No. 15: a milestone, of sorts

In the ever-changing world of newspapers, we're trying out new ideas that we never dreamed of doing as recently as a couple of years ago.

At the Observer-Reporter, we've come up with a concept called "What's Up With That?" The premise is self-explanatory: We find something we're wondering about, and do our best to impart ... what is up with that.

The tricky part about the series is that it requires a complementary video component. That's not a particularly easy concept to grasp for journalists who have worked strictly on the print side for decades. Nor for the person in charge of producing the videos (that's usually me), who worked strictly on the print side for a good 20 years.

The current video episode of "What's Up With That?" is our 15th. We hope that the individual episodes have gotten more polished and more entertaining as we've proceeded. We're learning all the time.

The latest episode is Scott Beveridge's "Mysteries of the courthouse," detailing some of the unusual stuff you'll find at the Washington County Courthouse. Scott was hesitant to appear in front of the camera, but he came across well. And I had a lot of fun programming the opening of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" (or some facsimile thereof) to use as theme music.

In case you want to catch up, or compare and contrast the various episodes, here they are so far:

• Episode 15: Mysteries of the courthouse


• Episode 14: 'Roman' around the Trust Building


• Episode 13: Cut me a deal


• Episode 12: The hot dog question


• Episode 11: 'Shoefiti'


• Episode 10: General Tso's chicken


• Episode 9: Red, white and blue barber poles


• Episode 8: Brave, Hero and other place names


• Episode 7: Where the clothes go


• Episode 6: What's with the wires?


• Episode 5: Size does matter


• Episode 4: Old dorms, new dorms


• Episode 3: Big church, little church


• Episode 2: Kids ponder frozen water


• Episode 1: Amanda ponders the hereafter

What's Up With That?

For more than a decade, the Observer-Reporter ran a regular Monday profile of an individual (or occasionally, individuals) in the Washington/Greene County area who had an interesting story to tell.

Eventually, all standing features run their course, so we came up with a new concept for each Monday: What's Up With That? The title is self-explanatory. Numerous occurrences prompt that question, and we're trying to come up with some answers.


Tying in with the newspaper feature is a short video production related in some manner to the topic at hand. We've started with a three-minute film called "Amanda Ponders the Hereafter," accompanying Amanda Gillooly's story about a venture called casketfurniture.com, which, indeed, makes caskets that can be used as furniture until they're needed for the other purpose.

We're attempting to bring some levity to the subject matter, and in test screenings we had viewers chuckling.

Here, you can judge for yourself: "Amanda Ponders the Hereafter"