Heading to the Winter Olympics? Let us know

Are you heading to Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics in any capacity -- spectator, official, interested observer? Give us a shout if you are.

Interview with the Pedal People

On Sunday, the Daily Kos blog had an interview with Alex Jarrett and Ruthy Woodring, the founders of the Pedal People bicycle trash pickup service in Northampton. Interesting to see their innovative approach to municipal services getting some national attention.

Now there's a band name

A friend from the West Coast emailed me today, more or less out of nowhere, to ask if I'd heard anything about a new version of Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band that's appearing out in Oakland, which I had -- Yoko has dusted off the old name that she and John Lennon had used back in the '70s for a new outfit with her son Sean and some of his younger cohorts from the New York area. So I was slightly jolted about a half-hour later, walking into downtown Northampton, to see the flier at right.

Turns out this is one of the bands that'll be appearing at an arson victims benefit at the Elevens on Saturday night. The poster was adjacent to the full benefit poster, which is repro'd below. Great, eye-catching way to draw attention to this most worthy cause. (And sometimes, plain black letters on a white background is still the best design. Frankie says "Relax!")

Editor's Pick: My most memorable video of the year

One thing we've been able to do this year on GazetteNET -- and a thing that's been a long-held goal of this news organization -- is to really ramp up our ability to tell a wide variety of stories on video, a medium that certainly befits a Website and complements a print newspaper well. Over the past couple of years, and particularly in 2009, we've tackled breaking news and a wide range of features with an eye toward extending the value of stories for our audience. Our numbers say you approve, so we'll stick with it.

A big reason for that is the contributions of a wide variety of staffers and college interns. All of our photographers (Carol Lollis, Jerrey Roberts, Gordon Daniels and Kevin Gutting) now shoot video, and with predictable excellence given their excellent eyes for images and how they can tell a story; a couple of them have mastered production as well, and 2010 should yield a full raft of fully produced video stories from that department. Similarly, our staff reporter Catherine Baum has taken to the world of video with a fresh eye and meticulous attention to storytelling and detail. And it looks like we have a couple more staffers in the pipeline.

We also rely quite a bit on interns from the college community -- mainly the Five Colleges, of course, but also from other institutions. Modern journalism students are being taught (and correctly so) that simply scribbling it down for print isn't a full approach to their professional futures anymore, and they're responding with a solid interest in multimedia forms of storytelling. I was fortunate in 2009 to have the chance to work with a couple of interns exclusively assigned to GazetteNET multimedia; throughout the summer, UMass senior Kylie Jelley took every oddball assignment I threw at her and came back with some sterling video work and a lot of improvements to our overall presentation. I also got some good contributions from interns assigned to other departments in the newsroom who sought a chance to do some multimedia work. This wonderful piece from summer features desk intern Chelsey Pollock is actually my favorite from the entire year; she really caught a great look at the women who are skating in the revival of Roller Derby and why they're motivated to go after such a rough, demanding sport.

But I think the most memorable video of our year here came from my fall GazetteNET intern, UMass senior Sara Cody. Early in her excellent stint here, I assigned Sara to go to the Amherst 250th anniversary parade on a rainy late-September Sunday and see what she could bring back. The result was a great look at a once-in-a-generation event that will serve as a solid record of a rare milestone in that storied town's history -- not just any old parade, but one that both marked the depth of Amherst's history and captured the people and places of its current moment. It really was one for the books, both for Amherst and for GazetteNET. Great job, Sara.

All of our videos remain available at our GazetteNET Videos page and at GazetteNET's YouTube channel, and we hope you'll keep watching and sending us your feedback. See you in 2010...