By now, you may have seen or heard about the visual and design changes in the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal. You can read my column about this project here.

If you have feedback for me, please send me an e-mail or post a comment on this blog. We will track reader reaction. Thank you.

"What's the best story here?" "What's the story about?" Sometimes he'd get an answer from a staffer, but press again: "OK, but what's the story really ABOUT?"

Joel Rawson, executive editor of the Providence Journal, met with 27 newsroom reporters, editors and photographers Monday, and challenged us to dig a little deeper, go a little farther, with our reporting and writing.

I will be on vacation for a few days but wanted to tell you about some major training opportunities coming up for our staff — training that will change our newspapers, for the better, very soon.

On Monday, Joel Rawson, executive editor of the Providence Journal, will lead reporting workshops at the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal newsrooms.

We launch a four-day series Sunday that examines how the aging of the baby boom generation soon will affect Maine, which already is one of the oldest states in the nation.

This is no feature series. Our daily packages examine how baby boomers nearing retirement in Maine will impact: the health-care industry; real estate; the workplace; and, public policy.

My older sister, Joann, was the jock in our family. She played field hockey, basketball and softball in high school. She excelled at track at college. By comparison, I was OK at most every sport I tried -- but I was no star. My younger sister really was more of a social student, and didn't do many sports.

Joann came by it naturally. My mother, now 80, was way before her time in this regard. An avid (Phillies) baseball fan, my mom also was a good athlete in a day when women weren't supposed to be. I remember watching her turn a double play during a mother-vs.-son game in Little League. Thank god I wasn't on base.

OK, so now we've nominated Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Obviously, the best we can do is be half-right.

I've been predicting since before the Iowa caucus that the nominees will be Hillary Clinton and John McCain. I am sticking with that. I still see the Clinton "machine" as too entrenched, shrewd and well-oiled to be beaten.

So now Hillary Clinton's going to Lewiston, too. That's the press release we just received. She will be in Orono Saturday morning and Lewiston Saturday afternoon.

Barack Obama will be in Bangor Saturday too. And former President Bill Clinton was in Portland Thursday.

We are proud of our new local Web site ChinaSentinel.com, but we want to know how you feel about it.

Publisher John Christie, several editors and managers and I will be at Tobey's Market on Route 3 in South China at 4:30 p.m. Thursday to promote the site, but also to get opinions about it.

Journalism is the kind of profession where you have to respond to surprises at any time on any day. That's what happened Friday night, as we were wrapping up our weekend newspapers and planning.

The scanners started crackling in the Kennebec Journal newsroom that an airplane apparently crashed in West Gardiner around 6 p.m.