Dates and phone numbers

I've been thinking for a while about dates in our papers. Since we post so much to the Web, would it make more sense to use the date rather than the day of the week? I've even almost slipped up and printed briefs after the fact if the date was stripped in an earlier edit.
Today, Jon and I were discussing 715 in relationship to phone numbers for MNH. Style for MNH is to include the area code when it would be long distance for Marshfield callers. However, I can't remember all of the communities for which you dial it. Not all readers are in Marshfield, either, so the area code might come in handy. (Who knows where Web-based readers are located?) Looking ahead a few years when we overlay another area code, the 715 will become necessary for callers.
Would it make sense to be proactive and add the area code?
What do others think?

Mystique

Thanks, Jeff

Jeff Williams at Wisconsin Rapids sent us an e-mail Sunday listing the Rapids budget, just as he does Monday through Friday. Thanks, Jeff. That helped us know when the budget was ready for us.

proof paradox

I've noticed lately, and will admit to be guilty sometimes myself, of proofs being handed off that sit, gathering dust, for sometimes hours. (This is directed at night desk only, I know day desk has its own problem with proofs).

On night desk, we need to change this procedure. Unless you are working on a page with a looming deadline, try to get any proofs that are handed to you back to the paginator within 30 minutes. Some members of the desk are already doing this, and that's great. Now it's time for the rest of us to get with it.

Also, big thanks to Cathy Emerson for helping out night desk on Monday after Rob called in sick. We really appreciate the help!

--Kristy

This Bach or that Bach?

A story running in Rapids' and Point's GO! sections referred to a composition by Bach. The question is: Which Bach? The Bach family had many members who were composers in the 1700. The famous one is J. S. Bach, whose children W.F. Bach, C.P.E. Bach and J.C.F. Bach were composers. There also is a great uncle: J.C. Bach, whose brother, J.M. Bach, and son, J.N. Bach, were composers. There are more composers in this family tree, but listing them would be overkill.
Also: there is a composer-comedian out there today who lampoons all these Bachs. The comedian is "Professor" Peter Schickele, whose routine is finding the "lost" works of P.D.Q. Bach.
The answer to the question that started this all was J.S. Bach.

Pushing buttons

We ran the "We've got coupons" button on the covers for Thursday's Thanksgiving issues after the button was unfortunately neglected last Sunday, but I ran into a problem this past Sunday when working on the Wausau and Central Wisconsin covers: no dollar amounts. I did not have them in my e-mail (nor did Amy Kimmes, the weekend editor, when I asked her), and looking back, I didn't have them last weekend either, when the button was also supposed to run. (But we did have a specific dollar amount to run for the Thanksgiving issues.) So we ran a generic button instead with no dollar amount.

What is the status of this button initiative? Should I look to have specific dollar amounts in the future (I work almost every Saturday from now through the end of the year, so you can count on me doing the Sunday covers those days), or should I just stick with the generic button from here on out? Is somebody else getting e-mails with the dollar amounts and I'm just not getting them by mistake?

What I'm thankful for

A very big thanks to Kristy, Elizabeth and Tim for working ahead on Wednesday night to get pages started for Thursday. Big props as well to Elizabeth, Andrew and Sirena for all of their hard work paginating on Thanksgiving Day. It made for a very smooth day and we couldn't have done it without the efforts of each and every one of you.

Critique, week two

As promised, here is a quick critique on how we did today promoting our "only online" content today:

On one hand:
1A: Video icon on hunting story was included. Perfect.
1B: A Varsity refer in the rail was a must on this football championship day.

On the other:
4A: The story on the shooting in Point has a gallery (although a couple of days old). Despite the fact that this gallery has been posted for a bit, we could promote to it as coverage of the shooting continues (see my note about the new furniture piece below).
3A: We missed an opportunity to promote a video interview with the winner of the Altrusa award. This wasn't on the multimedia plan part of our online budget, but was included in the budget line for the story. The good news is we did include an embedded link to the video in the online story, and kudos to whomever added it.
GO! page 4: Ann Liebmann's columns and tips are collected in a special section on our site. We should refer to this special section and her blog using the new furniture each time she writes for us (along with the reference in her column tagline).
GO! page 6&7: We missed an opportunity to include an icon promoting a gallery of photos from a 'Nickel and Dimed' rehearsal.

Finally:
1A: The Edgar football story is a good example of a place where the newly created online furniture could be used (I've dropped a copy on everyone's desk). This furniture (glorified factbox/referbox) could point readers towards the existing galleries, planned updates, user gallery or any number of additional "online only" elements.

The 3A feature obit is another good example. We have a somewhat neglected Remembrance special section online. Let's plan to use the new furniture each time we publish a feature obit and promote to obits online and the special section. See the example above.

The question is, how do we communicate what online components we want to promo to each day?

It isn't reasonable to believe that the desk will have, in their heads, a catalog of every video, gallery or extra available online. Is the answer a comprehensive online plan portion of the budget? Is the answer more detailed story budgets that include ties to as many online components as possible? We don't need to refer to, for instance, the Point shooting gallery with every related story, every day. So maybe members of the desk spend fifteen minutes digging for one item to link to on each of their section fronts on the sites each day? Maybe I need to look over the final budget each evening and make suggestions. I'm not sure.

Let me know what you think.