Read Shanna's blog

Shanna Flowers is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.

Shanna Flowers

Recent columns

• Glimpsing the dream
• There's merit to teachers' pay plan
• Readers became focus of column

• Column archive

Today, I jump from the sidelines of the Internet into the warp-speed world of 21st-century media.

Today marks the launch of my new, as-yet-unnamed blog. (More about the name later.)

Blogs are like the office water coolers of yesteryear. Somebody (me in this case) gets the conversation going. Folks saunter by. They give their two cents. They engage in civil debate. Everyone goes away -- maybe unchanged in their own thinking, but at least aware of where others stand on the issue.

I realize I come late to blogging. That's because only recently, after an unintentional career intervention, was I able to admit: "My name is Shanna Flowers, and I'm a journalistic dinosaur."

The revelation came during a visit late last month to Southern University in Baton Rouge, La. As I sat largely clueless in a class of journalism students preparing to learn to design newspaper pages on a computer screen, it became painfully obvious I was old school.

In my nearly 23 years of working in newspapers, I never learned page design. Not using the yesteryear tools of pica pole and photo wheel, let alone today's method of electronically building a page.

Reaching for relevance

That triggered thoughts of all the other "new-fangled" multimedia stuff I never bothered to learn. I haven't shot video or recorded audio or posted up-to-the-minute stories that have become the staples of electronic newspaper Web sites such as roanoke.com. Yet.

In an age when newspapers, and by extension their employees, are remaking themselves to be competitive in the multimedia world of iPods, iPhones and 24-hour news cycles, my experience level remained rooted solely in pen and paper.

OK, and Microsoft Word.

My strength as a shoe-leather reporter is talking to people, getting them to share the details of their lives or situation, then synthesizing those facts into 450 compelling words. Longer if the issue merits it.

But today, a journalist has to add some technological bells and whistles to the shoe leather.

In that class at Southern, I felt like a Ford Falcon in a room full of Toyota Priuses. I became aware I had to come into the 21st century if I wanted to stay professionally relevant -- and employable.

Lunch, anyone?

So here goes. Beginning today, you can find me online at blogs.roanoke.com/shannaflowers/.

My blog begins simply. Readers will be able to look at my column online, click on a link and fire off a comment. The readers' reaction will be available for public viewing, enabling others to join in the fray, er, discussion.

On days between my published column, I'll write a bit about what the subject of the next column may be -- and entertain comments, suggestions and questions on that subject or others.

Of course, I maintain the right to refuse to publish comments a reasonable person would find offensive, vulgar or distasteful.

As I get more experienced with blogging, I'll add different elements that I hope will generate even greater interaction with those who take the time to read my column.

One little problem, though: I'm having the hardest time coming up with the right name.

So I'm asking a favor: Go to my new blog, click on "Comments," and send me your suggestion, along with why you think your name works. If I find a winner among the entries, I'll take you to lunch anywhere you'd like in the Roanoke Valley. (Aw, come on, I'm not the ogress folks think I am.)

I need your suggestions by next Sunday. I'll read each one of them.

With that, let the blogging begin. And thank you for helping an old journalist learn new skills.

Shanna Flowers' column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.