JESSICA DaSILVA

So Monday marked the beginning of my second week at the Trib and Media General’s orientation day for new employees.

All last week, I had been told the seven-hour meeting was going to be absolutely painful and pointless. To my surprise, it wasn’t that bad. Then again, I also brought a book to keep me entertained during the boring parts… like while we watched a series of weird over-dramatization videos from the early ’90s on sexual harassment, spreading gossip in the workplace and etc.

But there were some really interesting parts to it.

Two people from the TBO.com staff (I forgot to write down their names) discussed the Web site, which was cool.

They brought up some new ideas they had been trying out, like blogging from Bonnaroo via Twitter. Also, they showed us some of their interesting database journalism (like the one on animal attacks).

And since TBO has an active audience that comments all over its content, the journalists are learning how to use them to their advantage for more information or story leads.

For the sales people in orientation, they addressed how they use their statistics to determine price and locations for advertising. It was crazy to hear that because I find my statistics really confusing. I don’t pretend to be good at math or charts or anything, but how they get information from all of those numbers blew my mind!

I think I need to start reading into my stats more.