The other officers and I have been very hard at work notifying finalists, promoting the workshop and banquet, coordinating with our awards guy for plaques and certificates, and doing general club maintenance. So, if my blog is not as lively as normal, please give me a pass. (For example, it’s 3:30 a.m., and I just finished a round of emails to our members.)

I’ve never been afraid of hard work. I also don’t mind sharing when I am working hard because I feel it’s equally important to let everyone know the effort involved in doing something like this.

You are your best cheerleader — or should be in this day and age. So, on that note, feel free to click around on my website.

• I am partial to a recent social media post inspired by Poynter: “Social Butterfly Effect.”
• I interviewed my favorite author for this post (whose new book I coincidentally received this week) and wrote about my experiences talking to her in “Kim Harrison mentions Q&A on her blog.”
• My rant against e-mail being changed to email caused a random Twitter user to comment on “AP Style: e-mail is now email.”
• For my favorite older posts, you should click on a blog roundup I did back in February after a friend recommended my blog.

My writing, designing and editing clips are also available, but on a limited basis due to my company’s policy. If you need something, just ask.

Welcome!

For all my longtime readers, go visit Kat’s blog: http://katherineclement.wordpress.com/. Kat has a variety of interests, so there’s something for everyone. She has posts not only on the difficulties in finding a journalism job but also her passion for running and fitness.

For you new readers wondering who the heck I am, I am a copy editor, page designer and sometimes writer (mainly features) for The Daytona Beach News-Journal. I’ve gone from putting the obituaries on the page to working the news editor position — one of the first women in years to have done so. Starting March 1, the copy desk will become a universal desk, and while I am looking forward to streamlining work, I remain nervous because things like that always take some time to show benefits. I am also the president of The Florida Press Club.

You might want to start with some of my most popular posts:

• “Kutcher wins Twitter war with CNN” In my pre-Twitter days, I just don’t get it. Actually, I still don’t get the obsession with the Celebrity Twitterverse.
• “Help Desk” helper” With the popularity of this comic, I’m guessing we’re all getting the same kind of “help” from the tech department.
• “What Eastwick gets right and wrong about journalism” Do not believe what Hollywood tells you about journalism. Mostly.
• LinkedIn: Hip networking or waste of time?” LinkedIn is useful for some, but don’t let it be the only kind of networking you do.
• “Clever advertising…for newspapers?” It’s not an ad for the latest Apple gadget. Instead, the commercial sells the old-fashioned newspaper in a new media way.
• “Kanye West: ‘I am a proud non-reader of books’” Even though books be too wordy, Kanye West writes a book and ticks off this reader.

…and here are a few of my favorites:

• “Who said print is dead?” I met a street performer in Honolulu, who has a creative use for newspapers.
• “Fun with Keynote et al” I was the voice talent for a promo my husband worked on for his website, Pilot’s Cafe.
• “Not feeling the love” A former co-worker reflects on our dysfunctional relationship with journalism.
• “Changes” After our third (fourth? fifth?) round of layoffs–hard to keep count–my job description changed. Then, more people were laid off, and I started working nights again.
• “Inspiration” After my grandmother’s death, I worked to regain focus and remembered her encouragement. (A year later, I miss her more than ever.)
• “Picture Perfect Shoot” I dance the night away in Daytona Beach as an extra in a spring break movie.

Happy reading, and please feel free to comment (or de-lurk)!

Last night at work, an opportunity arose from a space issue we were having at the paper. And I ran with it! Like most papers nowadays, space for editorial (also known as articles) is limited because of decreasing add review. (Though it seems, community newspapers are doing fine. My boss says that’s a silver lining, but as I pointed out, if we became solely a community newspaper, a lot of jobs would be lost, including ours, because there wouldn’t be as many newspaper pages to design.)

We had to hold a 40-inch (1,040-word) At Your Service column for the print version and put it online because a 3-by-10 advertisement needed to move from A section to the Local section, which happened to be in C, so that there could be more nation/world content. The Local section, containing content from Volusia and Flagler counties as well as from around Florida, only had six pages, including the weather page, so something had to hold. At Your Service was it.

Since we were running a News Watch, a package of briefs (short articles), I included the following to alert our readers to the change:

This week’s At Your Service listing, featuring descriptions and contact information for support groups in Volusia and Flagler counties, is available online.

In order to read the weekly column in its entirety, visit news-journalonline.com.

The At Your Service column usually runs Mondays in The News-Journal.

The thing about News Watch briefs is that–unlike plain unattributed briefs under an “In Brief” label, you credit the reporters who contributed. (Whether we have one or the other depends on both the importance of the information in the briefs and the acting metro editor on the desk.) Thus, in the tag at the bottom of the three briefs under “News Watch,” I wrote, “Staff Writers Patricio G. Balona, Linda Trimble and Sherry Mims contributed to today’s News Watch.”

SCORE! My first Local-section credit. A-section here I come…

My friend Rich had a good point:

“I know you love newspapers, because I do too, but I think the sooner you/I/we get out, the better. No matter how much we love it, it’s not going to love us back. It’s just going to keep coming home late from work, getting drunk and pushing us around. And it doesn’t even take us anywhere nice anymore.”

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