I can’t get Sarah Palin’s gibes about “community organizer” out of my mind. I felt somewhat sick at how raucously the big crowd laughed at the phrase every time she said it. What kind of people are these, I wondered, who disrespect the idea of organizing a community to work on its own behalf? I know it’s just politics, but hey — it was ugly.

For me there’s not a huge jump between being mayor of a small town ( population size unknown) and working as a community organizer in Chicago, one of the biggest cities in America. I’m saying I respect Palin’s two terms as the mayor/manager of Wasilla, Alaska, which apparently has more than 5,000 residents and fewer than 10,000, as best we can estimate. (It’s bigger than the Pennsylvania town I lived in until I was 13 — on the edge of town, a sign claimed a population of about 1,900.)

This led me to think about journalism — small town vs. big city.

Not many people get excited about the prospect of working for a small-town newspaper, and there are all kinds of reasons for that. But you know, not many journalists feel thrilled about the idea of getting a job at a community weekly in a big-city neighborhood either. There’s my hook to the mayor and the community organizer. I don’t think we should laugh and poke fun at either one of those jobs. There is value in each one.

There’s value in producing a news product that serves the needs of a small town or a city neighborhood, but a lot of journalists sneer and poke fun at reports of church suppers and Little League baseball teams. They roll their eyes and scoff at the notion that they would ever lower themselves to writing about such drivel.

I thought about this as I listened to an NPR story about Walsh, Colorado (pop. 700). The residents are so involved in their town that when the local grocery store was about to go out of business (and everyone would have needed to drive 30 minutes to the next town to buy milk and bread), the people formed a co-op, sold shares, and kept the store open.

The story about Walsh reminded me of Keith Graham’s Rural News Network project out in Montana. Keith and a bunch of journalism students helped the town of Dutton, Montana (pop. 357,  July 2007) start an online-only newspaper to replace the one that had shut down. The Dutton Country Courier is full of church-supper-style news. It also tells us the Dutton Town Council approved two new businesses in August: a coffee roaster and a DVD rental shop. No professional journalists have to dirty their soft hands to put out the Dutton Country Courier — the townspeople run it themselves, with a bit of support from the town’s public library.

RNN’s second site, Crow News (serving the town of Crow Agency, Montana, and the Apsaalooke nation), isn’t showing as much promise as the Dutton venture, but that should not detract from the model visible in Dutton. Community news can be produced and distributed throughout a small population that cares about it, and the presence of a single vehicle for such news also provides a resource for the community where bigger ideas can be discussed as needed.

Which brings me to the Knight News Challenge grants.

About $5 million is on the table for “the development and distribution of neighborhood and community-focused projects, services, and programs.” You could get some of that $5 million for your own big idea in a small town or geographic community.

A lot of people miss the sharp focus of the KNC grants, so let me hammer on those:

1. A project base using digital, open-source technology. Keys: (a) digital, so not print and not broadcast; (b) open source means you don’t own it, and it’s not proprietary.
2. The public interest. A Dr. Who fan club is not going to cut it.
3. Benefit to a specific geographic community. They are not interested in all hockey moms across the state of Alaska, or all disabled veterans across the U.S. They really want a focus on a town or a community.

LeRoy Collins, a former governor of Florida and later president of the National Association of Broadcasters, is credited with having said this about public-interest radio and TV:

Broadcasting to serve the public interest must have a soul and a conscience, a burning desire to excel, as well as to sell; the urge to build the character, citizenship, and intellectual stature of people, as well as to expand the gross national product.

This applies to governance as well as to journalism. Without any non-governmental vehicle or platform to serve the public interest, however, I think democracy falters, or even fails.

Photo galleries tend to be popular with visitors to online news sites — so it’s common to see these featured at or near the top of the home page. Many local newspapers use wire photos — often ONLY wire photos — in these galleries. (I’m not sure that’s the best strategy, because I can go a lot of places today to see photos from Louisiana or from the Republican National Convention.)

My local newspaper, The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun, has a photo gallery featured on the top right corner of the home page (well, the top after two ads). It changes the photos very slowly — you click, and then you wait … and wait. Sometimes you wait 15 to 20 seconds for the next image to appear.

A lot of newspapers use a gallery player that works this way. It’s not that they intentionally made it slow — that’s just their back-end system, or the network itself. The main reason the gallery is slow is because it was deliberately designed to physically load a new Web page each time it shows you a new photo.

I understand that this brings more pageviews into the count, and that’s the goal. Inflate the pageviews — even artificially — and you can brag to your advertisers.

Because the gallery continues to attract more unique users than other parts of the Web site, the newspapers think it’s okay that the usability is poor. Everyone would enjoy the gallery more if it changed to the next photo more quickly. (In addition to getting rid of the useless extra page loads, there are several techniques to optimize page- and image-loading time.)

What we see here is an example of “good enough.” I think this “good enough” approach has contributed much to the decline and downfall of American newspapers.

It’s good enough to have a photo gallery that does not include any local photos. People look at it (good). Less work for your staff (good).

It’s good enough to have a photo gallery player that is ugly and/or slow. People still look at it (good).

It’s good enough to make some people frustrated enough to quit — and leave — because, apparently, some other people will wait patiently and keep on clicking. (Not me!)

What a smarter business mind would look at is this:

• We have a thing that’s pretty popular with our visitors.
• How can we make it better?
• How can we learn from this?
• How can we extend this idea to new areas?
• How can we extend our branding and use this to reinforce what makes us unique and vital to our audience?

The newspapers’ approach to business: How can we inflate the number of pageviews on this?

Note: A photo gallery is sans audio, in most cases. Often the photos are unrelated to one another. A great gallery player is The Week in Pictures from MSNBC.com. It’s fast. It’s easy and pleasant to use. It’s way better than good enough.

This is another example of how the Web raises the bar for everyone — I know how lousy most newspapers’ photo galleries are because I have this one as an example of how good an online photo gallery can be.

Update (12:17 p.m.): See related post by University of Georgia photojournalism instructor Mark Johnson.

The BBC reports that John McCain and his team are criticizing the news media for asking questions about how the McCain team vetted the presumptive vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.

Not to open a can of worms about who said what, and what should or should not be said or examined (such as the teenage children of candidates; I’m with Barack Obama on that one: Leave them alone), but it is precisely — and essentially — the role of the press in a democratic society to examine how our leaders are chosen and how well, or how thoroughly, their background has been checked.

It is right for journalists to ask who checked out the candidate, how many people were interviewed, how long did it take, and who did the vetting. These questions are proper and necessary.

By the same token, if the journalists learn that the procedures were conducted in the correct and proper ways, then the journalists should say so. And be done with it.

2008 AEJMC convention by the numbers:

• 2,464 delegates (second largest)
• 1,367 faculty delegates (most ever)
• 398 new members (most ever)
• 121 speakers (smallest in six years) — and I was on three panels
• 437 student delegates (most ever; 50 percent new)

AEJMC is the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. It is an international organization for educators and graduate students in these fields, including advertising, public relations, and broadcasting. This year’s convention was held in Chicago.

This information came from a newsletter sent to members via e-mail. I can’t find the newsletter on the AEJMC Web site (huh?).

A spring 2008 graduate of our journalism program got a job as an editorial producer with MLB.com. That means he gets paid to watch baseball and write about it. Sweet, no?

So to help out other journalism students, Nick Rosinia wrote this — “The ‘How to Watch Baseball All Day and Get Paid Handsomely (Well, Not Really) For It’ Guide” (published here with Nick’s permission):

1. The new job title is “editorial producer.” It means little else than the Internet is too cool to have “copyeditors,” but you might win a few points with a recruiter if you know it.
2. Editing a story is called “producing” it, and putting it onto the Internet is called “sending it live.”
3. Learn how to write grabbing subheds. That’s right, everything gets a subhed. Some tips: Use present tense, use a clever headline and put the bland news in the subhed.
4. The hours are horrible, and there’s no way around it. Be prepared to work from sundown until sunrise. Find friends that like to go out on Monday.
5. Learn to edit and produce flawless work faster than you thought was fast. The motto in the online world is “send it live now, get it right later.” If you can send it live and get it right, someone might actually tell you you’re doing a great job. You’ll be amazed at how fast things get produced.
6. Morale in the world of journalism is low. Don’t expect box seats at the Yankees game for a corporate outing anytime soon, or a raise.
7. Don’t think because you’re an editor you won’t have to write. You may be called upon to write a couple grafs for a breaking story at any moment, and you’d better produce something that doesn’t embarrass you. Stick to the basics, but don’t think you won’t be writing.
8. Your work will appear instantly, so be sure it’s good. Instead of waiting for tomorrow’s paper, you will have your headlines and other work displayed prominently before you head home. Be sure to save any clips you want that moment, because things change very quickly and can disappear.
9. You will produce photo captions, write teasers, put together online packages and other items that involve short, succinct writing — but it’s the first thing anyone sees. You’re producing the full product now, not just writing headlines and designing, and your work is the grabber for the reader more than ever.
10. Learn basic HTML, it’s all you need. Know what a <p> tag does and how to make something bold (<b>) or insert a line break (<br />).
11. Enjoy not having to wear anything that resembles a suit to work, and not having to fight traffic to get to and from work.

You see, Nick is not a Web geek, and certainly not “computer jesus.” He’s just a well-prepared j-school grad who knows enough to be competent and skillful in the new news environment.

That (and a knack for editing) landed him a nice job.

I recommend HTML Dog for teaching yourself basic HTML. It’s not difficult.

P.S. Nick sent this to his editing professor, not to me, because he wasn’t one of our so-called online students. His editing prof sent it on to the rest of the journalism faculty, I’m happy to say. It looks like there will always be jobs for good copy editors.

You are your own brand. Young journalists need to understand this, and the sooner, the better.

Thursday I gave what I call the “wake-up call” lecture to the students in our Editing class, which is required of all print journalism majors. The gist is that if your name doesn’t Google well — if you don’t have a professional online presence to show — if you don’t know how to do online, digital stuff besides Facebook (and can show proof) — then you’re at a great disadvantage. Because if dozens of people apply for one job opening, some of them are sure to be online savvy and also good at journalism. If you’re not one of them, then you’re not in the running.

Ron Sylvester takes this idea one leap further in explaining how to pimp your work and your professional persona through social networks and micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter). It is not true that if you build it, they will come.

There are 112.8 million blogs listed at Technorati, so what excuse can a young journalist give for NOT having a professional blog? “I don’t have time for that”? What, you don’t have time to write 100 words or so a few times a week? You don’t have the imagination? You don’t know how to manage your time? Don’t know how to make a link, upload an image, write a headline for SEO? I surely do not want to hire you!

But more important, do you know how to put yourself out there with your blog? Do you link to and comment on other blogs? Do you use your RSS reader and Delicious links as tools to widen your personal sphere of contacts and influence? Ah. That’s what I’m talking about.

I would like to say for the record that I watched the convention on television. I watched it Tuesday, Wednesday, and last night. I watched it on PBS because Gwen Ifill is my favorite TV journalist. (I used to be loyal to Peter Jennings, especially after September 11, 2001.)

I didn’t flip channels. I didn’t look at any Web pages.

I did participate in a running conversation on Twitter (mostly reading, not tweeting), via Twhirl. That is, until Barack Obama entered the stadium last night. Minutes before, BreakingNewsOn had sent out a link to Obama’s complete speech. I downloaded it, glanced at it, and decided not to read it. Then I closed Twhirl and put my laptop to sleep and slid it out of sight.

Old media, unmediated: I watched Obama’s acceptance speech on TV.

Afterward, I waited to see if Gwen Ifill would talk to anyone good. I was not a bit interested in the blah-blah Jim Lehrer had going on. Then I flipped over to CNN — for the first time in four days — and after about five minutes turned it off and went to bed.

More old media this morning: I always wake up to NPR and listen to Morning Edition until it ends. There’s a lot of replay of good bits from the speech (it’s still on as I’m writing this), but nothing new. Update, 8:43 a.m.: Now they’re interviewing pundits for a little analysis. Talking about “celebrity.”

Queued up for my morning reading are Politifact (so I can see if they have fact-checked the speech yet); Politico (the best politics journalism in the U.S., in my opinion), and Daily Kos (to see what the ardent Obama supporters are sayiing). That’s it. Then I’ll go to work.

I offer you this as one example of an American’s media consumption habits. Update, 11:42 a.m.: Read how my online-savvy friend Steve Yelvington watched. It seems we feel the same aversion toward blabbing commentators on CNN, etc.

Politifact (9:07 a.m.): There were “more than 84,000 people” in the stadium during the speech. The fact-checkers say this one is true: “John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time.” Another true one: “Biden had his number right that McCain voted 19 times against a minimum-wage increase.” ( Source page)

Politico (9:19 a.m.): “One clear consequence of Democrats’ choice of Obama over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been the demotion of health care on the list of Democratic issues. The issue received two emotional paragraphs but came after his discussions of taxes, energy, and education. His plan would extend government-backed, but not government-run, care to anyone who seeks it.” Reader comments here present an interesting assortment of people who will clearly NOT vote for Obama, speaking without trash or invective. ( Source page)

Daily Kos (9:36 a.m.): Wow — this is a good one — a bartender switched one bar TV to CSPAN and left another one on MSNBC. Guess who showed the long line of military generals and admirals supporting Obama? Guess which one didn’t show them? Didn’t show or mention them at all?! (Let’s talk about objectivity now, shall we?) Kos himself wrote that Obama’s speech “came from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”

Check out Politifact’s new Flip-o-Meter and see when the candidates do a flip-flop on a stated position!