The editor's blog

Faster, friendlier MyrtleBeachOnline.com

The new look for MyrtleBeachOnline.com is about 24 hours old and hundreds of you have already weighed in with feedback, suggestions and general comments.

The changes you see are part of a months' long process driven by the constantly changing world of online tools, our growing audience and your comments and requests.

Here's what we set out to do:

1. Make the site cleaner, easier to navigate and better looking. Check out the site map at the bottom of each page as well as the simpler navigation bar at the top. You've got more ways now to find what you're looking for. We especially like the new color palette designed to guide you through the pages.

2. Make it friendlier. As you can see, the commenting function has changed. For some of you, the down side is that you must register now before you can add comments. The upside is that you can personalize the site to fit your needs and interests - create your own blogs, social networks and personal profiles similar to Facebook or MySpace. The commenting function is one of the best read features on the site, registration is simple and important discussions of community concern are taking place there all the time.

3. Make it faster! Check out the speedier loading time. MyrtleBeachOnline.com is by far the most visited site on the Grand Strand. Last month we topped 8.5 million page views and we're growing all the time.

We've come a long way over the decade since we launched our first Web site. Back then, thesunnews.com was primarily an online version of the daily newspaper. Today, MyrtleBeachOnline.com is a 24-hour news, information and advertising site that includes lively public conversation, photo galleries and videos exclusive to the web plus lots of other features.

Our full array of journalism is there along with links to MyrtleBeachAccess.com, the tourism Web site that we launched this summer, our new MyrtleBeachMoms.com site, extras like video interviews with political candidates, staff writers' blogs, the most complete and active marketplace for advertising available in our area and more.

One of our most important measures of success is how well it works for you. In the 24 hours since we launched the new look, several of you have helped us improve things already. One e-mail asked for larger type on the comments. We were able to make that change in about an hour.

Any change of this magnitude takes some getting used to, we know. And we'll have glitches along the way as we make the final transition from the old design to the new. Keep sending your suggestions, trying out the new tools and we'll keep making MyrtleBeachOnline.com more urgent, more useful and more complete.

Why we need to know

Do you remember the name Aaron Kelley? Kelley was named dean of the Wall School of Business at Coastal Carolina University back in 2001 and was scheduled to start work that August. Kelley withdrew his acceptance of the job after The Sun News published stories about his background at Ohio University where he had taught since 1993. Kelley had served as dean of the business school there until 1996 when he stepped down from the post following an unfavorable evaluation.

From our story published on May 11, 2001:

A June 1996 Ohio University news release states Kelley resigned because of an "unfavorable faculty evaluation which indicated that Kelley's leadership style was no longer effective."

The report by a four-member evaluation team pointed to "an inappropriate relationship that [Kelley] maintained with a subordinate female staff member" as one of the reasons his leadership no longer was effective.

Kelley said he resigned as dean at Ohio University because his leadership style no longer was a good fit with the university. He said allegations about the affair were untrue.

We should have backgrounded Kelley earlier than we did for our readers before he was hired. Who knows if the outcome would have been different if this community had complete information before Kelley was offered what was then the second highest paid job at CCU? Either way, we try to be more diligent now in backgrounding proposed leaders who are paid with our taxdollars and direct the public's business.

Which leads me to the search for a new superintendent of Horry County Schools.

School board consultants have vetted a large pool of applicants and given the board the names and backgrounds on seven "semifinalists." The school board will not release the names or  information regarding this pool of applicants, any one of whom could become the next leader of our county schools. Taxpayers will pay the plane fares and other expenses to bring these people into town in the coming days. What plans the board may have for letting the sunshine into this process remain fuzzy.

Our role as journalists is to serve as watchdogs over these processes and decisions on your behalf. We attend the meetings, ask the questions, share the answers. Battling secrecy makes it much tougher.

A quick return to Presidents Day

"I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials."  Woodrow Wilson, 28th U.S. President, 1917

"Did you ever hear anyone say, 'That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me?' " Joseph Henry Jackson, author, date unknown

    

How many eyeballs

A discussion regarding how many editors you need in the journalism business continues in our industry as online gets larger and newspapers (in many areas but not the Grand Strand) get smaller.

In our newsroom, a typical local story for print is written and reviewed by the reporter, edited by a content editor for context, fairness, clarity and writing style, edited by a copy editor who writes a  headline and also checks grammar, spelling, context, fairness, clarity and then is reviewed by a copy desk slot who sends the story on to print.

Breaking online stories - typically just the top of the news - are written and reviewed by a reporter and checked by the online editors. Longer versions or entire stories, particularly those that will appear in the print version, go through the more rigorous checking that I describe for print journalism.

The industry discussion about editing focuses on how different an online reader is from a print reader. It basically centers on whether the tolerance for typos and less context is higher for an online reader who trades those qualities in favor of urgency and brevity.

I hear from readers regularly who find errors in the paper and demand higher quality. I don't hear nearly so much from online readers about these concerns. Interesting.

Figure it out

As we told you this morning on myrtlebeachonline.com and in The Sun News, millions of Americans are eligible to receive a tax rebate ranging from $300 to $1,200 as part of President Bush's legislation to kick start the economy. And we have an easy way for you to check how big your check may be. Go to myrtlebeachonline.com, click on calculate your rebate, fill in the blanks and find out.

We are looking for more and better ways to be useful and to help you make sense of the news. If you have other examples of helpful and searchable information you'd like to see on our site, let me know. We'll see if we can accommodate.

A caller asks -

Where can I find things in the daily newspaper? At the bottom of Page 1A, you will find a horizontal listing and page number reference for the most popular daily features, including obituaries and our two daily crossword puzzles. At the bottom of each section front, you will find a similar listing for features in that particular section.

The caller ask for the daily listing of movies. We publish the upcoming week's movie listings in Friday's Kicks! section. We also publish advertising from movie theaters every day inside the Local section except on Friday when the ads appear near the coming week's listing in the Kicks! section.

We try hard to keep standing features in the same spots in the newspaper and on our website because we know you value usefulness.

Have your say

We have begun asking for your comments on selected stories posted on myrtlebeachonline.com after about a six-month hiatus. Those of you familiar with our website remember that the comment function was a staple until last spring's motorcycle rallies. Sadly, several contributors posted virulent racial screeds rather than contributing thoughtful commentary on the two bike weeks and their impact on the Grand Strand or other subjects as well. We have restored commenting and invite you to share your views and thoughts. Comments can enliven the public debate and shed new light on topics and events.

If you choose to comment, please observe our rules:

No name-calling or personal abuse.

No profanity or vulgarities. Some people use them in their speech regularly, we know, but they still offend.

Back and forth exchanges between posters irritate other readers if they go on too long.

Make your point succinctly.

Don't pretend to be someone you aren't. Don't make threats.

All politics are local

We are moving ever closer to being the center of the national universe - politically speaking - as candidates, staff, the parties' faithful and the rest of us look toward January and the two presidential debates in Myrtle Beach and statewide primaries to follow. Even in the midst of holiday festivities, we continue ruminating over who our next president should be. Keep checking our politics blog, PoliTick-Tock, for the latest updates, candidates schedules and other tidbits of interest. 

Our reporting staff is pinning down the list of politics stories we are working on, many of them keying off the news and candidates' appearances. Some of the others involve ideas that readers brought to us in two forums we held here at The Sun News in mid-November. The forums included about 20 folks who shared their priorities on the issues they care most about along with some of the questions they would like the candidates to address. Watch for stories on immigration, health care, Washington spending among others in the coming days.

This Sunday we will publish the latest tallies on who's leading and who's lagging in a joint poll produced by McClatchy newspapers and NBC. See the Sunday edition of The Sun News and myrtlebeachonline.com that morning for all the details.

Stocks of local interest

We are considering some tinkers to our daily Money section and need your help. On weekdays we have listings for stocks of local interest at the bottom of the section front. Some of them now seem less relevant while others that may be more widely held are not included. If you have suggestions for stock listings of local companies or companies that are key to our local economy, please post here.

The darkening mood

One of the online sites I check each day is poynter.org, a journalism industry site put together by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. Institute faculty member Al Thompkins posts story ideas each day that editors and reporters may choose to pursue in their communities. Today's posting is intriguing. Here's a snippet:

"OK, so we all know the public is upset with President Bush. But the new Reuters/Zogby poll shows that the public thinks even less of Congress. Reuters says:

A paltry 11 percent rated Congress positively, beating the previous low of 14 percent in July.The Reuters/Zogby Index, a new measure of the mood of the country, dropped from 100 to 98.8 in the last month on worries about the economy and fears of a recession, pollster John Zogby said."Since the last time we polled we have had the mortgage crisis, and we are hearing the recession word a whole lot more than we've heard it in the past," Zogby said.

A score above 100 indicates the country's mood has improved since July. A score below 100, like the one recorded in September, shows the nation's mood getting worse.

I suspect a lot of people think their Congressperson is just fine. It's the rest of Congress that they think should get tossed out. It may just be the "institution" of government that angers people."

Thompkins suggests that covering how local readers feel about government would be worthwhile, given current market conditions.

Zogby calls the country's mood darker than dark.

Would you agree?