I'm wondering if Emtronics would consider himself fired if on the day his union contract is being renewed and he was brought into the office and told that he wouldn't be offered a new contract. Would he consider himself fired?

UPDATE: Neither Gorenz nor Stowell were present, so the PJS was wrong. The PJS got the job titles wrong. Thanks to the person who gave me the info.

I'm sorry ... were you saying something?

Oh HECK yeah. The more the merrier. Be prepared for rowdy Diet Pepsi drinkers.

Terry: We're friends and all, but just about everything you said in this comment is wrong.

"One minute, you're gleefully bashing the mainstream media "

Occasionally, I bash the media, it's how you get their attention. And it works. Sometimes I heap praise on them, like the folks who ran WMBD 31's excellent weather coverage this weekend.

-- claiming it's a dinosaur and ought to just give up the ghost and go quietly into the night.

No. I want the mainstream media (newspapers in particular) to EVOLVE as technology has made the business model of printing news on paper and delivering it door to door financially unsupportable. News organizations that do not evolve WILL go the way of the dinosaurs. That's not a wish, just a prediction.

In fact, you are constantly pointing out that the future of journalism is "citizen journalists" such as yourself.

More accurately, I believe that ONLINE is the future of journalism. The bulk of reporting will be done by news organizations. I think that the media corporations that own most newspapers and broadcasters will collapse under the weight of their greed and be replaced by leaner, smarter start ups that are run by people with a higher commitment to journalism. Many of these new news orgs will evolve from sites created by people who we today call citizen journalists.

Then, when you get called on it, you claim that unless you are actually paid -- in effect made a part of the MSM media you despise -- then no one should expect you to actually go out and perform journalism.

No. I hear this "well, why don.t you go out and cover it yourself" comment whenever I offer commentary about the medias. The fact is I did do that, on and off for 20 years. I'm done with working for the MSM. The reason I don't go out and do it on my own is that, hey, I have to work. I work 40 hours a week, sleep eight hours out of the day, and I spend most of the remain time time blogging, helping other people to blog.

So "citizen journalists" only do "journalism" when they are paid by a "mainstream media outlet"?

No a journalist is anyone who does journalism. What I said in the above comment is that were I making enough money on the blog to quit the day job, I might very well have been out covering one or more of these stories.

Paul: Welcome back after a long absence.

What is your position, actually? That because bloggers aren't doing for free the amount of work being done by professional journalists, that bloggers cannot criticize news organizations for insufficiently staffing their news departments?

This blogger would be happy to go screaming into the night in pursuit of storm coverage to assist the underpaid and understaffed local media ... provided someone if going to give me a salary to let me quit my day job. Until then, I offer my little criticisms and do some reporting when the spirit and my schedule allows.

But thanks for the input.

Pictures of damage from Elmwood, pictures of tornadoes, all sent to station by viewers, is classic citizen journalism. Folks have been doing this since before anyone called it citizen journalism. But cell phones and email are helping citizens contribute to the public's body of knowledge.

WMBD's Bob Larson -- with more than three decades experience in Peoria, many as a weatherman -- was worried the heart of Peoria was going to be wrecked by a tornado. We dodged a bullet.

Downed power lines and trees on the West end of Peoria

Stealing some recent comments from TMZ:
http://www.tmz.com/2010/06/05/drew-peterson-stacy...

36. Neighbor just said two large black suburbans with tinted windows just pulled out of the site. Don't know if that means anything. The tent is probably up because it has been raining on and off all day.

Posted at 4:18 PM on Jun 5, 2010 by dk

and ...

38. Update: The dig is over for today and will likely not resume tomorrow, said Illinois State Police Sgt. Tom Burek. Burek declined to say whether anything was found.

He added that it's possible that they'd start digging again Monday.

The diggers had carved out a 10-foot-by-10 foot section in an area that was very difficult to navigate, Burek said. As of now they have let go the anthropologist they had brought in for assistance. The tip is "significant in the fact that we're here," he said.