OK, not the tissues, per se. But at some point this year, Kimberly-Clark decided to make the tall, roughly 280-count boxes of tissues I’ve bought since time immemorial … extinct, apparently. Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t spend all my life blowing my nose or wiping away tears or picking up me

Sorry. Again. As usual. See, I tend to start thinking that this blog must have Finely Crafted, Very Important Things. Otherwise it’s ‘Dear Diary, today I went to the grocery store….” So rather than small news, I offer no news. Because I’m too busy with “real news.” Bleh. So I’

Fear, anger, frustration, disgust — or all of the above? All of the above is winning in our latest KTVZ.COM Poll about folks’ prime emotions regarding the awful display of partisan bickering amid the debt crisis on Capitol Hill. How do we break the seemingly endless, for-sure vicious downward spiral of juvenile

I was still a sophomore at John Adams High in Portland when the skyajcker forever known as D.B. Cooper dropped into history. But five years later, I was working beside the man who named him. A man you’ve never known, but who was a funny, gentle man and a heck of a good reporter at [...]

My wonderful wife (my biggest blessing for 28 years now) and I have never been blessed with children. Cats, yes, and they’re great, but… I once in a while think all the many thousands of words and stories I’ve written are my children, in a way, sent out into the world – good, bad, rushed [...]

I got my long-awaited new netbook on Friday at Best Buy — a Toshiba NB505. It cost me more than I’d hoped — over $400 with the memory upgrade to 2MB, the upgrade to Win7 full instead of the starter edition. It’s quite cute. But it does take a bit getting used to the smaller [...]

“Stephen Trono’s on the phone for you!” Ted Taylor, our 6pm show producer, saw my jaw drop to the floor when I entered the newsroom and he said that. Thus began a mad scramble to get a phone-recording system running so we could talk – and we did, for almost a half-hour. I’ve written all [...]

Man, deja vu and not in a good way. AP quoted NPR and CNN (if I remember correctly) in reporting an Arizona congresswoman’s death after a mass shooting. She did not. No doubt, there will be mass dissection of how the mega-error happened, but what will be just as sadly interesting is how, 30 years [...]

Wow, what a week. Awful, tragic news — and editorial judgment calls for our news staff. On the one hand, it’s ‘exciting’ and energizing to have breaking news to cover, in an area where we blessedly have relatively little major crime, etc. compared to bigger cities. Still, it can be frustrating when p

Where in the world did basic design rules go? Why do so many sites do as this one does http://www.regrettheerror.com/2010/12/03/they-sullied-his-good-name/#disqus_thread and www.poynter.org – and go with gray or worse, light gray on white type? It CAN’T be just I who has to squint to read the words displayed lik

Karma can be a thing of wonder. Picked up the morning Bulletin off my sidewalk and opened it up to find a P. 1 headline that reads: “How do local kids fair at COCC, Oregon universities?” (Side note: I wish our Web provider would go to downstyle headlines rather than Capping Most Words. But I [...]

OK, I know, comparing Facebook to the ol’ phone book is a little odd, but I’ll try. First, a funny image - that of Steve Martin in The Jerk, running through the neighborhood, shouting, ‘The new phone books are here!” Well, I wasn’t THAT over the moon about them, but let me tell you, few things

Can I get myself into a pattern of regular blogging? Not sure, but will try. I do enjoy, in its own way, wildfire season. Many people turn to our Website for the latest fire news, and I’ve been doing this long enough I know just what to ask and how to assemble it, fast. One [...]

Nowadays, compromise is out of fashion – shrillness, finger-pointing and finding who to blame for our troubles is, alas, the way to go. I just read a great, reasoned, ‘middle ground’ posting on the still-burning timber/wildfire issue. I hold such postings precious, because it shows a mind is at work, rathe

I Googled the term first. It’s not really out there. I should write a book. But I’ll start with this: “The Blame Society: The Real Threat to Civilization” Or something like that. I get so sick of it – and not because I deal with the flamers, trolls, venters and other folks who abuse free [...]

Wow, well maybe this fresher summer-y WordPress theme will encourage me to get back here and say hi. Hi! We’ve settled in at the new Internet Broadcasting-run KTVZ.COM digs. Still some lingering issues (when isn’t there in technology?) but overall, pretty cool. Took a week off (OK, as usual, semi-off) from work

(I’m training myself to do Headlines With Words Capped on the Website, but dang it, this is MY blog and I know current style is downstyle headlines;-) It was a long week, but a fulfilling one, getting the new KTVZ.COM up and running. It was touch-and-go for a bit, due to late problems we’re still addressing, [.

First, a couple funny, yet sad 911 calls locally: Last night, someone in Metolius called 911 to call help for a baby owl that fell out of its nest and couldn’t get back up there. Then, just now, a sheriff’s dispatcher – Crook or Jefferson, couldn’t get over to the scanner to check – said [...]

Well, April Fool’s Day was another birthday – and thanks to my wonderful wife and brother, a chance to catch up on some new books I’ve wanted to read. First up: “Engage! The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Culivate and Measure Success in the New Web,” by Brian Solis. I love a

“You’re the best person I’ve ever had to lay off.” Ouch. In the fall of 1990, I got to hear those nice, in a way, but lousy in most others and not very unexpected words, over the phone, from a United Press International colleague in Los Angeles, directed to me, the last UPI (wire service) reporter

I see young people have immersed in Social Media to point where blogs have lost their buzz (not to be confused w/Google Buzz, which I’m now playing with – I don’t use gmail much, maybe this will get me using it? Anyway, what a week. Arrived Monday to an empty newsroom – qhickly learned it was [...]

Bill Friedman’s wife, Shoshana, asked me to post this at the CaringBridge Website set up in his honor. Alas, the piece is too long for there, because they have a 5,000-character limit. So instead, I’m posting it here and linking to it. Hope that’s OK. REMEMBERING BILL FRIEDMAN By Barney Lerten November 15,