Report to Readers by Susan LoTempio

Teen talk

  I feel a bit better about the future of this world after reading the teen essays in today's NeXt section.

  These local teens were responding to NeXt's first essay contest, which posed this question: What is the greatest challenge facing your generation?

Their subjects range from global warming to the quality of education and (my personal favorite) "getting over ourselves and learning to set our priorities straight."

These essays are thoughtful and intelligent, and give me hope that their generation might actually clean up the mess that their parents and grandparents leave behind.

We have a lot to learn from their perspective.

Demise of book sections

   It's very troubling for me as a great lover of books - fiction and nonfiction alike - to hear about trends like these:

   * The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently eliminated the job of book editor.

   * The Los Angeles Times merged its stand-alone book review section into another section that will also contain the Sunday opinion section, cutting the number of pages devoted to books from 12 to 10.

* Last year the San Francisco Chronicle book review dropped from six pages to four.

   * Other newspapers all over the country are cutting back on the use of staff and local book reviewers and instead using reviews offered by wire services.

  The push is from print to online book sites and literary blogs, which some believe will make book reviewing a more democratic process. Rather than stuffy reviewers offering a "handed-down-from-God" opinion, comments on newly published books will be open to anyone in the online world.

  How sad, how misguided.

  A few years ago I assigned a story to a News feature reporter on whether books that are held in a reader's hands would soon be replaced by digital book reading devices. Tech lovers saw it as a definite possibility. Book lovers scoffed at the idea.

It seems short-sighted of news organizations to cut back on book sections when the public is clearly reading - just stop in at a Barnes & Noble or Borders or Talking Leaves on a weekend afternoon for proof. The customers are not only buying coffee and greeting cards. They are buying books. And they are the same people who read newspapers.

Anyone who loves the feel of a book in their hands would, it seems to me, prefer the feel of a newspaper book section, as well. Clicking on Web sites for reviews is disconnected from the reading experience.

The Buffalo News has a long and proud history of book reviewing. We redesigned and expanded our coverage some years back, and two pages are devoted to staff and locally written book reviews every Sunday in the Spotlight section.

The News, which makes literacy one of its missions, has sponsored the monthly Book Club since October 2003. But when we started a Book Club blog in March it had very few participants, so we took it down.  Maybe that proves my point. People would rather read a book, then talk about it or read its review online.

The fun continues

  As the Sabres prepare for the next round of playoffs, The News is all over the story. On Thursday, look for another special play-off section that will contain all the information fans need to prepare - and enjoy - these critical games on the path to the Stanley Cup. Online, find the special playoff stories Thursday on this link.

  Also, the Sabres posters we've featured every day for the past few weeks are winding down, and the final poster will be in Sunday's Buffalo News.

And if you haven't joined in on the hockey conversation, now's the time to get involved with our Sabres Edge blog , written by several of our sports reporters and columnists.

As of Tuesday morning, it had more than 75,000 page views ands countless comments from die-hard fans. The talk is bound to heat up over the next couple of days.

How smart are you?

Are kids smarter these days or have I forgotten everything I learned in elementary school?

Truthfully, I think the answer is both.

We were reminded this week just how fleeting knowledge can be as features reporter Anne Neville put together a quiz based on the popular Fox TV show, "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?" (In print, the quiz can be found in the Spotlight section, and online under the Life listing on Buffalonews.com.)

Never ones to turn their backs on a challenge, several staffers took the test. The results were, shall we say, mixed.

"I graduated from fifth grade, as well as high school, college and grad school," says Anne Neville, "but either they didn't teach these things in fifth grade back then, or I've simply forgotten them. I got six of the 15 questions right."

She also reports that News copy editor Rick Stanley, an astronomy buff, aced the space questions but wound up getting five wrong, which is a pretty respectable score. And, News Library Director David Valenzuela also missed five. "I was mad that I missed the Canadian provinces," he said.

As for me, well, I'm not giving my score. But I will say that I've scored pretty well on the annual Nichol's quiz that we publish in The News' NeXt section.

We hope you'll use the comments section of this blog to tell us how you did on the 15 questions that were sent to us by local fifth-grade teachers.

Are you smarter than a 10-year-old?

Sabres behavior

Have you noticed all the hairy faces around town of late?

Features reporter Barbara Sullivan writes about the - shall we say strange - habit of growing play-off beards that has taken hold thanks to the Sabres. Don't miss her piece in Saturday Life.

But we find it hard to believe that hair-stubbled chins are the only supersitition that crops up during the playoffs. Yes, we've heard about socks that don't get changed for weeks on end, and even worse, playoff underwear. But those habits seem tame compared to other creative practices we just know are being used during this playoff round.

If you dare, share your playoff behavior in this blog's comments section. Don't be shy, your ritual is bound to be the lucky charm that will get us all the way to the Stanley Cup.

Count the stars

  The new movie "The Condemned," reviewed in Thursday's Life & Arts section, received a rating of only 1 and a half stars (out of four).

For many movies, that would mean death at the box office. But I suspect it won't stop one person in the target audience for this WWE-produced flick from seeing it.

On the other hand, even if it was a four-star movie, there's no way I would buy a ticket. Sit through a movie about condemned killers fighting to the death on a desolate island? You've got to be kidding.

Welcome to the complex and often annoying world of star ratings.

The News uses a four-star rating system for movie and theater reviews as well as CD and restaurant reviews. We don't use them for concert (pop or classical), book or art show reviews.

There are many people who would like to see the star system disappear forever. They worry that too many readers don't bother to read the review and judge the quality of a movie or production strictly by the number of stars the critic assigns.

Others see a disconnect between what's written in the review and the number of stars its given. Around the newsroom we call that "star inflation," which means the review can be brutal, but the star rating is  generous.

There are those who would like us to go to a five-star system. And there are others who wonder what the heck a half-star is supposed to indicate.

Informed readers take the time to consider all the pieces - the number of stars, the complete review (was the acting great but the plot weak?), even the tone of the headline - then make a judgment on their own.

Unfortunately, some readers base their judgment on whose byline is on the review:

    If so-and-so critic likes something, then I won't like it one bit.

   Or, if so-and-so critic reviews this, I know he/she is going to like it because he/she LIKES EVERYTHING.

Let me tell you, readers can get really angry about star ratings.

But, really, reviews and stars are just meant to be a guide. They are one person's opinion of a piece of music, a film, or a new place to eat.

They should be read with that in mind - and then we should trust our own judgment.

Where are the reviews?

  We occasionally get calls from readers - especially those who live in Niagara County - wondering why a review from a concert the night before isn't in their edition of the paper.

The reason most often has to do with press deadlines, especially on weekends when the deadlines are earlier.

The business of reviewing a nighttime show or concert can be tricky. We want our reviewers to stay until the very last minute, but then they need to get to a computer, write the review and file it.

That's just the first step in the process of getting a review published.

Once it's filed, several editors will read it, fix typos, write a headline and lay it out on the page. That page is then sent to the pressroom, which has been chomping at the bit to get the presses running.

Sometimes, then, when printing the Saturday and Sunday paper especially, the first papers off the press won't include the review, but the later ones will. And when we have the space,  we run the review the next day in the editions we missed.

Happily for readers who don't have the review in their paper, they can find it online and read it with their  morning coffee. 

One more question on local reviews: If reviews appear in either Gusto or the Life & Arts section Monday through Saturday, why on Sunday are they tucked into the City & Region section?
Good question!
Our Sunday entertainment section - Spotlight - is printed on Fridays, and therefore can't accommodate reviews from Saturday night. To make sure readers don't have to wait until Monday, they are included in Sunday's local news report.

Talented teens

   Ever hear that old chestnut that goes something like this: The only time you read about teens in the newspaper is when they get into trouble.

Au contraire.

The News' Wednesday NeXt section - written for and by local teens and edited by staffer Jean Westmoore - highlights the incredible talents of the teenagers in our community.

Today's cover story in a good case in point. It focuses on the local high school photographers whose prize-winning photos are part of this spring's Kenan Center's Storrs All High Photo Show.

The print edition of NeXt displays some of the remarkable photos and our Web site offers even more pictures for you to see. They are true works of art.

Local teens display their talents every week in NeXt with their writing, reviewing, photos and drawings.  All their work for NeXt is done separately from their schools, although they often write about other students and school events.

Many of the teen correspondents who have worked for NeXt over the years have gone to college and majored in journalism or other areas of the media.

And while NeXt is supposed to be for teen readers, it's a good place for adults to go if they want to stay in tune with what the next generation is thinking and doing.

First Sunday magazine

When former News staff reporter Anthony Violanti wrote the story "The Rainbow Journey of Harold Arlen," about the life of the Buffalo native who composed "Over the Rainbow," little did he know it would become a family affair.

Shortly after the article appeared in the February 2005 issue of The News' First Sunday magazine, Randall Kramer, executive director of Musicalfare Theatre, contacted Violanti and told him he wanted to commission a musical based on the magazine piece.

But when Violanti, now a reporter at the Star-Banner newspaper in Ocala, Fla., struggled writing a script, he suggested Kramer approach his daughter, Heather Violanti, a master's graduate of the Yale School of Drama who had written several plays, including one produced at Buffalo's Alleyway Theater.

The dream of bringing the Arlen story to the stage becomes reality on April 18 when Musicalfare presents "A Rainbow Journey: The Harold Arlen Story." Heather Violanti's script used her father's magazine story as a "launching point," she said. It begins April 23, 1986, the day Arlen died, and takes the audience back through key moments in the composer's life, including his early days on Buffalo's East Side.

You can read Violanti's original story on Buffalonews.com. Here's the link.

First Sunday's cover story this month is our annual look at new spring fashions, and while the print edition has plenty of fashion photos, we're planning to put more online that were taken during our daylong shoot at a home in Clarence.

Time for television

  Plenty of readers let us know about their frustration when they turn to the TV Topics section to see what's on TV but the listing doesn't match the show on their screen.

Oops.

The truth is, for quite some time we've been unhappy with the service that provides the TV grids for the Sunday section and the daily paper. It's their job to make sure the TV listings are as updated and accurate as possible, and they've fallen down on the job too many times.

So, we're in the process of switching providers with the intention of publishing more accurate TV listings. It's a complicated process to have the grids designed specifically for all of Western New York's cable systems transmitted  to us - via the computer - and the testing is set to start this week.

One more note on those TV listings: The TV networks and local channels are known to change programming up to the very last minute before a show airs. And since TV Topics is published a few days before it's distributed, you can bet some programs have been added or dropped before the section even lands on your doorstep Sunday morning.

The best thing to do is to check the more current listings in the daily paper - just to make sure your program is on when you think it is.

And, on another TV note: We have recently dropped the VCR Plus codes that were included in the grids. We've carried the codes (used for recording programs) for many years but have realized of late that most viewers have moved on to newer devices like DVR recorders.

We're monitoring how many complaint calls we receive, but feel pretty sure that most Western New Yorkers don't use the system anymore.

As they say in the TV biz, stay tuned ....