Halloween Live '05

What is the point of this? Why do we need more boring observations? Is this where the news is going? Why should we dig through all this garbage when there's not even anything to find that's of the slightest bit of interest?

Dear staci -

I'm sorry you found the observations boring. I personally tried to find interesting things to report on throughout the evening. In an ideal situation, people would also be submitting their comments and information and photos.

Although we love the newspaper and the ways we can tell stories in print, we're experimenting with new methods of gathering and reporting information as well as interacting with our readers. The results of these experiments may be one of the many directions that the Enterprise-Record and other publications pursue in the years to come.

Some of the new initiatives include these types of "event" blogs -- where we have reporters and photographers trying to capture an event in the moment. We're also trying to tell the stories of more people than a single story.

If we're successful, readers can know what's going on hours before the radio or TV newscasts or before the newspaper hits the first doorstep in the morning. Readers may also get a more complete picture of the event -- the Web site has far more space to tell a story than a newspaper or 2-minute TV story.

For our Labor Day Live blog, we showed what impact the crackdown efforts were having. For Halloween, I was interested (as a reporter) about how the city celebrates the holiday after years of an increased police presence.

Ultimately, there are many pros and cons for the different media we're exploring. I think we would appreciate any other comments or questions you may have.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,
Ryan Olson

did anyone see that hero that tryed to stop a gang from beating up people?He was dressed as a fairy and ended getting beat to a bloody pulp by the gang after the gang left and the police came and tryed to hand cuff the bludgeded hero 4 male cops one female jumped this poor guy held him down and then tazered him the guy was already beated almost into a coma then the police beat him wow this was awful poor guy anyone know if hes alright. the whip