Inside UDJ by Editor K.C. Meadows

I was editing the Willits News last week while their editor, Dan McKee had a much deserved vacation. It was fun traveling to Willits each day. First of all I was not in the middle of the afternoon northward traffic jam when I left. Wow, does that town need a bypass ...
There's a great pizza place for anyone who knows what NY pizza is like and who misses it. The place is two doors down from the newspaper office on Commercial. They have a real pizza oven- not those assembly line ovens most have which does not cook the crust right. Yum.
The Willits News is apparently catching some heat for publicizing the fact that a lot of kids using the Willits skate park are not wearing helmets and the possible liability the city faces if something happens there. Apparently the skaters have gotten pretty aggressive even with the local police over the issue.
This is a no brainer. The skaters should wear helmets and if they don't, maybe the city should just shut the darned thing down for awhile and see if the kids prefer that.
Heads up for the City of Ukiah. Figure out how to enforce helmet rules now.

I know it will sound ironic after all the pros and cons in the past three weeks over the Tommy Wayne Kramer column but I have to admit that this week's column makes me uncomfortable. I don't like the idea of criticizing other neighboring publications. It seems like a cheap shot on our part, although I'm sure none of the columnists mentioned could care less what a columnist in Ukiah thinks, much less TWK. But I still feel weird about it.

One thing Kramer said this week which is true is that newspapers are indeed struggling to figure out how to continue to print newspapers, how to make their web sites dynamic, and do all of this while cutting costs. The problem is that while more people are reading newspapers than ever before, they are doing it for free on line. They are not paying for it. They are also not paying for classified advertising in the way they used to with sites like Craig's List and Monster letting people post for free. Classifieds were the bread and butter of newspaper budgets. Also, thus far, official circulation auditors - who determine what your circulation is and therefore what you can charge for advertising - so far refuse to acknowledge that millions of people are using the Web to read newspapers and seeing advertising there. In the meantime, the expenses of printing a newspaper every day continue to go up. On Oct. 1 many newspapers, including ours, will be going to a slightly narrower newsprint to save money on paper. That means your print version of the Ukiah Daily Journal will be one-half inch narrower starting that day. And while all this is going on, newspapers everywhere, including the Ukiah Daily Journal are struggling to keep paying for the reporters, the photographers, the editors, all of whom are now also asked to go get video with the stories, go get audio, post slide shows, all with no more people than we had before. In some ways it's an exciting time, but a real challenge.
With the web becoming our main operation - certainly in metro areas and more and more even for small publications like ours - we're advised that we need to make sure our print products "drive people to the web." That's why you'll see us reminding our print readers of what's on the web site.
Many people I talk to can't believe that newspapers will survive if everyone's reading them online for free.
That's our big question too.
On Monday I am attending a conference in the Bay Area called Newspapers Next, a new industry training project that gives us ideas on how to jump to a new place which stresses the online content while satisfying the people who still read our print product.
I'll let you know what I learn.

Last thing, the second sex offender phone call I got wasn't one of the six at the Ramada Inn although the message he left me made it sound that way. The man I talked to simply wanted to tell me he was outraged at the Ramada Inn and the state and was glad we did the story.