Glückwunsch-und-Ironie-Freude?

I'm searching for the right hipster/German word to describe my reaction to news yesterday that News Journal reporters Chad Livengood and Maureen Milford had won first place for beat reporting in the third-quarter Awards of Excellence contest of parent company Gannett.

My first thought was congratulations (Glückwunsch), but then I read the award text and realized I had to shoe-horn in a dose of irony (Ironie, ironically):

I'm fairly sure we don't have a Chateau County in Delaware. There is "Chateau country," though. It's a rich-folks subset of New Castle County.

This May Be the Most Accurate News Story Ever

Maybe the most accurate news story ever
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

I found this via twitter on the NPR web site. I don't expect it to survive there long, so I did a screen-grab and posted it to flickr.

I can't help myself. I love things like this.

A Nice Story, Well Told

Today's Wilmington News Journal includes a profile of my friend Kate Walker and her Sussex Dance Academy. Kate has taught dance to our daughters for the last 12 years and her story is a very cool one. I was very happy with the work done by reporter Kim Hoey, who I've known, though less well, even longer.

I will claim a little credit for this one. A News Journal editor tweeted a request for story ideas for their "Crossroads" section a while back. I responded with a story-pitch in the form of a series of 140-character messages. (There's something about that limitation that forces one to get to the point.)

The article chronicles Kate's early career as a nurse, her work as combination school nurse and dance teacher at the southern Delaware School of the Arts, and the founding and growth of the Sussex Dance Academy.

... her studios continue to grow, even in a struggling economy, because of the "mom and pop" atmosphere, she said. Students and parents at Sussex Dance say they feel like they are part of a family -- a family with a mother who can be a bit pushy.

There are also quotes from Miriah Hearn and Kole Lofton, two young adults who I watched grow up at that studio and local schools, who credit Kate with helping them find their course in life.

Kate has helped our girls as well, and I'm very happy to see her get some news coverage.

I was a bit surprised to see a photo of Nova Gaffney identified as "Christina Mahaffie." And to see the photo of Christina labeled "Morgan Brower." (At least in the on-line version)

I've requested a correction. We'll see.

Here's a Sign of Something We Sometimes Do Wrong

There's a story in the news in Delaware this evening about a request that the state regulate who can perform marriages (Officials want list of clergy who can perform weddings). It includes this interesting paragraph:

The state used to keep a list of clergy who were registered to marry people. But when the employee who maintained the list left her state job, no one picked up the task.

That's a typical mistake that we make, and I'm sure it's not just state government. In almost any organization, there are things that get done just because someone started doing them. And they can become integral to the mission of the organization, or important to a partner.

But if they are not made a part of the regular business of the whole organization, there is a risk of failure when that one  person leaves.

If there is something worth doing in an organization, it must be documented and made an official part of a job, not just a person's approach to that job.

Editors Pose Thesis; Commenter Proves Point

The News Journal editors published an opinion this morning that I agree with whole-heartedly: 'Official prayers' exclude citizens despite claims.

There is a minor controversy here in Delaware about some government bodies starting their meetings with official prayers -- some explicitly sectarian, some not. When challenged, elected officials tend to defend the practice as "tradition." The News Journal takes meets that defense square-on:

Tradition has its virtues, but that's not one of them. The council members are perfectly free to pray, individually or in groups, all they want -- just as long as they don't do it when they are acting in an official capacity.

But they balance that with some common-sense advice to those complaining, noting that the official prayers don't do as much harm as some claim.

Our reservations about the actions of the council members would not begin with their pleas for divine guidance. If anything, we would encourage more of it -- provided it was not part of the meeting.

But, the editors conclude, the tradition of prayer is not worth the damage it does to Democracy:

Reciting a prayer, especially a specific one, such as The Lord's Prayer, as part of a government function, automatically excludes a portion of the audience -- people who pay taxes and have the right to participate in the government business at hand. That should not happen.

Now, normally I advocate against looking at the readers' comments on the News Journal's site. This time, curiosity got the better of me and immediately found a comment by a WalterPerry that I think proves the point:

America is a Christian Nation founded by Bible believing. God Fearing,Jesus Loving & Holy Spirit filled Men & women of God!.Not Muslims,Hindus,Harry Christa's. or any other "religion" If u don't like God or Jesus, id suggest u either SHUT UP, or Move to a Communist country! "Official" Prayers do not exclude ANYONE..Go ahead..Pray!

Walter, dude, take a deep breath and wipe the spittle off your keyboard.

A Time of Change

Delaware's fiscal year ends tonight. Many things will be different in my state, and in the state government in which I serve, tomorrow.

We hope that there will be a balanced budget to start the next fiscal year. The legislature had about a potential deficit of about $800,000,000 to overcome. At best, that means I get a pay cut starting tomorrow.

At least partly because of that planned pay cut, lots of people are retiring from state government. And given the budget situation, not all of them will be fully replaced. so it will be a different workforce.

Among those stepping down is the head of the Delaware State Police. Col. Thomas F. Mac Leish was going to have to retire in August anyway. There's an age limit for the State Police.

His replacement -- acting replacement, anyway -- is Major Joe Papili. I have gotten to know Joe Papili somewhat over the last few years. He seems like a good man.

I realize that, while I myself am not rising to the highest levels of state government (thank goodness), many of the people now stepping into leadership are my contemporaries and in some cases friends and acquaintances. It gives me a whole new view of things.

"Buckle-up..."

I had a call the other day from a local government PR guy. He had decided to add local bloggers to his news release e-mail list and wanted my e-mail address and my thoughts (I used to be in that business, many years back).

I had the sense that he made the change only grudgingly. Local bloggers, here as elsewhere, enjoy criticizing government and have become something of a source for the public. Rather than ignore them, or fight them, he had decided to offer his employer's point of view directly to them. I think that's a good idea.

But this new relationship won't be the same as that between PR folk and the traditional media. The difference is the activity of reporters. Reporters are trained in researching and questioning what they get from the PR folks. And they bring a cultural proclivity towards balance and objectivity to their work. At least, we hope all these things are true of reporters. Most bloggers tend to come from other traditions and start with a clearly subjective point of view, one that is not usually threatened by much research or questioning. (Yes, I know, there are expectations)

I was reminded of this as I read a fascinating piece by writer and internet-thinker Clay Shirky, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, which examines the issue of "The Death of Newspapers" that is so much discussed these days (and seems to cry out for capitalization). In it, Shirky explores the idea that we are now (and will be for a while) between the end of one era (ad-supported paper publication of news) and the maturity of another (we have no idea what it will be, but it is starting now).

And he makes this statement, which I think is true:

Society doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

There's nothing wrong with bloggers, or the roles that we play. We should criticise and cajole government, industry, and the public, from our own subjective standpoints. We should explore and discuss the world around us. But we cannot, and should not, replace reporters and the work that they do.

In fact, for blogging to work well, we depend on reporters to do what Shirky calls "society’s heavy journalistic lifting."

...from flooding the zone — covering every angle of a huge story — to the daily grind of attending the City Council meeting, just in case.

When we bloggers attempt to comment on what we call "the news" through our own direct experience, we run a large risk of getting things wrong -- missing minor details that bring the big picture into focus -- or missing things altogether. But when we have the work of journalists to build on and react to, we can fill a valuable roles as commentators.

So my friend in government PR should send his news out to the bloggers. It can't hurt and may help spread word on stories deemed too small by the newspapers or TV stations. But he shouldn't -- and won't -- expect bloggers to take-over the role now filled by reporters working for shaky "old media" institutions. We still need them, even if we're not as willing to subsidize their work.

This will make for an interesting period of time as we transition from the old model to a new model that we may not yet be able to imagine.

...there is one possible answer to the question “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” The answer is: Nothing will work, but everything might. Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did.

Should be fun.

New Tool

I've built a new Yahoo Pipes tool to overcome a quirk in the News Journal's RSS feed collection that has been bugging me. I call it The News Journal Aggregator.

The News Journal, Delaware's top daily paper, offers a number of RSS feeds. I've come to depend on them, in my Google Reader, to track stories from the paper. But the various feeds repeat each other sometimes. The same story might appear in both the "news" feed and the "politics" feed. And sometimes they repeat within feeds; I think this has something to do with republishing for small changes.

I don't know what causes it, but I got tired of the same stories multiplying within my Reader.

So I have built a Pipe to collect the News Journal's news, updates, politics, business and opinion feeds; filter them to drop any sports stories (I have other sources); filter them again to remove duplicates; sort them by date and time published; and publish them in a single RSS feed.

It's All In the Choices We Make

Sometimes the smallest details stand as editorial comments. Looking through Tuesday's front pages on the Newseum web site, I found several different photographs of a cute moment Monday in the Capitol Rotunda.

Mr. Obama was walking through the Rotunda with Nancy Pelosi and her crew. He stopped to talk to 5-year old Carter Metz, of Tennessee.

I was interested to see how that was played in different papers.

I was struck by the caption the editors of the Kansas City Star chose to put just above one version of the picture: "Obama meets with Capitol Hill leaders." Placed above this particular photo, this suggests that maybe the 5-year old is the leader.

By contrast, The Washington Times chose what I think is a cuter photo of Mr. Obama bending down to talk to young Carter and includes just a descriptive caption below. This highlights the fatherly Obama and the charm of the moment.

I may, of course, be reading way too much into these design choices. But that "meets with leaders" looks like the sort of thing I would have wanted to try to get away with.

I should also note that I Find the Times' version, with Pelosi and Rahm Emmanuel and the rest of the suits relegated to the background while the President-Elect speaks to a child, really cute.

Sunday Morning with the Newspapers #132

In this morning's News Journal, I find an article (Georgetown DelTech to offer theater productions) that describes an effort by Delaware Technical and Community College to bring regular theater productions to the stage on their Georgetown campus.

The goal, said Vice President and Campus Director Ileana Smith, is to get area residents into a habitat of supporting the arts and to "think about this theater as a place to come."

Smith said campus leaders believe the time is right for a theater venue in central Sussex County. Many new residents in nearby Bridgeville, Millsboro and Lewes moved to Sussex County from larger communities with vibrant culture and arts scenes, Smith said.

While I applaud this idea -- I'm in favor of theater, after all -- I do have to point out that Georgetown already is home, and has been for many years, to the Possum Point Players and their Possum Hall theater. In fact, Possum Hall is less than two miles from DelTech (as the Google bot suggests that the crow drive).

I used to be closely involved with the Possums. In the days before kids, the Lovely Karen and I were both a part of that group. Our first date was dinner at Adriatico (when it was on First Street at Baltimore Avenue in Rehoboth) followed by a Possum performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

That performance was at (wait for it) Delaware Technical and Community College, in the theatre now proposed for the addition of theater programs.

In those days, before the refurbishing and expansion of Possum Hall, the Possums did their larger productions at Del Tech. And we were a part of many.

Karen, a talented flautist, was a member of the orchestra for almost all of the Possum musicals (back when they used real orchestras). I can act and can fake my way through a song as long as I'm in a "character part." And I used to help out backstage for shows that lacked a suitable "Mike part." I did props, or sound, or helped shove things around on-stage between acts.

Between us, we were involved in The Good Doctor, Wait Until Dark, the Sound of Music, Nunsense, The Crucible, Oklahoma, The 1940's Radio Hour, The Man of La Mancha, Big River, and I'm sure there are others that I am now forgetting.

The week before I proposed, in 1987, we helped out at a Possum Kid's production of The Emperor's New Clothes. It was the last show of that production, so we stayed behind to help tear down the set. I wasn't paying proper attention and put a foot down in the wrong spot. I twisted my ankle over so severely that I pulled the connector-thingy (tendon?) that connects shin to foot completely out of my foot. Technically, it was a bone break. So I proposed on crutches. Never underestimate the power of sympathy.

When the Possums did Nunsense, I was the props master and Karen, then large with Colleen, did sound effects and turned pages for the pianist. Nunsense is a show-within-a-show show. The idea is that a group of Nuns is putting on a performance, so anyone seen onstage should be wearing a Nun's habit. As the show started, the stage manager (our friend Nina) and I would be out on the stage, setting props for the Nun's "stage." At that point I had only a mustache, so I kept my back turned to the audience until the very last second, when I would spin around, face the audience just long enough for my facial hair to register, and then exit, stage left. Those were the easiest (and somehow most satisfying) laughs of my stage career.

We also have a photo of the two of us from that show-- both in Nun drag, Karen clearly quite pregnant, me mustachioed. We like to haul it out to scare the girl's friends when they visit.

So, when I see a story about how the fine folks at DelTech are going to rescue a culturally benighted Georgetown by bringing in theater, I bristle. Just a little. The fact is that Sussex County does not really lack culture. You just have to seek it out. You just have to support it in any way you can.

We have the Possums. We have the Sussex Ballet (where our efforts, and those of our children, now center). We have the Rehoboth Summer Children's Theatre, whose Board I served on for many years and whose web site I still manage. There is a new theater group working in the old Epworth Church building in Rehoboth Beach. There are good programs in the local high schools. And there is the Southern Delaware School of the Arts.

There are fine music programs all summer at the Bethany and Rehoboth bandstands. There is the Rehoboth jazz festival and the Rehoboth film festival. There is a music festival in Dewey Beach. There are weekly concerts in Stango Park all summer in Lewes.

We have culture. We just have to do a better job of supporting it.

What's (Not) Wrong With This Picture?

The News Journal had a story this morning on the possible effect of high gas prices on travel to Delaware's designated 20-something drinking and beach town Dewey Beach. The story ran in the 55-Hours week-end preview section. It was teased on the front page with the picture at left.

I find it troubling.

In Fueling the summer bar wars, Ryan Cormier writes about the possibility that upstate party folks will forgo the drive to Dewey, at four bucks a gallon, and do their drinking in upstate bars. Good news for the upstate bar owners, but bad news for the down-state bar owners.

But, as a down-state driver -- and as the father of a newly minted downstate driver -- I have to say that I'm thrilled to think that the young woman pictured here will not be driving around here.

Well Done, Dover Post?

Several of the newspapers that make up the Dover Post family of publications -- the Sussex Countian, the Milford Beacon, the Smyrna Clayton Sun Times and the Middletown Transcript -- have launched new news sites that are, at least after a quick tour, very nice. Ironically, the Dover Post site itself does not appear to have been updated yet (at least not as I write).

Update (5/29/08): The Dover Post site has made the change!

According to an editorial in today's Sussex Countian, the on-line make-overs came with the help of new parent company Gatehouse Media. It appears the writing was on the on-line wall:

... while we will certainly be printing the same paper we have since 1886 every Wednesday, there is little doubt that news-gathering and news distribution is moving in a digital direction.

These are very local weekly newspapers, and they have for a long time provided a close-focus look at their communities. But things are moving faster than the printing press can produce a tabloid-sized newspaper:

There are advantages and disadvantages to a weekly paper. On one hand, we get nearly a full week to work and develop stories that happen between Wednesday and Sunday. But then again, everything that happens between those days is, well-developed or not, old news by the time it gets to the paper.

I hope this means that these papers will continue their in-depth reporting, but will update on an interim basis. They have included lots of RSS feeds, so we can read along with them. And, when we do, we should take notice of their advertisers. That's how this business works, after all.

News Journal On-Line Makeover Disaster #4

The News Journal, Delaware's top daily newspaper, recently made-over its on-line offerings and I am not very happy with the result. It's still better than the other Delaware daily, which offers essentially no on-line content, but I find the new News Journal site hard to use and off-putting.

There's too much stuff on the News Journal web page, so it takes far too long to load. Some sections aren't well dated; it's hard to see what's actually new. And the site goes too far down the road to trying to be a social site, making things simply more confusing.

But none of those problems, as annoying as they are, is News Journal On-Line Makeover Disaster #4. No, today I want to talk to you about RSS feeds and how poorly they are implemented on the News Journal site.

RSS feeds can be a great way to organize and consume data; they are particularly useful for news and news-related content. Since I can't dependably find news content on the News Journal site, I have subscribed to three of their feeds: News, Politics, and Opinion.

The News feed seems pretty straightforward; it repeats the headlines from the main "News" section each morning. That's good. The Opinion feed doesn't appear to have been updated since May 16. That's bad. The Politics feed seems to be a special case. It updates every few hours and offers a broad spectrum of news headlines. Sometimes, there is even political news.

Here are the latest headlines from the News Journal Politics feed, as found in my reader:

• Sussex may trim money for open space, seniors (Seems political: Pass)
• Sallies-St. Andrew's lacrosse game moved to Tower Hill (Sports [unless someone political has a kid in the game]: Fail)
• Cape Henlopen fishing pier to reopen (Recreation: Fail)
• Pennsylvania midday lottery numbers (Numerology?: Fail)
• Pa. woman charged with throwing son, 4, on railroad tracks (Crime [unless she is elected somewhere?]: Fail)
• Merck agrees to $58 million settlement over Vioxx ad claims (Business: Fail)
• A day fit for the dogs — and birds (Cute photo of little white doggy behind someone's rain-speckled car window: Fail miserably)
• The Old 97's to do Dewey (Entertainment [unless Bill Lee is involved?]: Fail)
• Reaction to news of Sen. Kennedy's brain tumor (Major political news: Pass)
• Statement from Sen. Kennedy's doctors (Medical, but politics-related: Pass)

So, out of 10 "political" headlines, 3 are actually about politics. The rest seem to be "latest updates." Further, the politics feed has a tendency to repeat itself, and to repeat headlines found in the other feeds, particularly in the morning.

Am I being picky? Yes. But the News Journal is a business. It sells ads based on readers/viewers and I am one of those readers. My attention to the site -- my clicking through from my RSS reader -- is crucial to the business model of the News Journal site. If they make that progressively harder, they will lose readers and they will not be able to sell ads as well.

So, as a fairly polite fellow, I left a comment on the new site's readers' forum , in the section titled "Redesign Feedback." That was two weeks ago. I have had no response. I did send an e-mail to the on-line editor and got a polite, but not very helpful reply suggesting that I might be getting repeats in the RSS feeds if I've subscribed to both the "sports" feed and the "Phillies" feed. That might be an issue if they had an "Orioles" feed, but they don't.

So I decided to complain to you, and potentially, to everyone who searches the web for information on "News Journal RSS Feeds."

Purple Prose Enlivens a Tale of the Emerald Diamond

I've been checking through old newspapers at the Library of Congress' Chronicling America site. I'm searching for references to my various forebears; it is a low-return fishing expedition, but great fun.

For example, a search for references to any Mahaffies in California in newspapers from around the turn of the 20th Century has turned up several sports-page notes about a baseball umpire named Mahaffy. I doubt that he is a direct relative, though he may be a very distant cousin. What's great about this, though, is the prose in which I find him.

Here are two paragraphs from Page 42 of the September 30, 1906, edition of the San Francisco Call. William J. Slattery writes about a game between the Portland Beavers and the San Francisco Seals (in first and second in the standings at the time).

Neither team played anything that looked like high art. Errors happened frequently and did a deal of damage. Neither pitcher was there any too strong and and both of them delayed the game as much as possible by indulging in a series of senseless winding ups and warming ups between the rounds.

Maybe it was because of the banishment of Cousin Park Wilson that San Francisco did not perform according to the tips of the wise brigade. Cousin Park assayed to engage in an oratorial contest with Umpire Mahaffy in the eighth spasm and before he realized that the worst was yet to come, the indicator man had already made a mysterious high sign and given Park notice to skidoo. He also informed the leader of the Seals that his pay envelope will be shy five dollars when the next day of reckoning with Cal Ewing is at hand.

The Seals were not doing well in their season series with the Beavers in 1906. The Beavers won this game, 3 to 1, moving to a record of 98-47 and a won/lost percentage of .697. The cellar-dwelling Fresno team, by contrast, was at .335 percent at 51-101.

Some Things Never Change (At Least Not In Their Essential Nature)

I've been searching through the archives of the New York Times lately, looking for references I can use in building-out my family tree. I came, by chance, across the following item in "City and Suburban News" for September 11 of 1879:

Yesterday a spurious Custom-house agent swindled Mrs. James Brooks, of 44 East Twenty-fifth-street, of $9 98 by the old ruse of pretending that that amount was due for duties on a package that had arrived from Europe and was lying in the Custom-house. Such swindles are common.

Replace "Custom-house agent" with "exiled government official;" replace "duties on a package" with "bank fees for a transfer of funds;" and replace "Europe" with "Nigeria" and the whole thing looks like something we (hopefully) now routinely mark as spam and delete from our in-boxes.

Fox Appropriates Family Dog, Cultural and Economic Debate Ensues

A family in Baltimore spotted a familiar face during a Fox football broadcast last month. It was their family dog, Truman, in a photo they had posted to Flickr that was apparently harvested by the television network and used to "holiday-up" their broadcast of a game between the Saints and the Eagles.

This prompted a blog post by dog-owner Tracey Gaughran-Perez and, many comments later, a call from the Washington Post which led to 1) some (moderately) contrite reaction from Fox, and, 2) a story in the paper (Hey, Isn't That . . .).

The Post story takes a larger look at the growing issue of copyright infringement in a culture that is on-line and connected and very, very open. People are starting to point to a basic hypocrisy in large corporations on the one hand zealously enforcing copyright against individuals while on the other hand violating individual copyrights with seeming impunity.

The story also makes an interesting point about how the culture of on-line, personal and real is leading advertisers and corporations away from the traditionally false and contrived material they have long used in advertising and corporate communications.

It's a byproduct of the user-generated world: the trustworthiness of YouTube, the realness of Facebook. Above all else, we believe ourselves. "People don't want to buy the fake from the phony anymore," Pine says. "They want to buy the real from the genuine."

This story caught my eye in part because I am an active flickr-er. I place a Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative" copyright on my photos, which, in theory, protects them from unauthorized commercial use. I do the same, by the way, with content on this blog.

I have found unauthorized use of content from Mike's Musings in the past. I found a post from this blog pasted into an ad-spam blog. These are blogs that scrape content from bloggers to give their ad-sites something for google and other search sites to find. In that case, when I e-mailed the site's owners they apologized and took my content off their site.

I have not yet found any of my photos taken without permission. That doesn't mean it hasn't happened, though. There have been several cases where I have been asked for permission to use photos. I have given the travel guides site Schmap permission to use shots I have taken in the Florida Keys and at the Statue of Liberty. I have granted permission to the Cape Gazette to use a few shots in backgrounds on their site as well. And I have given permission for their use in a few publications; there was an economic development brochure for a small city in New York, and a set of state-themed poems published as postcards.

I have not yet tried to make any money of my work; I'm usually happy to help out local institutions or non-profit groups. That doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in making some small amount of cash, however, if Fox or CNN or MSNBC or someone wanted to use a photo of mine in their election coverage.

Delaware State News: Off-Line

Independent Newspapers, Inc., wants me to pay $145 a year to view the contents of the Delaware State News on-line. Up until today, INI had offered a limited selection of local news stories in an ad-heavy, if not terribly exciting, web 1.0 format.

No longer.

This morning, their old "news" link led to a statement that one can now read the ENTIRE newspaper on-line. If one subscribes. And that some local news will still be included in their Newszap forums.

I didn't see any news in the forums, so I sent an e-mail to the auto-contact link they have. Here's what I got back (in part):

Thanks for your email. To be honest with you, we reached the conclusion that we could no longer give away our newspaper content for free. We are proud of the work our staff members are doing and believe we’re making a difference for thousands of people every day.

We hope you will consider purchasing an e-Subscription, which will give you every page of every edition of the newspaper in an easy-to-read format and with full search capabilities. To make this option more attractive, we have an introductory offer of 2 years for the price of 1, which we think is a great deal!

I think it's a form e-mail. I sent my question in to two separate contact links and got the same e-mail back each time. I followed the link they sent and, after a bit of searching, and working my way through a name and address data collection page (Harrington J. Millworthy, IV, at your service), but eventually I found the Subscription Rates page (above left).

I guess that 2-fer offer means I could get two years of the e-paper for $145. That's very generous, but still probably not of interest to me.

As part of my job, I scan a variety of news sources for items related to land-use planning and to geospatial data uses. Until now, the State News has been one of those sources. But given the low volume of news I usually found, I don't know that it is worth it to subscribe to an online version of the printed paper. Someone who gets that paper the old fashioned way is likely to let us know if there is ever anything worth looking at.

I don't think this change will do the State news much good. The News Journal offers a relatively complete edition on-line each day. I think they have too many ads, but understand they have to pay the bills. The Cape Gazette also offers a paid "full content" version but does post the main news of each week for free.

The New York Times tried a pay-only premium portion of their site for a while, but scrapped that plan this fall (remember Times Select?). In part, I think, they ended Times Select because people simply ignored the content that they would have had to pay to see. As a result, no one referred to it. No one linked to it. It ceased to be a main part of the discussion.

So, for now at least, I say so-long to on-line content from the Delaware State News.

Philosophical Posts

A couple of philosophical posts out on the Delaware blogoscape have me thinking this evening.

Delaware Libertarian Steve Newton has a thoughtful and well-written post that I think outlines one of our national challenges rather neatly. Steve has found a new thing to say about the issue of immigration.

When I see a mass of illegals running for the border on CNN, that’s one thing.

When I see a fellow parishioner hold up a baby for christening, that’s another.

Exactly. We don't want uncontrolled immigration, but how can we not find fellow feeling with families who only want to live, work and worship here?

Meanwhile, Reverend Tom Starnes has a sad piece posted on the News Journal's Delaware Talk Back site. Tom had long resisted the often-repeated thought that "9/11 changed everything." But our nation's use of torture, of domestic spying, of imprisonment without trial have changed his mind.

So, yes, I concede the point: 9/11 has changed us, and not, I fear, for the better. My hope, and, yes, my prayer is that we haven't crossed too far over that line that has, except for a few blotches on the record, distinguished us as a free people and a moral leader for the whole world.

As for me, I will confess that the news of late out of Pakistan, where military ruler General Musharraf has recently suspended democracy and imprisoned his rivals, has me wondering "could that happen here?" I think not. I think that that would be fairly unlikely to happen here, and I take some comfort in that thought.

But a few years ago I would have said that the idea of that happening here was completely absurd. Now, I think, it is just unlikely.

And that change, from "absurd," to "unlikely," is a sad measure of how we have changed.

It's Great to Know that Lewes Still Includes Some of its Originals

I have sometimes wondered what my old neighbor John Ellsworth is up to lately. According to the News Journal this morning, John is now building a land-speed record style racer in an attempt to break the 200-mph barrier.

That's pretty cool. And it is in keeping with what I know of John. It also means that my town has not yet completely become just another retirement village for wealthy folks from up-state and elsewhere. We still have some of our uniqueness.

Back in the late 1980s, when Karen and I were first married, we rented a small apartment above the shop next door to John and Hope's place on West Third Street. John owns the town blacksmith shop, but has always done much more than smithing. He was one of the founders of Punkin Chunkin, but left that sport when it went from a collection of individually designed rotary-arm flingers, trebuchets and John's own truck-sized cross-bow style punkin shooter to a contest of ever more-powerful compressed-air cannons.

"You couldn't see the pumpkin flying," he said. "I didn't like that at all. The fun was watching the pumpkins, and with the air cannons, you can't see them. You don't see it go through the air. Just a big whoosh, and that's it."

I agree with him completely. While I still think Punkin Chunkin is cool, and I'm proud that my state is still its home, it lost its charm for me when the air cannons took over.

But throwing pumpkins was never all there was to John Ellsworth. He created marvelous ironwork gates, fences and other items for homes around the area. He ran a herd of small, hand-carved cattle in front of his shop. He had a cement plant there as well; stalks of rebar topped with cement-chunk foliage. In the spring, the cement plant bloomed with small, pretty, yellow cement trucks.

And one year, for the Lewes Christmas Parade, he created a giant, house-tall metal rocking horse for his wife, Hope, to ride down the parade route.

Now there's long, open wheel, lakester-style racer under construction on West Third. John has exceeded 100-mph and hopes to top 200 next year.

"If you ever wanted to put your right foot down and hold it down, it's a hoot," he said. "The parachute coming out was probably the neatest part. It wasn't a jerk of any kind. It was like 'Star Wars' when they came out of warp speed and everything just slows down. You can't tell when it was deployed or anything. You just all of a sudden felt a deceleration."

It's great to know that John is still finding new challenges and ways to have fun. He was a pleasant neighbor; always interesting, challenging, and inspiring.

I moved to Lewes in the mid 1980s in part because it was a real town, with wealthy and modest homes, with folks from different races, with working fisherfolk and factories and with a certain amount of hustle and bustle. And with originals.

Over the years, we've lost much of our diversity, but I'm thrilled to find we still have some of what makes our town special.

Floor it, John.

Here's (Hopefully) Good (State) News

Delaware.Net President John McKown has a post up on his Building Better Web Sites blog announcing that his company has won a contract to re-do the web site of the Delaware State News.

It's about time. I'm not a huge fan of the News Journal's site (too busy, too blinky, and with too flashy-move-y thingies, though it is getting better). But the Journal's site is head and shoulders above the current State News site. At least the News Journal posts its stories by day and by section and provides archives and some sense of order.

The current State News "News" section for Central Delaware, for example, includes a headline and teaser that suggests that Milford has a CompPlan meeting "tonight."

City looks at comp plan
MILFORD — City planners will meet in special session at 7 tonight to begin revising Milford’s comprehensive plan.

It's only when you click through that you realize that that headline has been up there since September 12. That meeting is already over.

That's just one of several gripes. But what's important to note is that the State News is not a terrible newspaper. They have some decent reporters and do a respectable job covering Downstate Delaware.

I'm hoping that Mr. McKown and his team can bring some on-line order to the News.