You can expect a few blogs about journalism from me, naturally.

This evening I attended WCCO-TV’s “Bloginar,” hosted right down at the Channel 4 studios on the Nicollet Mall.  My hope was to learn a thing or two that would help me with the development of this blog and to meet other Twin Cities bloggers.  I met a few, but the bulk of the seminar was focussed on the station’s new online venture, “The Wire.”  It was a bit disappointing that I didn’t really get a chance to meet and greet with more local bloggers, but I figure — that’s what the Internet is for, right?

Anyhow — it was really great to see a preview of “The Wire” and to hear all of the local questions and comments from some of the more Web savvy creatures around — the few dozen people in the room.

“The Wire” is a sort of Flash Web application — a timeline tracking stories as they happen — plotting each new development with little bubbles that grow in size proportionally to their relevance and how many comments they’re getting from users.  And each update is linked to the prior and subsequent blurb on the same topic/story.  Imagine how much easier it could be to follow developing stories like all-day events or catastrophes — things you kind of like to piece together yourself as you process what happened from start to finish.  (For an even more comprehensive look ahead at “The Wire,” check out David Erickson’s Internet marketing blog.)

When big stories happen right now, I find myself using stations’ clunky search boxes to track down any and all content they might have.  I like watching initial live reports in addition to the latest, polished packages that might be posted hours later.  I want to see all the copy that’s been posted.  Often, stations don’t wrap that up in one neat package.  Web producers get tired after a long haul.  Related links aren’t built-in.  And goodness, it’s rarely pretty.

John Daenzer, Director of New Media at WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, shows a crowd of local bloggers the station's newest Web venture, "The Wire."

The producers of the new venture showed us a six-minute video summing it all up — and it ended with a soundbite that’s become the paradigm for new media, something about how “The Wire” is an opportunity “to have the viewers help us give them what they want.”  Some love that.  Others cringe at it.  My opinion on that seems to lie in the middle somewhere, given the realities of the need for revenue and the responsibility journalists have to educate and sometimes even advocate a little.

I will say that it is so refreshing to see a local television station taking this kind of initiative on the Web.  I’m sure it will go through many tweaks before it really hits its stride.  But it appeared the bloggers in the room were quite receptive, if not just plain giddy.  And it is what it is — a cleaner, well-managed aggregate of local news… managed by the people who know a thing or two about local news.  It isn’t nuggets sandwiched between heaps of trash aggregated on Twitter or Facebook.  And it will not be replacing wcco.com, but rather augmenting what the station’s seemingly recession-resistant Web staff is already pumping out.

I was most struck by the kind of commitment the people at WCCO-TV have for developing new things, taking chances and spending a little money (a nice chunk of change, it seems).  I left television news because it became clear to me these kinds of investments weren’t happening in very many places… that there weren’t many crucibles for this kind of development left around the country.  And at the rate I’ve witnessed, it will take years, if not a decade-plus for some of the smaller market TV stations to catch up to a station like WCCO-TV on the Web front.  By then many of them will be…gulp…  Yes the old media are dying — but some of them will make it back from the cusp thanks to innovation like this.  The people behind it may have just the brains journalism has been searching for.  The people who will cement the next golden age in media.  Even if it isn’t thanks to this particular venture.  Bravo, Hometown Team (I loved that ‘CCO branding in the 1990s.)

In the weeks prior to my LSAT exam this summer, I broke the monotony of analyzing logical arguments to read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.  For those who haven’t read, it’s a fascinating look at what drives success — the kind achieved by those we’d call society’s standouts.  Gladwell wrote that he became frustrated with simplistic explanations of successful people like “he’s smart” or “he’s ambitious.”

Anyway, he says a lot of achievement has to do with things beyond the individual — as you’d imagine — and I found chapter eight particularly fascinating.  It was about the culture of education in Asian societies where rice cultivation is prominent.  Without blowing a really great read that you ought to consider… he shows how various societies’ agrarian roots tend to influence how school is scheduled for kids.  Wheat can be planted in the spring, harvested in the fall and the farmers can sit around all summer in some countries… hence the American three-month summer break. (I know, that’s very simplistic, but think about it.)  But rice is tended daily — a constant battle.  Gladwell quotes this old saying: “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred and sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.”  Asian countries tend to keep their kids in school more days a year.

I thought at the time, “a-ha!”  There’s an advantage that I’m sure has helped my dad rise above various challenges.  Anecdotally, it rings true, too.  My dad has incredible work ethic (workaholism?) and it must come from his youth spent in and around the rice paddies of old Yulong.

But then again — my dad didn’t complete much school growing up in China.  Only about three years’ worth, he says.  And that wasn’t his choice.  So that whole rice paddy thing only applies to my dad to a point.  He works incredibly hard.  But someone or some people short-changed him on the true advantage that phenomenon is supposed to foster: a stronger education.

And an education is something I know my dad is heart-broken over never getting.  Last night, we must have talked about a hundred different things ranging from business to health care reform to President Obama to the American way.  My dad is curious and he knows a good deal about a lot of things despite not reading English.  And I think he’s proud of his curiosity and the knowledge he has managed to acquire over the 30-plus years he’s been here.

But he said, “I’ve stayed in this country long enough to know a teeny little bit more and more [about a lot of things], but I don’t know how to manage it.”

I asked him what he meant by that.  He held up an envelope and said, “Daily life, I don’t know what [this] is.”  He told me the world is seen in two completely different ways:  the way educated people see things and the way the uneducated see things.  Yes, he’s been able to pull himself up in many ways.  But he can’t “manage” what he knows — or, connect the dots, so to speak.

Isn’t that sad?  It’s a crime.  And that’s why education is so important.  I loathe to think that there are people in this world (this country!) who still have to endure this sort of blaspheme against humanity.  My dad — with so much curiosity and interest in the affairs of the world around him — is constantly bedeviled by a limitation right before his eyes.  An inability to fully understand.  Dad says it’s enough to cause nightmares.

I’ve always asked my dad why he’s never pursued English classes — the answer is justification enough: he’s always worked too many hours.  Maybe when he retires.  Someone tell me how to help him understand it’s never too late.

Luckily this doesn’t have to end as some sort of sob story.  My dad doesn’t go around feeling sorry for himself.  And everyone I know who’s ever met my dad sees him as a huge success.  And he certainly is.  Look at me, my brothers, the restaurant’s long list of happy and grateful customers.  In my eyes — my old man will always be an outlier.