I’m consistently surprised by the often harsh response this topic receives. Let me be clear: I’m not saying that the work you do now is worthless, or that every single person should experience the joy of an unpaid internship.

But at one point in your life you didn’t have the skills to perform work worth being paid for.

Let’s stop and talk about that for a moment: I don’t care when in your life it was — you might be so brilliant that by the time you were out of diapers you were a stellar copy editor — but there was a point in your life when you didn’t know an em dash from a hole in the ground.

When I walked into the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press at the age of 18, they owed me nothing and I owed them everything. It was essentially a training session. I would like to think that the month or two that I spent doing unpaid work there was productive for them, and I think it was, because when my internship ended I was hired on part-time.

Let me make something very clear. In a newsroom, as in many other professions, the smallest of screwups can lead to the biggest of lawsuits. For a while on the Free Press copy desk, I was actually a drag on everyone. They spent more time showing me how to do things and retracing my steps to make sure I wasn’t going to get them sued than it would have taken them to do the task themselves.

Why would I expect them to pay me for that?

Now I work at the Bangor Daily News, a job I procured thanks in no small part due to the experience I gained at the Free Press. We have an intern program, and I’ve seen this first-hand.

Many of the interns we see have no experience. They either haven’t worked for their college paper at all or have minimal experience there. Often they intern with us to fulfill a mandatory practicum requirement at the university.

If you’re good and you have experience, we’ll pay you. We’ll actually pay you pretty well. And there’s a very good chance you’ll be strongly considered for a full-time job with our organization at the end of your internship.

But if you come to us without experience or asking to fulfill a classroom requirement, we expect that we will spend most of your time with us training you. We might like the work you do, but make no mistake: The purpose of the internship is to benefit you, not us.

Simply because you’re sitting in an office does not mean you are entitled to a paycheck. I love airplanes. I’d love to be a pilot. Does that mean if I show up and sit in the cockpit of a Delta jet that they should pay me a pilot’s wage? That’s essentially the position I was in when I walked into the Free Press just a few years ago, and that’s essentially the position many wet-behind-the-ears young journalists are in when they walk into the BDN or any other newspaper.

So: They aren’t for everybody, but if you want to skip a few steps in life at an early age, I might recommend seeing if someone will be so kind as to show you the ropes for free.

Watch Episode 3 and then read this 2008 New Yorker profile of Olbermann. They’re the same person.

The only other thing I’ll say is this: “The Newsroom” focuses on the wrong people, just like “The West Wing” and “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” initially focused on the wrong people. Viewers really don’t want to watch a love story about Will and his American-British EP. The best part of TWW was the wonky inner workings of the White House. To be honest I could go the whole rest of the series without ever seeing Will McAvoy at the news desk again. I hope Sorkin realizes he needs to swivel focus before it’s too late.

But here’s some truth, friends: There’s nothing wrong, or new, with outsourcing the news. We’ve been doing it for decades, in the form of wire services. In fact, I had to laugh when the TAL report decried rewriting information scraped off websites, including articles on gas prices gleaned from gasbuddy.com.

If you missed the joke, it’s this: Every Monday, The Associated Press moves a brief on our state wire diligently following the rise of gas prices in Maine. The AP’s source? Gasbuddy.com.

The problem with the outsourcing that most news orgs practice is that it’s damn expensive. At most news organizations, the money paid to the AP would support more than a few extra (local) reporters. Journatic uses modern technology (gasp!) to bring that cost wildly down. And in the end, I think the result is probably more relevant to the readers. I really want someone to tell me with a straight face that this article by Journatic is somehow more journalistically high-minded than this one from the AP.

There’s an oft-repeated quote by Jay Rosen Jeff Jarvis that goes something like this: Cover what you do best and link to the rest.

Well, news organizations aren’t really great at covering hyperlocal crap. Or, conversely, (hopefully) we’re too good to be covering it. Why oh why are we paying a reporter making $50,000+ a year or a wire service hundreds and hundreds of thousands a year to rewrite a press release for us? Much better to leave it to someone making minimum wage.

I propose a new saying: Do what’s hard and leave the easy stuff to the Filipinos.

Crass, yes, not to mention that it doesn’t rhyme, but if news organizations want to have their cake and eat it to in the form of having enough readership to survive and yet maintaining local coverage in Podunk, America, we’ve got to make some pretty crass decisions.

You might say that news organizations shouldn’t be publishing rewritten press release and hark back to some golden day when every news report was a godly screed handed down from Olympus. And I’d invite you to take off your rose-colored glasses and step into the real world. This kind of journalism isn’t new and it’s here to stay for a long time. We can’t really survive without it, but the simple fact is that we’ve been paying to much for it now.

So here’s what I propose we all do: Scrap the AP, hire Journatic to replace it and with the resulting savings hire a few good local reporters to completely ignore press releases and focus on the hard stuff. I will bet you a significant amount of money your readers will be happy.

There’s one thing I really can’t support in any capacity: fake bylines on stories. That was a really indefensible move on Journatic’s part and their explanation was just plain stupid. That’s all there really is on that.

Let the filleting begin.

P.S.: What would be great is if there was a clearing-house for information and data, where basically everything imaginable would be stored and accessible for every news organization in America. If the AP was in its right mind it would do this, and since it’s a cooperative it might even be able to compel member organizations to contribute to it. But now we’re into a whole different topic.

The first, and I think most major, point is that open source software is in the hands of its users. WordPress is an incredibly extensible solution because it provides very easy and frequent hooks so plugins can modify core every which way. It’s this that makes WordPress such an excellent solution for so many organizations including the one I work for, the Bangor Daily News.

What WordPress is not is a complete solution right out of the box. Mr. Gallagher is correct that many of the things he listed off are either deficient of lacking in core WordPress. But almost every item can be addressed easily through a plugin that I can name off the top of my head. (There are a few items on there that I don’t understand, but I’m sure I could find solutions for those issues as well.) None of the items he listed are problems. The plugin system is great in that it can account for an infinite number of caching solutions, or CDN solutions, or single sign-on solutions, or many, many other things you might want to do with WordPress. Many of these plugins are developed by core devs or by people who work closely with the core devs, such as Automatticians or power users that run huge sites.

I was very disappointed, however, to read Mr. Gallagher’s criticism of WordPress’s testing process and its lack of support for ‘edge cases.’ To start with the latter, WordPress’s discontinuation of support for IE6 and IE7, for example, has nothing to do with the core team’s hatred of Microsoft (I know a few people on the core team use Windows exclusively) and more to do with using its influence to increase security across the board, which must be done. In fact, I would think it almost negligent of WordPress to not use its influence in order to get people to upgrade to the newest version of their respective browser. The BDN is a Windows-based company and we have never had a single problem using WordPress because of browser incompatibility, simply because everyone is on the latest version of his or her browser. I’m less familiar with the other edge cases he  references, but I will address them along with testing:

WordPress requires companies to be responsible. That includes testing pre-release versions of WordPress to try and find problems and then contributing back to core to help fix those problems. Without involvement, there is no WordPress. So if there are problems, I encourage Mr. Gallagher to submit a ticket to WordPress core trac, and if he or his team is able to submit a patch. Failing that, I encourage him to create a plugin for the repository. Failing that, I encourage him to jump on the WordPress-dev IRC channel where he can talk to a core developer. Without that involvement there cannot be WordPress.

WordPress is not necessarily an easy solution. It requires user involvement in the creation process, just like Democracy requires civic involvement. There will always be people who keep their heads down and don’t get involved, and that’s fine if you’re running a single blog about your favorite topic. But when you’re a power user — either you run a large site or you provide WordPress support for your clients — it’s almost negligent not to be as involved as possible in every step of the process. It might not be as easy, but it will produce better results for you and for everyone else.

It turns out his original story had significant errors. By 11:30 a.m., two hours the story was published, it had been taken down. And it wasn’t restored until nearly 24 hours later, at 9 a.m. on Saturday.

The revised post does mention the errors in the original, but that doesn’t make up for taking down the story without notice and not correcting the record for almost a full day. There are many other options, including link to a fully factual report such as the one at the BDN.

The revised post doesn’t really fully explain the problems with the original story. Luckily, someone in the comments on the BDN site linked to two screenshots that show the original story.

In the head-to-head world of online news, it’s inevitable that errors will be made. We owe it to our readers to fix errors as quickly as possible and be as transparent as possible about it. Al actually wrote about corrections online a few weeks ago. One of the things I noted in an email to him after the story was published is that we make a conscious effort to indicate how the error made its way into the story, as well as restate the error so people know exactly what was changed.

In the event of a catastrophic error, we never, ever, ever delete a story or take it down. All it does is let the error hang in the air and propagates rumors. We immediately correct the story best we can — this often involves truncating the story with an editor’s note and posting a full correction when we have a fuller idea of what was wrong.

I’m a little tired, but my point here is, I’m disappointed that the problems with Al’s story were handled so poorly. If he’s going to be an industry watchdog then he really owes it to everyone to be a leader in transparency.

So endeth the lecture.

P.S. This is exactly why I started freze.it. Use it, damnit!

But it’s going to kill our business.

• It’s bad for your brand. Nobody can convince me scammy ads for the Acai Berry diet or cheaper car insurance help reinforce your brand as a brand to trust.
• It’s bad for the user. Nobody pays attention to remnant ads because it’s not relevant — remnant isn’t usually local — and because most of it is drivel (see above). Ads are content, too — you wouldn’t publish a story on your front page that isn’t relevant to any of your readers, would you?
• It’s bad for business.  Because we’ve been conditioned to ignore advertising online because of remnant, most of us completely ignore ads. This creates the impression that nobody pays attention to online advertising because it’s true. CPMs drop and it makes it a lot harder for you to sell ads.

I really vividly remember one ad that I’ve seen online. It was more than a year ago, and I don’t remember what site I was on, but it was an ad for a Dyson vacuum cleaner. The top of the site was black, and the ad fully integrated in — it used the full width of the site. It was a simple ad — I think it was just a vacuum on a black background that moved a bit to show how it worked but wasn’t obnoxious, then displayed some text. The ad stuck in my mind long after I’d forgotten about the site and whatever essay I’d been reading.

Those are the kinds of ads we need to build and put on our websites. Our readers will appreciate us because of it. Ads will overall become more effective because of it. Readers won’t think we’re trying to sell them crap because we won’t be.

One last thing: There are a few ad networks that are doing things right. The Deck Network and and Fusion Ads are exclusive: They limit who can advertise on their networks, and they limit what sites display their ads. Both stipulate that only one ad is displayed on the page. And both limit the size and content of ads — just a few hundred characters of text and a small image. This sort of advertising isn’t for everyone, but newspapers would be making a lot more money if we collective went more in that direction.

Remnant is killing any chance of news orgs making significant money online. Let’s find a better way to do things.

b. nano /etc/hosts/

or http://www.viper007bond.com/2011/08/13/editing-your-hosts-file-in-windows/

And I would also think after that first experience you might refrain from insulting people in the media.

More than that though, I’d have something I’d like to say:

It’s not us, it’s you.

When you write an article that is obviously over-the-top so as to grab attention, you should kinda expect to some pushback.

Additionally, if someone doesn’t understand what you’re trying to say, maybe you should look at the source. If many people fail to properly parse your words, it’s almost definitely your fault.

Journalists are smart people. We try to cut out the bullshit and call it like we see it. I’m sorry we didn’t reprint your statements directly. That’s not what we do.

So next time you get some negative media coverage, please check your ego and don’t whine about the sorry state of journalism.

P.S. Hundreds of thousands of dollars or more? Who are you trying to kid?

William P. Davis doesn’t really know who you are but doesn’t like you anyway.

The default screen in WordPress for editing images has one major annoyance: The caption field is a text input field, as opposed to a textarea, which is more easily editable and allows you to see everything in the box.

I know, it seems stupid, but is seriously a huge complaint in the newsroom. I dragged my heels looking into changing it because I assumed something like that wouldn’t be easy and might involve hacking core (*gasp*).

It turned out to be very easy and just took a few minutes of snooping to figure out a solution. All the fields on that page are stored in an array and you can modify that array before the results are printed. See the results at PasteBin.

I think he needs to say that’s not the primary task of a governor. The governor shouldn’t be elected on the basis that he’s there to perform some social mission. His job is to administer the biggest enterprise in the state of Maine, which is state government.

There was a good grassroots campaign. They effectively organized through volunteers, and he’s tapping into a sentiment that’s very widespread. People look at him as someone a lot like themselves, only more successful maybe, and they empathize with him.

This was not a tea party election. It was an election that, in his case, appealed to a much broader spectrum of the population.”

Paul LePage, June 16, 2010

“Well, creation. You know, quite frankly, it’s a learning tool for our kids. I think we should teach them everything possible and let them make their own minds up on how they want to live their lives. Gay marriage. The Maine people have decided. They have voted. I will uphold the law. As far as pro-life, coming from 18 kids, if I was for pro-choice I might not be here, so.

If we concentrate on social issues as the No. 1 issue this fall, the state of Maine is doomed. We have to concentrate on jobs, fiscal responsibility, accountability, and have common sense regulations in the state of Maine. And that’s what it’s all about. You want to talk about something else you’re going to have politics as usual. If you want politics as usual, I’m not your guy. If you want the state to prosper, I’m your guy.

On fed-up voters:
I’d say the results of the election speak for themselves.

How to win:
The same way we did it in the primary. We went to the voters, we went to their homes, and we spoke one-on-one with people, and that’s what they wanted.

I am going to run Waterville until the latter part of the summer, and then we’ll see how things look.

Bill Beardsley:
This race has been like rival football teams, or sporting teams from different high schools, and we fight tooth and nail with each other. But the season’s over, we’re all going to college — Paul LePage, I will add, went to Husson and I’m very proud of that. Paul’s captaining the team and we’re all behind him 100 percent of the way. And one of the big athletes on this team who’s going to be working with us all the way through November and victory for Paul is Steve Abbott.

Steve Abbott:
I got all my best campaign advice from my 5-year-old son, Henry. You’ve heard me tell this story. Right after the convention, we were sitting, having breakfast, on Sunday morning, and Henry said, “Daddy, all that stuff everybody’s talking about, doesn’t matter. Just talk about business. That’s what I need in Maine.” So Wednesday morning after the election I’m having breakfast, and Henry’s there, and he goes, “Daddy, you forgot my message.” So Paul, my one piece of free advice for you: Don’t forget Henry’s message.

Peter Mills:
My support for this nominee [ 3 seconds] is [6 seconds] I need to see. And I think I speak for many people in this party. We need to see in this party this summer a gathering together of positive affirmative ideas to give the people of Maine some idea of what we will do when we ascend to power in the governorship, in the state Senate and perhaps in the House.

I came into public service in 1994, on the tide of the contract with America. I came into the majority in the Senate. We tried to rule, we tried to govern, but we got into some squabbles we didn’t need to, we divided along lines where we didn’t need to divide. And we failed to deliver to Maine people a clear conception of the affirmative, positive things we need to do, we wanted to do, in order to make this state a better place. And we lost the next election.

So I have lived through these tides. I’ve experienced them. It is important that we as a party begin to set aside some of the social issues that divide us, some of the stuff that we get into squabbles about within the party and begin to focus on business … and specifically on the business of managing and running state government. It is a mess. And I am a ringside witness to that mess and I stand ready to help in guiding this candidate and I think I speak for all of us, we stand ready to guide him in developing policies that will reach out to the voters who must elect us in November, and who must support the governor through the four years of management. Because politics doesn’t end on Nov. 3. You have to have public support all the way through. And if we are going to overhaul these complex systems of state government — the 13,500 people who work in state government, the 7,000 contractual relationships the state government enters into — this Republican Party is going to need constant, daily support from people all over Maine. Paul LePage is going to need that support. And I’m here to give it to him today. But we all need to be there. One of the reasons is because I think if we start to ask state government some of the same questions you have to ask about managing Mardens — and that’s where I think his management skills come to the fore. Because Mardens has grown — it’s tripled in size since he came to the company. It’s one of the most popular places for anybody to go shopping. He has created an appeal to the Maine customer. Well, guess what? That’s what state government is all about. It is a service organization, it is the largest organization in Maine, it is the largest business in Maine and it has to appeal to its customers. And let’s put somebody in charge who knows how to do that.

Paul LePage:
I’ll take a word from Calvin Coolidge: The business in Maine is going to be business come November.

“She has had a quarter of a century of time and she has driven our state backwards. This election and this campaign is going to be about putting Maine in the right direction.”

Jobs, lower taxes, reform regulatory environment.