Area codes

A story on the Daily Herald Web site says state telecommuniation regulators want phone customers in the 715 area code to begin dialing the area code for all local calls because of the upcoming 534 area code overlay. When should our four newspapers start including the 715 area code for all phone numbers listed in our stories?

PBS

Just a friendly reminder that PBS stands for Public Broadcasting Service. A story I edited today referred to PBS as Public Broadcasting System.
Which reminds me, CBS used to stand for Columbia Broadcasting System. It now just stands for CBS.

It's not easy being "green"

Going "green" is such a hot topic lately: green building, green energy, green jobs. Often in headlines and on first reference, we put quotation marks around the word "green." But I don't think we're 100 percent consistent. So perhaps we need a ruling on how this should be done. Is it necessary and beneficial to use quotation marks around the word "green" in headlines and on first reference?

I searched AP's Ask the Editor archive, and I found this: "AP doesn't put green in quotes on the assumption that it has become virtually a synonym for environmentally friendly policies."

Is there any reason not to follow the AP approach?

-Elizabeth

Station ID

While editing a story, Liz and I discussed how to identify the WSAW weather channel. The story identified it as channel 7.3. Since many of the television sets I see label it with a hyphen, we decided to identify it as 7-3.

Hossein in the membrane

I've noticed lately a recurring problem with Associated Press photos of the protests in Iran, in that the name of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has been repeatedly misspelled "Hossien" in the cutlines on DC 5.  It's not the fault of any of our copy editors here, but it's something we need to be vigilant for when reading stories about the situation in Iran.  It's "Hossein" just like Saddam Hussein, just with an O, not a U.

Also, apparently I've read enough Iran stories now to recognize Mousavi's full name on sight.

TV or DT?

When the local television channels switched to digital, their call letters changed a bit, too. WAOW-TV is now WAOW-DT, WSAW-TV is now WSAW-DT, and so on. For accuracy's sake, we should go the DT route, but some stories I've read (and some television station Web sites) are sticking with the TV designation. Any suggestions of how we should go?

Giving the business

I've just received a breaking news bulletin that we have canceled our Motley Fool coverage, making the Central Wisconsin Inc. page no longer able to host our Foolish content.

To help fill the space, we can add more wire articles (preferably with art, as it's a big space to fill).  It's also okay to grab an article from Friday (if the page is done on Saturday) as long as we're sure it's still timely and it didn't already run.

(This post is a bit of a return to form for me, as I will be trying in the future to get more content up on a regular basis.)