Opinion : What we do, and what we don\'t

Imagine this: You are at a restaurant, eating your steak and chicken. (Unless of course you are a tofu and salad type; if so, imagine that. Me, I am sticking with the meat.)

Your dinner arrives on time and it's great. But there's nothing to drink, even though you ordered your wildberry tea 30 minutes ago.

You look around. No waiter. So you walk to the kitchen and peek through the swinging door. There you see your server, standing at a counter with a set of tongs, carefully arranging your ice cubes in your glass.

You walk back to the table and wait. An hour or so later, when your meal is nearly finished, the tea arrives.

The waiter explains.

"The boss said the ice cubes were not arranged correctly. I had to get it right before bringing it to you," he says.

"How silly," you may say. "Waiters don't do that."

And you'd be right.

But journalists do.

I've been trying to understand the surprising growth in our numbers at Vinton Today. Obviously, the main reason we seem to set a new record each week is because we have had a series of significant news stories that people wanted to read. And generally speaking, because of the technology (and because of the people who help offer us news tips), we have had those stories on Vinton Today hours (or in some cases, days or even weeks) before you read or see them anywhere else.

What I am about to say is probably going to sound like a quote from one of those iconic baseball managers, but it's true:

One of the reasons we can do what we do now is that we no longer do what we used to do.

What I do now

What I do now is write a story. Then I put the words in a little box on the administrative site of Vinton Today. I push a couple of buttons; instantly anyone in the entire world can read it. It takes a few more minutes if I add a few photos.

What I used to do

I used to -- from 1992 until March of last year -- write a story and then begin the long process of sending it to you on a piece of neatly folded paper.

After writing the story, I had to copy and paste it into a program that makes newspaper pages. (Actually, during the first few years, we did all of this by hand, printing our stories and cutting them out and literally gluing them on a large piece of paper.) I had to make sure the story fit on the page with all of the other stories, photos and advertisements on the page. The pages were, of course, all the same size, but the stories varied in number and size each day. Most days, it was a challenge squeezing everything into the limited number of pages. On a few days, it was a challenge finding enough stuff to fill them.

I also had to make sure all of the ads were on the page, although it was, technically, someone else's job to sell and make them.

Then when this job was done, we had to electronically print each page and send it to the city where the press made the actual paper. About 12 hours later, the finished papers arrived at our office. But we still had to deliver the news to you. Unless of course you wanted to walk or drive to the newspaper office to read the news.

The paragraphs above describe a good day at work back then. I will not describe a bad day: I will simply let you imagine what would happen if there were a computer problem, a colleague in another town who failed to deliver an ad correctly or on time (or both!), or a boss complaining about how the ice cubes were arranged, or a combination of these and other maladies.

Unfair advantage

You may have noticed that the section entitled "What I do" is much shorter than the one called "What I used to do." Modern technology (and the amazing program written by Wes at Monkeytown) makes getting the news to you much easier and faster than it ever has been in the history of mankind. All that time I used to spend trying to do the journalistic equivalent of arranging ice cubes I can now spend on simply writing and publishing the news.

Sure, there are limits. You probably don't read Vinton Today in the bathroom. And I have talked to a few people still do not have computers or Internet access.

But being an Internet-based publication means that our readers can find out from us news hours or days before they read it in the newspaper. On Sunday night, May 1, you read about how a local soldier is serving in the area where Osama bin Laden used to live and had a camp, and how his death could affect that soldier. You would have had to wait 36 to 48 hours to read in the local newspaper that Osama bin Laden was dead (without even learning about the local soldier).

Because Vinton Today is a locally-owned, Internet-based service, we can get you the news much quicker than any newspaper, regardless of how many offices that company has.

What's not news

But I think my news philosophy is also a factor in the success of Vinton Today. Long ago, I decided that the silly quest to be "first" was not nearly as important as being best. Remember the Martha Stewart trial? Some journalists entered the courtroom with two handkerchiefs of different colors. When the verdict was announced, they ran to the door waving the handkerchief with the color that signified "guilty."

While Vinton Today is often first with some significant stories, I would rather have a more thorough, more informative story and be second or third than be first.

Last Monday, I was finishing a story about the legal case involving local business owners when we got some messages: A big city newspaper's web site had more information about that story than Vinton Today. And, indeed, they did --for an hour or so. Then I finished writing and pushed the button that sent you more information than you could read anywhere else.

Also, we do not try to give you information you can read somewhere else. For example, if you want to know how Navy SEALs got bin Laden, there are lots of news outlets that can tell you that. But nobody -- and I am not at all exaggerating when I say nobody in the whole wide world -- has given you the variety of Vinton news you see here, on this page.

What's next?

Technology is constantly changing and I do not have a clue (nobody in journalism does, it seems) of how technology will affect how we bring you the news.
But I think it's safe to say that what we do, and the way we bring you the news, will be setting trends that others follow. Two Fridays ago, an eastern Iowa TV station sent a reporter to Vinton, and another to Cedar Rapids, to broadcast a story.

Why? Because like you, they read it first here, on Vinton Today.