I’m finishing up my grad school application right now — I have to polish one essay, start my other, upload my writing clips and pay my application fee before Monday, then set up my writing test locally and take it — and if I get in, I’ll be 3,000 miles away from my wife and child.
Besides the ever-present Treo, one of the ways Jenn and I will stay in touch will be World of Warcraft. (No Goldshire jokes, please.) It’ll let us interact in real time in an environment that allows us to “see” each other, after a fashion.
It turns out that NASA has a similar idea. Future astronauts on a Mars mission will likely do something very similar, logging into an Earth-simulation MMO to interact with loved ones back home. Sort of like Second Life, but with fewer freaks (probably).
At his vaccination appointment yesterday, James — who will be six months old next Friday — weighed in at 19 pounds, 12 ounces and is 27 inches high. For the percentage-minded, that puts him at the 90 percentile for his age for weight and in the 75 to 90 percent range for height. He wore his first 12 month outfit to the doctor.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008, 11:34
Section: Journalism
We just got our API scores, and we did well!
These aren’t the same API scores that California schools get (the Academic Performance Index). Instead, many newspapers are reviewed by the American Press Institute, based on selected copies of the paper. (API asks for specific dates and, as I recall, we were able to give a few choice papers of our selection.)
Here’s what the judges said about Freedom papers as a whole:
Capturing the top quality ranking was – Ft. Walton Beach, with a score of 152.5. It also won the first “Freedom Double” by scoring highest in both the print and Web evaluations. Marysville (147.5), Lima (146), The Orange County Register (141), East Valley Tribune (138), and Alton, which tied with Jacksonville (Ill.) with 135.5, were runners up in the quality competition.
The daily papers registering the most improvement in print scores since last year were Victorville (+26), Jacksonville, Ill (+14.5) and Sun City (+10).
Port St. Joe (+20), The Island Breeze (+15.5), and, Hesperia (+13.5) were the most improved weekly papers
In terms of web valuations, The Orange County Register tied Fort Walton Beach for highest score. Colorado Springs, Lima, Mesa, Destin, Shelby, McAllen and Alton also recorded high marks in web grading.
I’m pretty sure I can’t reprint the evaluations in their entirety — they’re either the property of API or Freedom Communications, I assume — but the Hesperia Star received a 110.5 score for print and 89 for the Web (out of 170 and 150, respectively). (The Daily Press got a 131 and 111 with, officially, 16 times the staff.)
We got “Excellent” ratings in content variety and balance and in service information, and also scored well in relevance to readers, reporting and writing (just shy of “Excellent,” there), editorial pages/editorials and headlines.
I was singled out for needing a bit more help on my photographs and for cutting down some of my gigantic ledes, neither of which are a surprise or anything I disagree with. I’ll be making a special effort on both those fronts this year.
We’ll also be reading through the evaluations for the Freedom papers that did better than us, so that we may shamelessly rip off what works and make the paper even better. Watch your back, Ft. Walton Beach!
