My ideas for themed budget meetings this week:

Monday: Accuracy and copy editing. Show the ACES video. Talk about good self-editing practices like read out loud to yourself,
Tuesday: Functionality. Show Web site problems from years past. Throw slideshow together.
Wednesday: Immediacy: What we put up right away and what we hold to 12:01 --OR-- Opinion topics of the past week and who is reading them/how we're doing on comments.
Thursday: Analytics. Who is reading us?
Friday: Packaging: How are we keeping readers on our site with related content offerings to click on? Photos, multimedia, related articles, embedded links, related links, packaging, places to find more information, off-site embedded links too.

Things that wowed me at the APME 2009 conference:

• Our students. They all rose to the occassion and showed how hard they've worked to get this far. I have to say, they were one of the most professional, talented and innovative staffs I've ever had the pleasure to work with. And when I say work, I don't mean very hard. They did all the stuff.
  
• The sessions on social media was quite inspiring. While some folks grumbled that some of the material in the various presentations was more tech than journalism, I appreciated the tech. I want to experiment with this stuff; it's just in the infancy of what it could be (once we find a way to better facilitate noise and just get what we're after, you'll see social media grow like crazy.)
• The City Museum in St. Louis (site of the conference). Forget Disneyland, that is the happiest place on Earth. Can't wait to take the kids there. 

So, here's where I want to take the Missourian's social media efforts in the immediate future:

• Begin getting the basketball guys used to tweeting on the sports account. Andrew has done a great job with it. Now it's time to replicate and grow during basketball season. Also, we need to get their blog in the blog teaser on the home page.
  
• More bookmarking efforts by everyone in the newsroom. We need a tag cloud of source material (i.e. links) to our articles, previous articles, databases  and encyclopedia pages for reporting and editing.
  
• Get the CoMissourian account blasting. We're seeing some flicker of light that it's not only me doing all the tweeting anymore. I still do the most, but it's catching on. I want to impose a rule that anything we'd call a newsburst should be tweeted and Facebooked. I also think we could stand to interact with readers more often -- I need to start scheduling people as on duty to answer tweets and hold twitter chats.
  
• I need to put in place a more structured system for rolling this out to the newsroom each semester. A goal sheet, like -- week 1: TA's; week 2: ACES ...
  
• I need to find some fresh research on social media audiences. I want to know what kind of content is going to play better with Facebook users vs. Twitter users vs. blog users, vs whatever the next big social network is.
  

Last but not least, I need to go to bed. Up too late, but had to get these ideas down. I'd love any feedback you can offer. :)

I had the good fortune of returning to Wyoming a couple of weeks ago to make a presentation at the SocialWyo conference, held at LCCC in Cheyenne. Overall, I had a great time networking with folks back in the Cowboy State, both new friends and familiar faces.

I geared my presentation to be practical tips for networking a business online. Here's my PowerPoint:

Jake Sherlock, University of Missouri at Columbia   
I picked up some good tips along the way as well, including yet another person who recommended Yahoo Pipes for keeping information flowing in an organized manner. I've really got to get Pipes checked out.

I also had a little bit of time to see some friends and family in Laramie. Not having my own car there limited my transportation options, but I still managed to catch up with the family. I also spent a day on the UW campus, where I was pressed into a guest lecture on social media for one of my former professor's advertising class. That was a lot of fun, even if I only got about 20 minutes.

Jake Sherlock, University of Missouri at Columbia  

The Dow Jones editing test will be administered from 10-11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 17, in Lee Hills 110. It’s a one-hour test. Please make sure you're on time.

We'll have a review session for the test at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 12 at the Missourian.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Dow test
Q: I’ve heard this internship is a pretty big deal. Is it?
A. Yes. If selected for the internship, you’re considered one of the best collegiate editors in the nation. You’ll get to take part in an intense 8-day training at one of seven sites across the nation with some of the best editing faculty in the nation. It’s a big deal for your resume.

Q: Does this internship pay?
A: Yes. You’re guaranteed a minimum base salary, plus Dow will pay for your travel to your training site and to your internship.

Q: Where could I end up interning?
A: Last year, 79 newspapers partnered with Dow, including the New York Times. Dow papers can be found all across the nation and range in size from major metro papers to smaller community newspapers the size of the Missourian or Columbia Tribune.

Q: Do I have to be a senior or grad student to take it?
A: No. Anyone can take the test.

Q: Where can I find more information?
A: Go to www.newspaperfund.org for more information and to register for the test. Old tests are available as study guides here.

Another good place to study current events is here for 2008 and here for 2009.

Looking to study the AP Stylebook online? Get it here.

   

I am super excited to be one of the presenters for the Social Wyo conference coming up on Oct. 8. Last I was told, I'll be leading the training session on how to use Twitter, although I'm game to discuss good business strategies too. We'll see where the chips fall.

I just booked the ticket. I get into Denver at 2:40 p.m. MDT on Oct. 7. From there, I'll be looking for a ride to Laramie or Cheyenne (cue shameless begging for a ride ... NOW), so if anyone wants to make a DIA run on behalf of their old buddy Jake and take him to Wyoming, I'd love you forever.

The conference is happening Thursday at LCCC in Cheyenne, then I suspect I'll head to Laramie that night. I plan to stay in the area through Saturday, heading back to Missourah on Sunday. I'd love to go see the Cowboys vs. New Mexico on Saturday -- I haven't been to War Memorial in years now.

Unfortunately, Jenny and Audrey can't make it -- the conference isn't paying for the whole family to come out. We all hope to be home again at Christmas.

So, if you can help me out with that ride from DIA, I'd love you forever ... call me!

I get to be one of the presenters at the SocialWyo conference coming up in October. I have to write up a bio for the Web site, so I thought I'd try it out here first.

If you're in Cheyenne on September 8, sign up. It should be a great conference.

What does the future hold for copy editors? According to one attendee at a recent AEJMC09 breakfast, not everyone likes the potential answers.

In discussing the highlights of the talk that morning, David Fisher passes along these gems of knowledge by way of Josh Benton with Nieman Journalism Lab and David Beard with Boston.com:

• A key feature of new jobs will be coaxing journalistic-quality work out of non-journalists. Actually, he says, that's always been an important skill on community papers, if you think about it.
• Solid headline writing with a good understanding of search engine optimization.
• Curation, much like the old wire editor who combined various stories into one comprehensive report - the ability to ingest large amounts of information and find the nuggets.
• Not so important: AP style, which tends to promote sameness, and the ability to shape multiple voices into one kind of house style.

I wholeheartedly agree with the first three points, and I'll give an exasperated sigh to the final point. Let's take them one by one:

1. Coaxing journalist-quality work out of non-journalists. My fellow opinion editors can certainly back me up on this when it comes to publishing letters and guest columns -- they are the lifeblood of our sections. But sometimes, those great arguments get jumbled up in typos, or confused by statistics, or mixed up with propaganda. It takes a firm but helpful hand to bring the best quality out of community writers, but the reward is sure worth it.
   
2. Solid headline writing for search engine optimization. You better believe it. Any copy editor who doesn't know about SEO at this point in the game better brush up quick. If you want people to find your stuff, don't just assume they're going to come in through the front door. At the Missourian, about 75 percent of our traffic comes from Web searches and referring links. Is that a big enough percentage of readers to convince you that vague, clever stuff doesn't work anymore?
   
3. Gathering nuggets into a bigger report. Absolutely. Adding context has always been part of our job as journalists. Nowadays, we just have new places to look: blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, et al.
   
4. AP Style. OK, I'll concede that too many copy editors put too much of a premium on following the stylebook letter for letter. What we often  forget is that there are times to break the rules. It's when we're too afraid of breaking rules that we rob stories of their voice. The stylebook is a guideline, not a Bible.
   

Another interesting note from his post:
Really? Walked out? I think he's got some valid points, though I can see why this may get under a copy editor's skin (but not enough to spur a walkout).

He's absolutely correct in that sometimes, stories need to go right to readers -- news bursts, Twitter updates and anything else that qualifies as "breaking" should publish first, edit second.

His other point, about writing for readers instead of editors, has nothing to do with new media and everything to do with the way many copy desks shouldn't be functioning anyway. Of course we should write like we're talking to readers. Who else are we writing for?

Yes, this means bag the stilted, buearacratic language and tell it in plain, simple English. But it doesn't mean slopping out long sentences with no commas, sticking to poor word choices and peppering it with typos.

Copy editors are the conscience of a news organization. They're the ones who find the nit-picky stuff that sleazy lawyers seize upon. They're the ones who ask the tough questions that need to be asked. They're the ones who verify facts, spellings, Web addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers and directions.

Copy editors make reporters and news organizations look good, often times without much recognition. Maybe that's what turns some of us into style sticklers incapable of seeing the beauty of the English language. Or maybe it's the OCD. Either way, the future of journalism really isn't that much different than it has been. We just have more bells and whistles to play with now.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about selling Big Red, my 1999 Dodge Dakota Extended Cab 4X4.

It's a good truck, with an engine that's only three years old and less than 100,000 miles on it. It's actually pretty good on gas for what it is (about 18 mpg highway), and it has a kickin' sound system. The bluebook value on it was $5,150.

We're thinking we can probably get along with one car for a while, which would help us save money for the new little one that's on the way. There would be some inconveniences, but it's likely doable.

If I can net $5,000 on the truck, plus save some $250 on parking every year, plus save on gas and insurance, and it all adds up. We'll get another car down the road, something a little more kid-friendly, which Big Red is not.

But on the other hand, Big Red is paid for, it has an engine that will last a long time, and I always find good uses for the truck (moving people, building our patio, etc. etc.).

So I'm still thinking about it. But if you're interested, make me an offer.

One of our graduate students is doing an independent study on Twitter this summer. I'm reading his project paper, and this line really jumped out at me. So I thought I'd share. Sorry if it seems obvious, but it's something that is worthy of repeating over and over again to the folks in the media industry.

I know, obvious, right? But still important to remember.

That's all.

For those who haven't heard, I became an ordained clergyman recently. Seriously. See for yourself:



How did I get ordained? I simply went to the Spiritual Humanist Web site and answered a few short questions: name, address, and e-mail. Voila! I was ordained.

Many states, including Missouri, recognize Spiritual Humanists as able to perform weddings, so I signed the marriage license after the ceremony and dropped it off at the courthouse. In fact, it's what my good friend Rob Weir (and fellow geeky journalist) did for us when Jenny and I got hitched.

How did I do? Well, I started to call the groom "Byron" instead of "Bryon" at one point, which he ribbed me about after the ceremony. The bride, Carla, jokingly calls him that all the time, so he reasoned that was why I had my mini-goof. But he's the only one who noticed.

Otherwise, I think I did OK. I got a few compliments, and the bride and groom were happy with it, which is what mattered to me most.

Here's a copy of the script I wrote for it:

Bryon, Tylee and Jake are in position at the pulpit. Carla makes her entrance.

Jake: Please be seated

Jake: On behalf of Carla, Bryon and Tylee, we’d like to welcome you here this evening to celebrate this joyous occasion. We are here to be witnesses to the joining of this beautiful family as Carla and Bryon pledge their love to each other and to Tylee in front of all of you, the nearest and dearest family and friends.

The love that Bryon and Carla share is best expressed through the classic poem “I Carry Your Heart,” by e.e. Cummings:

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Jake: For those who have spent time with Carla and Bryon, you know them to be fun, light-hearted and not afraid to give each other a good teasing every now and again. You also know them to be caring and supportive of each other through all of life’s challenges. They complement each other well, and together they make quite a team, as evidenced by the beautiful home they’ve invited us into tonight and by their precious daughter who stands here with us.

That underlying connection which makes them such a fun, loving pair is captured in the writings of Voltaire, whom Carla will read now.

Carla: Sensual pleasure passes and vanishes in the twinkling of an eye, but the
friendship between us, the mutual confidence, the delights of the heart, the
enchantment of the soul, these things do not perish and can never be
destroyed. I shall love you until I die.

Carla takes the ring from Jake and slips it on Bryon’s finger.

Jake: Bryon will now read from William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

Bryon: My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.

Bryon takes the ring from Jake and slips it on Carla’s finger.

Carla surprises Tylee with her own ring

Jake:
What is a vow,
but an intention
spoken out before the world
so that the world, in hearing,
might take part
in aspirations
of the willing heart?
In our coming here today
to join and bless
the joy of your becoming wed,
may we enter in
the truth of the words you've said,
"I do."
Maureen Tolman Flannery

Jake: I speak for all of us here as we wish you a lifetime of joy and happiness together as husband, wife and daughter. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, and Bryon and Carla Ciolli. You may kiss the bride.

Lip lock, then uncork the champagne.

I am now taking bookings if anyone is interested. :)

This message says it all:

The study is an important look at how consumers read news online and could have big-time ramifications for the way newspapers offer news on the Web. So please, help out if you can. And hey, $10 is nothing to sneeze at. There is a recession on, after all.

  For tonight at least, I don't want to remember Michael for his creepy behavior later in life. I want to remember these days, when Michael was a total bad ass:

The good news: The Detroit News was ready to unveil a big ol' "Wings won the Cup" home page.
The bad news: It published when it wasn't true. D'oh!

Last year, on a whim, I opted to post the self-assessment my boss has us write every year. So i thought I'd share it here again this year.

Self-assessment for Jake Sherlock
Friday, May 1, 2009

Tom,

Remember last year when I applied for the job over at RJI? I am so glad I didn’t get it. I don’t think I could have done what I did this year anywhere but the Missourian. They may call it the futures lab over at RJI, and while I’m sure they’re doing wonderful work over there, I think we have plenty to toot our own horns about over here.

With that said, here’s a rundown of my toots (not to be confused with a tweet):

• The opinion section: I’ve worked hard this year to breathe new life into opinion, and so far I’ll have received is positive feedback. I’ve tried to make it the destination point for community conversation at the Missourian, and so far the results have been wonderful. We’re giving voice to community members and to students who want to learn the fine craft of column writing. Highlights from the past year include:
• A redesigned print page. Emily Ristow has crafted page templates that save me the time of designing the section, plus the new elements give us an opportunity to bring the best of the Web-only content to print. 
• The Beat. I’ve worked with the folks at KBIA to bring a regular podcast to ColumbiaMissourian.com. 
• Today’s Question. This has given our advanced reporters more opportunity to practice their skeptical writing skills while also engaging readers with topics they’re talking about on local blogs, Twitter, the radio, et al. The next step is getting them to interact online with readers through the comments field, Twitter and Facebook.
• Comments. The new voices column is a collection of short e-mails, comments and tweets about local issues that readers send our way.
• Twitter. I’ve worked with reporters, copy editors and TA’s to harness the potential of Twitter and give us a strong presence in the local Twittersphere. This year has been all about experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. Now that we have a pretty good handle on that, I’d like to start implementing more Twitter usage in the newsroom.  
• Newsroom “tech guy.” I answer a lot of basic technology questions for folks around the newsroom, which keeps Rob and his team free to tackle more of the bigger things that come up, like getting new computers online. I’m also our primary trainer for django. I’ve also tried to put more of my software skills I’ve acquired this year to work helping reporters with their convergence projects. 
• Enriched Web site content. We’ve been much better about immediacy this year, and we’re getting pretty good at SEO headlines and linking. It’s been a growth area for us, but we can do better. 
• Trainings. This year, I’ve sought training through attendance of the 2009 ACES conference, plus I’ve spent time on Lynda.com sharpening my skills in Final Cut and Dreamweaver.  
• Instruction junction. Academically, here’s a brief list of what I did this year:  
• Teaching. I taught all of 4406 in the summer, the editing portion in the fall and the design portion this spring. This coming summer, I’ll have my first chance to teach Advanced Copy Editing and Design for Joy. 
• FIGS. I continue to stay involved with FIGS to get the word out about the Missourian and how we’re moving into the future a little faster than the industry is. 
• Graduate academics. I served on two graduate committees this year (Allison McGee and Emily Mead). 
• Neighborhoods project. I’ve been leading an effort to make an archived database of all neighborhood newsletters we’ve published so far, plus I’ve worked with Nanette to bring some of the radio interviews to the neighborhoods page. I hope to have a whole neighborhoods page “sub section” soon on the Web site. Most of the hard work on this was done by our work-study freshman and a couple of copy desk staffers.
  

In addition to keeping the momentum going on the aforementioned toots, here is a list of projects and trainings I want to accomplish in the coming year.

• More interactivity in the opinion section. We have a solid readership with our opinion section, but it could be better. I’m hoping that by building more interactivity into the section, they will come. Here’s how I plan to do this:
• More promotions for opinion. 
• Explore ways to engage readers through multimedia. There is a convergence student interested in doing an independent project with us next semester – I’m hoping I can work with her to bring more voices to the section through video, Flash, slideshows, etc.
• Continue finding diverse voices for guest columns and letters. 
• Be more “assistant-professorly.” I hope to join the graduate faculty this fall, plus I’d like to get more involved in academic committee work. 
• Continue learning new software. Every year in this space I talk about how I need to learn Flash. Every year I push it off for something else. Not this year. This is the year it gets done. 
• Public Access Network. This was a project assigned to me several months ago that I just haven’t had a chance to sink my teeth into. I hope to rectify that soon. 
• Be flexible. Things change, and too often our editor team is slow to react and/or slow to accept that times they are a changing. Besides not falling into that trap myself, I want to help encourage other editors not to be scared of Twitter, video editing, multimedia storytelling, et al. And if I can offer some tips along the way for handling things more efficiently and saving everyone time (I doubt you have any self-assessment claiming someone is underworked), that would be great for our newsroom.
  

In closing, this year has ranked as one of the most rewarding and fun years of my career. It’s going to be hard to top, but I’ll find a way.

I'll never forget the first time I felt completely embarrassed by an error. As a young copy editor on the sports desk of the Laramie Boomerang, I wrote a headline about Daryl Strawberry's latest -- may have even been his last -- suspension from Major League Baseball. In the headline, I misspelled the word "indefinitely."

What made this error particularly bad over others I've made is that my own mother made fun of it. She didn't realize as she was saying it that it was my headline (headline writers don't get bylines, after all), but she still had every right to ask why such a gross mistake had made its way into her newspaper.

My accuracy has improved over the years, so much so that I'm even trusted to teach editing for the world's top Journalism School. But recently, I've learned a whole new lesson on accuracy: When you screw up on the Web, it will haunt you -- forever.

I was reminded of this while reading the Columbia Heart Beat today. Mike Martin's feature about Tom Dresner, the former interim chief and current No. 2 at the Columbia Police Department, mentioned an embarrassing error that Dresner called me out on a few weeks back.

Newly-appointed deputy Columbia police chief Tom Dresner was interim chief when he took to blogging on the Missourian's website back in mid-March, to set the record straight in a story about Tasers with Missourian opinion page editor Jake Sherlock.

"Jake, you didn't read my Thursday press release very closely," Dresner blogged, and to good effect. Calling the report "erroneous and "below Missourian standards," Sherlock apologized and made a correction. "Wow, Jake, very nice apology. I appreciate that very much," Dresner blogged in response.

Every word of it is true. I blew it big time that day, and Dresner was absolutely right to call me out on it. I also really appreciate how understanding he was about the whole thing.
At the time, I was very relieved that I was able to message the copy desk with a rewrite of that particular piece. And while I'm still glad I was able to quickly correct things and make amends, the fact that I made the errors I did still makes me mad at myself. 

Just like how we coach students to be careful with their online profiles, this is one error that is going to haunt me via Google for a long time. This isn't the first time that story and my exchange with Dresner has been linked; my boss wrote a similar column to Martin's about a month ago, and my pal Rob also references it in a blog post.

My only intention that day was to spark some conversation about Taser policies for the Columbia Police Department. Little did I know so many lessons would come out of it. They are, in now particular order:

• As if there aren't enough reasons to hate inaccuracies, we have one more -- the fact that it will live in infamy on the Web. 
  
• The Web gives everyone the ability to be part of the "Fifth Estate" -- a watchdog for the watchdogs. 
• As Clyde Bentley, an MU journalism professor, has told me several times, the beauty of the Web is that it is correctable. The article is now factually accurate, and the process of how it went from inaccurate to accurate is also very transparent on the page.
  

So, does this hurt my career? Will it make it harder for me to get a job outside the J School? Will it hurt my chances for promotion at the J School? Does it make me less credible as a journalist?

Well, it certainly doesn't help things. I fully expect for it to be brought up in my annual review, and I plan to bring it up in my self-assessment. Short-term, I wouldn't be surprised if it stayed alive in the memories of some of our more dedicated readers.

Long-term, I look at it like a motorist living in a state with a point system. If I keep getting into accidents and posting speeding tickets, I'll lose my license. If I keep making bonehead errors like these, I'll lose the trust of the public.

In the long haul, that type of scorecard system will go a long way in improving accuracy and exposing ethical breaches.

Well, I just got done creating the new Twitter account CoMissourianNow. This will be our new feed for tweeting live events, speeches, conferences, etc. etc. We won't make the mistake of tweeting any funerals.

One problem I ran into was the length of the name I could create for the Twitter account. I wanted the name to be CoMissourianEvents, but that was too long by about three characters. If I'm going to keep us branded as CoMissourian, I'll only have three characters to play with to create any new feeds. Thus, no CoMissourianSports, CoMissourianHeadlines or CoMissourianPolitical.

Instead, maybe I'll try: CoMissourianSP, CoMissourianHL and CoMissourianCrooks. Just kidding on that last one. Maybe CoMissourianPol?

While I'm not a big fan of the abbreviations, I'm telling myself it will be OK for two reasons: 1) A specially designed logo for each feed, like this one I created for CoMissourianNow (if Twitter will ever let me upload it).

Here it is:



2) It's Twitter. It's all about abbreviations. There's only 140 characters, for goodness sake.

So there we go. Any feedback much appreciated. Leave a comment or hit me up via e-mail. I plan to roll out new feeds as we need them.

This was in my inbox this evening:

If you see her, please call the number listed.

I'm just using the ol' blog as an idea file for the development of a little project I call The Twitter Manifesto. It's designed to be a strategic plan for using Twitter to:

• Publish news
• Connect with readers: Tips, criticism, coverage requests, opinions, insider info, etc. etc.
  
• Promote content at the Mothership, ColumbiaMissourian.com. 

To that end, I plan to propose we create and begin using the following Twitter feeds:

CoMissourian: This is the mother feed, the one that tweets a little of everything from the feeds below, plus more. Back to that at the end.

CoMissourianHeadlines: For readers who prefer headlines by Twitter instead of RSS. Rob has suggested we may be able to automatically update this feed whenever we publish a story, which would be super cool.

CoMissourianSports: Used much like the sports ticker seen on ESPN, a collection of scores and vital stats. We could be tweeting anything and everything we would normally see on a traditional agate page, just not as in-depth. This would be a good skill for reporters covering games, especially because they could tweet by text message. The support staff back at the ranch could handle the major sports (Blues, Cards, Rams, Chiefs, etc. etc.). This would especially be a good way for Ron to bring his mad agate skills to Web 2.0. We could also use it to retweet community scores from softball leagues, soccer, Little League, etc. etc., so it's important to follow lots of people (i.e. mine the hell out of www.localtweeps.com for our area codes)

CoMissourianPolitical: A Twitter feed from our Jefferson City/MDN bureau. News as it happens from the Senate and the House.

CoMissourianEvents: Used to Twitter feed events that we cover live -- kind of like what we tried to do with David Sedaris, but more with memorable quotes than crowd reaction. This would also be a good place to tweet calendar events.

That's a lot of growth for one little newsroom that is still taking baby steps with its Twitter. But we'll get there.

Oh ya, back to what we'll do with the mother feed:

• Breaking news
• Solicit opinions/conversations on the news -- make it important to people!
  
• Promo other feeds on slow news days, but only sporadically.
  
• Promo only the best of the best from the Web site. Too much promo becomes spam.
  
• Publish replies in the Voices column in the print Missourian

Lastly, a few do's and don'ts with the Twitter feeds:

• DO: Build a landing page for it at ColumbiaMissourian.com
  
• DO: Use lots of hashtags. Users will find us this way. Popular ones are #como, #mizzou, #MO
• DON'T: Be a promotion whore. Again, too many tweets = spam
• DO: Respond to reader replies. Be professional and polite. Use direct messaging to swap phone numbers or e-mail addresses if you need more than 140 characters to reply. 
  
• DO: Retweet breaking news if you KNOW it's credible and trust the source. I can't stress that enough. It's our credibility on the line here -- no retweets about something made up. 
• DON'T: Be a jerk to other tweeters
• DON'T: Tweet for the sake of tweeting. If you're covering an event and can't think of anything good to tweet, don't do it. Think about what information you wish you had on your phone if you were at the event or wishing you were at the event.
  

That's a good amount for one night. Now it's late, and I'm beat. More later.

I've been thinking long and hard about government health care, especially after we published this piece by Missouri state Rep. Chris Kelly earlier this week.

President Barack Obama, of course, wants to get government into the health care game as well. In the conservative press and among my more conservative contacts, I see a lot of good arguments against it. No. 1 on that list is cost, especially as it pertains to those who don't pay in the same amount, if any.

I have no desire to help any able-bodied person who is just too lazy to work. I expect other people to pay their bills, live within their means and not be a menace to the public good. In return, I'll show you the same courtesy.

You and me are all cool, right?

So my primary beef with government health care is the fact I don't want my tax dollars paying for some lazy bum's health problems, especially if they're of his or her own doing. Party all you want, but don't come to me to pay the bill. In return, I won't ask you for help paying my monthly premiums. Deal?

What is the solution? Well, it begins with tort reform. If you protect doctors and hospitals better from baloney lawsuits while still giving recourse to legitimate plaintiffs, insurance rates will go down. It may take a little corrective legislation to get them down, but they'll go down and the big companies can still make a nice profit.

With insurance rates down, doctors and hospitals won't be paying as much in premiums, and their fees can come down. Plus, with insurance rates down, more people will be able to afford it.

At the same time, you have to address the prescription drug problem. Let's take advantage of NAFTA and bring Canadian drugs into the country to compete. U.S. companies will drop prices like a bad habit.

And if you are going to have some form of government health care, it should be limited to vouchers. I'm all for helping the poorest among us who legitimately need assistance until you can get back on your feet. But let them have the freedom and responsibility to choose their own insurance, their own doctor and their own course of actions. And if you find anyone abusing the system, throw the book at them.

Now, let's get real for a moment: Do you see your government ever getting all of that done in any kind of efficient manner? I'm betting no; hence the title of this blog.

So why not try it. Maybe it will do some good and we'll all be happily surprised. And if it fails miserably, maybe then we can take up my free market ideas. But right now, government health care seems better than the status quo. Let's compare and contrast:

Major arguments against government health care                                                     Major arguments against current system
It's expensive                                                                                                                     It's expensive
It's inefficient                                                                                                                     It's inefficient
Lack of choice in insurance plan                                                                                       Lack of choice in insurance plan
It goes against America's free market principals                                                               It goes against America's free market principals

Now, in the spirit of bipartisanship, I'd like to share some ideas of how this could be negotiated at the state or federal level. Specifically, if conservatives are going to give government health care a shot, what should they get in return? After all, it's a big risk they'd be taking, and surely you need to find some spending somewhere that will help offset the extra costs.

Proposals:

• Flat tax. If you truly want to solve the problem of class warfare and end the argument over who carries the tax burden in this country, this is the way to go. I'll pay my X percent, Bill Gates will pay his, you'll pay yours. Thereby, nobody gains or loses because of their success. And I'll leave it to someone much smarter than me to figure out what X is.
  
• Tobacco money. Too much of it is tied up in smoking prevention, and it's a waste of money. If you don't know by now smoking kills you, I don't know what a prevention program is going to do. Yes, keep some of the money in cessation programs -- those are important when people want to quit. But take the prevention money and put it into the budget.
  
• Earmarks. Just stop them. There are just some things we can't do right now.
  

I'm sure there are plenty of other good ideas out there that could be discussed as well.

The bottom line is this: Do something. The status quo isn't working.