While it is true that the internet makes it infinitely easier to find or ‘follow’ the information you most want to hear, I feel it’s only a more exaggerated version of the way we tend to filter things in real life. Our whole social existence is based on filtering out the things we aren’t interested in. If things weren’t this way, we wouldn’t have so many TV channels, radio stations, even newspapers to choose from.

The human tendency is to seek out “the best,” meaning whatever an individual person feels is “best” for them. When I look for news online, as in real life, I seek out what I feel are the best, most accurate sources. In real life, I don’t go to the grocery store every day and pick up a copy of the New York Times, the Post, the Hartford Courant, Martha Stewart’s Living, STAR magazine, and whatever tabloid has Nostradamus on the cover, just because I feel I need my scope broadened.

Sunstein expresses a legitimate complaint, however. He describes group polarization, the idea that, “after deliberating with one another, people are likely to move toward a more extreme point in the direction to which they were previously inclined, as indicated by the median of their predeliberation judgments.” Sunstein relates this idea to supremacist groups on the internet. It is indeed dangerous that groups like this can feel legitimized by a strong internet presence. However, the internet also provides the flipside to this abomination. Because of greater access, people can also enact great social change by using the internet to rally each other, in ways which they could not accomplish in real life.

While personalization on the internet might reflect a greater movement towards “turning inward,” I don’t believe it is necessarily a negative thing. People will continue to seek out the information they are interested in, by whatever means necessary. Those who are motivated to seek more information, or higher quality information, will do so, and with a greater base of information at their fingertips than in the pre-internet days.

First of all, there’s libel. Libel, or written defamation, isn’t always intended. However, if a subject feels that they are being misrepresented by the reporter, the publication could easily end up facing a lawsuit. Reporters must take great care when describing their subjects and said subjects’ situations, or someone could be hurt in the process. Even when describing a crime that seems to have been obviously committed by a specific perpetrator, a reporter has to be careful to not prematurely convict anyone , and use words like “allegedly” instead. A suspect still remains innocent until proven guilty, and it is not the paper’s job to prove the suspect’s guilt.

Journalists face other challenges, too, like copyright laws, fair use regulations, and even creative commons. If there is any question about whether certain phrases, images, names, characters, symbols, etc. can be used in a publication, permission should be asked, and credit should be given where credit is due. Printing a photograph without permission or without giving credit is as bad as plagiarism.

Part of a journalist’s job is to pay great attention to detail. The same attention should be applied to maintaining the integrity of the people, places, and things being written about. Accidentally printing libel, or stories and images with copyright infringement issues can be costly mistakes.

Vitaly Friedman’s “Award-Winning Newspaper Designs” highlights several papers with truly inspiring layouts, including Connecticut’s own Hartford Courant. While all of these papers appear to be very different, they share a few common traits: innovative uses of fonts and typography, compelling photo layouts, and unusual yet effective use of white space.

It makes sense that papers are beginning to use more “artful” qualities in layout design — they are now either in direct competition with online news sources, or they are trying to adapt to the Web by utilizing layouts that work in both print and online. As Friedman said, “Over the last years newspapers and Web sites started to apply similar principles of data presentation, such as the heavy use of white space and grid-based design.” Friedman also points out that while the look can be similar, the overall function of said principles is vastly different. The application of a concept in newspaper form can take on an entirely different meaning or function than that same concept applied to web design.

Even though they are all taking different approaches, each of the papers mentioned in Friedman’s articles are finding new and interesting ways of presenting their news, which is important for any paper that wants to stay relevant to the consumer’s needs. The Hartford Courant, which claims the title of “America’s oldest continuously published newspaper,” is an example of a paper with a beautiful marriage of text and graphics.

It is not “enough” to just supply the news — papers are no longer competing solely with other area papers. Now, they face competition from flashier news sources, like television and the Web. Because of these competitors, papers now have to pay more attention to the intricacies of layout and design. However, when done well, the transition from photo to print and from page to page is seamless to the reader, but those with a trained eye can see that a great amount of care and thought has been put into creating a design with perfect balance.

Fuel For Thought: Kyle Anthony and Mitch Dubey share some iced coffees at Fuel Coffee Shop in New Haven.

Proud Grads: Dana Parmelee and her mother, Cynthia Aldrich-Stasko, pose in their caps and gowns. They graduated within a week of one another: Dana, with a B.A. in Sociology from Acadia University in Nova Scotia; Cindy, with a Master of Divinity from Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, Mass.

As Ludwig and Gilmore emphasize in Chapter 10 of Modern News Editing, it is important to keep headlines interesting, but accurate. A vague headline like “Plane Crashes at Airport” can leave readers confused and annoyed. Sometimes if a headline is bad enough, it will deter me from picking up the paper out of sheer frustration. Garbled headlines aren’t doing the readers any favors.

Botched headlines aren’t doing the reporters any favors, either. In this chapter, I learned that as an editor, it is important to make sure that a headline is accurate, and doesn’t distort the subject matter of the article itself. If the headline is too abstracted from the topic of the article, it becomes a disservice to the reporter.

Editors sometimes struggle to find the ‘right’ words to fit in the small space allotted for headlines, but it is important to find the best way to phrase them in order to retain the clarity and accuracy of the story, as well as the dignity of the story’s subjects.

Anderson said, “Hit driven economics is a creation of an age without enough room to carry everything for everybody.” By the old principles of hit-driven economics, if you wanted to buy something but couldn’t find it in a store, you were out of luck.

It was by virtue of the principles of hit-driven economics that we used to shell out $14 for an entire CD of songs we might not even like, but were forced to buy based on a band’s one or two radio hits. If we liked a band’s radio hit enough to buy their album, we had to hope that hit was indicative of the quality of the rest of the songs. Many times, this led to flat-out disappointment. There was no MySpace available so that we could sample the album’s deeper cuts, and there certainly wasn’t an iTunes store where you could purchase just one song at a time. And if you happened to be interested in a band that didn’t really have radio play, forget it — you’d be lucky to find their album in the first place.

Things are vastly different now. Because of the internet, we are no longer subjected to stores full of hits. Instead, the internet also supplies us with a vast quantity of misses, or “non-hits,” as Anderson puts it. According to Anderson, the non-hits supply an even bigger market than the hits — something that was never really relevant before you could buy books or rent movies on the internet.

Additionally, the internet gives us something that real life doesn’t really have the capability of giving us. On a site like Amazon, you can search for a band’s album, but then browse other music recommendations based on the album you’re looking at. Of course, this is somewhat possible in real life, but only on a much smaller scale. With the internet, the possibilities are vast.

Take Last.fm, for example. Last.fm is a site with a free downloadable application that tracks the songs you play in iTunes, or other music listening programs. After tracking the bands you play, Last.fm generates a list of recommendations based on the things you already like. Furthermore, a search function allows you to look for a band, and click through to a list of similar artists. In most cases, artists’ pages have sample tracks you can listen to. Say you like The Clash — you search for them, find them, look for similar artists, click on the band Stiff Little Fingers, listen to their song “Suspect Device.” and who knows? Maybe it becomes your new favorite song. And at the end of all that, Last.fm provides you with links to go buy your new favorite song, if you so choose. Last.fm also allows you to compile its listenable tracks into personalized ‘radio stations,’ which you can save and listen to any time you log in to the site.

We are becoming pretty used to browsing online in this manner — clicking through until we find something we like, or something that applies to us. So what does this have to do with news? Now, more and more ‘hyperlocal’ news Web sites are cropping up and allowing us to do the same. Things are becoming more customizable, therefore more relevant to our own interests. As it turns out, our own interests are more localized — an idea Anderson expands upon in his article about The Vanishing Point.

Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone’s New York Times article, Hyperlocal Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers, describes several news sites that are utilizing similar techniques to online retailers, but for free. You can now register for a Web site like Outside.In, which compiles several local online news sources into a feed for you, where you get to pick and choose what to read.

It used to be hard to find the news that was really applicable to my everyday life. For a long time, achieving hyperlocal coverage just wasn’t possible, especially for small towns that only have a weekly newspaper to look forward to. Even dailies are lacking. I used to buy a newspaper and read the entire local section, only to find one or two stories that applied to me and were interesting. Now, with endlessly customizable internet sources, I can easily find interesting stuff, like I mentioned a few weeks ago. I’m starting to find that searching for relevant news doesn’t have to mimic crate-digging at a record store. Things are a little easier.

This question probably wouldn’t make any sense to the average person, but could be a contentious issue in a room full of journalists. Whether we like it or not, the flow and readability of a news story are highly dependent upon the story pattern a journalist utilizes. Especially now, while facing competition from other news sources like the internet, it is extremely important for news writers to keep readers hooked by providing them with relevant information. For many people, a story is not defined by its lead alone. Readers want the information, but won’t seek it out unless an article stays readable and interesting.

In his article, Writing From The Top Down: Pros And Cons Of The Inverted Pyramid, Chip Scanlan provides a compelling argument for the usefulness of the ‘inverted pyramid’ style.

Scanlan says, “Many readers are impatient and want stories to get to the point immediately. In fast-breaking news situations, when events and circumstances may change rapidly, the pyramid allows the news writer to rewrite the top of the story continually, keeping it up-to-date.”

According to Scanlan, the pyramid has staying power because of uses like this. It makes sense–in a big breaking story, readers want the most important information first, and the supplementary facts later.

I can see the case for using the inverted pyramid, but in my own writing, I much prefer using the ‘block’ style described by Don Fry in his article Unmuddling Middles.

I think I’m most drawn to the block style because it is reminiscent of the standard essay format that we grew up learning in school. While it is a familiar standby, I feel like it lends itself to more creative possibilities than the ‘inverted triangle’ pattern, which always seems to start with strong pieces of information, then trails off into nothingness. I find that I use the block method most in my writing, because this is the way that I like to organize information–it’s more natural to me. I’m also drawn to the block method because it makes a story actually feel like a STORY, in the traditional storytelling sense.

As much as I agree with most of Don Fry’s points, I disagree when it comes to his statement, “THE INVERTED PYRAMID IS THE WORST FORM EVER INVENTED.” True, I do think it’s pretty weak. However, it’s important for a reporter to step back and decide which story pattern will help tell their particular story best. It all depends on the subject matter of the story, and the outlet providing the story–magazine, newspaper, internet, etc. I do think a case can be made for using the inverted pyramid sometimes, even though I much prefer the block style, and I’m sure that’s one of the reasons it has stuck around for so long.

After these last few years, I feel like I’ve invested a little time (and money) into New Haven. Therefore, I began to realize how important it is to stay on top of the real New Haven news.

First, I started picking up the Advocate. While it’s not always my favorite ‘source,’ there is some solid reporting there, and at the very least I can rely on the Advocate to tell me exactly where to find something fun to do in New Haven. I also appreciate their yearly ‘best-of’ poll, where I can participate by voting for my favorite local businesses.

After a while, I stumbled upon the New Haven Independent. New Haven has a myriad of problems, but I can rely on the Independent to supply me with a little transparency about the way our city is handling, or not handling them. Where else am I going to read about the huge pot bust just doors away from my friends’ house, or find out what my apartment’s property manager has been up to?

There are other outlets, of course. I can use See Click Fix to scope out biking hazards, or find out what the city plans on doing about my garbage-strewn neighborhood. Twitter is semi-useful, too–in case I’m wondering what’s happening at Cafe Nine this weekend, where the Cupcake Truck is parked, or what’s up at one of my favorite coffee shops.

I didn’t intend for this post to turn into a local news advertisement. However, I just wanted to use this opportunity to say that I’m really pleased that there are so many ways to stay informed about the city I live in. I’m not sure how the relationship between newspapers and the internet will eventually play out, but for the time being, I’m glad that the internet has provided so many new formats for me to dig through in order to learn more about the goings-on in New Haven.

When I was in middle school, I felt on top of my game when my older brother started bringing me book reports to edit. When my dad went back to school to get his master’s degree, he enlisted my proofreading skills for nearly every paper he wrote. In high school, editing dad’s college papers only served to validate my arrogant attitude. For a long time, I never bothered with rough drafts because I was operating under the assumption that my finished papers would be damn near perfect (of course, this couldn’t be further from the truth). I’ll admit, I was pretty full of myself.

Since those days, my inflated ego has been taken down a few notches. In one of my classes, I was given a “Most Commonly Misspelled Words” spelling test. I was horrified when I spelled FOUR words incorrectly. Later that same week, I received a graded article with several red pen corrections. Many similar misadventures in self-importance followed. Inside, I started to feel pretty embarrassed. I used to feel pretty confident. I had never walked around bragging about my skills, but I always felt like I had a firm grasp on everything grammar- and punctuation-related. Since then, I’ve been able to admit that I have some real trouble spots. Certain words trip me up. I realized I over-use commas. I still have to think really hard about the difference between ‘effect’ and ‘affect.’ In other words, I have things to work on.

In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Truss said, “I’m well aware there is little profit in asking for sympathy for sticklers. We are not the easiest people to feel sorry for.” Before reading this excerpt, I once read a pretty snarky review of the book, in which the reviewer pointed out some of Truss’ own grammatical mistakes.

Accuracy is important, but even the biggest sticklers are not immune to the occasional typographical error or misplaced punctuation mark. Sometimes, these sticklers are the ones who fall the hardest. It’s a natural fact that even the best editors aren’t perfect 100% of the time, even while knowing the readers’ trust is partially based in the grammatical accuracy of the paper. However, I do feel like a middle ground exists between picketing outside a movie theater because a film’s title is missing an apostrophe, and being hopelessly unaware of the difference between ‘they’re,’ ‘there,’ and ‘their.’

I feel for Lynne Truss, because I pretty much used to be her, or at least some pompous child-sized version of her. I still cringe when I see typos — for example, a sign at work advertising a sale on “Eggo WAFFELS” has been grating on my nerves all week — but I’m slowly learning to accept the fact that every writer has strengths and weaknesses, myself included. Now that writing is becoming a more serious part of my life, I find comfort in the fact that my mistakes don’t make me feel like a complete failure anymore; instead, they provide learning experiences and valuable lessons for the future.