Newsletter
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How do you concentrate in a noisy place?
By ChrisCobler in Your Advocate: an editor's blog
Many of us prefer silence when writing or thinking hard about anything. However, if you work in a newsroom, you always have to keep one ear tuned in to your surroundings, particularly the crackling of the police scanner. Some journalists ...
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How do we balance public good vs. private toll?
By ChrisCobler in Your Advocate: an editor's blog
This is an early look at my column planned for Sunday: Grief is the most personal of emotions. We can never be prepared fully to deal with such deep loss, particularly when it comes suddenly and unexpectedly. Those close to ...
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Should sources review stories before publication?
By ChrisCobler in Your Advocate: an editor's blog
Most newspapers have a policy against having sources review content before publication for several reasons: 1) It's impractical to be able to do this for everyone featured in a daily newspaper under our tight deadlines and get a paper out ...
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Do suspects charged with a federal crime have a right to privacy?
By ChrisCobler in Your Advocate: an editor's blog
Most people are used to seeing the jail booking photos of those arrested and charged with a crime. That's because information about arrests, for the most part, are public record. Our founding fathers created an open court system as a ...
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Would you take a flight out of Victoria?
By ChrisCobler in Your Advocate: an editor's blog
When you fly Sun Air's twin-engine Piper Chieftan, you get a close-up view of everything, including the cockpit. I sat a row behind the pilot. ------------------------------------ With some trepidation, I prepared Thursday to fly Sun Air out of Victoria. We ...
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When should we publish a photo of a car crash?
By ChrisCobler in Your Advocate: an editor's blog
Advocate journalists hate going to the scene a car crash. The carnage is tough to see, report on and photograph, but we recognize residents have a keen interest in traffic safety. The most common incidents readers contact us about via ...
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How would you handle a Catch-22?
By ChrisCobler in Your Advocate: an editor's blog
We always prefer tidy packages, black-and-white answers, clear-cut policies. However, the world is a messy, interesting place. That's why your Advocate has an ethics board trying to bring some cadence to the cacophony. At this week's board meeting, though, we ...
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How much more can our web traffic grow?
By ChrisCobler in Your Advocate: an editor's blog
As I monitored all of the online updates about Monday afternoon's shooting in Victoria, I also reviewed our web traffic numbers for 2012. The growth in our online readership is impressive. We know about the strong reach of the printed ...
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What do you think when you see a related ad near a news story?
By ChrisCobler in Your Advocate: an editor's blog
Our copy editors alerted me late Saturday night to the inadvertent placement of a news story about DeTar Hospital near the hospital's front-page ad. They were concerned the juxtaposition might give some readers the wrong idea. I didn't consider the ...
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What's the best thing about your job?
By ChrisCobler in Your Advocate: an editor's blog
I was touched last week by the impromptu farewell speech an intern delivered in the newsroom. Each semester we have two multimedia interns work for us. They generally come from all over the United States and work like any other ...