Missourinet

New newsroom nearly complete

The plan was to wait until we're all moved in to our beautiful new newsroom before posting more photos. But as we walked through the new digs today, it occurred to us the studios and work stations will never look this good again, and we better take a couple of photos to record how nice they looked before a bunch of broadcast reporters started working here.

The plan calls for Bob Priddy to lead his people out of the wilderness and up to the Promised Land beginning Monday morning (yes, I know this post has jinxed that time-table). We'll take some shots during and after the move but it will be too dangerous to get close once inhabited.

Missouri Lottery blog

The Missouri Lottery is blogging. According to the release, you can "ask questions about games and promotions, watch videos from the new Reel Lottery video series, get updates on Lottery winners, and read posts from Lottery employees and players."

Chief Blogger in Residence is John Wells. He's been with the Missouri Lottery for some time as Videographer/Satellite Coordinator. From time to time, John does part-time work for The Missourinet.

The lottery should have been blogging years ago, but for many (most? all?) state entities, the blogosphere is a mysterious and scary place. I have to believe that John lobbied long and hard to help make this happen. On the other hand, it's getting harder and harder to ignore the Power of the Blog.

We hope this is a smashing success.

Extreme make-over for Missourinet newsroom

It's been months since we posted anything about the renovation of the Missourinet newsroom. In part, because we never thought the project would be completed. Okay, we knew it would get completed but the Missourinet and Brownfield reporters have been living in cramped, temporary quarters so long they've stopped thinking about The Big Day. Which we now believe is June 4th.

We haven't posted images from the new newsroom and studios because we wanted to wait until everything was 100% finished. But the table (?) in the new talk studio is so sexy we decided to give you a peek. Moving Day should be a zoo and we'll try to get some video of that.

"Tagging" Missourinet stories

With the wrap-up of the Missouri General Assembly, we were curious about the number of related stories posted here at Missourinet.com, and discovered approximately 150 stories tagged "Legislature," and about the same number for under "Politics & Government."

You'll find a complete list of the "tags" or keywords we use to help sort and organize our stories on our Site Map page. You'll also find a list of the most recent "Related Stories" in the sidebar of each article or story page. A quick way to find more stories on a particular subject.

Dept. of Corrections puts offender dB online

The Missouri Department of Corrections has added a new feature to their website. Users can search for information such as the offender's race, sex, date of birth, where he or she is imprisoned and a summary of the sentence. They also can learn past offenses and aliases as well as why a prisoner is currently incarcerated. The database --which was added earlier this month-- is updated each day at 9 p.m. and does not include prisoners' release dates.

MO Supreme Court taking over oral arguments

The Missouri Supreme Court will hear arguments on May 22 and June 21 and then break for their summer recess. I mention it because it's something of an "end to an era." The Missourinet began streaming (and archiving) the arguments on December 14, 1999. The final three cases will take us to 812. A lot of the arguments were pretty dry stuff (if you're not an attorney) but there were some high-profiles cases that drew a lot of attention.

When the court resumes in September, they'll provide this service (at no charge). Our plan is to open up our archives at that point.They're currently available only to subscribers to our service. This is a good move and long overdue. We commend the court of stepping up and offering this service.

The Missourinet has been ahead of the curve on a few projects like this. We started and maintained Missouri State Highway Patrol Crash Reports for several years before handing it off the MSHP last year.

Legislature.com continues to operate as a subscription service, primarily because the (free) service offered by the House and Senate does not include archived audio. But they almost certainly will.

Here at Missourinet.com we take some pride at being among the first at offering this kind of content online. When we started streaming audio, nobody had broadband connections to the Internet. It was all modem and dial-up. But it worked. And while we didn't get rich with these services, we demonstrated the value of providing "rich media" to the public.

Flood images: YouTube and Flickr

People in the midwest (Iowa and Missouri) affected by the flooding wasted no time in posting video to YouTube. Here's some footage from Washington, Missouri.

Missouri Valley, Iowa got 5-7" of rain in a very short period of time, which resulted in three levee breaks. This clip is part of a series ... this guy (I don't know why I think it's a guy) decided to go with a rock video treatment ... and here's one from Wyeth Hill in St. Joseph MO. (Across the river, Elwood Kansas was in the process evacuating.)

A Flickr search for "missouri flood" pulled up 490 images. I'm sure I missed some good ones. Go ahead and post them in Comments.

What's going on with Missourinet Sports Daily?

Good question. Sorry it's taken so long to answer. We recently made some staffing changes and our daily sports email list fell through the digital crack. Please don't ask how that could happen because we don't have a very good answer. Be we think we have the problem resolved.

And while we're on the topic of getting Missourinet sports (and news) in your hands... you might find this brief video helpful.

It explains RSS, which is another way (besides email) to follow our reports.