Good news and (kinda) bad news.

Bad news first. If you haven't heard, my scrappy little VW Golf was rear-ended at high speed the other day, with me inside. I was waiting for a turn arrow on Lakeshore Drive when a guy clipped my rear-right corner and ripped the wheel off the axle.

It's only "kinda bad news" because of three things. 1. I wasn't hurt, other than a little soreness for a few days. 2. Neither Karen nor the baby was in the car. 3. I wanted a new car anyway.

Insurance has promptly totaled the VW and cut me a check for almost exactly what I bought the car for a few years back. (Well, it'll be equal once I get my $1,000 deductible back in a few months.) Now I get to go car shopping. Thinking a larger hatchback or a smaller SUV like Karen's Honda CRV. Let me know if you hear about anything.

The good news is, I've got a new job. A month or so back, my boss and I started getting serious about planning a full-time social media gig for me, and now it's culminated in the creation of our first-ever Social Media Strategist.

I'll still be doing quite a bit of writing, but I'll also be planning ways for the agency and our clients to better use emerging technologies and trends like mobile applications, social networking, micro-blogging and so on. To avoid boring most of you, I'll leave that stuff to my other blog.

New day care, new blog, new big-ass shed.

With my usual apologies for a dearth of updates here, I wanted to fill you guys in on a few things that have been going on around the Griner household:

1. Allison finally got into a great day care. She's now in the new infant room at a local Catholic church, which we were amazingly impressed with when we toured it several months back.

After our previous run-ins with bad day care, it's nice to have a place that's so attentive to her. But we do think it's strange that they've called us twice with concerns about her health: once because she was sleeping too much, and once because she wasn't peeing. I'm waiting for the panicked call where they tell us her poop smells entirely too good.

2. As you might know, I've started a new blog for work. It's dedicated to all things social media (blogs, social networks, messaging, etc.). I don't know if you'll enjoy it as a normal human who's not into marketing or the evolving Web, but I'm trying to write it in a conversational tone anyway. And every Friday I feature a "Cool Tool of the Week" that you might actually find useful.

3. We're almost done with the large garden shed in our back yard. I can't imagine how long it would have taken without the intense help of several friends and, most notably, my wonderful parents. They all even came over and got much of the work done while we were out of town visiting Karen's family. Thanks again to everyone who pitched in; the shed's going to make a big difference in our storage situation.

Here's a shot of the shed as it is now:



You can see a whole gallery of the construction on our Flickr page.

As I said, we're "almost done." Really the only major tasks left are getting rid of the extra construction materials and painting the exterior (once the Alabama summer humidity dies down a bit).

Right now we're thinking the shed will be a pale yellow. But if you want to stump for chartreuse or something, now's your chance.

Remembering the man who created my career.

On the last days of my sophomore year at Missouri, the job situation was bleak. As a freshman, I had defied expectations and landed a fantastic yet grueling internship at the Birmingham Post-Herald. Unfortunately, this left me cocky in my internship hunt for the next summer. I only applied at larger daily newspapers, none of which seemed to be biting. Time was running out.

So I called New Directions for News, a think tank based at the Missouri School of Journalism. The man who answered was Rich Somerville, who invited me to come by "and see if we like each other." Instead of talking about my anemic resume or my qualifications to be a research assistant, we simply chatted about where journalism was headed. I was struck that such a veteran of the industry was treating a long-haired 19-year-old as a peer and truly listening to what I had to say.

It was the first of countless conversations I had with Rich, who hired me on the spot and soon became not only my summer employer but also my professional mentor and close friend. We would work together at four very different places over the next decade, and each time, Rich would be a constant source of inspiration and guidance.

Rich died of a heart attack a week ago at his home in Eureka, Calif. He was only 61.

I've always had a hard time explaining Rich's role in my life, because it surely must have been a rare relationship. In college, I lacked the initiative or obsequiousness to cultivate a professor as a mentor. In fact, I doubt more than one or two professors would even remember me by name. But Rich was always up for getting a cup of coffee and talking about the industry's future, along with more practical issues like my quest for employment.

Senior year, I was managing editor of The Maneater student paper when we decided to depose our longtime faculty adviser. I convinced Rich to step in, and he quickly proved a perfect example of what an adviser for the independent newspaper could be -- hands-off, but motivational and accessible.

Finishing his doctoral work (but, sadly, never his dissertation), Rich moved on after that year. So did I, becoming a reporter at The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Ind. Three years later, as I was considering my next career move, Rich persuaded me to move all the way to Northern California and become city editor at The Union newspaper, where he was editor.

What followed were several rewarding, often-challenging years of working with Rich to grow readership at an established community paper. While innovative and passionate, Rich would be the first to admit he had his weak spots. His emotional connection to the work was known to spark a few outbursts and create friction with some longtime staffers. But those of us who stuck with Rich learned a great deal about where journalism was headed -- and what obstacles might keep the newspaper industry from getting there.

After a few more years, Rich left the paper. He was frustrated with the industry but also hopeful, so he started a newspaper consulting firm called Media Foresight Associates. For a while, Rich was the sole employee and had good success with his first round of clients. In fact, the consulting proved so fruitful, he hired me to join the firm in late 2005. I had moved back to Alabama and was trying to decide on my next career move.

Consulting alongside Rich was enjoyable and rewarding, mainly because his stress level was so much lower than during his years in newspapers. But before I could work with him for very long, I was hired to my current job as a copywriter. (I feared calling Rich to tell him I was going into advertising. His response, one of my favorite Rich moments, was: "At least it's not PR.")

Soon after, Rich was convinced by media mogul Dean Singleton to take the helm of the Times-Standard newspaper in Eureka, Calif. A bit hesitant to give up the relative ease of his consulting gig, Rich was finally won over by his own competitive spirit and love for community journalism. He had simply missed it too much to say no.

We kept up, of course, exchanging e-mails and having occasional phone conversations about his progress. A few weeks ago, we even talked by e-mail about his hopes of hiring a photographer friend of mine. So it was obviously a sudden blow to find out about his death on Monday of last week. It's painful on levels that I think will only be shown over time, as I find myself wishing I could call him to ask for advice or gossip about media infighting.

Working with Rich's brother, I'm excited to say that we've created The Richard Somerville Memorial Scholarship at the Missouri School of Journalism. We've set a daunting goal -- a $25,000 minimum is required to make it an endowed scholarship -- but even that ambitious of a task is less than I owe Rich for his time, his support and his friendship. The world is a poorer place without Rich in it, and although he boosted my confidence and skills to new levels, his death still leaves me with a void that no one else could ever fill.

Uncertain about your career path? Maybe that's a good thing.

I have a lot to write about on here as soon as I eke out a few minutes. For now, just enjoy this nice little video, which captures something I've been grappling with ever since switching careers.



Sometimes I worry that I don't have a career path in mind, a certain set of promotions I'd like to aim for. I like writing. Hell, I love it. I feel like my current job has been more than fun; I think it's opened my mind to a whole new range of ways I can use writing personally and professionally.

Who'd have thought you'd get that from writing bank fliers and tourism ads?

Anyway, more baby news and other pontificating coming soon.

Still not sure how I get paid to do this stuff...

We've just launched an agency promotion that I had a blast working on, so I wanted to share some of the stuff.

A few months back, we had a meeting to brainstorm ways we could promote the fact that we hired a new interactive chief. I pitched the idea of making Web videos that parodied bad-lawyer ads. Everyone else liked the idea, so I wrote up some scripts.

Here's the result, though I'll admit that some of the best lines were ad-libbed.





You can check out the full site here, and I've also been writing an in-character Twitter feed.


Hope you enjoy! The reactions so far seem pretty positive. Here's one writeup, and here's another (admittedly from the blog I write for, but still).

If you'd like to help pass the videos and site around, I'll make sure you have the people's fame and ovation forever.

Another victim of Prog Rock vandalism.

Hope to have some photos soon from the great tree split-o-thon of 2008, an event which is taking its toll on almost every muscle in my body. But until then, here's something I meant to post a while back.

When I came back after being out of the office for Allison's birth, I found that my four framed vinyl records had been stolen and maliciously replaced:




In case you can't see it well, that's two Rush albums alongside ones from King Crimson and Yes, all of which are practitioners of the worst music genre ever.

Luckily, the culprit stepped forward later that day, and the stench of Stephen King's playlist is now out of my office for good.



Whew.