We’re curious at The Tribune and TribTown.com about whether readers and viewers found our online updates before and during last weekend’s flooding useful.

With the technology allowing us to post news instantaneously, reporting on weather advisory has been a natural.

It’s become even more so in recent weeks and months this spring, with so much weather happening in our area.

We started posting about heavy rainfall in central Indiana and flooding there and in Bartholomew County on Saturday, including reports on the level of the East Fork of the White River.

Those updates came a little faster as flood waters started moving toward us, especially when the river’s overflow started rushing into area Sunday morning.

We kept them throughout the week, and even into this weekend.

Again, we’re curious if you found them helpful?

We realize if you were in the way of those flood waters you at some point became unable to check the updates as you and your loved ones prepared to leave your homes. My family did, too. Fortunately, we had little effect of the flooding, for which we feel fortunate and blessed.

No, this question isn’t intended to pat ourselves on the back, as we accused of with a similar column asking about whether TribTown is seen as a useful tool. We simply want to know if we’re putting our resources and time in the right place, if such information helps people. Our hope is it does.

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Flights really seem to be booked these days. They also seem pretty convoluted.

 

I’m not sure why, and not real certain I care enough to find out. I’m guessing it’s because of the airlines struggling financially and trying to get the most folks on a plane as possible, even if the flights take you a little out of the way.

 

..

 

Snacks and meals on airlines are pretty paltry these days. My flight from San Antonio to Chicago offered dry roasted peanuts and a bag of Cheese Nips.

 

The peanuts, though few, were good. I put the stinky Cheese Nips in my pocket, not wanting to open and therefore release their gut-wrenching stench. Hannah will likely get them. For some season, she likes them and doesn’t think they stink.

 

..

 

Lots of folks seem to work Sodoku puzzles waiting in airports and flying to their destinations. Same thing with working on laptops.

 

I asked the man in the window seat of my row – no one in the center seat (YEAH) – if he worked the pouzzle in his hometown paper (he was doing the one in USA Today). He does.

 

I also asked him what he liked about his hometown paper, which turned out to be the San Antonio Express. We talked a while about his newspaper reading habits, which he described as strong, and his use of the Internet, which he described as not so strong.

 

These questions folded in well with our editors meeting this week as we continue transforming the newsroom into an information center that serves both print and online readers.

 

Our discussion yielded some interesting observations.

 

It also yielded an answer to the first question posed in this posting. Turns out he’s a pilot for Southwest, en route to Chicago for his three-day shift.

 

The reason my flight was so convoluted? Lots of people fly from Louisville to St. Louis and Chicago, and lots of people fly from San Antonio to Chicago. But few people fly from Louisville to San Antonio and vice versa.

 

So they’re simply sending you to the best place to get you to your destination based on market forces. Nothing wrong with that.

 

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Did you Monday’s story online at TribTown and in the paper about our staff winning five awards Saturday at the Indiana Associated Press Managing Editors awards program?

TribTown won a first place in our division as the best Web site in the state.

We’re pretty excited about it, although such things don’t put new shoes on the girls’ feet, a tank of gas in the car or even a steak on the grill.

But it is satisfying, knowing that the hard word we put into the Web are being recognized by our peers.

We already knew we must be doing something right, based on the number of hits — growing hits — that TribTown.com receives. We see that in the number of unique visitors, the number of times viewers come back and how sticky they are to our site — that is the how long they stay and how deep into the Web site they go.

We also knew that by the number of hits we get on our photo galleries and videos of local events and people.

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Still in San Antonio on business. We’ve transitioned from Freedom School to what’s now called our Content Meeting. It used to be our editors conference. That’s another story.

I always miss my family when I travel for work, but that’s especially true today.

Our younger daughter will be “crowned” this morning as she completes kindergarten, and our older daughter has an hnonor’s day program.

If you see them today, tell them their daddy loves them and misses them.

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While waiting for Day 3 of Freedom School to get started this morning, I encountered Freedom’s CEO, Scott Flanders, as we were both filling our glass with ice.

We greeted each other, and then I mentioned to Scott that he occasionally pops up in our reader comments online at TribTown.com.

How so, he asked.

I explained that the The Tribune and some members of the Seymour High School Class of 1970 suggested that city somehow honor Seymour native John Mellencamp when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this winter. Honoring him with a street name was suggested by the paper and later by Mellencamp’s classmates.

That idea, I explained, led to one online viewer claiming that the whole idea stemmed from Scott doing lunch with the Coug’s people and that Scott was pushing that agenda on the newsroom.

Scott chuckled, pointed out the idea of he and Mellencamp’s people talking was at least plausible since Scott had once worked in the music industry, leading the Columbia House Co. as CEO, and that he had met Mellencamp, but he also quickly added that no such lunch or conversation had occurred and that he had not talked with Mellencamp or his people about it.

And I can assure you that Scott has pushed no such agenda — or any other agenda — on our newsroom.

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Our program at Freedom School on Tuesday focused on a range of topics.

They included a look at how Freedom newspapers and Web sites embrace our libertarian foundation in our editorials and discussions of illigal immigration, whether freedom is on the march or in retreat, church and state in a free country and how our properties engage in libertarianism and community service.

Tom Palmer of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, reviewed his observations after reading editorials from our newspapers.

He saw evidence that we support the idea of freedom for all, that we believe in the rule of law, that should be economy in government — that it should be limited — and that government should be closely watched.

He noted that our editorials hold public officials accountable for their actions, and inaction, that rule of law should apply to everyone, that we should know the rules of law ahead of time, that laws shouldn’t favor one group over another and that government shouldn’t rob Peter to pay Pail.

We try to practice those principals on our editorial page in The Tribune and Opinion section online at TribTown.com.

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It’s Day 2 in San Antonio as the editors and others from Freedom Communications’ newspapers, Web sites and television stations gather for the first full day of  our annual Freedom School.

We sometimes joke that it’s our annual brain-washing into the lowercase libertarian philosophy. That we must be brought together yearly so we replenish the grape Flavorade. That we must have the microchip embedded in our heads tweaked.

But actually Freedom School in an enjoyable three days during which he hear from a number of interesting speakers who share their views on the libertarian view or views of the world and how we might better apply that view on our editorial pages and even in our reporting by offering more than just one or two sides to our stories.

No, it’s not the time when we’re brought together to have thoughts and opinions pounded into us or when we’re given our marching orders of what should be on our opinion pages. Those things never happen, despite what some may argue in reader comments on TribTown.com.

Among the speakers this week will be Jonathan Rauch, an opinion columnist with the National Journal, Tom Palmer, senior fellow at Cato Institutte, and Tibor Machan, a professor at Chapman University and Freedom’s libertarian adviser. Tibor has visited Seymour and was the guest speaker at the Sertoma Club’s Freedom Banquet three years ago.

We have these meetings because the libertarian point of view remains important to the family of our founder, Ohio native R.C. Hoiles. They think it’s important that their company keep Hoiles’ founding and guiding principles alive. We do, too.

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Some observations while flying to San Antonio:

There’s no easy there from Seymour.

And early morning flight out of Louisville took me to St. Louis.

“Don’t get off there,” the Southwest attendant warned during check-in. “It’s just a 20-minute stop. Then you’ll go to Dallas and change planes.”

A similarly early flight out of Indianapolis with another airline would have included a brief stop in Chicago — isn’t that NORTH? — and a change of planes somewhere else.

—

When  the Southwest attendant gave me the gate number, B17, I thought it was perhaps a good omen. It reminded me of Pop, who flew as a bellygunner aboard B-17s in the skies over Europe during World War II.

But then the attendant brought up the brief stop in St. Louis.  Not a good thing, since I’ve had nothing but problems when flying in or out of Lambert.

During one approach for a layover, our plane was slowing down, lining up for landing and starting to drop from the sky. Then the jet engines roared. The plane jerked up and to the right.

“Sorry about that,” the pilot or some other crew member said. He then mentioned something about a “near-miss” with a military transport.

A near-miss? I realize the airline industry probably doesn’t like the word “collision,” that’s what “near-miss” means to this English major. Collision. Objects miss each other or they collide. You don’t nearly miss something. You miss it or you don’t.

But there was no such incident today.

—

I also noticed while driving to Louisville that truckers on Interstate 65 were going slower than normal, confirming a conversation that two friends shared at church Sunday.

Jerry, who had just returned from a trip to Tennessee, asked Kenny if truckers were driving slower. Kenny said that was case as they try to conserve high-priced diesel fuel and therefore their profits.

—

Breakfast offerings at airports are pretty slim, especially in the early morning hours.

—

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I just  registered with our new reader comment tool, Pluck, and tested the system.

It took just a few seconds to get approval.

And my test comments actually allowed me to use dollar signs, puncuation with sentences and even an asterisk.

The system went up just a little bit ago, so please be patient as the systems guys with Freedon Interactive work out any bugs that up this afternoon and into the evening.

As I said last week, I hope our online users will the new reader comment tool easier and less frustrating to use. I also hope it makes for a more civil community conversation.

Don’t forget to try out the forum option of the tool. It will allow individual users to start their own topical forums.

Unfortunately, we’ve learned that the reader comments already posted on the old system can’t be converted to the new, so anything you posted in the past day or two will no longer appear with their associated stories.

Thanks for reading my blog, and thanks for logging on to Tribtown.com.

Be sure to stay connect with TribTown on Election Day.

We’ll report online about what’s going on with Tuesday’s primary and school board elections throughout the morning, day and evening into the night, if ncessary.

Carolyn Hurt, Jackson County Clerk Sarah’s Benter deput over the Voter Registration Office, said early today that poll sites and poll workers will be ready to open the doors at 6 a.m. Tuesday. It’s a long day, that could be even longer this time if turnout is higher.

Carolyn expects a good turnout of the county’s 29,000-plus eligible voters. That’s based on her observation that absentee ballots were up by about 50 percent going into the final few hours of absentee balloting.

Absentee boards in Brownstown and Seymour closed at noon today.

Reporters Zach Spicer, Jill Treadway, January Wetzel and Aubrey Woods will stop in at several polls Tuesday morning. We’ll report on the early morning turnout online and incorporate those findings into a story that will be published Tuesday in The Tribune.

Throughout the day will update the online Election Day posting as news warrants.

Then we’ll start posting results as they come in the clerk’s office, although we can’t assure that we’ll receive periodic results as we always used to.

Thanks to technology, we’ve seen delays in the periodic reporting, but also thanks to technology, final results are generally out much, much quicker than in the past.

We’ll not dwell on the election two years ago, however, when computer glitches delayed final tallies until the next morning.

At any rate, stay connected to TribTown. We’ll keep you updated and report on the results as soon as we can.

Thanks for reading my blog, and thanks for logging on to TribTown.com.