This photo, taken by coworker Jess Sprenkle, shows me offering chips to Bryan Tate, republican candidate for state representative.

If the camera adds 10 pounds, I probably gained 15 Friday.

That’s the day Sonya and I wandered around York city eating chips and feeding them to strangers for this video.

Why?

The former Toyota Arena at the York Expo Center has a new sponsor: Utz Quality Foods.

It’s going to be called the Utz Arena, effective June 1 — which some people think is a good thing.

I’ve been told that Yorkers had trouble pronouncing the word “Toyota,” anyways.

Apparently, peoplewould say “Tioga” or “Teroga” and other things that basically make no sense. As someone who owns a Toyota Camry, this type of phonetical screw-up is actually beyond my comprehension.

We set to the streets to see whether people knew how to say “Utz.” It’s kind of a trick question.

You can probably say it however your little heart desires, although the top right corner this site has a tutorial.

Anyway, we began at the arena itself, where an Alpaca convention of some sort was going on.

PERFECT.

We snapped a few shots of me interacting with the hairy beasts and moved along.

Then, we wandered around York city a bit, where I proceeded to throw

chips everywhere, feed random people, and pose suggestively with a statue of Marquis de LaFayette.

All in a day’s work.

After the video was made, I socialized it all over the freaking place.

Twitter. YDR Facebook. My Facebook.

Everywhere.

Here’s some of the madness that ensued:

VIDEO: How do you pronounce “Utz?” We took to the streets of #iloveyorkcity to find out: ydr.com/business/ci_23… #YorkPA cc: @utzsnacks

— laurenboyer (@laurenboyer) May 13, 2013

Funny TV. I prefer “UHTz” not “OOTz” MT @laurenboyer: BOYER INVESTIGATES: How do you pronounce “Utz?” ydr.com/business/ci_23…

— Jim Stanton (@VisualsForAll) May 13, 2013

Who on earth says anything but Uh-tz? MT @laurenboyer: BOYER INVESTIGATES: How do you pronounce “Utz?” ydr.com/business/ci_23… …

— Alex Weisler (@alexweisler) May 13, 2013

So far, we have about 400 views and it’s only Tuesday.

The post itself even made it to the #9 spot on ydr.com.

Some of my last group learning about journalism, and why it’s fun and everyone should do it, obviously.

I had the pleasure of speaking with two groups of  young people at Martin Library for the annual Youth Empowerment Summit.

Sponsored by the Harley-Davidson Foundation, the event connects students from the York Homeschool Association and 12 school districts with local professionals and artisans.

I got to speak about journalism, which is pretty rad.

I thought about bringing the NewsVroom van, but ultimately decided against it. I can’t parallel park my own car, let alone a gigantic creeper van.

Anywho, I brought some of the iPads from the Vroom and encouraged the students to tweet my presentation using the hashtag #Boyer101.

Here’s what happened:

I told them the cold, hard truth about cubicles.

Cubicles are LAME #boyer101

— The YDR NewsVroom (@TheNewsVroom) May 9, 2013

Then, I obviously proved that I’m the most fun person they’ll ever meet.

Learning how to #partylikeajournalist with @laurenboyer #saywhat #youthsummit

— The YDR NewsVroom (@TheNewsVroom) May 9, 2013

I swear they were learning … 

Partying it up at YES #boyer101

— The YDR NewsVroom (@TheNewsVroom) May 9, 2013

I told them about our Tout contest.

I want to be a #touter#boyer101

— The YDR NewsVroom (@TheNewsVroom) May 9, 2013

This statement is probably irrelevant to whatever the actual lesson was.

LAUREN BOYER LOOOOVVES FRUIT LOOPS #boyer101

— The YDR NewsVroom (@TheNewsVroom) May 9, 2013

Apparently someone creepy was peering in the window?

Creeper outside the window…..#boyer101

— The YDR NewsVroom (@TheNewsVroom) May 9, 2013

Let’s be real. I probably actually said this:

The glamour of reporting, I only wish I could do stories on strip clubs and cockroach infestation.. #boyer101

— The YDR NewsVroom (@TheNewsVroom) May 9, 2013

Damn straight, kid. The best day ever.

My day was better than your day because I learned journalism with Lauren Boyer #boyer101

— The YDR NewsVroom (@TheNewsVroom) May 9, 2013

What is Tout?

It’s a video-sharing platform that allows you to capture 15-second status updates that post through Twitter and Facebook.

It also allows you to pause the video and switch frames, so you don’t have to use an editor.

From the get go, I decided that touts are about quality, not quantity. The purpose of a 15-second video is to be brief and to-the-point.

So, in my opinion, over-touting like some kind of psycho defeats the purpose.

I also think, to be effective, touts should probably have some sort of underlying theme to tie them all together.

My theme: “My Weekend is Better than your Weekend.”

Afterall, it probably was better than yours.

Not to sound conceited, but I’m a fun gal.

My video string included my weekend trip to DC, eating Fruit Loops out of a measuring cup, watching men strut in heels at a YWCA fundraiser and rocking out in my car to “Low Rider.”

For the videos, click here and look for touts with the hashtag #ydrtouters.

When’s the last time you saw this many people come to a planning commission meeting?

I had some incredible live tweeting fun the other night in Chanceford Township.

… also known as “the middle of nowhere.”

… also known as “The Brogue.”

You can check out the Storify here.

It doesn’t get any better than this, my friends.

Essentially, the township’s planning commission was considering a plan for an adult cabaret to occupy vacant space in a strip mall (pun totally intended!)

I arrived at 6:30 p.m. — a half hour before the meeting — thinking I’d be WAY too early.

Turns out, numerous residents had beaten me to the punch. The place was packed by 7 p.m. with more than 30 people spilling out of the room, into the hall and outside the building.

I’ve never been to a meeting this hilarious.

I’ve also never been so overheated in a meeting. The room was totally packed, and about the size of my closet.

Hellooo body heat.

Alas, I‘ll be returning to Chanceford at the end of May for another meeting, which will decide the final fate of “The Office” strip club.

(Yes, that’s its actual name.)

How did I get assigned this story in the first place?

The conversation went down like this.

Editor: “I have this assignment. I’m not sure who wants it. It’s about an adult entertainment [BOYER INTERRUPTION HERE]“

Me: “I’LL TAKE IT!!!”

I’m pretty tired from a crazy (and it was CrAzY) St. Patrick’s Day weekend.

Here’s my story that ran this weekend about the potential shutdown of lines at the local BAE Systems factory.

Since then, apparently, I have tweeted more than 11,000 times.

Now, Twitter is allowing its users to relive the fun of that first time they tried to fit an expression into 140 characters.

I have to admit … I was hesitant to download my Twitter archive.

It felt too much like the time I tried to hunt down the old Xanga page where I’d post angsty rants about my parents with total disregard for the Internet’s public nature.

But I did it. Behold, my first Tweet. If I had known I’d still be looking at these in 2013, I might have said something more intelligent than …

doesn’t understand twitter

— laurenboyer (@laurenboyer) July 28, 2008

Even better are the posts that come after this one. Most of them involve wanting Twitter to die, because I didn’t understand it. That’s how my 20-year-old self dealt with frustrating things.

Here’s a gem that came about an hour after I joined the Twitterverse. I clearly wasn’t an expert yet.

Still doesn’t understand how to use this thing. What. The. Hell.

— laurenboyer (@laurenboyer) July 28, 2008

Here, I even extend a warm “thank you” to the person who brought Twitter into my life.

Thank you daniel victor for showing me how to waste time via Twitter.

— laurenboyer (@laurenboyer) July 28, 2008

I also found a lot of disjointed random thoughts that were probably “you had to be there” funny comments. It was, afterall a great summer.

It was a summer of sperm.

The features intern is teaching me about sperm.

— laurenboyer (@laurenboyer) July 31, 2008

A summer of high level thinking.

is wondering who on the citydesk has back hair
— laurenboyer (@laurenboyer) August 13, 2008

And a summer of intelligent statements like this one.

has come to the conclusion that, when it boils down to it, interviewing is basically flirting.
— laurenboyer (@laurenboyer) August 4, 2008

The early tweets were the funniest. Back then, I had no idea how useful Twitter would become in the journalism world. No one really did.

I can also tell I grew up (a little?)

But, as they say, some things never change. I know this one hasn’t.

wants to write a story with lots of potty humor
— laurenboyer (@laurenboyer) August 11, 2008

To download your own Twitter archive, follow these directions. You can view them in an Excel spreadsheet.

So, it’s 10 p.m., and I really wish I was watching Chicago Fire.

However, I got addicted to New Hive instead.

I was inspired to use it after checking out fellow DFM ideaLabber Aimee Heckel’s blog.

And, although I’m no graphic designer, I think this embeddable graphic with clickable elements is pretty cool.

And anyone can do it. I mean … if you can use Paint on your  computer, you can use New Hive.

SIDE NOTE: I spent like an hour trying to draw those stupid tanks inside paint before I pasted them into New Hive.

You can embed photos, link to files, create different texts, and even sketch right inside the program.

I wish I could embed the thing here, but my blog is kind of stupid and doesn’t like iframe coding. Guess that’s the price I pay for not paying cash money for a real website…

Click here to check out the full graphic in all its glory.

And here’s a post from our social media coordinator Buffy Andrews on the platform.

As you recall, wle did a NewsVroom presentation for two journalism classes a couple weeks ago.

Anywho, you can read it for yourselves.

A lot of them seemed SUPER enthused about getting out of the cubicle.

Click to enlarge:

Horrible picture. These were taken the day my mom gave me Penn State footie pajamas.

Click here to read my story on the adult footie pajama trend that’s sweeping the nation.

As some of you know, I’m a huge footie pajama advocate.

In fact, I blogged about the topic not too long ago for YDR.

Ever since then, I’ve been scouring York County in a search for my fellow footie brethren.

One day last month, I had the hankering for a light-hearted story.

Everything’s so negative these days.

And I knew they were out there — hiding beneath their zip-up fleece cocoons of warmth.

I posted something about footie pajamas on the York Daily Record/Sunday News Facebook page and got about 30 responses to my inquiry.

Of course, a few of those comment came from the usual Negative Nancies.

You know the type. They’re the kind of people who want to make fun of you for having a “slow news day.”

Total armchair journalists.

These people made me even more determined to give footies their due ink.

I interviewed a few folks and even got a sociologist to weigh in on the fad.

That involved an interesting call to York College, by the way.

I tried to keep a straight face in my conversation with the communications director.

But I think I checked my seriousness at the door when I said, “Hello, do you have an expert I can talk to about adult footie pajamas?”

I think the story turned out well, but haters gon’ hate.

Also, as proof that footie pajamas are indeed the coolest thing since the Snuggie, I leave you with this video of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.”

Batman footies make an appearance around 2:25.

The stage of the Strand all decked out for Think Loud’s after party on Feb. 28. Later in the night, the curtains opened and Live played with a backdrop of empty seats.

The past couple weeks, for me, have been about music.

First, there was the lack thereof.

Last week, we broke this story about Harley-Davidson removing radios from its plants as a matter of safety and productivity protocol.

I know what you’re thinking. (Some people even emailed me to share their two cents.)

“Why is this a story?” 

“What are you going to write about next? The contents of Harley’s vending machines? The employees’ bathroom breaks?”

Truthfully, this isn’t really a story about Harley at all.

It’s a story about factory culture.

It’s a story about one of those weird aspects of the daily grind that you’d never think to ask about unless you’ve worked in a plant yourelf.

And — as I learned from some CEOs —  it’s a story about an issue that they’ve had to deal with for decades.

Things got a little louder on Thursday of this week when members of the band LIVE and business partners presented their plans for fiber optic network stretching more than 300 miles from New York City to northern Virginia.

Hip hop violinist Damien Escobar played at a private event following the press conference held on the stage of the Strand-Capitol Performing Arts Center.

Later in the night, the curtains opened and LIVE — with new singer Chris Shinn — played several of their older songs, like “Lightning Crashes,” and even debuted a new one set to appear on their upcoming album.

Read more about the band here and check out my horrible iPhone cinematography below:

Also of interest

Here’s an older story I did about the band and their real estate ventures

A blog post about the last concert LIVE played at the Strand