But more selfishly, Vande Velde rides for team Garmin Chipotle. Yes, that Chipotle.

The Colorado-based burrito chain needs only the flimsiest excuses to give away food. Come dressed in tinfoil on Halloween and get free burrito. Fill out a faux Chipotle tax return on April 15 and get a free burrito.

So if Vande Velde wears the yellow jersey on July 27, I gotta think it’s burritos for everyone.

Possible? Hey, Christian is only 38 seconds behind the leader, and the Alps are coming up. Climbing is Vande Velde’s specialty.

When I started at the Gazette, we didn’t have voicemail. It was the No. 1 employee request for years. Now that we have it, I prefer to get messages via email. Much faster.

via Howard Owens

UPDATE: Bad link fixed

But today, his opponent, John McCain, is scheduled to be in Denver, at a public appearance starting at noon.

Today’s question, class, is this: Should the McCain story also be placed on the Gazette front page?

The reflexive decision inside the newsroom is: No. The big reason: Obama came to Colorado Springs. McCain is not coming to Colorado Springs. The McCain story is not as local; therefore, not as newsworthy; therefore, not deserving of such a prominent position.

Some other ingredients in the mix:

Obama coming right into the heart of the most Republican territory in Colorado was a nervy move. News points for that.

On the other hand, Denver is the most Democratic territory in Colorado — and the site of the Democratic National Convention next month. Should McCain get news points for that?

The Denver papers played Obama’s visit to the Springs on their respective front pages. One could argue that Colorado Springs paper therefore should play McCain’s visit to Denver on its front page.

On the other hand, both Denver papers are covering the Democratic convention — and all the events leading up to it — with everything they have. Thus, Obama is very much a local story in Denver right now. He could have changed a flat tire in Durango, and he would have been front-page news in Denver.

McCain probably is going to be front-page news in the Tuesday editions of the Denver papers. That makes sense: his public event will be held in Denver. The Rocky Mountain News is liveblogging the event, just as the Gazette did with Obama last week. The Denver Post is not, as far as I can tell.

But, would a McCain appearance in Colorado Springs make the front pages in Denver? That’s not so obvious, though my guess is yes because of Denver’s place on the presidential-election stage this year. The Springs is not on that stage.

Still more factors to consder:

Will McCain make news? Will he announce a running mate, for example? Or unveil a new policy direction? That would up the news value.

How big is the crowd? If half a million people materialize and paralyze Denver during his appearance, McCain’s news value goes up.

FWIW, “equal time” is not relevant. Equal time is a rule that applies only to broadcasters, not to newspapers or the Internet. And the rule comes into play only when a candidate requests time on the air in response to time given to an opponent; there is no requirement that broadcasters keep a ledger of airtime and make sure it balances. In any case, the rule doesn’t apply to news events such as campaign appearances.

For a newspaper/website, the real goal is appropriate context and fair treatment. When McCain makes a whistle stop appearance in South Carolina, it’s not front-page news in Colorado Springs — and might not be news in our pages at all. On the same day, an Obama appearance in our city is a front-page story. Proximity matters. Denver is more proximate than South Carolina, so McCain will get coverage in our pages, from one of our own staff reporters. The question will be where to place the story.

UPDATE: McCain’s audience was about 400 people. Based on news reports, he said he favors reducing tax rates, supports free trade and supports renewable energy. Not terribly surprising positions for any GOP candidate — and ones that already have received press attention. The newsiest angle to emerge appears to be McCain’s call to reinvigorate nuclear power generation.

It doesn’t add up to a slam-dunk page-one placement, but let’s see what other news develops, or doesn’t, throughout the rest of the day. There might not be much competition for page one tomorrow.

The article quotes the creator of a popular wrestlilng website: “For every ad that doesn’t load, we don’t earn the needed revenue we need to generate revenue to pay our mortgages, bills, etc.”

“Tough. Get a job,” responds one reader.

Pouring 50 hours a week into a website that get 4 million hits a month isn’t a job?

“I pay for my bandwidth,” retorts another reader, concluding that the content on the web — the reason why he pays for the bandwidth — should be included in the price.

I pay for my gasoline, too. I guess my truck — the reason why I buy the gas — should be included in the price.

The “news should be free” debate is an old one, by web standards. Eventually, it will run into an even older truism: There is no free lunch.

For a lot of people, the mention of Haggard’s name is an invitation to revisit, at length, the glass-house drama of his ouster from New Life Church. At the same time, no other subject inspires so many people to write about how much they don’t care.

You can argue he’s old news. You can argue he deserves to be left alone. You can argue it’s not fair to the New Life community to keep bringing it up. But what you can’t argue is that Ted Haggard does not still stir deep passions among believers and nonbelievers alike. And the fact that he’s back in Colorado Springs, apparently permanently, is news.

Still, at some point the media — including the Gazette — need to give the man and his family some space. Just because Haggard at one point was a compelling national story, it does not necessarily follow that he remains a compelling national or even local story, or that he ought to be subject to media scrutiny that never wanes. Assuming he doesn’t start a new church or something equally public in nature, the next step for the media is the awkward, but necessary, disengagement with Haggard.

The story, in case you haven’t seen it yet, is about a Government Accountability Office report, still a draft and not final, that asserts military testimony to Congress in March understated the vulnerability of PAFB’s “Building 2,” headquarters of NORAD and of Northern Command (the military component of the Department of Homeland Security). It’s the new nerve center of any military response needed in the face of a natural disaster or terrorist threat.

It’s also a stone’s throw from any number of nearby buildings. And right next to the airport. And it’s not, any more, in Cheyenne Mountain, perhaps the planet’s most impenetrable fortress. Its move from the mountain’s womb to an above-ground office building in an urban setting has raised obvious security questions from the day it was proposed. You don’t have to be al-Qaida to wonder, what if . . .

I don’t mean to dismiss this woman’s concerns. She has every right to be worried. And on the surface, it seems logical that publicizing the vulnerability of the building is courting attack.

That logic would hold up — if it could be assumed that the military had made Building 2 as secure as it needs to be.

The problem is: how do we know the military has done that? How can Americans hold their military leadership accountable?

Accountability requires publicity. Accountability cannot be achieved in secret. You can’t entrust verification to someone else — even someone you’ve elected — and call yourself a government of the people. That’s why we published the story, and will continue to cover it.

I’m not talking about revealing Building 2’s specific vulnerabilities. We’re not about to publish a blueprint for destruction. This is about verifying whether America is getting the best protection possible of a vital national asset. For now anyway, the GAO is saying the Pentagon isn’t delivering that product. The military now has its turn to respond to the GAO assessment and assure Congress — behind closed doors — that it’s doing what’s necessary to get the facility up to security standards.

This whole process is supposed to be classified. So it’s doubly concerning to discover, through this small crack in the secrecy surrounding the move of NORAD command to Building 2, real questions about military accountability. Maybe those questions will be answered. Unless more cracks in the secrecy appear, we won’t know.

What is more secure: a building that actually — and verifiably — is as fortified as necessary, or a building that actually has weaknesses that we hope a terrorist never finds out about?

The Gazette published two news stories in its June 15 edition, both dealing with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. That’s not unusual in a presidential election year. What was unusual was the advertisement that occupied the same two pages.

The advertisement, for Centura Health and St. Francis Medical Center, took the form of a large blue “H” that spanned pages A18 and A19. The news stories occupied the spaces between the legs of the H.

Was this some kind of message, tying together Centura the hospital and Obama the candidate? No. The advertising in the Gazette and the news stories in the Gazette are created separately. The Obama stories, neither of which mentions health care, are not part of Centura’s ad.

In most cases, editors select news stories to publish, and they select the pages on which to place them, without knowledge of the content of the advertisements on those pages. Had Centura placed a more common, rectangular advertisement on page A18 or A19, it’s just as likely that the Obama stories would have been placed on either of those pages.

As does any business, advertising evolves, and part of that evolution is the creation of more creatively shaped newspaper ads. However, advertising and the editing of the news will remain separate endeavors.

Will we see more of these kind of ads in the future? Yes, almost certainly. Already airline ads have planes “flying” into the text of adjacent stories, for example.

A company called TV Media sends us a digital file each Friday containing all the non-advertising content of the Sunday TV publication. This past Friday, TV Media sent us a file that contained a mix of correct and incorrect information. The front-of-the-book content, containing sports programming highlights for the upcoming week, is correct. The dates on the top of the pages are correct. What is incorrect are the grids containing the hour-by-hour programming information.

The grids themselves contain dates, which in this case do not match the dates on the top of each page, called folios. The folios are routinely checked before we release those pages to be turned into printing plates, and they were checked this time. What was not checked – and is not usually checked – are the dates on the grids themselves. Obviously, we’re going to have to start checking them before firing up the press.

My apologies for the aggravation this has caused. A lot of people, primarily older folks who can’t get out much and rely on TV as their principal source of entertainment, rely on the TV Spotlight magazine to be accurate. And almost none of them will ever see this blog, because few of them have or want computers to get up-to-the minute TV listings online. They do use their phones, however, and I’ve been talking with quite a few of them today.

We’ll be printing daily TV grids in the Life section throughout this week, until next Sunday’s TV Spotlight is published. We’ve also obtained an accurate set of programming grids for the entire current week, and have copies available at our front desk at 30 S. Prospect St.

We print each TV Spotlight seven days before it is delivered. I’ve already checked the edition scheduled to be delivered on Sunday, June 22. It’s got the correct grids in it.

Our new system, made by Digital Technology International in Utah, has been producing our Sports, Life and Go! sections since early May. On Monday, it will also produce the A, Metro and Business sections. The entire newsroom staff has gone through either four or eight half-days of training, which has resulted in not as much news getting covered during the past few weeks as normally would be the case.

These things never go as smoothly as hoped. A glitch or two on Monday
is likely, and the challenge will be to fix them on the fly. Failing to publish a Tuesday edition is not an option.

It’s a newsprint-saving move, something every newspaper is doing to navigate through a very tough economic transformation. I’d prefer not to do it, but given the choice of saving money through newsprint or people, I’d rather save on the paper and keep as many people as possible involved in covering the news in our region.

In the tabloid format, the comics are 20 percent smaller than they are in the broadsheet. The crossword is 7 percent smaller.

The advice columns – Amy Dickinson, Dr. Donohue and Heloise – are 25 percent smaller. That’s too much of a squeeze, and I hope to have the columns in a larger size by next Friday.