Two more ways for yakimaherald.com users to connect

by Sarah Jenkins
Yakima Herald-Republic

Odds and ends:

 

Want to take a look inside the newsroom? There's a place to do that, in our cleverly named "Inside the Newsroom" blog. This is a place for you to ask questions about how news decisions are made, how a story is reported or what ethic issues certain decisions raise. It's also a place to address complaints and concerns I hear from you.

Here are a couple of blog entries from this past week:

 

Do we formally track coverage by candidate?

(From Wednesday)

That was the question a caller had this morning: Does the YH-R keep a formal count of how many stories about the two presidential candidates are published and what prominence are they given?

The answer is no, we don't. But I was going through July newspapers anyway, so I counted what stories were published about John McCain and Barack Obama, on which pages and whether they had photos. I then assigned a "value" to each piece: 8 points for a front-page story, 7 for a story on page 2, 6 for a story on page 3, and so on, then 3 points for a photo, 1 point for a mug shot.

The "tally" for the month was 98 for McCain and 110 for Obama, and the coverage was remarkably similar. The only exception was during Obama's war-zone tour, when he had news reports with a photo on Page 3A for three days in a row. During the same three days, McCain had just one news report on 3A and no photos.

This type of tally is artificial, of course. It doesn't take into account news value, or whether a story reflects positively or negatively on a candidate or his positions. But it's still an interesting snapshot.

 

O'Reilly: Love 'im or hate 'im

(From Tuesday)

The thing you have to love about opinions is that everybody's got one -- and that's never more true than in a heated presidential election year.

Reader David Crowder suggested we take a look at Bill O'Reilly's weekly commentary for a strong conservative voice on the Yakima Herald-Republic's Opinion page, so we have purchased the rights to publish the column on a trial basis. And when we introduced it last Saturday, we asked other readers for their thoughts on it.

By Monday morning, about a dozen readers had responded, and the "vote" was evenly split. "I can't stand O'Reilly personally," wrote one person, "but he is right on (with) most of his reporting/opinionating." "I am not in favor of Bill O'Reilly," wrote another. "If you look up the word 'narcissism' in the dictionary, you will find his picture." And another, "What a breath of fresh air! It's high time Bill O'Reilly's editorials appeared ... in your paper."

We shoot for a mix of opinions from our syndicated columnists -- but we are also looking for strong writing, solid arguments and interesting topics. (I don't know about other readers, but I get tired of
every column focusing on "inside the Beltway" partisan politics.) And like David Crowder, pretty much every reader has an opinion about how well we achieve that.

Are there other editorial columnists you'd like to see added to the mix?

But wait, that's not all: Another new feature at yakimaherald.com is "Valley Vox," offering you breaking news, political buzz, business and real estate items, street scenes, conversations overheard ... Pretty much anything that strikes us as new, interesting, odd, funny and worth talking about.

Some of these postings will also appear in the next day's newspaper. Others won't.

Last week, we had items about the new gas station at Fred Meyer, Doc Hastings' pit-stop appearance in Prosser, a Web poll on former Prosser High School quarterback Kellen Moore and the BMX from Yakima that will be ridden during Olympic competition in Beijing.

The goal is to give online readers more news and information and to encourage you to come to our Web site for the latest updates.

Everyone on the YH-R news staff (reporters, editors, photographers) can contribute, and because blogs are intended to be more conversational, the tone is less formal than news stories. The idea is to make it informative but also entertaining and fun -- sometimes even snarky.

And, of course, you can join in -- with comments as well as news tips of your own and other community items.

Check it out at yakimaherald.com/blogs/valley-vox.

 

Reader Paul Douglas Franklin had more thoughts on split infinitives, addressed in this space last week:

To thoughtlessly, indiscriminately, and -- need I add this? -- confusingly split an infinitive is surely a mortal sin. On the other hand, to appropriately split an infinitive is a wonderful thing.

My favorite teacher, Jo H. Lewis, explained the origin of the ban on split infinitives (which means to put an adverb between to and a verb). Our English infinitives consist of two words which could be separated. Latin infinitives, on the other hand, consist of single words which cannot be split. At a certain point in our history, somewhere around the 1500s, the snobs among grammarians decided that Latin was the perfect language, and English must therefore be forced into the Latin mold. The prohibitions on split infinitives and on ending a sentence with a preposition are two results of this ridiculous attitude.

So split away. Unless you try really hard, I doubt you will violate any rules which should exist.

 

Want a full list of what people are paid at Yakima Valley Community College? Want to check if I voted in the last election? Want to see if Joe Morrier has been involved in any court cases?

There's a cool Web site that includes databases with all that information, and much, much more.

Check it out at www.lbloom.net.

Web master Louis Bloom is a Camano Island resident who describes himself as a former septic system installer and an oyster farmer (go figure). He started compiling databases in 1996, so there is a huge amount of information available.

 

* Sarah Jenkins is editor of the Yakima Herald-Republic. If you have a question or concern, you can reach her at 577-7703; P.O. Box 9668, Yakima WA 98909; or sjenkins@yakimaherald.com. You can also comment on this column in the "Inside the Newsroom" blog, at editor.yakimablogs.com.

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