Like someone rolling a large stone uphill

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks stewing unhappily over the situation with my first production posted on our newspaper’s blog. In my view, a succinct audio-driven slide show that took a lot of work was given equal weight to an overly long, unedited and pointless piece of video shot YouTube-style and slapped together by a reporter. I even offered to incorporate some of the reporter’s video into the slide show if he would just remove his video. He said he’d be glad to swap my original slide show with one that included video, but adamantly refused to remove his own video because it was “fun” and had received a lot of hits on the blog. Never mind that most of those hits resulted from my posting our side-by-side slide show and video on three different forums devoted to multimedia production, inviting comments on the contrast between the two. Nor would it have made any difference to the reporter if I showed him some of the scathing remarks on the video.

Quality control was not the issue. The issue was who held the territorial rights to the newspaper's blog.

This particular reporter was in charge of the newspaper’s blog. He initiated it and kept it alive. It was his baby and he had the final say on it. He was its editor. My greatest source of frustration with the whole business of producing newspapers, large and small, has stemmed from the clash between my professional ego and 'someone else in charge' – editors. The fire-bucket style of teamwork involved in newspaper production depends upon its editors serving as gatekeepers. The editors in charge set the standards for quality. All too often, more especially on smaller newspapers, the only thing that matters is being in charge.

I don’t know why I thought this paradigm would change with the transition from newsprint to Internet.

All this has left me very discouraged. Over the past year I've spent countless hours teaching myself the basics of audio slide show production, using somewhat less than basic means. I think I've accomplished what I set out to do with my own blog. If there is no meaningful future outlet for these efforts at my own newspaper – with no access to its website and no standards set for content on its blog – then there isn't much reason to continue.