Scratching the seven-year itch of agriculture news blogging

Today is officially the seven-year anniversary of the launch of Blogriculture. This site was, and remains, an area where the Capital Press staff has been able to interact with readers in a way not always possible on our main website.

It has also been a forum for experimentation and trying new things in the digital realm that we haven't always been able to do our CapitalPress.com. Today, it mostly serves as the entry point for our podcasts and audio posts of Ag Minute audio.

But what will it be tomorrow (meaning the months and years ahead)? That is unknown.

Agriculture's use of digital media has grown tremendously since Blogriculture was born. Back in 2006 it took a lot of searching to find agriculture blogs of any kind. Today, they are seemingly everywhere. And if you add in blogs and websites about special interests related to the products farmers and ranchers grow, you can get lost in the digital web of food and farming sites. Farmers and foodies are also very active in social media, like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. We have been proud to be a small part of that digital information explosion.

There are some big technology changes occurring soon at the Capital Press and its parent company, EO Media Group. A new computer system produced by the people at Saxotech will make it much faster and easier for the Capital Press and her sister publications to publish to the web and it bring changes to the manner in which we print too.

On the digital front, one of the biggest changes online readers of the Capital Press will see is a relaunched website that is built using responsive design. That means the same website will look and behave differently depending on what type of devise and what size browser window you have. Instead of building separate sites for desktop/laptop computers, tablets and smartphones, we will have one site capable of serving up our stories and photos in a format that works better with the device you are using.

The print and web publishing functions will be made possible by a new computer system designed to integrate with both web publishing and build pages destined for ink-on-paper printing. Our company is in the process of installing that system now and will be rolling it out over the next several months in a process that is likely to take most of this year, and may stretch into next year. It's a massive project for us.

What that means for Blogriculture, specifically, is that our chief contributor here, Will Koenig, and I will be moving to new roles with the company to ensure our print papers continue evolve to take advantage of these new tools. Will and I hope to keep a hand in the digital realm in some regard, but given the size and scope of this project, it is difficult to know today just what that role may be and when we will be able to contribute specifically to things like podcast and blogs.

So, perhaps someone else (or several someones) at the Capital Press will pick of the torch at Blogriculture, just like Will picked up the torch after I moved into other activities a few years ago. Or perhaps sometime in the next few months, new posts to Blogriculture will dry up. It's hard to say. In the beginning, Blogriculture was launched because it was faster and easier to make updates here than on our main website. We also could customize our blog easier than we could our website and add features to it that either couldn't be added to our main site or required submitting a job ticket to a third-party vendor who may or may not help us successfully achieve the desired goal. Today, our main site is much faster and easier to update, we have more control over it and can do more things with it. And in a few months, the CapitalPress.com domain will boast a whole new look and feel that just wasn't possible even in our last website relaunch in August 2009.

These are exciting times for our company, but the excitement has a price of uncertainty for  Blogriculture. We are proud of the role Blogriculture has made in helping Capital Press evolved as a digital agriculture medium. It has played a huge role in helping us become better and faster at sharing information, not just in the Pacific Northwest, but nationwide and worldwide. It has helped us understand digital communication better and helped us communicate in ways that are just not possible in print.

It's fairly rare that a blog stays active for seven years. We are proud of the run so far. What will the future hold? Will the run continue? We will find out this and more in the months ahead.

Thank you, for taking the time to share this blogiversary with us and thank you to everyone who has contributed to Blogriculture as a poster, reader and commenter over the last seven years.

Capital Press adds daily video updates

We have added a new feature this week to www.capitalpress.com. Editor Joe Beach is posting daily video updates to highlight some of the news stories you can — or will be able to — find on capitalpress.com and in the print edition of the newspaper.

We just posted the third daily installment online. So far, the video updates have been 2 minutes or less. You can play them from the home page of our website or from our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/capitalpressvideo. We are also making them available through our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/capitalpress. So if you want a quick capsule of the day's ag news, Monday through Friday, look for the daily video updates to be posted by noon each day. You can watch them on your computer, netbook or even your smart phone.

Getting past the terrible 2s in a blog's life

Can you believe it? The Capital Press has been blogging for three years. On March 15, we will mark the three-year anniversary of Blogriculture.

I can't believe it's been that long. And, obviously, when we started this thing in 2006 we weren't even sure it would last, as my first official post here indicated this was a trial transplanting. I was afraid it wouldn't last a month, let alone three years.

Now look at us. The number of Capital Press websites continues to grow. We have another blog, back4d.com, that is building steadily. Another new website, Ag Directory West, allows ag-related businesses to create their own entries so their customers, current and new, can find them and the services or equipment they offer.

Sometime this week, we will reach 30,000 visitors to Blogriculture. It's certainly not the draw our main website is, which attracts averages about 30,000 visitors a month. But then again, it's probably 30,000 visitors who may not have found us any other way. The posts here are unique to this site. We may touch on the some of the topics the Capital Press news staff reports on, but we don't do it in the same way here. So, we appreciate the blog visitors.

I may even appreciate them more today than I did when we started this venture, as there are a lot more websites and online agriculture related resources available to people today than there were in 2006.

Before the official launch of Blogriculture, I wrote an item on the Capital Press website and moved it here. It was titled: "Do farmers blog?" The answer, I know know, is a definitive yes, there are some farmers and ranchers who have blogs. And there are a lot of agriculture-related businesses with blogs too. Now, you can even follow farm-related topics on Twitter (which also launched in 2006) using the hashtag #farm.

As we learned from the 2007 Census of Agriculture, America's farms have gotten smaller (and we also learned this year that rural broadband access has improved). You might say there are a lot of micro farmers out there. Those folks are the focus of our back4d.com blog. But I've become more of a micro farmblogger, posting ag-related updates and links more frequently through our Twitter profile than the Blogriculture website. Using that tool, which I didn't even know about at Blogriculture's birth, I can share some of my warped view of the farm world as well as post updates from both blogs and news updates to the Capital Press website.

Since Blogriculture began, the Capital Press has planted its flag on the video services YouTube and Brightcove. We've got a Facebook page. And some members of the blog team here have changed. Our newest member, Tim Hearden covers agriculture issues from his Northern California perch near Shasta Lake. He has quickly become our most prolific poster here. And small farmer and marketing guru Kay Marikos keeps things humming along with help from Editor Joe Beach, among others, at www.back4d.com.

We even had a podcast for a while, but it has been retired, at least for now, while the principle podcaster (yea, that would be me) focuses on other things.

Thinks keep evolving, changing and growing in the multimedia world, and we are evolving too at the Capital Press and at Blogriculture. Thanks for stopping in and sharing some of the ride with us.

Video shows some of the impacts of flooding on a Washington farm

This is the latest Capital Press video. We've got an updated version of our Brightcove video player. You can also find it on YouTube.

This one is from reporter Cookson Beecher about the effects of recent flooding on a farm in Arlington, Wash., and the efforts to recover from the damage, which forced the evacuation of livestock. Click here for more of Cookson's flood coverage.

What a difference a year makes

One year ago, I was up in Portland covering an event. I had lined up an intern to do the important work, writing the story and taking the pictures. So, being free of that responsibility, I decided to make my first feeble attempt at shooting video.

I had no clue what I was doing or what I was in for. I had literally zero experience using a video camera. I was once a still news photographer, but had little interest in shooting video. So, this was my chance to do something different.

The video was not good, and knowing even less about video editing than I did about videography, the resolution sucked. But it was my first attempt and I counted it as a success to even get the video posted online.

The video I shot was of last year's watermelon and produce giveaway by Eastern Oregon farmers in Portland. Perhaps it is fitting, or merely ironic, that I've spent part of the last week working on video editing and posting, because it is watermelon giveaway time again.

So, to show how far we've come, here's a look at the first video I did a year ago and the most recent one I edited and posted that was shot by Capital Press reporter Cookson Beecher.

Then:



Now:


I've still got a lot to learn, as do my colleagues here at the Capital Press. But we are making progress.

New video player

We are testing out a new video posting tool. Our YouTube channel is available at the bottom of this page. Above is the one we are trying out. If you have a preference, let us know.

Too late late for press? That depends where you look

The Capital Press has the wrong deadline for reporting agriculture news to our print readers. I'm not sure what the right one is, but I know it's not the one we've got.

Today, minutes after all of our news pages were done and gone, a pretty big story broke. Korea lifted its ban on U.S. beef. That's an international story with economic and political ramifications. Korean citizens have been protesting about the issue, the South Korean government has been put into turmoil because of the protests. It's a pretty big deal here too, as it opens what has historically been one of the biggest export markets for U.S. beef. Having more consumers for U.S. beef could help cattle producers in this country, who have have been locked out of that market since 2003, and are now facing higher feed costs.

But because of that deadline, people who only read the ink-on-paper editions of Capital Press won't read that story when there paper gets to them in a few days.

As a news guy, that makes me a little crazy, especially since that last news page that went out today was a page I put together and it had two stories on it related to the turmoil over getting U.S. beef back into Korea. In a matter of a few minutes, one of those stories became outdated. Old news. It's enough to drive a newsman insane.

And it probably would have left me talking to myself and drooling on my shoes except for one thing. We posted that new news online and sent out a breaking news alert to people who have subscribed to our electronic newsletter even before the first splash of ink hit the newsprint for this week's edition.

I don't know how much readers think about things like deadlines, but I will share some insider information here, in case anyone is curious.

The Capital Press "publishes" every Friday. That's the day it is available at our newsstand locations and, ideally, reaches people's homes or offices. I say ideally, because the paper gets delivered to people's homes and offices via the U.S. Postal Service and the federal government does things on its own timeline, which means it isn't necessarily our timeline.

In order for us to have any shot at getting a mail-delivered paper to people on Friday means we have to get it in the mail early on Thursday. As most people may know who have ever placed a Classified ad with the paper, we accept classified ads up to noon on Wednesday. So we send our final pages to the press by 5 to 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

As luck would have it, a lot of the big ag news events happen after our print deadlines and still before the paper gets to most of our subscribers. Key announcement in federal or state policies affecting agriculture always seem to be made on a Thursday or a Friday. Several key votes or actions related to the farm bill over the last year have happened on Fridays or Thursdays.

Maddening!

Maddening, except for what people like you, readers of blogs and websites, already know. With the Internet, there are no deadlines. It's never too late to publish. There is no need to yell "stop the presses" because this medium is digital. It's not about ink and paper, it's about pixels and bandwidth. And it's about delivering news and information when the news is still new.

I recently celebrated my third anniversary at the Capital Press. Unfortunately, I have not made many blog posts here on our Blogriculture site. In fact all of us Capital Press bloggers have been blogging less than we may want to contribute here. But I hope we can be forgiven for being away. Things are changing. This blog was originally started as a means to report things in a different medium and a different way than we were doing in print or even online on our website. It's been a test plot to try new things. Some of the things and features that debuted here eventually moved to our main site.

Collectively, our time is being spent putting more energy and emphasis into our main site and our print product, including more emphasis on things like video. We have not been away because we are not committed to the web. To the contrary, we are dialing up our efforts to share agriculture news and information in new and different ways in a world were there are no deadlines and it's never too late to tell people more and give them new information.

Media training workshop will help prepare ag community

Near the end of May, a media training workshop is being held in Portland to help people in the ag community understand the media better but also prepare them for doing interviews.

The idea first was suggested last November, and eagerly embraced even by those who quite regularly are interviewed by journalists. Everyone felt you can never get enough training in this area of communication. Sometimes agricultural groups or even individual farmers just want to get their message out, to educate consumers or perhaps influence more positive legislation, image or buying habits.

In today's media environment, sources are pressured to be even more focused, succinct and prepared to give articulate messages within a few seconds. Often these are made to jouralists with threatening deadlines and little background in agriculture.

The workshop will give tips on how to handle these interviews.

Sometimes people find themselves in a crisis management situation — some disaster has struck their industry. It could be BSE, Sudden Oak Death, E. Coli, animal rights abuses or some other unwanted event that throws the spotlight on someone when it might be least expected.

The workshop will provide advice and training on what to do, and also allow people to share anecdotes of things that have happened to them so they can share their collective wisdom on maybe how to handle things differently in the future.

Another part of the workshop will be about the changing technology: Journalists carry new tools, and even print reporters may be using digital cameras, digital audio taperecorders and small camcorders — and be posting stories/audio/video within hours, if not minutes, after an interview.

The workshop will give people a taste of what it's like to face a big TV camera, but also the little camcorders that allow such easy transfer to websites such as YouTube.

Last week, a few people got a taste of this at Oregon Board of Agriculture meeting in Portland.

I carried in our new small camcorder and the digital taperecorder and taped some of what was being presented to the board.

At first some people were unnerved by a little camera on a tripod. They probably would be even more nervous if they thought I might use this as part of the workshop coming up.

But perhaps even more unnerving is realizing the power these new tools — and the changing technology of communication — have and how quickly messages can get out.

I taped an interview with Tammy Dennee of the Oregon Wheat Growers League and posted a few video clips online early Friday morning on YouTube.

By noon today, four days later, one of the videos has had more than 26,000 views. A second clip has more than 900 views.

Welcome to the power of YouTube. It can be very powerful.

But also think of what can be done by those who learn to harness the power.

That is the goal of the media training workshop: Know what can be done with technology, understand the media better, and be prepared to get the right message of agriculture out to audiences.

Remember when channels were only UHV and VHF?

We have created a new YouTube channel for posting videos created by Capital Press staff (and perhaps even freelancers).

Up to this point, the members of our staff you have been experimenting with video have all created their own channels to get videos online to our readers could see them. But moving forward, to try to keep the videos together, we opted to create a channel we could give all of our staff access to for posting purposes.

So, check out our channel below, which features our more recent videos.

Will you FLIP over our new videos from Oregon Ag Fest 2008?

Last week, Capital Press received a new tool to use in their jobs. Some call it a tool. Others might call it a new toy. But the bottom line is the new Flip Video Ultra Series cameras are small camcorders that allow our staff to get another angle to our coverage.

We are now a company that is doing more than just writing for a weekly agricultural newspaper that gets into the mailboxes of farmers in the West once a week. We have a website that publishes stories daily from staff and Associated Press; we send out a daily newsletter; and we also send out breaking news alerts to those who sign up to receive them.

We have been expanding out multimedia offerings: We now have photo slideshows, audio of interviews, and — with our new tool/toy — video to add to the website.

Oregon State University Extension and Experiment Station Communications staff were kind enough to provide us some training last week, since they are familiar with the Flip Video camcorders and have used the devices for some of their work.

This past weekend, I took my Flip Video to Ag Fest in Salem to record some video, then posted it to YouTube. There are some pros and cons to the camcorder, but some of the benefits is its size, ease of use and (when all software is cooperating between Apple and Quicktime — and that’s another story!), its ease to posting to YouTube.

Here are a couple examples of what I have taped so far. Stay tuned to see a lot more of this on Capital Press’ multimedia site and/or on YouTube.

First, here's a compilation of some of the events that helped entertain as well as educate Oregon children — and adults — about agriculture. The event was held in Salem, Oregon on April 26-27.



In the second video, Michele Ruby, Executive Director of Oregon Ag Fest 2008, met with Elaine Shein of Capital Press at the end of the event on April 27 to share what a success it had been, what is its role, and how important it is to have volunteers.

More Capital Press photo videos online

This week, Capital Press launched a new slide show video feature to share some of the photo images that appear each week in our four zoned editions of the newspaper.

You can get a glimpse of the diversity of agriculture we have in the West, but also the hard work of the people behind these agricultural products.

Here are the photos from the week of our March 21 issue:



And also for the week of our April 4 issue:

Spring fling

Capital Press advertising staff members from four states gathered in our Salem, Ore., office this week. Staff members meet at Capital Press HQ twice a year for a planning and training session. One of the big topics of conversation at this week's meetings was how advertising representatives can help clients reach their customers in print and online.

Technology now allows the Capital Press to serve clients and readers in a variety of ways beyond our best known medium of ink-on-paper. In the future, you may even see video used on Capital Press websites.

As a little demonstration, today I shot some photos and a snippet of video using a cell phone camera. You probably won't hear the audio, and the video is bad, but I just wanted to demonstrate what's possible with simple tools widely available to the public for the Capital Press staff.

Gilligan’s Island actress in hot water

Most people when they think of Dawn Wells, they think of the perky Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island.
However, in the ag community she is a perky spokesperson that helps promote Idaho potatoes and gives great cooking tips in commercials and on YouTube like how to peel a potato with just hot water and some ice cubes.

However, now Wells might be too much a hot potato herself: The Idaho Potato Commission might want to stay away from using her to promote their healthy, wholesome product.

Seems there was more cookin’ lately with her…

An Associated Press story this afternoon said Wells will “serve six months’ unsupervised probation after allegedly being caught with marijuana in her car.” (Click here to see related AP video.)

More from AP:

“She was sentenced Feb. 29 to five days in jail, fined $410.50 and placed on probation after pleading guilty to one count of reckless driving.

Under a plea agreement, three misdemeanor counts — driving under the influence, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a controlled substance — were dropped.

On Oct. 18, Teton County sheriff's Deputy Joseph Gutierrez arrested Wells as she was driving home from a surprise birthday party that was held for her. According to the sheriff's office report, Gutierrez pulled Wells over after noticing her swerve and repeatedly speed up and slow down. When Gutierrez asked about a marijuana smell, Wells said she'd just given a ride to three hitchhikers and had dropped them off when they began smoking something. Gutierrez found half-smoked joints and two small cases used to store marijuana.

The 69-year-old Wells, founder of the Idaho Film and Television Institute and organizer of the region's annual family movie festival called the Spud Fest, then failed a sobriety test.

Wells' lawyer, Ron Swafford, said that a friend of Wells' testified that he'd left a small amount of marijuana in the vehicle after using it that day, and that Wells was unaware of it. Swafford also said several witnesses were prepared to testify that Wells had very little to drink at the party and was not intoxicated when she left. He said she was swerving on the road because she was trying to find the heater controls in her new car."

Portland-area market promotes 'buy local' philosophy

The folks at New Seasons Market want to give consumers a change to meet the folks that raise their food. They've done a nice little video to promote a lamb-tasting event they've got going on this weekend.

I stumbled upon it this week on YouTube, which was pretty exciting to see something about agriculture right here on the West Coast in an online video. In this case they are promoting the whole "buy local" philosophy.

I've been toying with the idea of highlighting agriculture related videos here on the Blogriculture site. So I thought, as something of a test drive of that idea, I'd share the New Seasons video with Blogriculture visitors. It's interesting to see how those in and around the ag industry are using the Internet.

New Seasons also has some videos on its YouTube channel to introduce people to farmers and ranchers who grow for their markets.

Lunar eclipse in Oregon

What was rarer: a clear winter night on the West Coast, or a full lunar eclipse?

For those of us here, considering all the rainy weather and fog we received during the winter, it was a delight to have an exceptionally clear night and be able to witness the last full lunar eclipse until 2010.

These images were taken from my backyard in Salem, Oregon.

More protests on Klamath settlement

We have another video from freelancer Jacqui Krizo on reaction the recently announced Klamath water agreement. Krizo was in Yreka, Calif., to hear what people had to tell the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors about the deal.

Now for something completely different

Want a sneak peek at some of the ads that may be showing during the Super Bowl?

AP has some snippets from ads from Budweiser that you may be seeing Super Bowl Sunday. Click here to take a look.

Or maybe this one is more to your liking. It's an ad for a Sunsilk hair product, which features the late, great Marilyn Monroe with modern era pop starts Shakira and Madonna.

There are some other Super Bowl sneak peek videos available too from:

Pepsi;
Carmen Electra in an IceBreakers Ice Cubes spot;
and one about drugs.

Fit to be roped and tied

Have you seen the video of the 2-year old roper? Yes, I mean a rodeo-type roper. OK, maybe he's not riding horseback and flanking cattle — yet — but this young Oregonian is well on his way to becoming a calf roper or team roper or steer roper in the rodeo arena someday. Check out this video from Associated Press.

Getting caught up on odds and ends

I've been on vacation and haven't posted anything for a while, so I wanted to mention a few things to get myself back in a posting mode and share information that may be of interest to Capital Press and Blogriculture readers.

***

Kudos to fellow Capital Press staffer Steve Brown (and fellow Blogriculture blogger too I might add) for getting his recent video story about Christmas tree harvesting by helicopter mentioned in a post on the Oregonian newspaper's Oregonlive.com website earlier this month.

The boost in traffic to his YouTube video from that post has made it the most popular of the videos we've posted at Capital Press in our short video-posting history.

***

Speaking of Christmas tree video stories, the Associated Press recently posted a video about the debate over whether real or artificial trees may be better for the environment. You can check out the video here.

Or read a recent guest commentary piece published in the Capital Press on that issue by Joseph Sharp, president of Yule Tree Farms at Aurora, Ore., and chairman of the Coalition of Environmentally Responsible Growers.

Staff writer Elizabeth Larson also did a story on this issue in the Nov. 23 edition.

***

And, on a more personal note, the reason I was playing hooky last week was because I was down in Las Vegas for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. Last year, when I went to the NFR I took a laptop along and posted some blog updates from Las Vegas on the rodeo.

We don't really cover rodeo at the Capital Press, but there is an obvious link between the sport and agriculture, and farming and ranching news in the West is what the Capital Press. Rodeo grew out of the skills needed in ranching and working with livestock. The people who compete in rodeo largely come from ranching backgrounds and maintain farms or ranches in addition to their competitive lives. The stock contractors are specialized ranchers. And I would be willing to wager that the core of the rodeo fan base comes from the greater agriculture community. Rodeo is not only part of the Western lifestyle it is also a part of the agribusiness economy.

So, needless to say, it was difficult not to think about work when I was surrounded by farmers and ranchers from Umatilla County who make the annual trek to Vegas for the NFR.

But if you are craving some Wrangler National Finals Rodeo news, check out columnist Butch Thurman's dispatch from Las Vegas. Capital Press print readers will get the column in their paper Friday, but you can read it online now on the Capital Press website. You can even read more of Butch's columns there.

Flying Christmas trees

Steve Brown of the Capital Press has posted a video story about Christmas tree harvest using helicopters on a tree farm in Turner, Ore. The video will also be available soon on the Capital Press website, but for now the Blogriculture site and YouTube are the only ways to find it.