"Too Much For 140"

(Gotta love the fail whale).

This post has been a long time coming. Thanks to all my stalwart readers who keep checking in the hopes that I'll have posted something both humorous and inspiring.

I apologize, but this most likely neither. Instead, it's a quick (I hope) rundown of everything social media-ish the Reporter-News has been doing over the last few weeks and months. I can't possibly fit it all into a tweet, and I don't want to annoy people by flooding their news feeds with updates, so it wound up here. Forgive me if some of these are old news.

Twitter:
I suppose it's only appropriate to start with @e_edition. That guy is good. Probably the best the ARN has ever seen (don't tell @ReporterNews I said that). Seriously, aside from any talent or lack thereof, the various Twitter accounts at the paper (@ARNBizBuzz, @ARNrewards, @ARNjobs, @abilenemoms, etc.) are a pretty hefty milestone in our history. West Texas isn't exactly famous for being high-tech or full of early adopters. We're pretty proud of our efforts to buck that stereotype as we learn more every day how to better engage with the Abilene community.

Facebook:
Our e-edition Facebook fan page is alive and well, although it could handle some more content. We're still working on ways to elicit content from our friends and fans, but I'm confident we'll get there.

I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that the Reporter-News fan page, which launched last week, has nearly 50 fans and is already generating solid interaction with readers. People love their newspaper, and it's ironic to me the medium that will be the alleged downfall of the printed word is emphasizing its popularity.

Blogs:
This blog, although still in its infant stage by most standards, has turned out to be not only a good time investment, but also really enjoyable. The newspaper industry is an exciting place to write. I'm either talking with people deeply invested in and passionate about it, or I'm given a chance to share my "life" (as much as a php site can have) and passion with someone who doesn't know the first thing about newspapers.

Anyone worth their salt in social media will tell you perfection isn't possible. Community isn't something you can display in a trophy case. It's something we have to work on every minute of every day. I'm thrilled to be able to say that's exactly what we're doing. Sometimes it's nice to have too much for 140.

Reel Men Love Newspapers

Part of the charm of running a good-old-fashioned newspaper is not just the smell of paper and ink wafting throughout the building, but also the bona-fide printing press down the hall. Yes, all you doubting Thomases, in some places in the world, they print news on paper. If you've never seen a modern press, trust me, it's awesome. It's four floors tall and the paper reels it prints on are about 1800 pounds each. It takes three hours, a roomful of reels and a skilled reelman to print our newspaper (plus a lot of other people upstairs). And that's if everything goes right.

Before Tuesday, however, I didn't know any of that.

The ARN, being the only newspaper in town, gets a lot of press. (I'll pause for the obligatory eye-roll). Teachers love to bring their classes through on tours, available year-round by appointment. Usually, our good friend and marketing manager, James, has the honor of escorting the horde of 7-year-olds around the building.

This week was different. The group that came in was on the oldish side, for field trips, at least. They were a group of Big Country high school students participating in a year-long leadership program. We were just one stop in a long day of visits to the media outlets in Abilene (all three of them). Also, James asked me to tag along and learn the tour so I can do it in the future. So, we met the kids in the lobby and off we went.

We looked at the old presses on display in the lobby, talked about the history of the paper, walked through some departments and eventually, made our way upstairs to the exciting part of the tour: printing the paper.

I've seen a tour before. Normally, we stand outside a glass wall and look inside at the machines, ooh, aah, next. Today, we ran into Ed. As I found out later, James already knew Ed, but I'd never seen him before, so I thought we just got lucky. Lucky, because Ed happens to work on the press, and he knows just about everything there is to know about printing a newspaper. Not only that, but he could let us into the famed glass-walled room. Not even James or I had been inside before. I was probably more excited than the kids were.

Anyway, Ed is a reel man rockstar. It was obvious as he wove his way through the maze of machines that he's great at what he does because he loves it. He's been in the newspaper business for years, and he told me he's afraid, not of losing his job if the presses ever stop rolling, but that when they do, the art will be lost. And it is an art.

Ed's friend, Larry, is in charge of "pasting" the rolls. Tens of thousands of newspapers won't fit on one roll, so someone has to be ready with a new roll when the old one runs out. It requires expert timing to paste the old paper to the new just as the edge of it spins off the reel, and if you miss, everything grinds to a halt. Ed says Larry's one of the best, and I believe it. He has all kinds of tricks for wrestling those giant reels onto the machines, and on top of that, he's just a nice guy.

The point is, they're both nice guys. They're passionate about what they do, and they want to share it with anybody who will stand still and listen. Yeah, they have ink all over their hands and faces and clothes. They work until 2 or 3 a.m. every night. The work they do is hot and tiring. But it's cool. And they know it.

What are we missing? Why can't everybody be fired up like that? To be fair, being a reel man is unique. Some people don't even know how to fold a newspaper anymore, much less explain how it's made. It's a novelty, for sure. But after years of the same work, I think the shine has probably worn off for Ed, just like any other job. I think the reason he loves his job is because he's invested in it, his time and patience and sweat, and he's proud of it.

So, the question is, are you proud of your work? Do you do everything to the best of your ability? Are you good at monotasking? If you're not pouring your heart and soul into everything you do, just maybe the boring job isn't the problem.

My challenge for tomorrow: try loving your job. See what happens.

(photo cred: wcm777)

We're Working On It

What's that you say?

The comics are fuzzy?

Th e wor ds areodd ly spa ced?

Articles from one part of the page are suddenly part of another unrelated idea of proposed fed­eral legislation that would re­quire chain restaurants such as Chick-fil-A , McDonald’s, and Burger King to list calorie con­tent on menus or on a large menu board article?

I know at this point many of our e-edition readers are waiting outside the building with torches and pitchforks and nasty computer viruses, but please, before you set the place ablaze, let me explain.

Yesterday marked the first day of a fresh new look for the ARN. I'm sure you've noticed the new layouts, clean lines, modern typefaces, rounded edges. Obviously, I'm rather partial to the new design. But it seems to have thrown our e-edition provider for a loop. This, however, is not entirely their fault.

The last two days have been a lesson in good communication due to the extraordinary lack of it in the days before the redesign. This is not because anyone was lazy or careless or forgetful. It simply never occurred to those behind (sounds conspiratorial) the new layout that it might affect the e-edition. So, no one thought to contact Tecnavia and prepare them for Monday morning. The system in place for pulling text off the page worked swimmingly for the old ARN, but the new one required some adaptation. Unfortunately, the PDFs were uploaded as usual and our readers woke up Monday morning to garbled text and fuzzy funnies.

Despite the mistake, several good things came from this.

One, (in my opinion, the best one), it's being resolved. Tecnavia and our e-edition team have been in constant contact since yesterday, combing every page for bugs and trouble spots. Our readers have been instrumental in finding the flaws and addressing them quickly.

Two, we now know better. The terrible, paradoxical thing about many mistakes is that you have to make them to know not to. The great thing about them is that particular mistake will never happen again. Next redesign, we'll be prepared.

Three, our readers are paying attention. And now I know it. I was so excited when that first email rolled in, it didn't matter that it was negative. I know that sounds strange, but I love to see and hear people talking about the e-edition, no matter what they're saying. It means we're getting noticed. Flaws, I can fix; negative perceptions, I can change; praise, I can deal with; but silence is the least helpful, most depressing response I can think of. It was nice to know that not only were people noticing, but they trusted us to be able and willing to fix the problem.

I've read so many blogs by so many great people I can't remember them all about the correct relational response to consumers. This one from Seth Simonds on the Obsessed with Conformity blog does a great job of "summing up" (as he says, quoting the immortal Inigo Montoya) what companies should do when they make mistakes. And I'm proud to say, I think we did a darn good job this time around.

Even though the exact situation might not be pertinent, I think the lessons are relevant regardless of your line of work. If there's a problem, ignoring it won't make it go away. It also won't make your customers very happy. Neither will excuses. Surprisingly, it usually requires a quick and effective response to do that. Which requires listening to your customer to see the problem in the first place. A little forethought never hurt anyone, either.

So, for all you readers out there: We're sorry. We promise it won't happen again. I sincerely hope you'll put down the pitchforks and forgive us.


And anyway, if you burn down the newspaper, who'll tell everyone about your protest?