Inside Out: Teaching an old dog new tricks

What to put up on the web? It’s the new chant to be sung every waking hour of every day.

Only a machine could manage to handle that 24/7 so the subtext of the chant is: do the best you can.

I’m trying and in many ways even enjoying it. But it’s not always easy to mesh this always-on web mentality with the different things I handle as editor of a little weekly newspaper, the print edition of which is still very important to a lot of people in the community.

It’s not all that hard, really. It only feels that way. Find the content, edit it for the web, find a picture to go with it and post it. Alert Facebook fans and friends. Check it over. Fix the inevitable typos. And you’re done — until the next post in an hour or two.

An email came in last Friday mid-afternoon from the supervisor’s office with an attached .pdf file. It was a memo and a copy of a Newsday story. The supervisor’s office had sent it to Town Board members and members of the town’s 2-Percent Open Space Committee with a copy to me.

The story was about a Setauket legislator’s bid to put the county’s open space programs on hold for 90 days. In his memo, the supervisor said he would be going to a hearing in Hauppauge later this month to speak out against the idea. He asked for warm bodies to join him.

Whammo! Some news for the web! For one thing, Shelter Island has open space deals in the works with the county to preserve 80 acres in Sylvester Manor and generate an endowment for the manor’s non-profit educational farm. The supervisor said those deals were “safe” from the proposed moratorium but no deal is done until it’s done.

I turned the memo into a short news story, found a file photo of Sylvester Manor we have not used recently, put them up on the website and went to our Facebook pages (there are two) to post alerts.

It’s a pretty intensive process that requires all of one’s attention to avoid mistakes. And no one edits the content I generate myself. If I screw it up, it will be up there for the world to see — at least until I notice it and fix it.

It’s “easy” to fix or revise a posted story. The supervisor’s office soon sent another email that made it clear the hearing he’d attend would be in Riverhead in March, not Hauppauge in April. So I logged in to the website and tweaked the story. Easy — but another element in the “always on” aspect of web editing.

I got word over the weekend that I had mistyped the name of the acclaimed architect and designer Yoshiko Sato as “Yashiko” in her obituary. I hated having made the mistake in that incredible, wonderful woman’s obit; I must say I was relieved to be able to easily change what the world sees — which is something you can’t do when the error has been committed in print.

This isn’t all new to me. But the pace is new. For years now, my job as a newspaper editor has included posting stories on a website. Lately, that part of the job has become much more important for me as the Times Review company focuses on the future: reaching people who do not read newspapers, people who want news and information at their fingertips whenever they need it, on their smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Some of you may have noticed we’ve been trying to put more content on the Reporter’s website more frequently. The goal is to let readers know there’s good reason to keep checking the site throughout the day. The company has a super web team in Mattituck that helps us keep the Reporter site fresh but the bottom line is that each paper’s staff is primarily responsible for generating content. That’s a challenge for the Reporter, which has two full-time people in the newsroom: one editor and one reporter. We need to worry about getting together a good newspaper too every week. The rhythm and focus of that process is not always in sync with the web part of the job.

It’s not that news is hard to find. There’s always plenty going on, from open space and land use issues to the planning of the next school budget. There are always plenty of interesting people and issues and events to write about. And when the newspaper shrinks to 32 pages in the dead of winter because advertisers are saving their dollars for the return of summer residents and visitors, there’s never enough space in the paper to place every story and every photo we’d like to get in. Hooray for the web for giving us a medium to spread the news anyway.

I started racking up my posting rate three weeks ago, making a real effort to keep our site fresh all day. It’s gratifying to hear from several people they’ve noticed and appreciate it. If it was the only thing I had to do, it would be less of a challenge. So hey, Supervisor Dougherty — and anyone else with news, Republican, Democrat, Independent, elected official or citizen — keep those newsy emails coming.

Did your kid make the Dean’s List? I’ll post it with a banner headline. All you have to do is keep me posted at [email protected].