Huckleberries Online

My 2 Cents — A Return To Prime Time

Posted by DFO

March 9, 2009 11:39 a.m. • 33 comments

After 25 years, print Huckleberries finally has made it to Sunday, including front page in a news stand near you. Beginning next Sunday, Huckleberries and Betsy Russell will share the front page of the now-combined Handle Extra. The old Handle Extra (Saturday) and Prairie Voice (Thursday) will be folded into the one Sunday edition and be circulated throughout North Idaho. For those keeping score at home, Huckleberries appeared for almost 20 years in the Monday edition of the SR’s Idaho regional newspaper. Under former Editor Steve Smith, it was first broken into daily columnets of 6 to 8 inches and then migrated to the Prairie Voice and Handle Extra two years ago. Additionally, the new Handle Extra will include some of your Huckleberries Online favorites: OrangeTV (restaurant reviews), Bayview Herb & CindyH. You’ll also get Nils Rosdahl, weather woman Michelle Boss, and columns from Rathdrum & Sandpoint. On news stands, Handle Extra will wrap around the newspaper & become the front page. In other words, don’t be surprised to see my mug smiliing back at you from the news stand in your favorite restaurant Sunday. I consider this the best thing to happen to my print column since it lost its regular Monday perch.

Question: Do any of you remember the name of my original three-dot print column?

33 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

moscow_minidoka on March 09 at 12:01 p.m.
Was it Hot Potatoes?

I’m very pleased for you, but this statement rings a bit hollow: “The old Handle Extra (Saturday) and Prairie Voice (Thursday) will be folded into the one Sunday edition and be circulated throughout North Idaho.”

Well, not “throughout” North Idaho - the SR stopped giving Moscow residents the Idaho version of the paper a couple of years ago, so we know more about what’s happening in Spokane than CDA. I know, I keep griping about this, but it bugs me… it would be one thing if we NEVER had the Handle edition in Moscow, but we DID… and they took it away. Jerks.
Cindy_H on March 09 at 12:09 p.m.
MM: Which Voices edition do you get in your TH paper? The South Voice? That would be weird.
DFO on March 09 at 12:22 p.m.
Good guess, Moscow Minidoka. But I’ve never used the name of the original Huckleberries column for my blog. Anyone else?
moscow_minidoka on March 09 at 12:23 p.m.
We don’t get a “Voice” at all, CindyH. We get the Spokane version of the paper, minus a Voice section. So, we are paying the same for less content. On Sunday, we get a “Best of the Voices” page in the main section, but I assume everyone gets that.

I stated here before that the lack of Idaho content for the Moscow edition really chaps my hide, because when I first came here as a freshman in college I really enjoyed reading DFO, Doug Clark, and Paul Turner. But DFO doesn’t even EXIST in my newspaper, because they no longer run his column (or Betsy’s) for us. Perhaps it was too complicated to have separate papers for Pullman than for Moscow, but they managed to handle it for 15 years or so without it being a problem…

And yes, I understand that I am helping to finance HBO… but I would like to see DFO and Betsy in my actual print newspaper, since I am, supposedly, in “North Idaho.”

Question: Does St. Maries get the CDA version? Plummer? Worley? Just curious…
Joker on March 09 at 12:53 p.m.
Very cool. I find it interesting the posiitve changes on the blog have now brought you good fortunate elsewhere. Karma is cool.
zelda on March 09 at 1:03 p.m.
The Voices section is especially plump these days as it’s publishing all the legal foreclosure notices and that beefs up the newshole. (It’s an ill wind that blows no good.)

I like the Valley Voice, which is the section I get, and go online for the other Voices.

“Hot Potatoes” rings a bell. I’m going with Moscow_Minodoka on that guess.
hhuseland on March 09 at 1:09 p.m.
No holds barred
DFO on March 09 at 1:12 p.m.
Moscow Minidoka; I’ll ask the powers that be to make the Handle Extra available in pdf form. So I can post it Mondays on Huckleberries Online. If that’s not possible, I plan to run a roundup of the columns and best features of the Handle Extra in Mondays AM Headlines roundup. I’ll try to remember to run Doug Clark’s column more often, too.
DFO on March 09 at 1:13 p.m.
No Holds Barred? Try again, Herb.
OrangeTV on March 09 at 1:20 p.m.
I just found out about this a couple days ago and I have to say I’m pretty stoked to be in the big ‘ol Sunday paper now, plus in the regular edition that reaches ALL segments of NI. BTW this week is the two year anniversary of Get Out. I’ll have to have a strawberry Qwik and toast to that…
MikeK on March 09 at 1:23 p.m.
Was it “Chokecherries”?
keithincda on March 09 at 1:25 p.m.
M_M.>>>Question: Does St. Maries get the CDA version? Plummer? Worley? Just curious…”

Heck, does CDA get a CDA version? I’ve yet to see much, if ANY, North Idaho news in the Spokeman since last fall. Just.Sayin.
DFO on March 09 at 1:26 p.m.
MikeK; nice guess. But Chokecherries was (and remains) the North Idaho College Sentinel spinoff of Huckleberries. The Press had a column for a short period called Razzberries. Which was another spinoff that Les Tidball started under the direction of then publisher Bob Paulos.
DFO on March 09 at 1:30 p.m.
>Heck, does CDA get a CDA version? I’ve yet to see much, if ANY, North Idaho news in the Spokeman since last fall — keithincda.<

Keith; if you check out today’s AM Headlines at the start of today’s front page, you’ll notice that almost all the North Idaho stories come from this weekend’s SR. In fact, I left 2 or 3 stories off the AM Headlines, that I’ll use tonight in the PM Headlines. We run more stuff from out here than people imagine. But we don’t package it all on one page as before. Still, there’s no question that we don’t do as much as we once did, unless you toss in Huckleberries Online. Which adds balance to the question as a result of the immediacy of online.
DFO on March 09 at 1:33 p.m.
OrangeTV; you’ve blossomed into a top-notch reviewer and deserve to take a bow for your hard work of the last two years. I’m delighted to be sharing the same Handle Extra with you, Nils, Betsy and the rest of the gang this Sunday.
Cis on March 09 at 2:15 p.m.
The Sunday became so bloated with ads, that I quit taking the weekend papers.. took 5 mins. to read it.

we didn’t get the Thurs. Prairie Voice nor the Handle. up here in Bonner county. by the time they started putting the Handle in Bonner papers, I had already ditched Sat. and Sun.

Also thinking about dropping the week one as well, because I read most of the headliners here the afternoon before.

Congrats..Orange TV on 2 years….
PatrickH on March 09 at 7:59 p.m.
I shouldn’t read anything to do with the newspaper business anymore, it just depresses me. First Scripps screws my Rocky last month and now even less coverage of North Idaho by the Spokesman, don’t even get me started on the Press. Columns are great and all, and I do like DFO and I think its great that OrangeTV is getting one, but its not the Review/Chronicle I grew up with.
I had the honor of being one of the first year writers/editorial board members of the Spokesman and The Chronicle’s “Our Generation” section and was lucky enough to write several news pieces for it. News is gone from the newspaper business, its about entertainment now. The proof is on our front steps in the form of The Press and The Review, and in the death of The Rocky. While I wish DFO and the rest the best of luck with the latest format change, can we just please quit calling them newspapers, those vanished long ago.

« Back to Huckleberries Online

You must be logged in to post comments.
Please create a profile or log in here.

About this blog

D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.