Urge una ventana asi en el rancho del pinchetito!!!

Today we experienced “Mystery Quest” and had a chance to partipate in a global conversation on the economy. What part of the day did you find most memorable? Would the GNG format work in your school? Why or why not?

As you think back over today’s events and the events of the last few days, please think about the following questions and record your thoughts:

• What do you want to remember about preparing your students for an ASK program?
• Which lesson format did you like best? Do you think it’s appropriate for your classroom?
• Which guest speaker did you like best? What topic would you like to see Jazz present in the future?

La banda comandada por Leonardo D’ Lozanne pretende darle un giro a la forma de comercializar discos.

En los primeros días del mes de julio, el colectivo de rock Los Concorde pondrá a disposición de su público, mediante un sitio en Internet, un total de cinco canciones que serán descargadas de manera gratuita.

Con esta iniciativa, los músicos quienes también pertenecen a otras bandas como Fobia, La Ley, Resorte, Jaguares, La Lupita y Plastilina Mosh, pretenden dar un golpe duro en contra de la “piratería” musical, y liberarse de las condiciones que impone una disquera transnacional.

Mauricio Clavería (La Ley) admitió que la medida, no es un negocio para ellos; sin embargo, subrayó que desde hace tiempo vender discos también dejó de redituar grandes ganancias para los artistas debido a la venta ilegal en el mercado.

Por su parte, el vocalista del grupo Fobia, Leonardo de Lozanne consideró que la propuesta de regalar las canciones de Los Concorde a través de la red, ha sido más difícil que comercializarlas porque debieron buscar patrocinadores. No obstante, resaltó,

“le daremos en la torre a los piratas, es lo que más me gusta de la idea, porque es una técnica antipiratería, nadie puede contra un disco gratis”.

Añadió que

“las bandas vivimos de los conciertos y regalar es una tendencia a la que te tienes que adaptar. La mayoría de la gente ahora baja la música, los discos existen de milagro y porque habemos nostálgicos que todavía gastamos nuestro dinero en eso”.

Poncho Toledo, quien es miembro de La Lupita, mencionó al echar a andar este proyecto que no descartan un álbum de manera física, pues quizá para el 15 de agosto esté disponible en las principales tiendas. Contendrá temas extras (como Hitman y Simonke), para lograr un conjunto de 11, además de incluir fotos, entrevistas y vídeos.

Se afianzan como banda

A poco más de un año de su formación, Mauricio Clavería (La Ley) dijo que la agrupación está sorprendida y agradecida por la respuesta del público en cada uno de sus conciertos.

Los shows no se ofrecen de manera constante debido a que tienen compromisos con sus bandas originales, pero eso no significa tomar no en serio el concepto de Los Concorde, refirió Lozanne.

“Lo tomamos muy en serio, trabajamos muchísimo y estamos encantados, lo que pasa es que no planeamos mucho las cosas, es conforme se vayan dando, tampoco queremos forzarnos porque existen otros compromisos y contratos”.

El músico añadió que

“de eso se trata la banda, de que quienes puedan salir salen y los que no, no. Cuando la gente compra un boleto no saben lo que van a ver, es la única manera en que podemos funcionar, somos mucho de improvisar”.

Luego de participar en la banda sonora de la película Sultanes del Sur y realizar el video de su segundo sencillo Love is a bit…, Los Concorde fue invitado por el productor Miguel Ángel Fox para realizar un tema en la serie de televisión Terminales.

“Estamos en vías de desarrollar la idea. Debe ser una canción fuerte porque gira en torno a los enfermos desahuciados, en etapa terminal”, puntualizó Poncho Toledo.

La frase:

“Le daremos en la torre a los piratas, es lo que más me gusta de la idea, nadie puede contra un disco gratis”

Leonardo de Lozanne, cantante

* Leonardo de Lozanne y compañía se suman a la cruzada “antipiratería” subiendo gratuitamente sus temas a Internet.

Álbum Tracklist:

1. Rompecabezas
2. Loosing My Edge
3. Mustang
4. No Usemos Ropa
5. Oso Polar
6. Bruno
7. Love It’s a Bitch

© Candidman
Agosto 10, 2008.

I didn’t go to office today because I was suffering from my gastric problem. I knew that I won’t be able to concentrate in my work because of the pain. I decided to take my medicine (Prevacid) and slept all day. I didn’t feel like eating rice for my meal. I’d like to eat Gardenia Chocolate but it’s not available in the grocery and 7-11. I’ve been looking for it the grocery, Robinson’s Mla, last Sunday … even in MiniStop last Monday. I get addicted to it the first time I taste it but I didn’t like it the first time I saw it because I thought that the small chocolate chips in the bread are raisins until I tasted it. Unluckily, I was not able to eat it today after 3 days of craving it. So I just eat donuts and hotdog sandwich that I bought in 7-11.

I get irritated more when I heard in the evening news that the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) permitted the P0.50 provisional fare increase effective tomorrow in Metro Manila, Region 3 and Region 4:

Jeep from P7.50 to P8.00

Ordinary Bus from P8.00 to P9.00

Air-Conditioned Bus from P10.00 to P11.50

The provincial buses of Region 3 and Region 4 will increase by P0.10 while P0.25 for their air-conditioned buses.

What duh??!!

With all the increase of the food prices, gasoline, and fare, what will happen to the Filipinos?? On the other side, this fare hike will be of big help to all transport drivers.

Goodluck Juan dela Cruz!

On the positive side, I heard another news that will make Hello Kitty lovers happy. Hello Kitty is now Japan’s tourism ambassador. After being considered pop culture icon, , Hello Kitty will now represents Japan in Asia to attract more tourists to the country. Many of my friends will be happier if Hello Kitty will visit the Philippines. Why not?? =)

That’s all for today … ciao! =)

The Blog noticed many papers getting narrower lately as the 48-inch web sweeps the nation. The Chicago Tribune is the most recent to make the transition, making the switch today (see the new front page below). The paper is using the format change to introduce other changes, perhaps the most noticeable: getting rid of the blue background on the Page 1 nameplate. Joe Knowles, the Tribune’s AME for design and graphics took a few minutes to talk with The Blog about the changes:

What was the thinking behind changing the blue background to white in the Tribune’s flag?
Joe Knowles: “We felt it was time to update it. Our world has changed quite a bit since we introduced the white-on-blue version 25 years ago. Color was a relatively new thing on Page 1 back then. We knew the blue bar had become a powerful brand identifier for the Tribune… it was originally developed to stand out and be distinctive and it certainly did its job. But it had become overpowering in a way. It was a difficult visual element to overcome on the page. The new one lets the content come forward. That’s how we want to distinguish ourselves now.”

When was the last time there was no blue background?
“The color bar — which also ran in green for our now defunct afternoon markets edition — was introduced in 1982. Before that, the nameplate was black on white.”

Did you have the flag redrawn?
“Yes, we had Jim Parkinson, who updated our flag for our last major redesign in 2000, redraw the nameplate to work with the new approach.

Do you have any thoughts about what readers might think?
“We expect some negative reaction initially. I certainly think some people will like the new nameplate, but we’re more likely to hear from those who don’t. It’s reasonable for readers to react strongly to such a change. They’re very attached to their Tribune and the blue bar has taken on a sort of iconic status for many of them. I think they’ll get used to the new one pretty quickly because it’s more evolutionary than revolutionary.”

What other changes is the paper making?
“We’re adding more white space to the design in general, more space between elements all the way through the paper. There’s some new type as well. We had Nick Shinn draw us a new Century Light Italic, and we’re using Benton as our primary sans serif in place of Myriad. We also previously used Myriad for agate and small-type presentations, but we’re now switching to Poynter Agate for those applications. There are some other relatively minor changes as well, most of them directly related to the narrower page size. We’ll employ a five-column grid more frequently now, for example.”

The Region 4 Blog today gives us the lowdown on a pretty cool honor for Ball State University.

While flying from Chicago to San Diego last week, the Region 4 Blog spotted member Jennifer George-Palilonis‘ portrait as part of a story in American Way magazine profiling BSU’s innovative new television news experiment.

American Way is the in-flight magazine on American Airlines and a bit of an underrated design star, but we digress.

Jenn runs the journalism-graphics sequence at Ball State and is a former designer at Region 4 papers like the Detroit Free Press and Chicago Sun-Times.

Check out the full post at the Region 4 Blog, which also links to the full story at the American Way’s site on the World Wide Series of Tubes.

It’s been a long time since we’ve heard from Region 4. And hey, who am I foolin’?!? I’m the Region 4 Director making this post, and I’ve just gotta fess up and say I’ve been slacking on the Region 4 Blog and on my contributions to this blog.

But guess what? That ends today. But not without a plea to all you, the SND members — we want to bring you guys as much great information as we can, but we can’t do it alone. We need you to let us know what’s happening out there so we can report it.

For example … the good kids at the Arizona Daily Star and RedEye teamed up to let us know that the Daily Star’s loss is RedEye’s gain.

Sara Stewart, a features designer at the Daily Star in Tucson, and just an all-around cool chica, is leaving the desert for the flooding and soon-to-be blizzards of Chicago. Before you think, “OK, is she nuts?!?,” she’s joining the staff of RedEye.

And you can read all about it — along with comments from Sara, her old boss Mike Rice and her new chief Chris Courtney — at the Region 4 Blog, which is updated for the first time in forever.

Check out some of Sara’s great work at the A.D.S. here. Then go check out some of the wacky folks she’s gonna be working with in Trib Tower.

Congrats Sara, congrats RedEye and Mike — we’re sorry, man.

Following a turbulent swirl of changes over the past many months across the newspaper-scape that is the Twin Cities, Thursday saw further changes in the design leadership ranks at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Lisa Clausen and Chris Clonts were promoted to design directors. Here’s the official memo:

“SUBJ: Changes in design”

“Among the priorities for the new design department will be visual editing, coaching and skill-building to ensure that everyone who designs pages has the tools and feedback not only to produce high-caliber pages, but to grow and learn as well. It also will be important to find ways to streamline some of our work.

Features design director Lisa Clausen and news design director Chris Clonts will lead the department, working as partners to manage daily and advance work and guide our most important visual journalism into the paper.

Helping them will be two assistant design directors, Nicole Hvidsten and Colleen Kelly, leaders with deep understanding of design and the nuances of production. They’re also outstanding problem-solvers and all-around journalists.

These changes are effective immediately. Congratulations all around.

Congrats and good luck to all those newly situated.

Former Merc executive editor David Yarnold and outgoing executive editor Susan Goldberg in the newsroom after the extra edition was published on Sept. 11, 2001. (Mercury News archives)

Susan Goldberg will leave the San Jose Mercury News to become editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, replacing Doug Clifton who’s retiring this week. The announcement will happen in both newsrooms today, The Blog has learned.

The Blog reports that Goldberg will take over in Cleveland on May 29.

Carole Leigh Hutton will be the new executive editor in San Jose, publisher George Riggs told the staff at an 11 a.m. newsroom gathering, which coincided with a meeting in Ohio where the Plain Dealer’s staff learned that Goldberg would be their new editor.

Hutton had been vice president of community newspapers for the California Newspaper Partnership, which publishes the Mercury News. She’s a former editor and publisher of the Detroit Free Press. Hutton assumes her duties May 21, one week from today.

Goldberg has been executive editor of the Mercury News since 2003 when she took the helm from the well-respected David Yarnold, and before that was the paper’s managing editor, a position she accepted in 1999 at the height of the dot-com boom.

Goldberg was right at the storytelling center of the most vibrant part of the American economy when she started — and also presided over the newsroom when the bubble burst, watching as much of the core advertising for the newspaper dried up almost overnight. The woman knows how to manage through both good and bad.

Goldberg has been a champion of bold visual journalism since her arrival at the Merc, which was already known as a good design paper.

Under her watch, though, the Merc has been judged a World’s Best-Designed Newspaper by SND and placed among the top winners in the Society’s annual creative competition for the last seven years. And the photography staff has become a leader in multimedia storytelling, taking top honors from both the National Press Photographers Association and Pictures of the Year International.

Goldberg was also a significant supporter of SND’s annual workshop and exhibition, which was held in San Jose in 2004 and hosted by the Mercury News. Many SND-ers met her there and were delighted to find her attending sessions and participating at a level few top editors had before.

From her early days as a reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to her work for the Detroit Free Press covering the Michigan statehouse, Goldberg established herself as a tenacious reporter. The Michigan State alum is, by all colleague accounts, an amazingly talented journalist who has a creative spark few can match.

During her first tour of duty at the Merc, Goldberg was instrumental in directing the Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.

She has also helped direct two Pulitzer finalists since her return to the Merc, one in investigative reporting and the other in feature photography (for the California recall election).

Goldberg spent the longest stretch of her career at USA Today, where in 10 years she served as deputy managing editor in three areas: projects and investigations, features, and news. It was after those stints that she returned to the Mercury News as its first female managing editor and, subsequently, as the first woman to hold the title of executive editor.

To say that The Blog will miss The Boss at the day job is a huge understatement. She’s an inspirational force, a smart change agent, a terrific conceptual thinker, one of our closest friends and the best darn editor we have ever had the privilege to work with. We wish her the best, of course, but 750 Ridder Park Drive just won’t be the same without her.

Shake ‘em up in Cleveland, Susan!

Read the Plain Dealer story here.
Read Editor and Publisher’s story here.
Read the Mercury News story here.

An interesting trend the Region 4 Blog noticed Friday in Day 1 of the ASBPE’s Azbee Awards? Typography jokes. That top one is from Shelter magazine and is an entire article on door skins. We didn’t even know what door skins were before Friday. And ya gotta love the brace-face in-joke in Independent Agent magazine, below. (MattE photos)

On Saturday, judging wrapped up for design categories in the annual Azbee Awards. Never heard of them? Those are the prizes doled out by the American Society of Business Publication Editors.

The Region 4 Blog was joined in Wheaton, Ill., on Friday by RedEye design director Chris Courtney and freelance editor Renee Pas for Day 1 of the judging process for the design-based categories. Saturday’s Day 2 brought in judges Jen Mystkowski of Crain’s Chicago Business and formerly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Virginian-Pilot and Terry Ntovas-Roth of TNR Design, formerly of mags like Rolling Stone, Allure and Elle.

The judges assessment of the competition, which is comprised of business-to-business magazines and industry specialty publications, was that while there’s plenty out there that left them going, “Uhhh …. ewwwww,” there’s also a lot out there that really took them by surprise and left a much better impression.

Some of the faves on Saturday? Titles like Emergency Management, CIO, R&I, and Builder.

For a closer look at the judging and the judges in this interesting competition, head over to the Region 4 Blog.

Kevin Kyser, art director at the Muskegon, Mich., Chronicle, passed on some exciting news happening in that fantastic little city on the Eastern shore of Lake Michigan.

The Chronicle is in the midst of its sesquicentennial anniversary celebration — 150 years of Michigan lakeshore love! Kyser tells the Region 4 Blog the paper is doing a bundle to commemorate the occasion — and it all looks fantastic. From special sections to DVDs to interactive museum exhibits, the Chronicle is pulling out all the stops for the big anniversary.

In the neighborhood and want to check out the happenings next week? The Blog recommends the C.F. Prime Chophouse — 9 oz filet mignon, medium-well, with a lobster-meat crust and mashed sweet potatoes followed by a trip to the South Pier Lighthouse.

Read all about it over at the SND Region 4 Blog.

It was a race fit for a Queen in Louisville on Saturday — Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip were on hand for the 133rd running of the Kentucky Derby. And the two major papers of record in the Bluegrass State, the Louisville Courier-Journal and Lexington Herald-Leader, didn’t disappoint with their coverage of the race.

The Region 4 Blog has extended coverage and pages from both papers posted this morning, including pages from each paper’s preview section and Sunday’s live coverage. Special thanks to Region 4 members Patty Pitts, presentation editor at the Courier-Journal, and Jeff Bowen, a designer at the Herald-Leader, for sending pages along to share with all of us.

So if the two live covers above don’t satiate you, head over to Region 4 and see some more great work from Louisville and Lexington for the biggest event of Kentucky’s year, every year.

About a month ago, Elio Leturia had a chat with Rosa Castellanos, an award-winning features designer at the Detroit Free Press, over at the VisualMente Blog.

Leturia, a longtime design ace at the FreeP before becoming a faculty member at Columbia College in Chicago about 1 1/2 years ago, talked with Castellanos, left, about her creative process, being bilingual and bicultural in the newspaper design business and the differences beteween North American and Latin American designers.

The SND Region 4 Blog provides some translated highlights of the interview, plus links to the full versions in both Spanish and English at VisualMente.

Our favorite part? Castellanos’ discussion of the SND award-winning “Whoopie Cushion” page from the 28th Edition competition:

Leturia: What was the process in creating the “Whoopie Cushion” page that won an SND award in the last competition?
Castellanos: It was complicated in many ways. First, flatulence is not a popular subject for North American newspaper readers. … There was not a long time to think about concepts. … The editor of the section sent the whoopie cushion to us. That was the unique thing that we had for art for the cover and the inside pages. The problem was that the whoopie cushion itself had very strong typography and would compete with the headline. The headline “Ooops” came naturally — the intention was to unite the art with the headline, and it occurred!

Region 4 director Matt Erickson from The Times of Northwest Indiana rolls out the first part of a Q/A with Indiana University’s Mark Koenig, who was SND’s Student Designer of the Year in ‘06 and a runner-up this year.

The main themes? Both Hoosiers put out sports-themed “brain” pages within weeks of each other, which was followed by allegations of visual plagiarism. So Matt and Mark talk about brainstorming ideas, and where you get inspiration from anyway. Check it out now at the Region 4 blog.

And then be sure to check out Part 2 of the Q/A with Mark as he goes into the Region 4 Spotlight. Exclusively at the Region 4 blog.

The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, on Sunday said an internal investigation into former staff photographer Allan Detrich, who digitally altered a photo that ran in the paper March 31, revealed additional photos altered by him over the last three months.

To put it bluntly, the numbers can only be described as massive.

In a column written by Blade vice president and executive editor Ron Royhab, the paper reports that Detrich submitted 947 photos for publication consideration since January of this year. Of those 947, director of photography Nate Parsons found 79 of them to have been digitally altered.

Detrich is a former Pulitzer Prize finalist and four-time Ohio Photographer of the Year recipient. He had been with the Blade since 1989. When the March 31 photo was found to have been digitally altered and Detrich admitted to doing so — claiming he altered it for personal use and accidentally sent that version to the paper — he was suspended by the Blade. He resigned the next day as the paper’s investigation got under way.

Reached by the SND Region 4 Blog via e-mail on Sunday afternoon and given the opportunity to tell his side of the story, Detrich asked for his privacy to be respected and offered up the expected “No comment.”

A quick breakdown of the findings: 27 of the 79 appeared in both the print product and online; 31 appeared exclusively at ToledoBlade.com; 21 were not selected for publication.

From Royhab’s Sunday column:

The changes Mr. Detrich made included erasing people, tree limbs, utility poles, electrical wires, electrical outlets, and other background elements from photographs. In other cases, he added elements such as tree branches and shrubbery. Mr. Detrich also submitted two sports photographs in which items were inserted. In one he added a hockey puck and in the other he added a basketball, each hanging in mid-air. Neither was published.

Read Royhab’s column in its entirety at ToledoBlade.com. And you can read NPPA’s Sunday story on the findings, as well.

The SND Region 4 Blog has additional coverage and commentary.

Blade AME/Administration Luann Sharp commented via e-mail to the Region 4 Blog on Monday and offered an inside look at the newsroom’s philosophy moving forward. A glimpse at what she has to say:

The most challenging part of this whole process has been one of education. Some readers questioned why we felt the issue was so important. Even a handul of staff members thought we over-reacted to the whole matter.

Our focus has been to point out that our photographers are journalists, too. They show readers what happened, warts and all. We can’t accept anything less.

Our photography staff has been tremendous. They are disappointed that a co-worker altered photos and are firmly behind us as we try to explain to the rest of the staff and our readers why we must have zero tolerance for digitally altering photos.

To read more of Sharp’s comments, head over to the SND Region 4 Blog.

Professor Karl Gude of Michigan State announced today via the debut of a new website that The MSU School of Journalism in conjunction with the newly formed I.G.A. will be hosting its inaugural Conference on Informtion Graphics June 4-5. The site explains and includes schedules.:

All-day, hands-on, conceptual information graphics workshop (no computers) by former Newsweek Information Graphics Director, Karl Gude, and current graphics editor, Kevin Hand.

June 4 & 5, 2007: Coming to Michigan State University’s School of Journalism is the information graphics dream team. It’s a rare treat for such an elite group of experts in visual communication to gather in one place to show what they know.

Come one day early and you can join “Karl & Kevin’s full-day, hands-on workshop!”

Come spend a day with Karl Gude and Kevin Hand: they’ll take you out in the field to report a “big story”; then you’ll build a graphic about the event. This computer- free workshop, limited to 30 people, will be an intense and intimate exploration of content, concept and design in the execution of information graphics.

“So wait, what’s this I.G.A. thingy, anyway, ” you ask? And the site responds…

The I.G. (Information Graphics) Association is not just for the artists, designers, researchers and others who work in journalism, but for anyone in any field where information graphics and animations are made. As the I.G. Association grows it will provide opportunities to communicate and to learn, to find jobs and to showcase work. A competition is in the planning stages that will allow entries from a broad range of industries: media, corporate, government, education, law, science, medicine,
architecture, engineering and others.

This new and exciting organization will give the many thousands of people around the world who face the challenge of visualizing content a place where they can meet others who do what they do and to learn from those who do something new. No such association has every existed before. The field of information graphics has generally been overlooked or viewed as a sideshow to broader design associations.

But this one is just for us. JUST FOR GRAPHICS!

Region 4 director Matt Erickson recently sat down for a e-mail chat with Andrea Levy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer — an artist and illustrator so amazing that MattE has come up with a new word for her: “ri-freakin’-diculous-mad-wicked-awesome-holy-crap-that’s-incredible.”

Don’t miss a chance to get inside Andrea’s head in this exclusive Q&A over at the Region 4 blog!

9:00 am Roll Call  Hello Texas, Michigan, Missouri

 We were welcomed and took a tour of Moogle-our online environment for the week.  We will chat, we will reflect, and we will post as we collaborate on a project.

 We experienced the fun of presenting and sharing with Monster Exchange and Books Across America.

We shared what we learned about videoconferencing and some good ideas for an exchange.

Great lunch!

We learned about videoconferencing from Paul Hieronymous and IVDL Jeopardy.  It was time to get competitive! New York answered a 500 point question correctly.  Yes!!!!

 We enjoyed watching video clips and hearing about some great distance learning content providers i.e. Cleveland Zoo, Nasa Glenn.

Local Time Andrea discussed videoconferencing set-up and connectivity ( IP and ISDN).

Break Out Groups-Some of us chatted and some of us videoconferenced while we explored ideas and began planning for our 123…VC CLASS PROJECT. We used the project template as we learned about one another and shared ideas.

 It was a full day with opportunities to interact, collaborate, and share.

Looking forward to Day 2!!!!

Maxine Rappaport (Region 4 New York)