Scripps consolidation ...

Here is a story in the Athens News about plans to combine the schools in the college of communications, and here's a similar story in The Post about moving the schools under one roof at Baker Center.

Am I the only one a little leery about this whole "Scripps College of Communication" melting pot thing? Or am I just being a "E.W. Scripps School of Journalism" snob?

Role reversal ...

Yesterday I was discussing with a colleague a story we ran on today's front page. It's all about University of Cincinnati football fans and their disappointment that Saturday's game at Rutgers was not shown on the big screen at Fountain Square downtown. Instead, the Ohio State-Purdue game aired.

We got blasted with e-mails and calls about the oversight. Within hours, we were making calls of our own and working on an A-1 story.

It happens more and more all the time. We'll hear about a hot message board discussion and it becomes a story. Readers use our website to comment on a story and it becomes another story. Usually, it's not what we consider "hard news," but often it becomes a fairly popular topic.

It's amazing how much things have changed in recent years. When I started in the newspaper business we told our readers what the news was. We wrote what we thought was important and they read it. Now they tell us what's important, we write it ... and sometiems they read it.