Question the news

Nice to have you here. Here’s what’s coming up today on News Cut:

  • “Northwest Day” on News Cut earlier this week (it’s hard to find what with our poor navigation structure and all but if you go here you can scroll down to see how it worked) was fun, with you submitting questions and me searching around for the answers. See, there’s a lot about news that flies under the radar of a newsroom. We might be telling you about the Delta for Northwest stock share exchange, and you might be saying, “that’s nice, but what are the odds of getting Southwest Airlines in here?” Or, on a more disgustingly gross scale, we might be telling about the strange neurological illnesses in poor plant workers, and you might be asking, “what exactly were they doing on their jobs?” So, Julia Schrenkler, the MPR patron saint of all things interactive, has set up this form you can fill out whenever you have a question. And, assuming it’s not rhetorical, I’ll start digging when I get it.” Ready? Go!
  • It’s Friday, and that means the News Cut week-in-review quiz will be out at some point this afternoon. A couple of weeks after I detected a “make it harder” groundswell, I’m sensing a “this is too hard” movement.
  • I’ve gotten quite a few folks who have offered to be my “lab rat” for a presentation on biking to work. I’ll be going through it today to try to arrange some visits with some of you, trying to figure out how to put together this presentation without having to bike 16 miles to work with you, but making you think that I did.
  • I’m kicking around another presentation idea. Your house. Remember when our houses were more than bank accounts or the thing that kept us awake at night? Remember when they were the place where we kept our memories, the memories that made us say “I could never sell this place”? Me too. Look for an invitation to be part of that presentation over the weekend or Monday. The requirements: You need memories, maybe a digital camera, and the willingness to have someone shove a microphone in your face.
  • Plus all the scraps of news that passes through the cubicle today.