… but I want to hear from you. What can make this blog work? How can I help infuse a new discussion?

Your turn.

The Twitter talk has grown recently at the Missouri School of Journalism. I’ve added it to my class. I encourage my students to get their own personal account to start playing around in there. They have a new outlet to build a personal online identity as they get closer to entering the job arena. I also ask them to use it by keeping up with what people are saying who follow KOMU and use it to post information about what we’re covering or post breaking news.

I started going on a rant on Twitter about student journalists who get forced to use the site. I saw a number of new members of Twitter who followed me recently complaining that they’d been forced to use Twitter. And I guess I got all up in arms because I worry about reporters who start using Twitter because they “have” to. That leads to situations like when a news reporter tweeted during a 3-year-old’s funeral. He could have made that work if he had been more sensitive. But if you read the posts, you realize that he didn’t understand the personal conversation you have using this tool.

The conversation went on and on. Somehow I even got Ana Marie Cox – formerly of Wonkette – to tell me she found Twitter on her own and was never forced to use it. My little rant got a lot of people talking about why should journalists be on Twitter (I’ve ranted on that before) and is it right or wrong to get forced into it. Then a number of people started sharing great tips. Howard Rheingold shared his favorite links about twitter. Cecelia Hanley shared her experiences: “@jenleereeves I usually use @gazettefood for work related tweets, and I follow other bloggers & papers. Great way to spot trends to localize.” Jenn Jarvis over at KWWL-TV said she joined Twitter to be able to reach lawmakers. Twitter seemed to be the only way to reach them when they were in session. Many, many others talked about how Twitter is a great tool to help boost your career or get your name out there.

Some professors told me how they are “forcing” their students to tweet… And it seems to be working out fine. My husband (@newsmonkey8 on Twitter) says I’m worrying about something that is just plain silly to worry about. But I’m just going to say this before we keep this conversation rolling: Twitter is a wonderful tool for journalists as long as we use it responsibly. If enough newsrooms force reporters, producers, editors and managers to use the tool without really understanding its potential, Twitter users will turn away from us. They will ignore us. For now, journalists can offer an insider view of the news on Twitter. I would love to keep that excitement rolling.