Beware the Kaneohe Christmas Parade this morning. Traffic becomes a nightmare during the couple of hours of the parade. We’re just going to hunker down until it’s over before venturing out of Kaaawa.

Don’t miss this one–“The chickens come home to roost at Gannett“, which appears on another fine Seattle blog, Rogue Columnist, by former reporter/editor Jon Talton.

And I have to mention Talton’s brief biographical statement.

I’ve been a working journalist for 27 years. Most recently, I spent seven years as a columnist at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, standing up to that state’s numerous cranks, haters, sleazy ‘businessmen’ and right-wing thugs.

I was also an editor and columnist at the Charlotte Observer, Cincinnati Enquirer, Rocky Mountain News, Dayton Daily News and what is now the North County Times in San Diego. I specialized in the economy, business, energy, urban issues, politics and sustainability.

Now I’m not a 22-year-old HTML kid and have little interest in writing about Britney’s panties. So no newspapers are calling. I’m a writer living in Seattle. Aside from the risk of living under a bridge, I’m free to write the truth and raise hell. That was once the calling of the best newspapers. Now a few of us will try to carry it on as guerrilla journalists and rogue columnists.

Well said.

Am I feeling geeky this morning? Apparently so. I followed my nose through several issues and ended up speculating on the Star-Bulletin’s back issues. First, I noticed the Advertiser story yesterday on the newly released LBJ tapes failed to include a link to the recording of the president urging Senator Hubert Humphrey to consider Dan Inouye as his running mate, while the Star-Bulletin version this morning managed to assist readers by prominently displaying links to the LBJ Library and the specific recording containing the VP discussion.

Then I noticed the Star-Bulletin using new URL styles. Each story URL now includes a long title reference similar to those created by blog software.

http://www.starbulletin.com/news/20081206_Tapes_reveal_Inouye_had_LBJ_pushing_him_for_68_ticket.html

I hadn’t paid attention to this before.

Noodling around on starbulletin.com, it appears that until September 24, 2008, the URL to individual Star-Bulletin stories had a standard format. For example:

http://starbulletin.com/2008/09/23/news/story02.html

On 9/24, they shifted to the new format with the blog-like look. Was there a software change that accounts for the shift?

Another change is found in the URL for stories in back issues. Previously they retained their original URL, making it very simple to look up old news. However, the S-B has now changed that filing system with a new archive format. That last example is now found at the following address:

http://archives.starbulletin.com/2008/09/23/news/story02.html

It’s not necessarily a big change, but it could have real implications. It makes me wonder whether the S-B might be preparing to charge for access to stories from its archive, as the Advertiser already attempts to do, or perhaps is outsourcing the archive maintenance. I’ll have to ask around.

And I also noticed that the S-B is now using its own version of TinyURL to create shorter links (see www.hsblinks.com).

Happy Saturday.