Hopefully, you didn’t even notice I was gone.
Honestly, I didn’t really want to leave — it was cold and dark and the rain had just picked up outside — but there was no reporter here and not much to be done about it.
The accident call sounded pretty bad.
A photographer wanted me to look at a picture as soon as I got to work the other day: A teenage girl with a nasty gash across her forehead, blood streaming down her freckled face.
It’s from a drill, not real blood, he explains. Still, it doesn’t pass what I heard one old editor call “the breakfast test,” I tell him.
Don’t tell the boss I’m writing this.
After all, the default policy around here is generally to go about our business, chasing the news in York and Adams counties and trying to keep up with it all. That’s tough enough.
There’s traditionally not a lot of time for horn-tooting at a small paper, even when it receives recognition. And frankly there’ s never been much to-do in Hanover at such times.
But what the heck, let’s toot for a minute.
Talk about peer pressure.
I got back from vacation last week just in time to sit down in front of the computer and pull up Facebook and read the chatter and see that the favorite Hanover hangout of just about everyone I know was slated to close the next day.
Find me the spirit of KClinger’s, the boss said. Right now.
Um, sure.
I still have the operating room scrubs, folded and tucked away in the back of the closet. They’re green with a white drawstring on the pants, washed and dried and most days anymore I don’t give them a second thought.
They were a size too big for me.
For whatever reason, though, that shirt-and-pants set is the image that came to me this morning, thinking about the Toomey family of Hanover, who had their quadruplets yesterday.
Plenty of other things jump to mind, too, when I think back over the local family’s journey, and the way in which we tried to chronicle it. Most recently, that meant trying to get information while Heather Toomey was giving birth this weekend at York Hospital.
There’s an interesting question – if you’ll pardon the bad pun – of how hard to push for news in such a situation.
It also bears discussion how, in this case, social media (again) came to the rescue.
And then there are those scrubs. I took them out today and they’re sitting on the table next to the computer.
Boy, that brings back a whole other story.
I’ll go ahead and admit it here: I’ve been pretty excited this week about Rick Santorum.
That’s not necessarily a political endorsement, though. Rather, it’s a brief and admittedly unsolicited cheer for The Evening Sun’s online coverage of a visit by the GOP presidential hopeful to Gettysburg a few days ago.
In particular, there was a small group left here during Santorum’s Tuesday night visit tasked with reporting on the event. And updating our website as things developed. And passing along information through social media. Oh, and putting together a newspaper.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not going to tell you just how perfectly everything came together. There are always things to improve on.
But it’s worth taking a minute here to talk about what we did, and why we did it.
You know, there’s nothing like social media to grab a fistful of your shirt, pick you up on tiptoes, and give you a good stern smack in the face.
Maybe that’s why we like it so much.
There’s no doubt we’re all moving more quickly these days, especially those of us in the Digital First world, as we try to get you better news faster. Much of that mission rests on the cyber shoulders of Facebook and Twitter, those known and trusted online accelerants.
But that same collection of bits and bytes pushing us forward like we’re a screeching toddler on an outdoor swing can sometimes slow us down. Way down.
It’s the mother that grabs the playground chains with both hands, stern-faced, and brings all the fun to a sputtering stop.
Our poor police reporter… Twitter must be absolutely killing her.
And Facebook, too, for that matter. And that monster at www.eveningsun.com, which I ask her to feed all weekend with all manner of media on banged up bumpers and barn fires.
But that’s the job these days, with people accustomed to getting instant gratification.
Want a book? Click over to Amazon. Got two minutes to kill? Pull up Angry Birds or Words with Friends on your phone. Want to see what your friends are up to? Thumb your way over to your mobile social media apps.
And while you’re there, check the news. Why is traffic so slow on Route 94 tonight?
The Evening Sun better be able to tell you.
All I remember is sitting bolt upright in bed, looking around frantically, trying to get my bearings by the light leaking in from the street.
A moment passed, confusion dropping away into a stomach knot of concern.
Oh my God, I thought, his name is Dylan, right? That’s what his mother said in conversation, but I should have double-checked before it went to print.
I knew, of course, if that name was wrong the other 700 words – the hours of work writing on my day off – wouldn’t be worth the paper they were printed on. They wouldn’t mean a damn thing.
Thus my mindset when it comes to stories written about accidents, or to remember someone in the wake of tragedy.
And I have to agree with local reporter Erin James, who said during an exchange on Facebook this week that’s the mindset of the overwhelming majority of people who do this job.
We want to get it right. And when we fall short it hurts.
But when people act like we don’t care about the words in the paper – words we fight for then sign our names to each day – well, in its own way that hurts even more.
It recently was pointed out to us that this newly launched blog site of ours was not available through our mobile app. At least that was the case concerning some phones.
I’m happy to announce that problem has been corrected.
But you know what they say about problems — if it’s not one thing, it’s another.
And the glitch I became aware of last night while viewing one of my own blog posts through the app illustrates the complexity of challenges we face as a news source as we scale up our digital offerings.
