The story of Dieuphete Celime, as heartbreaking as it is, is one of ultimate hope. As much as I love covering breaking news/spot news, and as good as I’ve become at running out and getting the quick story, I would write Dieuphete Celime stories every day. This story is not tragic but beautiful, and photographer Eric Jacobs did a fantastic job capturing the scene.

As I turn 28 today, it’s a great gift to be able to put a story like that in the newspaper.

And after five years, I’m so utterly proud to say that I’m on the staff of The Boston Globe.

Today I began a night cops beat job here. I’ll be working three nights a week and will still be writing the business and fun tech stories, which prove to be a great contrast to the cops beat.

In the mean time, read about Blast’s plans for world domination.

Starting a company — a news company — at age 23 was a risk. Every day I wonder if it’s going to pay off.

Beyond that, there’s the Boston Globe. People tell me all the time that I need to be at a different newspaper right now if I want to come back one day.

I still disagree.

But I still gaze at JournalismJobs.com every few days wondering. Maybe Ft. Wayne? Maybe Miami? Maybe York, Pennsylvania?

Nah. Boston.

Gotta run. I have stories to edit for Blast.

I have a voice, and I want to share that with you.

Whether you like it or not.

I’m going to talk about my exploits as a freelance journalist and the editor of the happy little online magazine, Blast. This isn’t going to be a Live Journal or a diary. I hope to make some interesting observations and analysis on my job and what’s going on around me.

-john

So far so decent.

It is definitely a better visual interface than 2.6, but it’s a whole nother thing to get used to.

First, we do not use WordPress Widgets. We use WAY too many plugins and have about 15 different variations of a sidebar on Blast, so we aren’t using Widgets. But it seems like everyone is converting the best plugins to “Widget only” — that sucks for us and I get the feeling there’s a lot of actual bloggers out there that havne’t assimilated to the Widget world yet. 

My question: How do you manually insert/activate/use a Widget in a sidebar or a page without activating the dynamic/widget sidebar function? 

Number two: Importing text for dummies.

Blast has about 20 different people who insert articles or blog on the site. Many of them are not web savvy. But the two most common ways writers send us stories is by email (Gmail usually) and in Microsoft Word .doc (or that stupid .docx) format. 

The problem that leaves us with is that Gmail takes pasted text and inserts random linebreaks all over the place and Microsoft Word inserts all kinds of crazy crap, code, fonts, sizes, etc, etc, etc. I’ve training my editors on how to use the “Paste from Word” function, but even that’s not filtering out all of the MS Word garbage now.

Oh, and we could really use a good multi-author plugin that integrates to the post editor and lets us assign multiple authors to a single post…

I used to go to the one on Newbury Street in Boston … I was friendly with the girl that worked there. She’s a few years older than me and real down to earth with that North Shore accent and attitude. It was like walking into the bar — she knew my name, what I was having, etc. She even offered a cigarette on a particularly stressful day. Newport box.

Anyway, she’s not there anymore and I moved to the South Shore, so I walked into the store in Norwood last week and I said “I’d like to order my contacts please.”

Would you guess what the lady said to me? She said no!

Apparently, in Massachusetts, contact lenses are considered prescription medical gear on the same level as Percocet and Xanax, and you can’t order them without a yearly full eye exam and prescription.

Now, on a scale of 1-100, 1 being blind and 100 being perfect vision, my eyes are about a 42. Even if, somehow, between being 23 and 24 years old my vision slipped to 41, why the hell should I have to pay $200 for an eye exam FOR THE PRIVILEGE of spending another $200 on contact lenses? Who made this law up, and why does it still exist!

I just want my contacts!

The majority of these have come this year. It’s still just as exciting to see my work in the Globe as it was when I worked my way up from obituaries as a co-op student working weekends. I believe I’m making the right move by freelancing and sticking close to this newspaper while I start grad school in journalism.

It’s funny to see how far I’ve come from a criminal justice student, to a future publicist, to a news reporter.