Radio lingo, election news, Mormon crickets

FYI in case there’s some confusion, S-R Radio is only live on weekdays. Some editors wondered this morning whether it’s confusing when everything we announce about the S-R Radio news says “bottom of the hour.” Do enough day-to-day people think in radio lingo?

“I have the same problem with the top of the inning and the bottom of the inning,” said city editor Addy Hatch. The term “bottom of the hour” also doesn’t apply to someone looking at a digital watch, said reporter Jim Camden.

Someone else suggested saying the S-R news is every hour on the half hour, although that may be just as confusing.

Check out the layout of…

This Page D1 (Today section front page). That’s Amy Winehouse. Her tall hair made it especially suitable for a vertical layout. She’s no poster child for no-smoking campaigns, but the page looks great.

Social Security, for you and for me

Great choice on the front page election item, folks said: Plans differ, but candidates agree Social Security needs drastic work . Because it’s not a “horse race” story about what each presidential candidate is doing or not doing, but rather today’s story is about an issue.

In tech news

No, managing editor Gary “Gadget” Graham is not planning to get a PoGo , a new design of pocket-sized digital sticker-photo printer.

“I’m finally getting the recognition I deserve,” he joked. Graham was the first one in the newsroom to get a Kindle , designed for viewing e-books and e-subscriptions of various newspapers nationwide. And a couple summers ago, Graham bought a USB mojo flip camera.

Then editor Steve Smith and assistant managing editor Carla Savalli reminisced a bit about the novelty of Polaroids and how they were ultimately, “expensive crappy pictures,” Smith said.

Coming up

…something about an invasion of Mormon crickets , nasty flightless grasshopper-like non-crickets that stampede each other with cannibalistic intent, meanwhile leaving behind a nasty goo. More about that later.

But the idea of “Mormon crickets” led to a tangent conversation about a language censor program gone wrong when it was programmed to replace all instances of the word “gay” with the word “homosexual,” which did not work for a news story about an athlete whose name is Tyson Gay.