It’s a big county out there. About a quarter of a million people live in Hamilton County. And this isn’t a sit-on-their-couch-and-watch-TV populace. There’s always something going on.

Just look at the pages of your paper throughout the week and you’ll see listings for hundreds of events, programs, fundraisers, galas and festivals. This doesn’t even take into account the dozens of government meetings, sporting events and things that just pop up.

Try as we might, we here at the Noblesville Daily Times just can’t be all places at all times. Covering a county this big with a staff our size is a daunting task.

Everyday, there are events we just cannot cover with a reporter or a photographer. But that doesn’t mean those events don’t deserve coverage. It certainly doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a spot in your paper. That’s right … your paper.

A community newspaper is an interactive forum. Your contributions should not be limited to letters to the editor or online comments.

From our social networking Web site Hamilton County Today.com, to our printed products to our brand new prep sports Web site Fans Post.com, reader-generated content – pictures, videos and the written word produced by you, the readers – is important to what we do.

Newspapers have long embraced certain items from readers – the traditional engagement photos and birth announcements. But today’s readers – having become accustomed to the interactive digital world – expect more input, and we try to give you that forum.

When you’re out at an event, feel free to click a few pictures and send them to us. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sporting event, or a fundraiser or a church event, take some pictures of your friends and neighbors and get them to us.

If your church or sorority or service group is planning a function, drop us a line, we’ll get that in too.

We often have people ask what is the best way to get items to us. Well, I typically tell them whatever is most convenient for them.

We can take items you drop by our office in the Model Mill Building, or that you mail to us. You can even pick up the phone and call. For a quicker turn around, e-mail works great. Just remember that if you send an attachment, be sure to jot a quick note in the body of the e-mail to let us know what the attachment is.

Our digital products provide even more options. You can log onto Hamilton County Today.com or Fans Post.com and upload your own photos and videos. You can upload your own press releases and calendar events at noblesvilledailytimes.com through the Post It Here feature.

Never has it been so easy to get something in the paper. And never has it been so important to us that you do so. Like I said, we can’t be everywhere, but we certainly can offer you the space to take us there.

It’s fair time again, and no one covers the Hamilton County 4-H Fair like the Noblesville Daily Times.

I hope you got chance to check out our fair preview section in last Saturday’s edition of the Daily Times. In it, we laid out all you needed to know about the fair including a schedule and locator map.

But that was just the beginning. In recent days we’ve covered events including the fair queen competition, the beginning of judging and animal move-in day. Today, we bring you coverage of the fair in multiple platforms. In this edition of our printed product you get photos and stories about what’s going on at the fairgrounds. Online you can find dozens of other photos and a video about the fair’s opening day.

Throughout the end of the fair next week we will continue to keep you on top of what is happening at the county fair.

Any county event that draws tens of thousands of visitors is something worthy of our coverage. But the 4-H Fair is special. The fair is about fun. The fair is about food. But it is also about teaching young people responsibility and hard work.

Nearly 2,000 youths put their blood, sweat and tears into their 4-H projects. That hard work deserves recognition. That’s why you see their faces and names in your paper every day.

That’s why we also will bring you a commemorative results section July 31.

In years past, we’ve run 4-H project results throughout the course of the fair. We’d have to plug them in where we had room. That made it tough for our readers to know where to look to find them. It also made it easy for a proud parent to miss the day their kid’s grand champion recognition made the paper.

Last year, we compiled all those results in one easy-to-navigate, collectible package following the fair. Our readers loved it. This year we’ll do the same.

Not only does this give 4-H’ers and their families a keepsake of their accomplishments, but it frees up space in each day’s edition of our print product to bring you more sights, sounds and stories from the fair.

When you are at the fair, make sure to stop by the Daily Times booth and let us know how we’re doing, or just say hi. At the booth you can also register to be a contestant in our Deal With the Daily Times game for a chance to win up to $1,000.

Deal With the Daily Times will be 3 p.m. Sunday at the Exhibition Center.

If you see reporter/photographer/4-H fanatic Robert Herrington, make sure to tell him you appreciate the hard work and long hours he’s putting in at the fairgrounds for you. I hear his editor is a grouchy jerk who tosses around compliments like they are manhole covers, so he could probably use a pat on the back.

Speaking of the grouchy editor, I’ll be at the fair periodically, and will be manning the Daily Times booth along with Managing Editor Rob Borders Sunday afternoon. We’d love to meet you.

This is the information age, or so they say. Who is “they?” Probably some bloggers, or the hosts of a hip and edgy social networking site.

It is true that more knowledge is available at the fingertips of more people than ever before in the history of mankind. The problem is, along with all that information comes more than a healthy dose of misinformation.

Cyberspace is ripe with asteroid belts of rumor, gossip and outright lies. Often these falsehoods grow organically and innocently, as rumors become fact in chat rooms – a modern day version of the old telephone game where a fact is twisted and changed as it passes from one person to another.

Other times the deceit is deliberate and dirty. I wish I had a dollar for every e-mail I’ve received in recent months containing bold-face lies aimed at assassinating the character of the various presidential candidates. Mudslinging and deception is nothing new in politics. The problem is, when Joe Sixpack gets a chain e-mail full of “information” about a candidate, then Joe sees the information repeated by traditional media outlets that also received the “information,” he’s going to believe it.

That’s what scares me most about the so-called information age. Media outlets hungry for juicy gossip, peer-to-peer “journalism” and wanting to be on top of the latest “hot” topics have taken to espousing this information as truth, without any independent verification.

In the past couple weeks major news outlets have been caught with egg on their faces because they fell prey to Internet hoaxes. I read a story about photos taken of a “lost Amazon tribe” on a number of Web sites.

It has since been revealed that the tribe in the photos was anything but “lost.”

News outlets were scrambling days later when it was revealed that a video clip showing a “catch” by a ball girl at a Triple A baseball game was a fake. Those outlets had shown the clip – which has the young lady scaling a wall and making a miraculous backhanded stab – which turned out to video from a sports drink commercial.

I don’t mean to cast a condescending stone at those media outlets. As newsroom budgets shrink, editors and news producers are forced to find content from alternative sources.

This new fangled problem brings to mind an ancient Latin phrase – caveat emptor – let the buyer beware.

In the newspaper business, you never stop learning. Everyday offers a new issue, or a new subject of which you must gain at least a working knowledge in order to write about it.

Most importantly, a good journalist never stops learning about his or her craft. The hope is that each day you are a little better at the job than you were the day before.

This week, I was able to spend some time with one of the great newspaper men in the state at the premier newspaper in the state, as judged by the Hoosier State Press Association.

Our sister publication, The Herald-Times in Bloomington, was chosen the Blue Ribbon Daily – the best all around paper in the state – by the HSPA in 2007. Bob Zaltsberg has led the Herald-Times’ news staff since 1985 and is an industry giant.

I spent time in Bloomington at the Herald-Times in hopes of making the Daily Times here in Noblesville even better. I think we’ve got a pretty good paper here already. But we’re always looking to improve. And anytime you get a chance to spend a few days in a newsroom like the one they have in Bloomington, you jump at it.

Z — as everyone knows him — described his staff as a little “tired,” this week. They’ve been working nonstop in recent weeks covering the devastating floods that have hit the southern portion of our state – the heart of the Herald-Times coverage area. Yet, the newsroom was hopping and vibrant while I was there this week. It was good to sit in on their planning meetings, and watch them practice their craft, seeing how a staff that big – more than 40 journalists – works together.

It was also heartening to see that despite being big and successful, the H-T faces many of the same challenges we do everyday here at the NDT.

I’ve worked in many newsrooms, and visited dozens. But it’s always good to visit a new one to gain insight and perhaps steal a few tricks of the trade.

It was a great experience, which I intend to put to use here. I’ll keep you posted in coming weeks about some changes coming for your hometown daily paper. Some have been planned for a while, others grew out of my trip to Bloomington.

As always, if you have any ideas about how we can better serve you, my door, phone line and e-mail account are always open. You can also pitch ideas through our online suggestion box at noblesvilledailytimes.com.

Journalists learn not only from one another, but most importantly, we learn by listening to our readers. In this business, we’re always looking to learn and improve.

Only one thing is constant in the newspaper business … and that is change. Everyday brings something different.

As a newspaper editor, my job is to allocate our resources in a way to produce the best products we can for you, the reader, everyday. If you regularly read our print or online products, you know we’re always tweaking, always looking to improve.

This week came the latest changes, which are geared toward making our products more reader friendly than ever before.

You may have noticed many of our destination, or specialty pages, disappeared this week. Pages like Business, Health & Wellness or In Your Schools, pages that have traditionally run during a given day each week, are no more.

Instead, we now bring you that type of news everyday. Rather than dedicating a page or two once a week to the latest business news, or the latest in entertainment, you’ll now find those items on our pages everyday. When we find out about something, it goes into the next edition in which space is available – no waiting.

It’s now easier than ever to get your latest event, announcement or photos into the paper too. Rather than keeping track of who our business reporter, or health reporter is, you can simply send all of that information to news@noblesvilledailytimes.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and we’ll make sure it gets published.

Did I mention photos? If you’ve got a news item about a new employee, or your child has accomplished something in school, send along a photo. If you see something interesting in the community, take a shot of it and e-mail it to us.

As I’ve mentioned many times before in this space, this is your paper. It’s news about you, and it is often news by you.

In coming weeks we will introduce further changes that will give you even more input into your community newspaper – an unprecedented amount of input that will allow you to decide what your daily newspaper looks like.

Stay tuned. More change is coming.

Occasionally a story will come along that inspires even a cynical journalist.

In this line of work, a lot of what we deal with is the darker side of human nature. As someone who spent more than a decade covering police, fire and court beats, I’ve seen the worst humanity has to offer. It’s easy to become jaded. As far as grouchy old newspaper editors go, I’m about as grouchy and pessimistic as they come.

But I was been blown away last week by the way my community rallied around Michael Treinen and his family. If a story like this doesn’t touch your heart, then you don’t have one.

When we got into the office last Monday morning to find several e-mails detailing the family’s plight – how Michael had reached a lifetime cap on his insurance and would need to raise $500,000 by Thursday in order to have a bone marrow transplant – the cynic in me said “no way.” I mean think about that. A half million dollars in four days.

Well, as of Friday, the community had collected more than $700,000 to help save this young man’s life. That’s staggering. Never in my career have I seen anything like that. I’ve never even heard of a community rallying like that, in that amount of time.

Schools and organizations and businesses pitched in to help. In most cases, they were helping someone they didn’t even know.

I don’t know the Treinen family. But I want to personally thank everyone who took the time to collect donations, who gave income from their business or their family budget.

As a father, I can’t even imagine what it would be like for my son to be facing that type of battle. But I hope the Treinens gain some comfort in knowing they are loved and supported.

As a Noblesville resident, I am proud to say this is the community in which I am raising my children.

Our job is to give you the news, and often the news is bad. While most of what the Noblesville Daily Times reports is positive news, it is seldom as inspiring as this.

It has been an honor to share this story, and it is an honor to serve a community like this.

People around here are goofy over golf. With more than a dozen public and six private courses in the county, the locals have more than their share of opportunities to hit the links.
Because we know you love the game, each spring we publish our Golf Guide. The 2008 edition can be found inside today’s Daily Times. It features green fees, contact information and more about the county’s courses. In addition, the guide features stories and information about the local world of golf – including a feature on Noblesville’s sensational sisters, Ashley and Amber Prange, and their professional careers.
Golf is one game I’ve never taken a shine to. That puts me in the minority around here.
With the cost of green fees and equipment, I’ve never been able to afford to work at the game. As a result, I suck. If I weren’t so horrible at it, I’m sure I’d be able to work it into my budget. The simple fact is, I have a habit of trying to avoid public humiliation.
My parents bought me a very inexpensive set of starter clubs when I was a teen. My friends and I occasionally liked to knock around a 3-par course in Kokomo, and I’m sure my parents felt taking up golf would be good for me.
With those clubs I did try to learn the game. But, as I mentioned before, I sucked.
While I’ve never been a star athlete, I have always been able to be at least competitive and not look like a complete dork while playing most sports. This fueled my passion, and I continued to work on my skills.
Golf offered no hope. It gave me only frustration. The clubs got pushed to the back of the closet, where they’ve remained for the most part. I’ve played in various charity tournaments over the years. This only reinforced my fear of the game. Something about teeing off and whiffing in front of a bunch of strangers makes me know I’ve made the right decision.
Yet I know my shunning of golf is my loss. I would love to take an afternoon and play a round with the guys while drinking a few cold beers. Lot’s of business gets done on golf courses around here. Few of my sources would care to meet me on Conner Courts for a game of one-on-one.
I’m sure local groundskeepers are thrilled that I don’t spend the occasional afternoon chewing up their fairways. And those with houses near courses probably have lower insurance rates thanks to my foregoing those fairways.
Besides, that leaves more room for all of you. Looking to find a place to tee off? Check out our 2008 Golf Guide. Good luck on the links, and remember to replace your divits.

Since I came to the Noblesville Daily Times nearly two years ago, I’ve let it be known how important readers’ contributions are to what we do.

As I’ve stated many times in public and in my weekly column, we need readers to be an active participant in order for us to practice true community journalism. Your contributions come in all forms, from feedback, to news tips, to contributed content. Now we’ve taken it to the next level.

In the Saturday, Feb. 23 edition, we officially launched Hamilton County Today.com. This new reverse publishing product replaces what had been Hamilton County Weekly, serving as the “B Section” of the Saturday paper.

Let me back up a little. Reverse publishing is a term we in the newspaper business use to describe content we’ve taken from our digital products and published in our printed products. In this case, the content printed in the Hamilton County Today.com section in the Daily Times is content that has appeared on our social networking Web site, Hamilton County Today.com.

Much of this content is the same type of stuff we’d always published in Hamilton County Weekly – birth, wedding and engagement announcements, scout and military news and other items you’ve submitted about your family and friends. A few months ago, we opened such submissions up to accept nearly anything you wanted to contribute, from cartoons to poetry. We ran that stuff in Hamilton County Weekly in a feature called “By You.” Now its home is Hamilton County Today.com.

It is easier than ever before for you to participate in your community newspaper. By joining Hamilton County Today.com, you can participate in online forums, join discussion groups and submit your own content – be it photos, videos, blogs or anything you’d like to share with our online community. It’s like a local version of MySpace or FaceBook.

Some of that content will then be reversed published in the print version of Hamilton County Today.com. That product not only comes with the Saturday edition of the Noblesville Daily Times, but is distributed to homes in our market that don’t subscribe to the daily paper.

Hamilton County Today.com in both the digital and print format is a way to not only share good news about loved ones or neighbors, but to get the word out about upcoming events, or share an opinion. It is news for you, by you.

You can contribute far beyond just joining and posting to Hamilton County Today.com, however. Our news site, noblesvilledailytimes.com, now allows you to submit press releases and other news items on our community bulletin board “Post it Here.” Your news item goes right up on the site without having to wait for the next edition of the print product to be published and delivered to readers’ doors.

Our news Web site has long been a place for you to get the word out about an upcoming event – with our online community calendar – or let your opinion be heard – through our weekly Web poll and by submitting letters to the editor online. We even let you offer your suggestions for improving our products with an online suggestion box.

Just as the Noblesville Daily Times is your newspaper, our digital products are there for you to use, to improve and participate. Go online and make the news at noblesvilledailytimes.com or have fun at Hamilton County Today.com.

With all of these options, I hope you see that we are no longer simply a newspaper company. While our printed product is still a major part of what we do, we offer much more. As the years progress, I hope you’ll begin to look at us much more as a local information and connection utility.

I remember covering a high-profile murder trial about a decade ago that suddenly, and unexpectedly ended in a mistrial. I darted from the courtroom to a small conference room in the Hamilton County Government and Judicial Center and called my editor.

Like something out of a movie, she ran to the press room and yelled “stop the presses.”

I had a story turned around in a couple minutes – which I read to the editor over the phone – and was able to break the news on that day’s front page. Good thing we made it. If we hadn’t gotten the story in that evening’s paper, our readers wouldn’t have read it until about 30 hours later, in the next day’s edition.

Few newspapers at that time really focused on breaking stories online. Oh how times have changed.

The Noblesville Daily Times Web site www.noblesvilledailytimes.com is updated many times a day, as new stories break, and as new information becomes available about stories already online and in our printed products. Now our readers never have to wait to find out what is going on in their community. Even on days that we don’t publish a newspaper, our Web site is updated with news and information, weather forecasts and fun, interactive items.

Not only have the platforms for news delivery changed – such as our interactive Web site and our e-mail newsletter – but the tools reporters use to report the news have changed.

I was taken back to that mistrial and the way I reported it this week when we were preparing a story about the resignation of Fishers High School Principal Scott Syverson.

A special school board meeting to discuss the embattled principal’s contract was scheduled to begin about the time of our deadline for Thursday’s edition of the paper. That forced us to use a combination of old-fashioned planning and new-fangled technology.

We held a slot on the front page open for the story. Reporter Robert Herrington had already prepared the story file, and written the background – information about Syverson being pulled over on suspicion of drunken driving, and the fact he had been placed on leave in January pending Thursday’s school board meeting.

As soon as the Hamilton Southeastern School Board voted 7-0 to accept Syverson’s resignation, Herrington began sending text messages to the newsroom without having to leave the meeting to find a phone like I did following the mistrial. In fact, Herrington didn’t even have to make a phone call. His focus could remain on what was happening in the meeting, sending us text messages about what was happening as it was happening.

We had the story online within seconds, before any other media outlet, and continued to update the version that would appear on the front page of Thursday evening’s printed edition until we absolutely had to send the page to the printing press. We made deadline, and was the only newspaper with that story in print Thursday.

We then updated the story online throughout the day.

Finally, an updated version appeared on the front page of today’s printed edition.

Newspaper people so often see the Internet as a threat, the meteor that will wipe out us print dinosaurs. We’ve failed to embrace the “new media,” or at least utilize it in ways that are beneficial to us, and our readers.

I saw a promising sign last Saturday, however, during a newspaper job fair at Ball State University. I talked to dozens of journalism students, and not a single one thought newspapers are dying. Instead, they excitedly talked about the way newspapers are evolving.

The Internet is anything but a threat to us. It is a supplement to our printed products, not a harvester of sorrow. It is a magnificent tool that allows us to report news and information quicker than ever, and in ways I never would have imagined when I ran out of the courtroom that day to find a phone.

News of the shootings at a Kirkwood, Mo., city council meeting sent chills down my spine last night. As I read the accounts this morning of the rampage, which ended with six people dead and several others suffering gunshot wounds, including a reporter, I couldn’t help but think how lucky I am to have never found myself living that nightmare. I’ve placed a link at the bottom of this post to my paper’s Web site, where you can find coverage of the shootings.

I’ve sat through hundreds of public meetings. Most are mundane, even boring, running together in my memories of nearly two decades as a journalist. Sometimes though, things get heated, very heated. I’ve seen people have to be removed from city meetings by police. Emotions run high when people feel the government is unfairly jerking with their life or livelihood.

Few public forums carry the raw emotions seen inside courtrooms, where I’ve spent thousands of hours in my career. I’ve been in the middle of incidents that seemed ready to spiral into riots. I’ve seen countless altercations, both verbal and physical.

Many times that anger has been directed at me, for something I wrote, or something I allowed to be published. I’ve gone into many court hearings or other public meetings wondering if I was going to have to defend myself, verbally or physically.

My heart goes out to those who walked into City Hall in Kirkwood Thursday expecting a routine meeting … perhaps one they’d forget all about in coming months or years. Some were there to serve the public as a city official or a member of the media, others were simply being responsible citizens. Some ended up losing their lives. Others will never be the same.

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