Our staff received 6 additional Flip cameras yesterday from our corporate office. I spent a big part of my day tagging them and writing down serial numbers to make sure we know who has what camera should something happen.

Then I got to give them out to my staff - the most exciting part of my day.

A few minutes later, photographer Catherine Avalone came back to my office and said, "Why is it all in French?"

In her eagerness to get started, she had bypassed the English instructions and we had no idea how to get them back.

An e-mail to our techies in Yardley resulted in four quick responses - one of them actually in French, translated via Babel Fish (when translated back via the same method, it made no sense whatsoever).

As usual when things get a little messed up, it was very simple to fix it, and Cathy is now well on her way to taking videos for our web site. Check out the 8 videos she took yesterday afternoon at Middlesex Community College HERE.

The Middletown Press newsroom consists of 10 staff members who do everything from taking photos and writing stories to laying out pages and writing headlines (and yes, that includes our sports department).

In newsroom comparisons, we would probably be considered one of the smallest around. But we do get the job done, and we try to get better at what we do every day.

Sometimes, the mail we get helps us see what the world was like when newsrooms had a larger staff. Mail is often addressed to the “Business Editor,” “Religion Editor” or “Assignment Editor” – titles that are long gone and may have never existed at our publication. We frequently get comments online or phone calls asking, “Where was your proofreader?” The truth is, there is no such person, and there hasn’t been a proofreader for many years. It is now called “the person sitting next to you.”

Most newsrooms are shrinking – the need for staff members who can do any and all jobs is greater than ever. And we are lucky. We have many multi-taskers on our staff. But we cannot do everything on our own.

This is why it is more important than ever for the community to participate in our message board discussions, for online readers to report abuse on comments that are inappropriate and for those with knowledge of area events to send us a note to let us know what’s going on.

We always welcome submissions at editor@middletownpress.com, and you are welcome to send us photos. We want The Middletown Press to remain a community newspaper, but we need your help in keeping it that way.

U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman comes down the hill from the Kleen Energy plant and gets ready for his press conference in a muddy parking lot.

My personal favorite thing in this video is the TV reporter who jumps out and says "How've you been?" like they were old friends who haven't had a chance to catch up in a really long time.

This gives you an idea of what it's like before a press conference begins (The video below is from today's press conference with Middletown Mayor Sebastian Giuliano and U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman outside the gates of the Kleen Energy plant in Middletown).

Tonight while driving home from work I realized two things: I definitely need new tires on my car, and the state is doing an awful job plowing Route 66.

Perhaps if this week’s snowstorm had been played up as much as last week’s I would have been prepared. And perhaps the state would have been prepared too.

I remember hearing on the police scanner in the early evening hours that “westbound 66 is absolutely awful.” I figured that by 7:15, it would be all cleared up. After all, Route 66 is a major road. The worst part would surely just be getting through the lights from Main Street and up to Route 3, I told myself.

But I knew already as I pulled out of the McDonald’s parking lot that I wouldn’t have enough speed to make it all the way up the hills of Middlefield. I was lucky I had stopped for gas a few minutes earlier, because I ran out of speed right before Victory Christian Church and had to roll back down until I could turn around and head back downhill.

I waited patiently in the Agway parking lot in Middlefield, thinking a plow truck must surely come any moment. I’m sure I’ve heard an official at some point say that the state plows each of its roads at least once an hour, and if it’s bad it’s just because the plow trucks can’t keep up with the snow.

Well, I waited. And waited. And waited. It even stopped snowing while I waited, but no trucks came.

I read Merrick Alpert’s biography, then his campaign goals. Twice. I even started jotting down questions for the meeting I have with him tomorrow, but I gave up because it really wasn’t something I wanted to be doing in an abandoned parking lot. I just wanted to go home.

Hope flooded through me as I saw two orange trucks come down Route 66 and head toward Middletown. Surely, it wouldn’t be too long now until they turned around and came back up the hill. After all, plowing the hills should be a priority, right? Everyone knows how dangerous those are when they are slick and wet.

9 p.m. came and went, and there wasn’t another plow truck in sight. Finally, I started moving back and forth in the parking lot just to make sure I wouldn’t get stuck. There were probably about 5 inches on the ground where I sat, idling.

Just as I was about to give up and head back to the office – I had been avoiding this because it felt like giving up, plus, I would have never known when the coast was clear if I turned around now – I saw the blinking lights easer their way up the hill from Middletown.

I had waited over 90 minutes at this point. “The roads better be good now,” I thought as I followed the trucks, trying to gain enough speed to make it through the traffic light before it turned.

Once I got past Guida’s, I knew I’d be OK. However, the roads didn’t improve much until I got to I-84.

My ride home normally takes me 35 minutes in good conditions. Tonight, it took 3 hours. A co-worker who left around 4:30 to beat the rush-hour traffic said it took him an hour just to get from Middletown to the Meriden mall.

It snows every year – several times. Why is it always such a big surprise? And why can’t a New England state do a better job to clear the roads?

The Middletown Press staff received a letter from our CEO, John Paton, last week.

"I am committed to investing in our future," he wrote. "We will invest in our people through training and in upgrading our technology to make the neccessary changes to take this company into the future and we will make sure all employees share in our growth."

As someone who has been with the JRC for more than 5 years now, I have to say Paton is a breath of fresh air.

If anyone can help small, local newspapers transform into a future world - it will be him.

"Going forward we will be a team," Paton writes in his letter. "When the Company wins, the employees win. We will win together."

Like I said in a previous post here, these are exciting times to be in the newspaper business. Everything is changing quickly, and yes, it is sometimes very stressful, but think about all the new, cool things we get to do.

The Middletown Press has a story today about how quickly Middlesex Hospital and its staff responded to the explosion at the Kleen Energy power plant in Middletown on Sunday. Check it out here.

Today I learned that getting a 2-minute video clip from a press conference up on our web site can take up to six hours and several phone calls to tech support.

WATCH IT HERE.

I also learned that when someone whispers to you very near your camera, it will get caught on tape.

If you watch the video in the link above from today's press conference at Middletown City Hall regarding the Kleen Energy plant explosion on Sunday, you will hear Sal Nesci from the health department whisper to me "Did everyone get this?" as he shows me a the script the mayor is reading from. I thought I was being very subtle, but you can clearly hear me whisper back: "No, we got a different one."

That, dear people, is "real life" journalism.

Was there anyone in Middlesex or New Haven County that didn't feel the explosion on Sunday from the Kleen Energy power plant in Middletown?

I felt it at my house, and I live 30 miles away. Of course, I didn't know what it was. It seemed minor, like when the neighbors slam the front door too hard.

Then I heard the news, and I knew I'd have a good excuse to miss the Super Bowl. That's alright, I thought as I headed to work. I really don't like football anyway.

We called in a reporter and a photographer that were scheduled to be off, and we coordinated efforts with the New Haven Register, who sent two reporters and a photographer. Our friends in Torrington at The Register Citizen helped us with Twitter.

One person in the newsroom was in charge of getting everything up on our web site, and you can soon watch all the coverage related to the explosion on THIS PAGE.

What we didn't count on was the floods of phone calls from the rest of the world - we spoke with BBC and Sky News in London as well as two Australian news organizations, a newspaper in Italy, someone from Canada and one in France. All wanted to know more about the explosion, and we ended up going on air with them trying to help them with their coverage while still trying to focus on our coverage.

A daily newspaper in France actually ended up using our staff photographer's photo on their front page, via the Associated Press. I think I saw the same photo on a Swedish newspaper's web site as well.

For tomorrow's paper, we are hoping to get some aerial photos via the New Haven Register, and hopefully we'll know more soon about the victims involved. Stay tuned.

For the first time in many years, I am actually excited to be in the newspaper business.

I just got back from a publisher's conference in Pennsylvania near our headquarters in Yardley, where I got to meet our company's new CEO, John Paton. His vision for our company will most certainly put a more positive spin on the term "JRC." It will also help move our company towards the future, where we need to be.

Newspapers are not dead - yet - they may not ever die. The question is, how do we keep going as a company with less and less demand for print products? The answer: We become a media organization that operates 24/7.

No longer is the main concern the nightly deadline or just "getting the paper out." Technically, we "get the paper out" every hour of every day. On the Internet, our deadline is NOW, and we need to work fast and efficiently at all hours of the day.

To help bring all JRC newspapers up to speed, Paton sent all publishers and editors who attended the conference back to their home newspapers with a Flip Cam - a tiny little thing that takes up to 2 hours of video with the push of a button. Within 30 days, all reporters at all JRC newspapers will carry one in their pockets.

The news business is changing - fast. Here at The Middletown Press, we are on board with those changes and we can't wait to become more visible on the web and to update our readers throughout the day with what happens in Middlesex County.

Now you can take a virtual tour of our newsroom right here!

Pretty soon, you will be able to read posts here from the editor of The Middletown Press!