Another new age for DJ website

By Joel Myhre (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, February 16, 2008

In the past, many of my columns have talked about the advances in our web site. We have another advance, only it isn’t necessarily that we’re going to be doing anything new as much as we are going to be doing much more in something that’s relatively new.

Confused? How about I just say we have recently hired Sam Kiefer to work in our newsroom. Kiefer’s role, however, will be different from any other newsroom staffer we have hired. His primary job will not be to write stories, take photos, write headlines or design pages, but to shoot, edit and upload video to our web site: www.fergusfallsjournal.com.

Of course, The Journal has been shooting video for a couple of years. But, I admit, the extent of our video production has been “dabbling.” Kiefer has the knowledge and the time to produce the kinds of video which we hope will one day make our web site, in essence, a local television station.

While web video is truly in its infancy, it’s also becoming clear that more and more people are using it. I have heard of many people — mainly teenagers — who have figured out how to find old episodes of their favorite programs and watch them on their computer. Now, it isn’t exactly easy to find them, since the big companies who made the television programs would rather not give their programs away without having advertisers buy commercial space within them.

What we plan, for now, will be directly related to local news coverage. Here are a few things that we plan on doing in the coming months:

• Video highlights of local sporting events.

• Breaking news, such as fires

• Interviews with politicians or other VIPs who may come to The Journal

• Highlights of plays, concerts, and other public events

• Video features of local people doing interesting things

• Local commercials (yes, we have to pay the bills too).

We’re also open to ideas. If you think of something you think would make for a good video, let us know.

Also, be sure to check out our videos online (the Pioneer Home video is available now, for example, and Saturday’s Otter girls basketball highlights will be available this weekend.) The more we can grow our view-ership, the more likely local videos will become a permanent fix-ture on our web site.

•••

So I appreciate how many people have asked me about how my diet is going. What surprised me even more was the fact that most everyone is looking to do the same thing.

After a couple months of doing this, I’ve lost 10 or 11 pounds, depending on the time of the day (for some reason, I tend to plump up in the evenings.) I’m not completely disappointed, but I certainly know I could do better. It also has annoyed me that, at the end of the day, I get to thinking about how I cheated on something, and get disappointed.

Not wanting to feel that way, I have decided to take a different approach: figure out everything I’m doing, or not doing, that is contributing to my unhealthy lifestyle, and tackle each habit one at a time, easiest to hardest.

For example, getting back on the exercise track was, for me, easy, because I had already had a good habit of exercise before. Changing my breakfast cereal to a high fiber was was easy, too, since I eat cereal every morning anyway.

Bringing healthy snacks to work – rather than eating donuts and candy bars -- was a little harder, mostly because I’m so scatter-brained in the morning. But I’ve been pretty good. I also have made it two days bringing my lunch to work, rather than doing fast food. And thanks to my wife, incorporating more fruits and vegetables has been relatively painless.

If I can get those habits licked, then it’s time to tackle a few more. Some of the many: reducing my portion sizes at dinner, substituting healthy beverages for the “bad” beverages I typically drink, and getting to bed earlier.

I figure that if I can make all of the changes eventually, I’ll be much better off. And if it takes a while to lose weight, so be it.