412.

I’ve always loved numbers. When I was a kid, I would borrow the Money section from my dad’s USA Today and add up lines upon lines of stock quotes. I loved played Monopoly, I was great in math class, and the back of baseball cards were better than the front.

Digital clocks were one of my favorites. I had all sorts of games I would play whenever I saw time displayed. One is to “cast out nines,” which is a trick you use when checking division problems. Basically, when all the numbers add up to nine, they cancel each other out. So, 4:50 was an even one, as was 8:01 or 2:34.

I would also count the lines that made up each glowing number, and I knew which times of day had the perfect number of lines to make up perfect 8s with no spaces wasted. 3:18. 8:47. 2:34 (again!).

Now that you know I’m crazy, let’s move on to those glorious times in life when certain numbers gain a special meaning. It may be your birthday — seeing 10 and 31 anywhere makes me smile, because Halloween is when I was born. I’ve always liked 21 (the first day of winter, and the first of summer — and the day my grandmother was born), and 3 and 7 always worked out for me, probably because I was raised reading the Bible.

In high school, 24 became my lifelong favorite number. It was the jersey number of my hero, and the number I wore when I played basketball. I would forever use it for passwords or pins.

But the newest number for me has been 412 (a variation of 24, mind you). This number popped up sometime when I was working a sad job at a sad newspaper. At first, I couldn’t place it, but I was seeing it everywhere.

I was supposed to be at work at 4:00, but I usually rolled in around 4:12 (which, technically, was 4:07 because my clock was five minutes fast). When I went to bed, it was often 4:12, too, the time I finally unwound from a long day at work.

Whenever I saw 412, it gave me hope. It seemed to say that God was there, and that He was keeping track of me, and that even in the mess, there was a sign. It was my snake in the wilderness, my fleece in the dew, my raven by the stream.

The number 412 soon got an unfortunate cousin in the number 146, which was the “tube number” of a very inept coworker of mine. (We used a DOS-based editing system, and each station was assigned a number. Mine was 245. His was 146. When you saw 146 pop up when you tried to get into a story, you groaned. When you saw an article that originated at 146, you groaned. Eventually, when you saw 146 anywhere, you groaned.)

God gave me a lot of 412s at that job, but I also got a lot of 146s. No matter how many time I saw 146, though — often waking up in the middle of the day after my night shift (1:46), there was a 412 when I rolled into work.

For every 146, there’s a 412.

I wrote that on a piece of paper and hung it in my cube, and no one had a clue what it meant but me. I knew, though. I knew every time I saw those numbers, and I knew it when 146 walked over with one of those things he always did and jumbled my day.

For every 146, there’s a 412. It works in math, and it works with God — except, maybe, during the times when God is so amazing that He lets you see 412 more than you see 146, even if there’s an equal amount out there. (I haven’t seen a lot of 146s since I left that job.)

The cool thing about these numbers popping out and surprising you is that it often happens when you aren’t expecting it, and that’s what makes me say it’s from God. I’ll be having a crappy day and will be praying that He’ll show Himself to me, and all of the sudden my savings on a grocery receipt will be $4.12. I’ll be muddling through a day at work, and then I’ll see it’s April 12 (4/12). I don’t go to work at 4:00 anymore, and I don’t go to bed at 4 a.m., but I still see so many 412s.

(I realized later that the place where I probably picked up “412” was from a Switchfoot song called that. And, yep, the words describe my life around the time of 412 perfectly.)

I was working on my checkbook tonight, thanking God for the three-paycheck month yet wondering how I was going to pay my car insurance and my rent and that credit card bill that just keeps getting bigger. I had enough to cover it this time, but the margins keep getting thinner.

Last week in church, my pastor had talked about a tithing challenge. Apparently, some people who weren’t raised in repressive Judeo-Christian households haven’t had the 10% rule drilled into them, and they need to be reminded to give their firstfruits, and a full tenth, to the local church God has placed in their lives. (Just kidding. I’m aware this is a complex topic, but I couldn’t resist.)

I’ve always tithed, although sometimes I didn’t have a local church, or I had to move money around. Recently, though, I’ve been in a pickle. I stopped tithing to my local church for several months this past year because my work schedule changed, and I worked every Sunday. I was also feeling disconnected from the church in many ways, so I had welcomed the schedule change as a way to take a break and reassess. Since I was not actively involved in the church, I did not consider it my local church, and I instead invested my tithe money in some missionaries I already supported otherwise who were dealing with a shortfall on their monthly support.

When I returned to the church this spring, I started tithing again — but not 10% to the church. I didn’t really know what to do, in fact. I wasn’t going to cut back on the missionaries; I had prayed and asked God to keep providing enough that I could give them this extra amount. But I also couldn’t afford to tithe 10% to my church, because the amount I was giving to the missionaries was already about that much of my salary.

If I tithed and kept my promise, I would be giving away 20% of what I earn, right off the bat. And I’m in a living situation where my rent is about 60% of what I earn. I would prefer to still be able to buy food.

But then the pastor got up and talked about tithing, and the challenge, and I knew what was right. It’s just money. I don’t need new clothes, and I haven’t spent anything on myself in forever (and I don’t really intend to, if it’s between spending on me or God). This means no more eating out for lunch, or not letting my car break down, or skipping some things I would like. But it’s just money. And, as the great C.S. Lewis says, you’re not really giving if it doesn’t hurt in some way.

So tonight, thanking God for my three-paycheck month, which took care of the old car insurance, I added in this week’s deposit and went to write my check for my church. I totaled up how much I made and cut off the last digit. I wrote the check for what is a very big chunk of change for me.

And then, as I ripped off the boring, cheapest-you-can-buy check, I saw the number: 412.

Of course my step of faith would be written on the 412th check I had ever written from this account. Of course it would be when I was asking God whether He would really hold me together through this. Of course He would open the door for me to give a 412 when there wasn’t a 146 in sight.

I once used my 412/146 thought in a song I wrote, the theme of which was grace. The main line to that song, in which I tried to capture the incredible feeling I had one night when I realized something God had done just for me, was, “I didn’t need it but You gave it anyway. I need to remember that.”

I have trouble remembering sometimes. But that’s why God made clocks, and numbers like 412.

Journalists are stellar complainers.

The old adage about journalism is that it's there "to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted." What it doesn't mention is that journalists are often afflicted (real or not), and of the few places they find true comfort, one is when they are griping about their problems with each other.

That's what made me smile the most when I read this article about the New York Times' editor, Jill Abramson, and this quote especially (she was asked what the biggest drag was of being the executive editor): "I don't get to complain anymore. It's just true. Some of the most delicious time that you spend as a journalist is like, complaining. At no times have I had fewer actual friends to gossip with, and kind of complain with, or at least commiserate with. That is a hard part of being the boss. Newsrooms are just full of cantankerous complaining people. It's so enjoyable to be part of that."

Well said, Ms. Abramson.

Journalisms.

I found some fun stuff on Poynter today. First up we have the war journalist action figure. He's got a pretty serious camera and nice duds, but let's be honest -- no man worth his salt is taking a goatee into a war zone.

The other find is this lovely piece that explains why I no longer have a job as a copy editor. It includes this video, which I have embedded for your viewing pleasure. One note, though -- the animosity between reporters and copy editors (and day people and night people) isn't just a byproduct of a newsroom. It's the larger life case of people who do it right vs. people who don't, or two sets of people who do it right but don't communicate. Newspapers are just awesome places to see it get really bad before people combust.

24 Oceans.

It was a number — just a number, just two digits that didn't have to mean anything but came to stand for so much.

It was 24, the jersey number of a basketball player who I wanted to be, the symbol of perfection, completion, a place I could only dream of landing.

It was an age where all the preparation and waiting would stop being, and the doing would begin. When I was 24, I would have my own magazine, I would chart my own path, and I would have my place at last in this world.

No. 24 has taken its hits in my life, but never so much as this year, when I turned 24 years old with the bullheaded expectation that nothing would keep me from making this a banner year. I would push and strive, connive and achieve, because 24 only happens once.

The funny thing about No. 24 is that it's an arbitrary number. The numbers 2 and 4 were never digits that resonated with me. I was more of a 3 or 7 type kid. And I don't know why my basketball hero picked 24, and why that had to consume me and become something. But 24 became 24, and so when I turned 24, it was time.

The year started well enough. I didn't see starting my own magazine reasonably happening, but I already managed a magazine (16-page, full color!) on my own, so that was close. Plus, I had the grand vision of jumping in the old Mustang and driving down to New York City, where I would wow the executives of Time Inc. or New York magazine with my ambition and work ethic to the point that they would give me some kind of amazing job. The year bore enough promise to fulfill its expectations.

Right before I turned 24, I was promoted at the job I had risen to from a mess of internships, freelance, and low-level full-time work. I became the night editor of a daily newspaper, which had me supervising the paper each evening and designing the front page. I got to send reporters scurrying, exercise news judgment, and make the whole thing markedly more respectable, with all my little quirks coming out on its pages, from taking care of the widows in the text to making packages that were far too effort-filled for newsprint.

Within a few months of turning 24 and running as hard as I could with that promotion, though, things began to change. I already loathed the company I worked at very much, and I had long dreamed of getting out of there. But amidst the crappiness of the job, the layoffs, and the turmoil of the industry, I thought I would be safe — at least until I could smell doom coming, and then I could take off and find a new home before anyone else.

But soon after that promotion, my distaste for the company was met with changes that even I, as a talented employee, could not stop. An unraveling began as the company changed some things, and threats emerged. One thing happened after another, with long hours bleeding into stress and disillusionment. The smarter you were, the more you flailed, for the company was bringing in new procedures meant to suit the bottom-feeders. I fought for perfection, the complete 24, and it started to break me.

Those months at the newspaper, when the company tried to implement a new system for building the paper (design, writing, everything), I found the answer to what happens when an immovable force (a caffeinated, 24-year-old go-getter who won't take anything less than perfect) meets an immovable object (a crappy company, or all the antagonists from Atlas Shrugged — you pick). The answer is tendonitis.

I had never heard of tendonitis before I got very scary, deep pains in my wrist near the tail end of us introducing a new system that was flawed, slow, and designed to kill people from the beginning. But now, whenever I hear of someone getting tennis elbow or a baseball player landing on the disabled list with fatigue, I feel great sympathy. Tendonitis blows.

Tendonitis is what happens when the elasticity that makes up the tendons and muscles wrapped around your arms starts to go. Rather than being taut rubberbands that allow your fingers and arms to react as if spring-loaded, your limbs become strung-out rubberbands, getting tiny tears and going limp. My tendons were so shot that I could rotate my arms around and hear the bones clicking together. I felt shooting pain at first, then it subsided to a deep ache, like when you've been punched a bunch of times and the bruise never goes away. It started in my wrists and worked into my elbows, then ran all of the way into my shoulders and neck.

Using a mouse caused shooting pain. Typing caused me to hunch over in pain. All of the day-to-day tasks you need to do to live — driving, getting dressed, washing dishes, picking up something as light as a shoe — brought gasps of pain.

I soon found that I couldn't curl my hands into shapes that I had used them in my whole life. It was one thing to not be able to cook or fold something, but considering I spent my life worshipping at the thrones of writing, drawing, guitar playing, basketball dribbling and shooting, driving, handiman fixing, and otherwise just doing everything on my own with basic ingenuity and hands that could figure out how to do anything, something more was quickly lost. I couldn't hold a pen. I couldn't write. I couldn't type. I couldn't design. I couldn't hold a book open. I couldn't draw. I couldn't turn a steering wheel.

I couldn't live.

Two months into what was meant to be the year that everything happened, the age that would define me, I could barely get dressed. The kid that self-righteously gutted through every horrible night at work had to tell her boss she couldn't keep trying. She couldn't keep moving that mouse with bags of ice wrapped around her arms. She couldn't be a freaking warrior, proving to the world that this was her time and place.

The details are bland now — the doctor's visits, therapy, ice baths, splints. Learning how to sleep. Spending weeks living with my parents because I couldn't function on my own. Reading more than 5,000 pages of books and magazines. Learning how to pray because I could do nothing else.

My company, which quickly realized that the very system it had implemented against many protestations and warnings was indeed crap, made the situation more Job-ian as time went on. On one return to my job, to tell my boss I was headed in to see the doctor but couldn't come back to work yet, he told me that he — a man who put up with an inordinate amount of stupidity and could weather anything — had finally had enough. He was leaving, and he wouldn't be around when I came back.

Then the company-wide emails came that explained that certain processes were moving to desks in Chicago. I came across this one day when checking my email from my parents' house. After I inquired, the editor of the paper explained that, indeed, I had just been laid off via email, prospective that summer.

As I sat and waited and iced my arms, the paper I had fought tirelessly to build up for a few months was being degraded daily, with me not even within driving distance of stopping the slide.

And so, at 24, I learned I was not God.

It's funny to write about it now, because I'm sure it seems melodramatic. I'd been dealing with all sorts of emotional upheaval, soul-searching, and general discouragement ever sinced I moved to Boston several years before. Life lessons and seeing Who God is were not new to me. But the culmination of my great expectations for being 24, coupled with my body finally cracking after years of trying to out-fight life, came in a beautifully ironic package over those few weeks.

I would have to write forever to describe the lessons I learned and how God pulled together the final pieces in the next few months to cap off journeys he had started for me weeks, years, and even decades before. Losing my arms began me gaining my soul, and it was something I couldn't have conjured up or seen, no matter the time I put into chasing joy and seeking God for so long. The lessons were wide-ranging, the fallen barriers all over the place. But starting with the days when I couldn't grip a pen, I became like the C.S. Lewis dragon that has to have himself ripped to the core before he can become a child again.

And today, about a month before a birthday that will forever sweep away my perfect 24th year, I am more whole than I've ever been.

As God usually does, He's already started redeeming the situation. If I had come out of that mess just knowing that He was God, and that I needed to chill out, and that certain things were worth living for, that would have been great. But He had me learn many more lessons, and see many more things. And then He started blessing me, as is His norm when we think all that's left is to thumb our noses at Him.

About a year to the day I got that masterful promotion, I was at a new job — a job I went to just to get out of that bad company as quickly as possible. But, it turns out this job was pretty good, too — to the point that I spent a night, a year after that promotion that I thought had solved everything, interviewing several members of the New York Yankees in the bowels of Fenway Park. I can explain why this is fantastic, but I don't think I need to. I asked to be a little god at a newspaper, and God broke my arms and gave me a one-on-one interview with Andy Pettitte, and then Derek Jeter (to name two). I think that makes my point.

So, with a month left of being 24, I sit and type with a twinge still in my arms but a smile on my face. I'm never going to be able to encapsulate in a blog post, book, or song what has happened to me in this 24th year, but I do know that somehow it has turned out exactly how I wanted.

I wanted 24 to be a year when amazing things happened, when I finally arrived, when life became worth living. And, in the true spirit of Mark 9, God has cut off my arms to bring me closer to Him.

I have joy for the first time in my life. I no longer wonder about my future or fear that I won't fulfill expectations. I work my tail off and get great results but am never shackled by perfection. I enjoy my days and the people around me, and I can say for the first time in my life that, through no ability of my own, I have finally seen how to walk with God.

So, don't be careful what you wish for. Wish for it, and chase it. But if you are the kind that has decided God will be part of your life, be aware that He keeps His promises, and He'll keep them whether you're following along or fighting Him with all your might. I have told Him many times over the years that I want Him, and this year He fulfilled my wish in the best of ways.

Could it have happened without pain? Could it have happened without feeling an inch from death and hopelessness many times over? Perhaps. (Especially considering I think most of the garbage I experienced was due to my own pride, not God trying to pull one on me.)

But I don't care, because I'm 24 years old, and God has done with 24 what I couldn't: He's made these otherwise meaningless numbers mean something very big. He's given me oceans to sweep away my hopes of castles in the sand and given me what I was looking for behind all of those empty requests: Him.

So, hello, 25. We shall meet in a few weeks. But when I set an agenda for you, be forewarned: It may look organized on the outside, with goals and plans that follow human norms, but its execution could be far different. For the picture I paint is not what I pursue — the deeper meaning behind is what I want.

After a year when God used what appeared to be the opposite of a great human experience to give me the best result I could have ever wanted, I fully expect my ideas of human advancement to be met with obliteration, and my heart to be taken forward in the same giant strides He's shown me this year.

I don't need to draw, write, eat, drive, dribble, play, and scheme to know God. He can have my arms any time.

And whatever things I feel so badly that I need this year to get somewhere or be someone, I probably don't need, either. There's not much that could happen now that would make me think I'm losing anything when God works.

24, after all, is just a number.

Awesome archives

One of the best things newspapers have to offer these days is their incredible wealth of knowledge, information, and ability to capture and explain history.

The reason we still have journalism is because you can't just report the news -- you also have to give it context. Two of the best ways to do this are through exceptional photography and superior analysis, which is why I've always been a fan of the New York Times.

Now, paywall-free, the Times is offering a look at a bunch of its archive photos. Not only are the photos incredible, but the captions offer enough of a context that you can tell there's a whole different world out there.

The Boston Globe has jumped on board with its own archive series.

It smells like Heaven, and old sandwiches

Tonight was my first full shift at the Boston Globe sports desk, a night filled with taking high school scores, fetching page printouts, and losing a battle against the encroachment of crumbs on the "Hawk" desk.

But it was the greatest night ever.

After my shift finished around 2 a.m., I walked past the amazing pictures of Boston life hanging on the newsroom walls, down the escalator surrounded by snapshots of the old typesetting process, out the doors emblazoned with the gothic "Boston Globe" flag in white and into a night that is too cold for summer. As I walked around the front of the building, I looked up and saw the printing presses humming away inside, behind the two-story glass windows. I stopped.

For five minutes, I watched the newspapers fly through the press, going from giant white rolls to line-smeared beauties, in and out and under and over and ahhhh. It was so beautiful.

I don't know what is going to happen to print, or to all those forest-green-and-gold Boston Globe delivery trucks that pack the left side of the parking lot, but I do know that I've reached the point of no return. I'm no longer the fan of newspapers, I'm part of one — a big one, a proud one. Sure, half of the Globe's main floor is full of empty cubicles where many workers once sat. Yes, the newsroom is dingy, and there's a terrible creak on the part of the floor I have to traverse every time I take the page printouts to the slot editor.

But it's a paper! It has a guy called the "slot" editor! It has photos of Babe Ruth in its sports area! It has the U.S. Open on TV at night! It has crazy old men calling in at 1 a.m. to find out who won the Sox game! It has proofers and reporters and editors and girls who come up from the pressroom around midnight to deliver the first edition, all smudged up and pretty, with its full buffet of the day's news.

A buffet — that's what newspapers were always supposed to be — a one-stop place to find out a little bit of everything going on in life. But today, with specialized sites and up-to-the-minute news, the buffet seems old and outdated.

Think about it: who wants to read a huge, easily crinkled sheet smudged with ink? And who wants to work in a newsroom with a college kid's bylined story from six years ago taped to the side of a computer monitor? Why does it matter what some sports writer says about how Fed won tonight? And does anyone except those drunks from Southie care what the Red Sox score is, enough to not watch the game but then call the sports desk to hear whether Boston won?

I don't know, and I can no longer try to answer those questions, for I am partial to newspapers now. But I do know that I love this buffet of a newspaper. It smells like old sandwiches at the Globe, but to me, it smells like Heaven, too.

I'm not sure whether everyone else would love that hole like I do now, with its old file cabinets full of media guides for every single college and professional team, with its wide-open newsroom that has cubicles and reporters' heads for as far as you can see, with people like Cheryl sitting on the sports copy desk, telling the new "night hawk" (their name for my position) how it is (that people aren't going to stop reading the paper or cancel their subscriptions because the new girl's recording on the Globe's score phone line (617-265-6600, call on Thursdays) sounded dumb to herself), with a proofing printer that the editors hope would have a completion percentage near Tom Brady's, but is actually more like Rex Grossman's (40% — my observation) in spewing out full-page prints of the next day's paper on time.

I'm a fan. I'll take the Globe as it is, from its fight to stay what it used to be to its place on my doorstep every morning. I'll take the cold weather, the actual frost on my windshield on an early September night.

I'll take Boston's mess of roads that still aren't finished, and the cops using my tax dollars by sitting on those roads at two in the morning while some blue-collar guy tacks on a street sign. I'll take the drive home, the way 93 whips you around and shoots you into the city, under the buildings with blinding lights.

They don't even need to pay me. I can't wait to go back.

No joke...a newspaper that is still put together by hand

No joke...there's at least one newspaper left in the world that is put together by hand: The San Diego Union-Tribune. I stumbled upon this article, about the obsolete pagination techniques, when looking into Platinum Equity, the company that owns the Union-Tribune and is looking into buying the Boston Globe.

Everyone at the Globe is worried that Platinum will bring deep cuts similar to the ones at the San Diego paper (hundreds were laid off the day after it was bought), but seeing as the paper was still in 1970s-era layout and pagination, I'd say the Union-Tribune had plenty of reason to take those cuts.

A great Ted Kennedy package

The Globe ran a very strong series on the life of Ted Kennedy earlier this year, with this multimedia package online to go with it. This is the way newspapers should cover everything; it's excellent.

These letters from the Kennedy mother are especially funny.

A new way for the White House to snub the press

Call it one act in a list of many, but the White House's choice to cancel newspaper subscriptions as a cost-cutting measure is just another shot to the heart of journalism.

News sources had Internet woes from the beginning

Don't think news sources didn't try to take advantage of the Internet in the beginning, this Poynter article says, just realize that early Internet technology was so bad that some news leaders didn't think it would take off, and if it did, that it would be too difficult to use (for, say, the legions of bloggers and news aggregate sites, all for free).


When the Internet picked up and other people found easier, better ways to use it, the news sources who were ahead were stuck with outdated technology. And like good, Depression-era journalists, they tried to squeeze the juice out of their old stuff like they would with an old press. But technology improves exponentially, and news sources were soon behind the game.

You know the rest of the story from here.

The newspaper vs. Web experiment

Slate writer Michael Kinsley has started an experiment where different sets of people will read either only newspapers or only news Web sites for a day, with the aim being to find out if there's anything behind those arguments that one source or the other leaves a reader better-informed.

Check out his Slate article about the idea, and try it yourself. (I'm going to do Web for a few days then newspapers this weekend.)

Charging for online

A Rhode Island newspaper is charging for online content, but not in any way that's familiar to those who have seen different pricing models tried out for Internet news.

The paper will charge $100 on top of the print subscription to get the Web site, and $200 more if someone just wants the Web site.

I don't know much about this paper, but apparently whoever wrote the article (see link above) is, and they're saying this isn't the type of paper that has good enough content to charge like that.

I guess we'll see, but the move is a gutsy choice. Whether a large, viable print/Web news source could do that is another question, especially since we're about 10-15 years past the time where any attempt to charge for online content may have been snuck through. There have been a lot of moves lately, though, to start charging, so the industry will have to keep an eye on this model as well as the more popular cheap subscription and micropayment models.

Stuff you can still only get from newspapers

Believe it or not, there is still stuff (and I choose to use this ugly word on purpose) that you can only get from newspapers.

As I've written about before, the move of news onto the Internet has killed a lot of the design elements that make print products so great.

In a Slate article about reading newspapers on a Kindle, I found many of the same arguments. The Kindle is a great idea, except that instead of giving straight-up Web news, or the print version on the screen, it offers a third form that takes the worst from both.

One of the main reasons Web news is great is because it's instantaneous, but the Kindle misses that by only updating once a day. So, it ruins the whole point of getting the newspaper on a screen, unless you're just trying to keep your hands clean of newsprint. You're still getting old news.

And even if you love the print version but just want to see it an electronic format, you can't get that from the Kindle, either. Subscriptions on the Kindle deliver the news in a unique format, without the aesthetic appeal of good graphics, carefully designed pages or (and most important) the editorial input found with headlines of different sizes and stories placed with specific prominence.

As much as people argue that they want to be able to pick and choose their own news, what they usually mean is that they want sources where they can find the news they want. They don't mean that they want their news streaming across a screen in all one size font with no breaks, headlines or editorial input such as graphics and slightly sensational headlines. (Although no online or electronic reader sources...except for maybe Drudge report...go to the extreme of no design, it's fair to say there's some serious lack of design creativity on the Web and electronic readers.)

Basically, electronic and Web news is now like newspapers were hundreds of years ago, in the days of smooshed text and multiple decks. The hope is that the revolution to the modern version of print, with beautiful graphics, clean spacing and a laid-out page that makes navigating the news easy, will come soon to these new media.

Here's a grand idea: Just put the print versions on the Kindle, and fill in the different news holes with updates throughout the day. The shock! The difficulty! What, keep using a good model? And there could be advertising on these pages as well? No! It cannot be done!

I have no clue why newspapers are not moving toward their own readers, which could do this and, in turn, save their beautiful printed pages by having them transposed onto a screen.

And remember, Amazon takes 70 percent of all subscriptions run on the Kindle. 70 percent. What do the newspapers have to lose?

Good news for news

I seem to be posting a lot about the newspaper industry, but I've found something I think is very encouraging for those who love journalism and want to keep viable news sources alive. Note that I'm saying "news sources," not newspapers. (I was sitting by the Charles River near Harvard yesterday and had my broadsheet blown into a tissue paper-like ball of messy ink, and thus my distaste for the massive, hard-to-read medium grows, although I love the source.)

One of the hardest things for me to swallow as newspapers fall is not only that these great institutions are failing but that the presentation of news on the Web is mediocre. It's harder to read, comes at you more frequently and is often shorter. That's just the way it is with the Internet; no one is going to read a 5,000-word Vanity Fair profile online just for sport.

So, I laud any journalistic enterprises that can find a way to take the presentation of information as we know it right now, in newspapers and magazines, and get it — in full design glory — onto the Web.

Several magazines are putting their actual layouts online, and they flip like a real magazine. I think this is awesome. You get the full presentation, complete with great layouts and colors, and don't have to read it as a standard Web piece. The superior design also helps you sit through the longer articles, even though it's still a pain to read a lot from a screen.

The other alternative is the waves the Detroit Free Press is making with its online newspaper, an e-edition now available, since the paper version isn't printed a couple days a week anymore. People said this signaled the path toward death for the newspaper, but readership has actually increased, and the online version has attracted more people, according to Poynter. Even better, the Detroit people are uploading whole broadsheets for viewing fun, which means, once again, that the design is preserved.

(With newspapers, the layout is especially important, because this is where these great news organizations show their editorial prowess. A front page story is still a front page story, and where they place the articles as you go through an edition shows you how they rank news value. This role — of the news source setting the tone and importance of news as well as giving "just the facts" (we hope) — is one that the Internet is taking away. While the democratization is good on some levels (meaning people get to pick their own news), a lot of us still want to know what the New York Times thinks is the most important story of the day.)

I'm encouraged by these online versions, meaning that although we may have to ditch newsprint, we can still keep the art form alive. I've even heard rumblings that we may be going back to multi-edition days, like in the early 20th century, as e-editions are easier to produce and news changes throughout the day.

But hardly any newspapers or magazines are doing this. The Kindle2 was released this week, and everyone went crazy about how it was going to be great for newspapers — but all it the new Kindle does is give people a larger screen to read the same stuff. Some new forms to disseminate news are under way at the New York Times and the Boston Globe, but newspapers have yet to take control of a device like the Kindle and make it an essential for getting their news.

My suggestion? Use the Kindle, or another device, but make news packages that are way superior to what you can get on the regular Internet, whether it is from your organizations' Web site or the blogging cess pools. Hand out some of these free devices, or get people to buy them (whatever), but make the news packages only available on these devices. Make them so cutting edge that they'll be a go-to place for all your business, a step up from a newspaper you can pack in your bag and the Blackberry you tuck in your pocket. (This is a brief sketch. I have the entire plan under lock and key.)

It sounds expensive, but news organizations need to start the move toward being multi-serving news sources, or it's all going to be over soon.

Shoot the dinosaurs. Take the canoli.

It's no longer the gray lady disowning her golden child. It's the kid insisting that he be allowed to build a taller sandcastle, with no clue that the tides are due in any time now.

From what it looks like, the Globe has avoided being shut down again. The leadership of the papers got a nice list of concessions from its unions, with the paper currently talking over details with the final union, a 700-member stick-in-the-mud organization that continues to squabble with the paper's leadership. These union members are loath to give up perks such as lifetime guarantees or health care reductions, assuming, of course, that the paper they work for will be able to survive in the coming years without a drastic change in business style.

After the other unions working with the Globe gave up millions in concessions over the past few days, you'd hope this last group could scrounge up enough to give to the Globe, so the paper can please the New York Times. But right now it looks like the union (and mostly the managers, in fact) are fighting for a few marbles as a tidal wave approaches from offshore.

Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr wrote a rather nasty column about the future of the Globe, but while his remarks could have been nicer as the deadline loomed over the weekend, a lot of what he said was right. The news business is changing, and this is just the first step. The Globe is going to have to do some serious thinking about its focus and business practices if it wants to stay alive in the future.

This is not the New York Times' fault; it is merely offering to shoot the horse before it suffers too much.

Still, the Globe has a lot to offer and a lot of resources, which is why anger should be turned to the unions. Workers' rights are one thing; not having a place to work is another. And, for goodness' sake, the union leaders that are still making tons of money while their workers offer to get paid even less (they already have wage freezes) need to stop. They represent everything that is wrong with the Globe, whereas the people willing to sacrifice pay, benefits and cushy bonuses for the good of journalism represent all that is right (and sustainable).

It's a new age. Shoot the dinosaurs. Take the canoli.

Boston Herald news coverage
Boston Globe news coverage

As the Globe turns

Some interesting articles about the Globe's (and many newspapers') situation:

A. David Warsh writes about the Globe's shift in focus after being bought by the New York Times.

I see this as a representation of a deep problem in newspapers all across the nation: a detachment from the base. Instead of being family-owned, community-oriented newspapers, publications have tried to go after the evil twins of praise and money.

By pursuing high-profile pieces that make "good" papers in national eyes (and win prizes), newspapers have moved away from the communities that turned to them for down-to-earth, relevant news. On the other side, many papers have marketed to younger crowds to pull in more advertising dollars (which may have been lost in the first place with articles that didn't resonate with the community). The result? A paper that is always playing to the younger crowd instead of developing a following that will remain for a lifetime. Newspapers have cheapened their products and now have nothing to offer even to the sensible people who are trying to do the right thing and turn to a quality source.

I've got news for you, newspapers: little Johnny likes Dad's Beatles albums almost as much as the new Jonas Brothers track. And in 50 years, he'll still be playing the Beatles. Products built to last will attract all ages and be better in the long haul. But, why am I telling you that? You're still trying to make newsprint exciting for 11-year-olds with iPods.

B. Dan Kennedy's MediaNation has some great comments and links on the Globe situation.

Two parts I thought were particularly insightful were the comments about lifetime guarantees at the Globe and the New York Times' coverage of the situation.

Kennedy writes that the Times is "undercovering" the Globe situation, which I would have to agree with, seeing the next-to-nothing news coming from New York about one of its biggest assets (or leeches, in this case). Kennedy hints that this could be because of the Times' control of news coverage across the U.S., which is why the shutdown of one of America's biggest cities' largest newspaper has been covered less than the death of Denver's second largest paper a month ago.

My answer to that is: After years of hearing conservatives whine about the New York Times, is it possible that sheep from the Times' own "liberal" fold may also start bleeting, when news coverage turns against them in an unfavorable way? Liberal, not liberal, good news judgment or not, it is suspicious how little the Times is saying about the Globe's situation, and how little the nation is paying attention.

Second, the lifetime guarantees. First of all, lifetime guarantees are a preposterous way to enhance productivity. It's a well-known fact that there's an 80-something-year-old woman who still writes a couple obituaries a week for the Globe because she has a lifetime guarantee. That's no way to keep your business from going under. (See my blog post on shooting the dinosaur, taking the canoli to see what I think about people whining over benefits when their 137-year-old employer is about to croak.)

The real problem with these lifetime guarantees are that they are apparently very difficult to undo, which is part of why the Times is pushing to get the Globe to get them taken care of, or shut the paper. Kennedy suggests that bankruptcy court may be an easier way to get rid of these guarantees, since the paper isn't looking to take them away despite the dire times. I would have shrugged at Kennedy's assertion, until today, when I realized that the one union that has held up the process of keeping the Globe alive was still trying to keep those guarantees, even as the paper was hours from death (again, see dinosaur, canoli blog post). If I was the Globe, I'd go to bankruptcy court, cut off some fat, and then start again with people who really want to work for what they see is good and true. The rest of the grumblers should get a taste of how much worse life can be.