Omblogslady

You saw it here first. I've coined a word. Whether or not it gets chosen for an upcoming edition of Merriam Webster's dictionary remains to be seen. It's an offshoot from ombudsman, but since I'm the only female in an upcoming new blogging project, it seemed a politically correct necessity.

I've accepted an invitation from the Spokesman-Review to join four other bloggers on a group blog which reviews the newspaper's daily coverage. I'm actually typing the meat of my information this morning from a blog written a few days ago by one of my new colleagues, Russ Lipton http://www.coffeehouse-at-end-of-days.com/

Russ gleaned his information at an initial brainstorming get-together with the Spokesman's Ryan Pitts the week before last. I could not attend because of my last-minute trip to the Midwest. So, I'm playing a bit of catch-up with the concept.

The other bloggers, besides Russ, include Doug Hughes http://www.spovegas.com/, Carson McComas http://blog.frogbody.com/, and Remi Olsen http://www.remi1000.com/

Here's what Russ' blog entry says about the project:

" . . . we will inspect the newspaper's coverage on a daily basis:

What was covered well today? Not well?
Did opinion pose as fact? Vice versa?
Is the paper's design (as well as S-R's website) up-to-snuff?
What does the Spokane community want to see in its paper of record?
How is print-online journalism converging or not?
What can we learn from experiments elsewhere in the country?

This will include active dialogue with S-R staff. Heh.

We have also been invited to hang out at S-R meetings and otherwise make ourselves pests at the office. Ooh. Cool. I'll play the role of Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story.

The start date is not firm, but is tentatively slated for next week.

Major kudos to Ken Sands and Ryan Pitts - as well as Steve Smith, editor and Stacey Cowles, publisher. No guts, no glory. Of course, no citizen journalism over the next decade, no paper.

The only charity here is on our part. Payment is in coffee. What could be more appropriate to the Northwest?

So, I'm headed off on a new journalistic adventure. And, of course, I'll welcome my own readers' comments as more information about this project unfolds. Who knows where it will go and what it will lead to for the Spokesman-Review. For me, however, it's always exciting to open a new door.

I promise to try really hard to function as a good omblogslady. That means tuning into readers' views of daily news coverage and passing them along to the newspaper staff.

P.S. If you're a regular Spokesman reader and would like to send me your impressions of or wishes for the paper, please drop me a line at malove@imbris.net. Also, I may ask from time to time for readers to tell me their favorite story in that day's edition of the paper and why. We can all have some fun and participate in "citizen journalism."