Beyond the proliferation of similar blogs, Twitter has also done much to eliminate the need to post the shorter posts or to debate in a more stream-of-consciousness method the questions or concerns I have about developments or pass along links others would be interested in reading. There were weeks in the first year or so of this site where I posted nearly daily, sometimes multiple times in a day. I had a lot to say and no other platform. But thanks to the myriad other connections I have with journalists today, including through Twitter, much of the steady posts I used to write are supplanted by 140-character tweets these days.

Finally, because I’m in a very different reporting and editing role today, my experiences are less relevant to the general journalism population. I’d love to talk about how I use Access and databases to find story trends and sources for my magazine articles, but nobody else has access to that proprietary information. That isn’t to say there aren’t some really interesting tricks of the trade and experiences I’ve gained, because there definitely are. Seeing the industry from a different niche in it has made me appreciate some things I didn’t notice before, and it’s also made me miss some things I underestimated. Eventually, I’ll write about some of these things.

For now, however, Meranda Writes has gotten to the point where I post sporadically. So I’ve been looking for a way to get back into the groove and have a reason to keep my head and heart in new media and journalism trends. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to join an already established and respected site: 10,000 Words. As a contributor, not only will I get paid to write things I’ve been writing about for free here (although a modest amount that will likely cause more of a tax headache than any upward blip in my income), but I’ll also have a reason to keep writing because I’ve committed to at least a few posts each week.

My first two posts are already up:

• 15 quotes to inspire journalists
• Lessons From Risking It All For A Journalism Start-Up That Fails

I’m always accepting tips for blog posts you’d like to see me explore: meranda@merandawrites.com

I’ll still blog here from time to time — probably as often as I have been in the past year or so — but for more regular updates follow @10000words, and for my in-between musings, follow @meranduh.

I’ve been thinking about what that means and how I feel about it. The truth? I miss it a bit. Maybe a lot. (I’m still healing, I think, from the years of breakneck speed as a cub reporter.) But I really like my new job and company, and I love the balance and stability it’s given my life. But I keep thinking, surely, there must be fun and interesting things I can do to get back some of the things I liked about that beat reporting role. I’m creative and outgoing and enterprising. I just haven’t been able to decide where I want to productively expend my after-work hours energy. However, I’ve had an inkling it should be something that allows me to keep two feet in digital media, because although its never been the primary role of my day job, it’s always been and going to be a passion of mine.

So, today, I got the kick in the butt I think I need to start formulating something that will keep me in both places. Otherwise, I’ll have a quite expensive paperweight hanging around my apartment.

Each year, my company collects the swag companies send along and holds a raffle/trivia competition on the half-day of work on Christmas Eve. (This year, everyone gets Christmas Eve and the half-day before Christmas Eve off to make-up for a weekend Christmas. That’s why this event happened today instead of tomorrow.) Well, at the event today, the top prizes included a Nintendo Wii, an iPad, and a Flip HD video camera. I wasn’t expecting to take home anything — because I suck at trivia and because my luck is never good. BUT, they drew my name for the Flip. So I’m the new proud owner of a 16GB Flip Slide HD video camera. (I should put a few exclamation points there, because I’m super excited about this! So !!)

Many of you probably already own a Flip, I know. But I don’t didn’t. I’ve ogled them and toyed with them and envied you all for having them. I’ve thought, that would be really sweet to own one. But I’ve never been able to justify paying $150-$250 for a device (it’s $199 on Amazon) that does one thing, and something that is a function already included on multiple other devices that I already own. I am a young journalist after all, and that’s a fair chunk of change that I could put to better use buying food or paying off student loans.

Also, I’m in the business of consolidating my technology to a single piece I carry daily — not adding. In my home office now, I have a digital camera (that records video), a USB audio recorder and an iPod Nano — none of which I’ve used in more than a month. (I haven’t used the audio recorder since I left the newspaper, and I haven’t used the digital camera since spring, when I realized my phone’s camera was more than adequate for snapshots.) I consolidated those former daily carry-on items into a single cell phone that fits in my pocket and decently does everything those single-function pieces can.

But here’s the thing: If I were going to deliberately record audio for a slideshow, I would go to the audio recorder to get the best quality. If I wanted to take a picture to blow up to a large size or to use in a specific situation, I’d go to my digital camera. And when I’m taking a road trip or (if I were inclined to go for) a run, I’d grab the iPod for a more in-depth soundtrack than I carry on my phone, where music competes with photos, audio and apps for space.

So, I’ve got this new camera. I wouldn’t have paid for it, but I’m super super excited to have it. And I don’t want it to be wasted on me. I consider it serendipitous. Now, I just need to think of a project that will allow it to shine and give me a reason to learn, use and carry it. I’m also hoping it will help me hone my video editing skills, which have grown rusty.

YOUR TURN: So, what’s your favorite video project done by an independent person? It can be journalism-related or not. I don’t see myself as much of a talk-show type of person, nor an artsy filmmaker. But I’m thinking something where I can showcase the place I live or places I visit and the people and animals I encounter. I have the other tools/skills needed: I recently purchased a new external harddrive, I know how to tell a story and what makes a good story, and I’m handy enough to build a new website or video channel to showcase my work. I just need to figure out what I want to capture and why.

I’m off work now until after the new year (did I mention how fabulous it is to not work newspaper hours/holidays?!). So I’ll be spending the next 10 days thinking about and formulating a use for this camera. Otherwise, I may as well list it on eBay today. I’m going to give it some time, though.

1. A true pay cut permanently lowers your salary. So even if pay raises do happen, your raise will be based on your current salary minus 2-percent (one week is about 2 percent of the year’s salary). That means your raise and eventual salary will be less. It also cheapens your value for every hour you work at the company from then on.
2. A direct pay cut also means you get paid less for doing the same amount of work. At least with a furlough, your work is still worth the same amount (pittance as it is) to the company. You get a week off in exchange for getting paid less. Of course, furloughs mean more work spread among those working that week, but so do layoffs.
3. The company cannot contact you during your furlough. When was the last paid vacation you had that wasn’t intruded upon in some way by Gannett/work? I haven’t had one. But my furloughs have been blissfully work-free (if not worry-free — hello rent, I’m looking at you).
4. You can take an entire week off work and not feel guilty. The company is screwing you, so you shouldn’t feel bad about taking an entire week off even if it means missing meetings or something you should be at. Don’t take a day furlough here and there. You lose absolutely the same amount of money whether you take every other Tuesday or a week straight. Take the full week — it’s harder to make up a full week’s work staying late the day before or the day after (yes, I’ve been there too).
5. You’ve probably complained about how you can’t find a new job because you don’t have time to put together a resume, portfolio and find and apply. This is a great time to get cracking on that.
6. A furlough means you have a job to come back to. Instead, they could lay you off, or they could layoff someone else in your department, which means when you’re at work you’ll have their job to do too — not just this week but forever.

One of the beautiful waterfalls I saw on a hike during my March 2010 furlough in North Carolina.

Personally, I enjoyed my furloughs. Don’t get me wrong, they crushed my already tenuous budget. I was already barely paid enough to cover bills. The first year — two weeks of furloughs following a raise that was eliminated by the first week’s furlough — I was shocked at the news. It meant lots of ramen noodles for me, but somehow I managed. I knew by the next year, my third furlough week in the first quarter of 2010, that I’d survive. Still, I ended up taking a part-time job after the third mandatory week without pay because I wasn’t sure I could survive another week without pay. It sucked, but it strengthened me. The actual furlough time off, however, I did not mind. The weeks gave me the longest breaks I had from work since starting college. The first week off, I went home to Ohio to hang out with my mother visiting parks and museums; the second week I took a road trip from Ohio to Orlando with my father for a sister’s wedding; and on the third week, my boyfriend and I traveled over the Smokey Mountains and through the Blue Ridge Mountain area, hiking, dining, touring communities, visiting friends and seeing new places. Each of those weeks was packed with fun times, and I probably wouldn’t have had done any of them without the furlough. So, for those who will be affected by this, please, try to look on the bright side.

Tuesday, Aug. 17, was my last day as education reporter at the Lafayette Journal & Courier, and potentially at a newspaper. I started Aug. 18 at a new job at Angie’s List Magazine as an associate editor. Before we commence the tar-and-feather “how could you leave journalism??” bit… I didn’t leave journalism at all. I found another niche within it at a magazine that is part of a growing company doing work I think serves a good purpose; it’s actually an award-winning magazine with solid original reporting, so a company newsletter it’s not. I’m still writing and reporting, just about more consumer affairs issues and less (or rather not-at-all) about school boards. I’m also honing a different set of writing and editing skills for a different type of audience, and I’m working in a very different type of setting and keeping regular office hours.

Why change? (Here comes the long part, full of very honest self-reflection)

I started at the J&C less than a month after college graduation, a lucky land when you consider the market I graduated into. I honestly expected to stay there a year or two at most and move on to a bigger place or a different type of job online. But there were things I liked and opportunities that I had to tell some compelling stories that kept me here. Also, there wasn’t exactly a glut of jobs to move into it, as companies —- my own included —- froze wages and positions and tossed aside thousands of more talented people. Although my performance reviews have always been positive, I earned a combined total of about a 5-percent raise in the 3.5 years I worked there, and it’s way less if you subtract out the combined three weeks of furloughs this year and last. I was underpaid when I was hired, and although I felt fortunate to be employed in this industry, and for a long time I loved what I did, I felt like I was working more and feeling less appreciated. I would occasionally troll the job boards and throw my hat in the ring for jobs I wasn’t qualified for, many of which never got filled. I had a few legitimate bites, but not at times I was ready to go or places I wanted to go to. But at my third annual review, I told my editor I’d be looking this summer. I remember my eyes got teary-eyed when I told him I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay in journalism. Why? See all those reasons above, and the rest of this way-too-long blog entry on why I considered leaving — and why I chose to stay.

There absolutely are many things I’m proud of from my time at the J&C. I’m most proud, understandably, of completing the “Miller: A Change in Course” series, which traced the underlying issues and followed a failing elementary school through a year of major changes in an effort to cast off that “failing” label bestowed by the state and federal government. I spent a year working with a photographer at my paper (who incidentally also just left the paper) to chronicle daily life in the school and how everything from the accountability laws to parental involvement affected their outcomes. To be honest, if I hadn’t been granted the access from sources and buy-in from editors, I probably would have been penning this farewell to my job post last summer. But this was a once-in-a-career opportunity to tell an untold story, and I know it helped inform my community and helped change the tenor of conversation about what it means to be a failing school these days. If nothing else, I hope I accomplished my goal of putting the issue in perspective and putting faces on the label. If I never write another newspaper story again, I’ll always be proud of this series.

But I’m also proud of the lesser stories I told.

My 15-year-old nephew asked me recently about the crazy things I’ve seen in my job. I told him about seeing a dead body beside a burned out vehicle while standing on a grid-locked interstate as police officers chased dollar bills sailing in the wind. I told him about covering fires when it was so cold the water shot out of the aerial only to descend like snowflakes and gloss the road below. I told him about some the same stories I’ve told scores of high school and middle school classes as a career day speaker: the teacher who had duct-taped a student’s mouth shut, a superintendent who had furnished his home with electronics and tools bought on the school’s dime, and the time I stood just below an overflowing dam with water gushing against the side of the bridge where I stood and how the Department of Natural Resources guys let me go out on the rescue boat as they took in people off roof tops on the flooded river. I told him about getting to cover speeches by all three Clintons — Bill, Hillary and Chelsea — and about the other extreme, the interviews with parents who recently lost their children to bus crashes or murder or many things in between.

The truth is those are the stories that stand out. Most of the thousands of stories I wrote in my three-plus years were far less exciting and make far poorer anecdotes. They came out of or led into the hundreds of school board meetings. (By my estimates, I attended about 325 school board meetings and spent 20+ full days — 24-hour days! — in board meetings.) These pieces were about budgets, policies, building projects, property taxes and funding (or increasingly, lack of funding). They were about innovative classroom projects, gifted educators or motivated students and sometimes the cross section of all three. My beat was education, after all; though, I thought it was appropriate when the job listing to replace me came with the caveat they were hiring a K-12 education/general assignment reporter. Read my previous paragraphs and you’ll quickly see although I specialized in education, it was hardly what I was confined to in my work. At a community newspaper, every reporter comes with a “/General Assignment” job description.

I don’t know if I can say I changed lives with my work, but I do know that the job changed mine. I’m a much humbler person now that I’ve seen all the amazing things other people have accomplished. I’m a much more thankful one after writing about the horrific things that other people have suffered through. I’m also more confident: I know who to ask when I want to know something, and I know what I’m entitled to know and how to politely press for it.

But it wasn’t all change for the better. If it had been, my new job wouldn’t be so different from my old one.

I don’t want my co-workers to read this and get offended. You all will know more than anyone else how much work went into getting our information out. I appreciate your friendship and humor and the way we all pushed ourselves insanely hard to do good work, which we did. This truly is a case of “it’s not you, it’s me.” I changed, personally, and this job was no longer as good of a fit as it was when I was 21 and fresh out of college. For starters, I simply wasn’t growing any more. I had peaked in the position, and there wasn’t any other beat or job available at the newspaper that I’d have any interest in at this time. Had they added a social media coordinator, I might have stuck around. (I was already pretty much leading that charge on top of my day job, and in my poor timing left just as they started taking it seriously.) But just as likely, I probably would not have stayed. Because it was time to move on.

You see, working three years and eight months at a daily newspaper, especially the size of the one where I was employed, stressed me out. I’m not burned out — yet — but the go-go-go pace and inability to feel accomplished or appreciated was burning me out. I watched my mother go through that grind as management in corporate America; she’s still paying the health consequences today, a decade after she quit to spend more time with her family — and she made a heck of a lot more money than I did. As a perfectionist, the pressure was intense not just from my bosses or sources but also from myself. As much I wanted to keep offering to pick up more stories, stay later and cover odd shifts to help out, it grates on you after awhile. It felt like no matter how many good stories I landed or projects I completed, no matter how many ways I jumped in beyond my job description or how many times I offered to “make a call on that” or “get something for online” so someone else didn’t have to, it was never enough. The news business has an insatiable appetite. I couldn’t live up to my own expectations, and every unreturned phone call or art assignment that fell through had started to make me feel like I was letting down my bosses and, more than that, myself. My heart wasn’t in it the way it once had been, so to be fair, I probably wasn’t at the top of my game anymore. I think the best way to describe the feeling is what I told one of my professors when she congratulated me on my new job: It had begun to feel like an abusive relationship. I knew it wasn’t good for me, but I kept coming back because I didn’t know what else to do, and I believed somewhere in there was something I once loved and thought I might still. I still do love the meaningfulness of newspaper work. After all the things I said in this graph, it’s worth noting I at least knew every day that what I did mattered. That was the thing that kept me coming back and could have kept me, except…

Speaking of relationships, that’s the other thing that changed for me. I’m in one. A great one. For more than a year now. And he’s not a journalist. He has a good job, and it’s a mostly 8-5, so our schedules were often opposites when I had meetings or had to stay late to finish a story, which meant I kept him up past his bedtime way too often (although he never complained). He also lived an hour away from me, which meant that I usually could only be with him on weekends. So when I also took a part-time job on nights and weekends earlier this year (to recover the earnings I lost to company-wide furloughs), it really cut into how much I got to spend with him. I remember one weeknight he drove up to visit, and I had expected to get off around 7, and instead I came home around 10:30 because I was finishing a story; I remember crying because I felt so bad that he had waited for me and missed out on doing something else. I felt guilty every time I had to stay late or go in on a weekend to finish something up. Similar scenes played out, minus the tears, dozens of times. He’s an amazing guy, and though he’s totally gracious and never actually complained about it, he doesn’t deserve that. I didn’t either, even though I knew that was the expectation when I chose this business. So this move put me closer to him in proximity and scheduling, which means a much healthier work-life balance than I’ve ever enjoyed.

So the new job, eh? Well, my health insurance kicked in this week, so I guess that means I’m official. I also put in my request for the paid time off I’ll earn this year, and for the first time since college, I’ll be home for Christmas. (I worked Christmas day two of my three winters at the newspaper.) In fact, because of the days the company gives everyone off and the PTO I’ll be able to take that week, I will be off from Dec. 23 until Jan. 3. Beyond not working holidays, my magazine work is normal business hours, and despite adding a 40-minute commute to my routine, I still come out ahead in personal time because I truly work 8-5. Besides, I like NPR, so I don’t mind the drive. Aside from that, the company is laid back and encourages socializing. It’s also pretty health-conscious, with an on-site gym and personal trainer, as well as a slew of exercise classes which I haven’t quite investigated yet because I’m still getting used to my actual day job.

As for the work, I’m doing well so far. The magazine is localized for each major market around the U.S., so each of the associate editors has a handful of markets we “cover.” That means I’m responsible for producing all the localized content that goes into these magazines along with national stories and health stories. About half of my work requires tracking down people to interview to help answer reader questions and half requires trudging through data and reports to find interesting things people have submitted and highlighting them. My Access skills are growing daily as I spend a lot of time “questioning the data” looking for patterns or stories. We also do articles relevant to homeowners in each local market. For November, I wrote a story about installing home urinals, which was a surprisingly interesting and random topic. This month, we’re at work on the annual Best/Worst issue, which requires finding the worst home contractors who scammed or shammed customers in 2010. The hard part isn’t finding examples in each market, sadly; the hard part is tracking down the victims and the villains and vetting them with court documents and mug shots wrangled from agencies I’ve never dealt with, in states I’ve never visited and in courthouses I can’t just go to in person. It’s been an exercise in patience and appreciation for helpful people. Beyond producing content, I also do some editing. We swap local stories, and we help proof the final pages. It’s not a lot of editing, but it does remind me of the things I really liked about my student newspaper days: truly helping improve a story with suggestions and proofreading the laid out page. I worried, a little, I might get bored in my new job without the daily running-around-like-a-headless-chicken dance, but I haven’t yet. I’m learning to write tighter, shorter, more lively prose than newspapers allow or demand. In fact, it keeps me more than busy but not burdened, which is how I like it.

No, it’s not my fairy tale dream job. But it’s a larger audience for my work, and it’s something new and interesting. I’m also learning a whole lot about what goes into keeping a home in tip-top shape, since so much of our magazine is focused on home ownership and consumer affairs. (This is nice because without the newspaper-to-newspaper, city-to-city job growth chart I once saw for myself, I’m now thinking home ownership isn’t a bad idea.) One of the things that attracted me to apply for the job — aside from it being a journalism job in the city I wanted to be in — was that I’ve always been interested in business and consumer affairs reporting. I’d love to have the consumer beat at a newspaper or at a news magazine. Perhaps someday I will come full circle and get that. I’m not sure if I will, which is to say, I’m not sure if I’ll ever go back to a newspaper. But here’s the thing: I’m not saying I won’t. That’s a big deal. Even though I felt a bit mistreated by the jostling in the newspaper industry, there are still thousands of awesome people doing awesome work I wouldn’t turn down the chance to be part of.

I put off writing this blog post for a month because I didn’t want it to come off as bitter but reflective. I’m not bitter about my newspaper experience. OK, a little about some aspects. If I didn’t admit that, I’d be lying, and I think newspaper execs should keep in mind all the things that drove me — by most accounts a talented and ambitious young journalist — away. There are things I would do differently, but I wouldn’t give up the experiences, lessons or doors it opened. I told the editors I interviewed with from day one that my newspaper reporting job was meant as a foundation for a career I couldn’t define yet. My second job is continuing to build on that foundation in a very different sort of role. I expected my next job to be in online media, honestly, but this opportunity opened at the right time and right place. That’s 95-percent of the battle. I’m continuing to grow and add to my skills, which is after all, how you build a career. And at 25, I’ve got plenty of years left to add clarity to the career, and the only way to do so, is to keep adding experiences.

This blog will continue to chronicle my experiments and thoughts on journalism, and as always, it will continue to represent my — not my employer’s — opinions and ideas.

This was Julie’s short and sweet parting advice in an e-mail to staff before heading out the last time. It reminds me a lot of another favorite quote about journalism, which actually was emblazoned on the backs of the Daily Kent Stater t-shirts the semester I was editor:

“It is a newspaper’s duty to print the news and raise hell.”
— Wilbur F. Storey

Either way, I just wanted to post this quote to add it to my collection and to inspire other journalists to keep the work in perspective. It can be incredibly difficult and sometimes you have to put some feet to the fire, yes, but sometimes, you can also have an incredible amount of fun. It’s a balancing act, and Julie managed it well.

I came across this quote recently, and it seemed to make a lot of sense in the context of journalism. So I wanted to pass it on to my readers. I see its meaning similar to one of my other favorite quotes, which I posted awhile back:

“In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
— Eric Hoffer

Step 1: Get an invite.

I joined Google Voice in July 2009. I got my invite from Google a few weeks after after signing up on Google’s site. Users have a small number of invites also. So look around.

Step 2: Pick a new, local number.

I was able to scan through a catalog of numbers in Lafayette’s 765 area code. You can even search for words or, as I ended up doing, sequences of numbers. I picked 729 and chose the first option where those were the last three digits. My birthday is July 29, so it’s insignificant to anyone else but it was cool to me that I had some say in the number, so I wanted to take advantage of it.

Step 3: Forward calls to your real number.

You can forward calls to pretty much any number. I chose to send it to my cell phone, which has an Akron, Ohio, 330 area code. You can even send your calls to multiple phones to be answered on the first to pick up. I opted not to do this because at my office, we pick up other peoples’ ringing phone when they’re out of the office and take a message. But if you have your own office or other people don’t answer your desk phone, that may be an option for you.

Step 4: Customize your experience, preferences, etc.

You’ll want to set up your voicemail box at a minimum. But also look around at the preferences (e.g. do you want it to answer immediately, answer and give you a menu, etc.) and set those that work for you. For example, I set it up so my voicemails and SMS texts are e-mailed to me. This way it doesn’t use my phone’s texting plan and it transcribes my voicemail, so I don’t have to listen to them immediately or sometimes at all. (Note: Sometimes the transcription is humorously bad. Usually, I can at least tell who it is, though, and always I can go in and listen if needed.)

Step 5: Start disseminating your new number.

You could send it out as a mass note to your local sources. Or just start giving it out instead of your old number. You don’t need to explain Google Voice to anyone. Just start telling them, as I did, if you want to reach me on my cell phone call 765-xxx-x729. Eventually, they’ll start calling that. In addition to all the cool points above, the nice thing here is people no longer have to call an out-of-area-code number. It’s local, and local for those landline-lovers (and businesses with landlines) means the call is free.

Bonus: Get the Google Voice app.

Or at the least check out the nice mobile site. The app allows you to make calls that show up from your Google Voice number, without having to dial into Google Voice. With the Android app, it actually asks me at the start of every call whether I want to call from Google Voice or not. It also stores all those other messages in one place (though I’ve found it’s somewhat overkill to have e-mails of your sms/voicemails if you have the app).

The other cool thing about this service is if you move to another news organization in another community in the future, you can change your Google Voice number. It’s $10, but honestly, $10 seems a reasonable price to pay to keep your contacts, settings, etc. all tied together but front a new number.

So anyway, there are lots of other ways to use Google Voice, but this is how I use it. Any one else have some tips I missed?

So, raise your hand if you were told this phrase in j-school: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

The basic gist, in case you missed that lesson, is no matter how much you trust someone, don’t just take their word for it. Verify the information.

About a week and a half ago, this ingrained fact-checking mantra stumbled on something that seemed incomprehensible to me. That’s where my story begins:

A local school district called a press conference in the days leading up to a tax referendum vote. The point of the event was to tout several recent awards/recognitions for their students and schools. I was already aware of most of the items announced. The only thing that seemed newsworthy to me was their pronouncement that BusinessWeek had named them, for a second year, the top academic school in the state. I sent my editor a note from the press conference telling him that was the upshot of the event. I was going to post it on Twitter as well, but I decided since it wasn’t breaking news I would wait to get back to the office to find the link online to share. So I talked to a few students, board members, superintendent, etc. and then went back to the office expecting to spit out a quick story.

But when I went to the BusinessWeek site, there was nothing promoted about the “recent announcement.” That seemed strange. I tried searching the site for the award and could only pull up the 2009 rankings. I tried Googling it — with all my Google-fu skills — and tried looking for it on the Great Schools site, because Great Schools had partnered with BW in 2009. Nada.

I tried to call the editors at the magazine. It was already 4:30 p.m., so I wasn’t sure I’d reach anyone. After being forwarded through several people, I ended up leaving a voicemail for an education reporter there. She called me back about an hour later and said she hadn’t heard anything about the project being repeated this year. However, she wasn’t involved the prior year, so she suggested I contact the projects editor. I left him a voicemail and e-mail.

Meanwhile, I e-mailed the superintendent to ask if he had any documentation. I also e-mailed the Education Writers Association listserv to see if anyone else had heard about the announcement. I assumed other reporters would be working on similar stories about their own local schools. But no one else on the very active list replied, which is unusual. The superintendent replied with a link to the 2009 rankings, which while not specifically dated on that story page, were linked to a story from 2009. The format of the URL also indicated to me the page was posted in January 2009. I pointed that out to him and asked how he heard about the award this year. We talked on the phone and he said he was going back to his office to try and find the e-mail he received a few weeks ago, which he would forward to me — and to the night editor because I had to leave soon.

It occurred to me maybe this was a print exclusive story or a package with a delayed online posting. I didn’t have access to a print copy of BusinessWeek at the office. And I didn’t have time to go to the library a few blocks away, but I did call their reference desk where a not-as-helpful-as-he-could-be clerk told me it wasn’t in this issue.

At this point, I needed to file something, but I couldn’t confirm the entire point of the story. I had been working since about 9 a.m. that morning, and I was scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. that night at my part-time job. I wrote a story with all the information I had at that point, contact info for people I’d been reaching out to and told the night editor I’d forward the note from the superintendent when I got it on my phone. But when the note came in, it was really vague and not at all clear. My editors made the right decision to hold the story a day, even if it meant TV ran with the story and our news would be a little older than the press conference.

Long story short, it turns out this award wasn’t re-issued. The pages haven’t been updated. But between the still unexplainable e-mail the district officials received and the lack of a date stamped on the page, confusion had arisen that made them assume this was a new recognition. I found this out definitively the next day when I was able to reach the magazine projects editor. The story that ran in our paper ended up being the superintendent’s mea culpa for claiming a recognition that didn’t happen. As I pointed out, the district is still the top-ranked school in Indiana, but it hasn’t been recognized a second time.

So, here’s the lesson:

If they had just mentioned it to me and hadn’t called a press conference attended by several dozen community members, I probably would have just let it go and pointed out the mistake. It might have been mentioned on my beat blog, but just as likely not. I went into the story looking to validate not disprove the information. It hadn’t occurred to me until I was on the phone with the magazine reporter that the information could possibly be wrong. I just assumed I couldn’t find it. Instead, both I and the district got a lesson in the importance of fact checking and were able to set the record straight about what I believe was an honest mistake. (The TV station seemed to completely ignore this information, but then, their as-yet-uncorrected story was wrong to begin with because they said it was “Business Weekly” offering the honor.)

The other lesson in this is probably lost on BusinessWeek and other news entities, but I want to point it out anyway. Although there’s value in “evergreen” features, there’s also a real chance of danger in keeping something up too long and especially in not time/date-stamping it. Not everyone is as Web savvy as I am, and following the trail on this story it was very easy to see how someone would have misinterpreted the pages and information. It could get recrawled by Google and come across as fresh news, as has happened before. Or at the least, it could lead to confusion or blunders, such as the one I wrote about.

When subsequent upgrades were released, I found other reasons not to take the plunge. Its network sucked, especially in my office where I always had full bars on T-mobile. I didn’t like the idea of a virtual keyboard. It was still too expensive. Even when the price of the handset with a new contract plunged, the substantial monthly cost was a deciding factor.

In particular, the cost factor was hard to swallow not because of the upfront handset cost but because the network I was on gave me unlimited monthly calling for >$50 and unlimited data for $20. With texting and taxes, my monthly bill came out around $81. It was still a lot of money to fork out monthly for a girl with plenty of debt to pay back (thanks college). But it was, and remains, the cheapest smartphone deal out there from a major carrier.

Last month, as my more than two years old BlackBerry started malfunctioning and its battery life depreciated significantly, I knew purchasing my next phone was a decision I couldn’t put off. For more than a year, I had been talking about the need to upgrade and visiting cell phone stores to check out the latest, greatest phones. I haven’t been under contract in more than two years, so that was never a factor. I knew I had to buy a new smart phone because I used mine constantly for my work and play; honestly, once you go there, you can’t go back. It also had to look nice and include a few key items:

• a network that worked well in the places I spend my time most, including my cave-like office and the rural areas that surround my city,

• the ability to use Google Voice (which I use to set up a local cell number for sources to call me back),
• the ability to take decent quality photos,
• the ability to work with my gmail and my work e-mail on IMAP,
• the ability to install apps ranging from Twitter to Google maps, and
• the ability to use more than one of these programs at the same time.

Those were minimums, and they were minimums based on my most-used programs and functions from my existing phone. I also wanted to add to that, in a non-dealbreaker category, the ability to take video and watch it on the Web, a handset that wasn’t bulky and that looked nice and one that would allow for some strong personalization.

I truly thought about buying the iPhone. For the most part, it does what I want it to do. I like Apple products. I own an iPod nano. I’m writing this on my MacBook. And I use a Mac at work as well.

However, one thing about all the hype that really concerned me: I’ve never had anyone recommend AT&T to me, not for their coverage, costs or customer service.

The other thing that bothered me equally as much was the App Store-approved requirements. My boyfriend develops computer software for a living. He hasn’t created apps or anything. But it still annoyed me that Apple denies legitimate applications from being offered for its phone. It’s not that they won’t place it in the store because they have that right. Bricks and mortar stores make decisions every day to offer or not offer products. But in the real world, if you can’t find something you want at Best Buy, they don’t stop you from getting it somewhere else. Apple does that by closing off its handset to anyone without their stamp of approval. I don’t think they have the users best interest in mind (protecting them from malware, etc.) but instead their own bottom line and seemingly random acceptable interests.

Still, neither of those were complete deal breakers. After all, every phone/network has limitations. But they did mean I wasn’t going to be an Apple fanboy and pony up my hard-earned cash without looking around.

I initially thought I would stay on T-mobile. They have by far the best prices per month for smart phones. Their customer service has always been great. Their network has served me not imperfectly but well enough since 2004, when I moved off my parents Verizon family plan and onto my own plan. They also have a lot of smart phones to choose from, including Google’s Nexus One. The downside to sticking with them, however, was for existing customers even with upgrade pricing their phones are not competitively priced. What motivation do you have to stick with your company when they want to charge you $200 for a two-year contract but you can get a comparable phone/contract for practically free on another network? However, the Nexus One was the most competitive iPhone competitor. And after handling one that belonged to someone I met at a recent tweetup, I was ready to go for it. But then I looked into the pricing. As an existing customer, I had to pay almost $100 more for the phone upfront, and I also had to switch to a much much less favorable phone plan than my existing one.

The same person who let me handle his Nexus One recommended, if I could, that I wait to see the HTC Droid Incredible when it came out the next week. (The previous strangers’ powers of persuasion were helped a lot by knowing he was graduating soon and going on to develop mobile phones for a major company.) I started researching that phone, and from the specs it sounded better than I hoped for.

However, when I ran out the cost of ownership of the Incredible on Verizon against the cost of the iPhone on AT&T, they came out dead even. (This was before I realized I could get a corporate discount, but even with that the costs would be about the same.) So I was faced with the dilemma: Who wouldn’t want an iPhone? It’s a culture icon and status symbol. And if I’m going to pay that much anyway, why not?!

But then, I looked back at what I wanted and my reservations.

I previously had used Verizon when I was in high school and early college. I was never anywhere I didn’t have reception. My mom is also on Verizon, which would make calls home fall outside my minutes. I also know, on the flipside, many people with AT&T who get spotty at best reception in the newsroom, so it was a concern. In short, the Verizon network won in that battle.

After poring over specs and reviews of the Incredible, I decided I needed to handle it. I had some concerns about it, including notably the back cover design was sort of ugly and the lack of keyboard (something missing from all of my finalists, actually). So I went to the Verizon store on Monday and asked to use one of their models without strings. It felt light in my hands and fit comfortably. The keyboard, even on my first use of the phone, was responsive and accurate. And, wow, the phone was fast. It flies through tasks and bumps from one thing to another without hesitating. Its camera has a surprising number of features close at hand. Its internet browser was speedy, displayed full pages and even handled some flash.

I was sold.

Then the sales rep asked if I was interested in buying two — for the price of one, after mail-in rebate. I’d initially thought I’d buy the phone online from one of the stores selling it for $150. But two for $200 was a better deal. So I got the details and went home to talk to my boyfriend (who is also exploring an upgrade to an Android phone from a very low-tech phone that’s currently connected to his parents family plan). A family plan, we realized as we ran out the figures, would be cheaper to split than an individual plan, and that wasn’t even factoring in the 21-percent corporate discount I got for being a Gannett employee. We decided to go with that. On Wednesday, I went back to the store, signed up for a new contract. I was told the phones were (understandably) on back order because they had just been released and to expect them by May 12. It was no big deal. So it was a pleasant surprise when I got the phones from FedEx the next day: A week sooner than I’d prepared myself for.

I plugged the phone in overnight. Then, I ported my number over (I plan to keep my 330 cell number forever if I can) and spent Friday morning downloading all the applications I need and want, setting up my e-mail accounts and linking my phone to my other networks (the social media aspects are so intertwined in the phone system it’s remarkable) and playing with it. The calls I took on it all came across good, except one cell phone call I took from a source who was on their cell phone in Florida, so I don’t know if it was her phone or mine that was degrading slightly. It was fun to use, very easy to get going and ridiculously quick.

One of my iPhone-toting bosses had jibed me over Twitter: “@meranduh is there an app that turns your phone into an iPhone?” To which I replied, “I’d rather have an app that turns your network into Verizon.”

Even so, It didn’t hit me until about 11 p.m. last night how certain I was of my purchase. I was on the phone chatting with my boyfriend on speaker phone, playing a LabPixies game, searching for phone accessories on the Web (using my home wifi network on the phone) and then an e-mail came in that I was able to switch to and check. I was doing all of that all at once when it hit me: You can’t do that with an iPhone. The upcoming iPhone4G might change the field, but it wouldn’t eliminate some of previously stated hesitations. I know I’m still in the honeymoon period with my new phone, but for right now, I’m loving it. I’d definitely recommend checking it out.

I haven’t had time to thoroughly check it out, but most of the posts from my network so far have gone something like this: “I am so uninterested in Google Buzz. I ALREADY HAVE TWITTER.” (That was my friend Kate’s buzz, which spurred a conversation that in turn has spurred this blog post.)

One of our mutual friends, Ben, replied to Kate’s post questioning the purpose of “making a crappy version of something that already exists.”

That is a valid point, but only to an extent. And I think it overlooks something that is fundamental not only on the Internet but in the world, at least the capitalistic system that governs most of the world we live in. That is, if you weren’t constantly improving on something that’s already been invented, then we’d all still be riding around in Model T’s. We’d have no cell phones. We’d have no iPhone or any iPhone competitors. That isn’t to say all these inventions were crappy revisions (obviously they weren’t), but it probably depends who you ask and on which features you measure.

And to bring it back more precisely to the Internet, as I did in my reply to Ben:

Ben by your same logic, however, the world wouldn’t have Facebook. Think about it, there was already MySpace for connecting with your friends. Or continue that logic to pre-MySpace… we’d all still be stuck on Friendster. Also, they’d never have invented GMail, because Yahoo and Microsoft beat them to the free Web mail game.

I don’t think this is a crappy version of Twitter. I don’t think Buzz is a game changer, not yet. But it has potential to do things that other social networks don’t, with the added benefit that it’s built into much of your existing network. Give it some time to grow. Everything is always hyped up or shouted down when first introduced. I still don’t “get” Google Wave. It’s stupid to me. But I’m testing it to see what it becomes. I did the same with Twitter and Facebook, which I stuck with, and plenty of other things that I didn’t.

I am probably much more early adopter than the majority of Web users. That’s why I was on Twitter 2.5 years before my company started seriously talking about social media (i.e. now). That’s why I’ve at least tested the waters of everything from FriendFeed to Tumblr to Four Square to Google Wave to Yelp to … a multitude of other lesser known sites. I don’t use those sites on a regular basis, but I have a presence there and know how they work and why they don’t work for me.

Part of being on the Internet, especially in an industry like media where the Internet and its tools are so vital, is learning to evolve with it. You can’t evolve if you dismiss every new potential tool as stupid because it does something some other product already does in a different (or even similar) way. If it’s a worthwhile tool, people will migrate toward it (e.g. MySpace to Facebook exodus) or the other tool will evolve itself to better compete (e.g. Yahoo Mail today is better than it was before GMail, though still not as good in my opinion).

So, yes, I think the buzz about Buzz is a bit much until we see how useful it actually proves to be. (Sorry that’s the second pun!) And yes, there are some valid concerns:

• Do I really want my e-mail network to suddenly become my social network, particularly when there’s danger that my social circle and work circle don’t — and shouldn’t — overlap?
• Do I want my flooded inbox gushing with trivial status updates from that collective network? (I already fixed this.)
• Given my limited time in a day, how many social networks can I realistically engage in meaningfully? Does the world really need Buzz, or are we all stretched enough on existing sites?
• How much of my online life am I truly willing to cede to Google, as it moves increasingly toward becoming Googlezon?

But I’m going to be playing around with it and at least giving it a spin to see if it really is worthy. Right now, I’ve already identified several things I like and several I don’t. But I could say just as much of any Web site, including Twitter and Facebook. So my verdict for now is it has potential. And that alone means it’s worth serious consideration.