May 13, 2026
Couldn't resist a link to this post from an old colleague, Mark Shenefelt, with whom I covered news in Boise years ago. Shenefelt now is an editor at the Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner, and he writes here about the cost of health care, some of his experiences, and some of its implications.
Posted here not solely because of his kind words toward the end . . .
Got an inquiry from a friend (in the conventional sense) about becoming a friend (in the specialized sense) with someone on Facebook. He and the other person have had political differences, but he got the invitation to be "friended." What to do?
Each to their own tastes. But - and yes, we here are on Facebook, and Twitter too among other things - the basic take here is that being someone's "friend" on Facebook is a little different than the traditional type. A friend on Facebook is someone you choose to keep in touch with, and may or may not be more than that. The question: But would I throttle back on my opinions if I know that so-and-so might see them? Response: If they're on line anywhere, they may be seen. A whole generation of politicians, among others, is about to learn that the hard way. (The rule here: Write nothing, post nothing, anywhere, that isn't essentially open to the world at large. You'll find your desire to keep it private is in inverse proportion to the likelihood of its emergence into unwanted hands.)
Facebook and Twitter do raise a variety of questions for certain categories of people. A question for bloggers and other writers (journalists included): To what extent is a Facebook post or a Twitter tweet "on the record" - quotable elsewhere? A point not yet really resolved.
The next blog post here will make use of Tweets someone else has posted. Probably, those tweets were intended to shared with the world at large. If not, we'll probably find out soon enough.
Via a Facebook post, a link to a pair of essays by two Idaho journalists, Kevin Richert and Marcia Franklin, on the ethical and journalistic issues of social communications. The main takeaway: There's a lot yet to be worked out.
This is "experimenting with new web media" weekend (especially since it turned out so much cooler and cloudier than expected). Yesterday, a new wiki on wikia.com about the Snake River Basin Adjudication. Today, a new lens on Squidoo about what to expect when moving to Oregon.
No explanation here about lenses and Squidoos (that's available via their main site). Here, just a note that the "lens" is just starting construction, and will be be substantially added to. Suggestions are welcome.
This sounds like a highly useful idea:
A single-day conference, to held in Portland sometime in August, on the subject of how journalism can best be done in the coming digital age.
I want us to shut up about about the death of newspapers and start talking about how we, as journalists, are innovating right now — what’s working, what’s not, and how we can get better at what we do.
Here’s where you come in. What do you think the topics should be? What do you want to learn about? Who are innovators you want to learn from? What expertise can you share with others?
Here are some initial topics I’ve come up with:
Five things traditional journalists and bloggers can teach each other
Quick tips for producing audio and video for the web
Out of the newsroom: Success stories from non-traditional journalists
Turning data into graphics and maps
Hyper-local news: What works and what doesn’t
Learn how to share, a.k.a WTF is Creative Commons?
SEO for digital journalists
Can be followed on Twitter or via the link at the top of this post.
Joining the mass of sites offering the option for Tuesday morning:
Partly too because Hulu is a big favorite around these quarters, watched considerably more than the sum total of broadcast TV.
A quick programming note: On Monday mornings during the legislative session, I'll be talking on KLIX-AM radio in Twin Falls. That started this morning at about 8:05 (Mountain), for 15 minutes or so, and the plan is to continue that till the legislators go home.
Talked this morning on the budget mess, the challenges Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter and the legislature have (though they seem to coming closer to facing them together) and related subjects. Podcasts are available.
In the next three days, we'll run posts on our picks for the person of the year in Idaho, Oregon and Washington. A quick word on these first.
They will be along the line of the influential persons lists we did for some years in Idaho, at least in matters of criteria - and but for the fact that we'll be naming just one person.
The idea is not honorary, not necessarily an indication of goodness or of excellent achievement. The idea is to name someone who somehow or another threw a curve into the very recent history of their state, affecting it on a substantial level for good or ill. And someone whose actions were specific to them, not necessarily undertaken by whoever might have been standing in their shoes - someone without whom their state would have been different than it actually is right now. The thing is more an invitation to consider not necessarily what made the big headlines but what mattered in the Northwest over the last year.
Let it be not a conversation ender, but conversation starter.
You may have noticed that we've done a little sprucing up, code-wise. We've operated with a sound Wordpress package for more than three years, but we haven't upgraded its core engine in all that time. So things have become increasing scratch/patch. And after a while, a little shaking out helps.
What's here is, for the most part, much like what was here yesterday - from many of the basic elements, you can see this is still Ridenbaugh Press. But there's been a little reworking under the hood, and will be a little more. The site's purpose and content, though, go on.
Let us know what you think.
Aquick note here that the hiatus over the last week-plus is over, and we'll be resuming something at least resembling a normal posting regimen hereout. The hospital stay is over.
Those two little words (pulmonary embolism) that delivered such a wallop and afforded such intimate exposure to hospital procedures, 9-1-1 realities (those guys and gals really are life-savers), drugs and tests and so much more, have also had this upside: PEs (at least in this case), as life-threatening as they are, also can be straightforward to deal with and (at least in this case) involve no massive surgeries or anything especially invasive or even very life-changing. As medical crises go, this one has worked out benignly. So far at least. Though we'll likely be taking it easy for a while.
Many thanks to everyone who sent in a comment, e-mail, card or otherwise got in touch. Your thoughts were, are, deeply appreciated.
And back to the news . . .