Any typical “breaking” “news” story (see balloon boy, Tiger Woods, White House party crash, and on and on) turns into an ugly mess of clichés and sensationalism on a regular basis. Who can keep track of who’s liberal, moderate or conservative anymore when they’re all ditching coverage of the war, our president and Congress to latch onto the latest scandal.

And that’s just the news media these days.

The entertainment side seems to be throwing fists these days, trying to make a hit out of something – I take that back, anything. Which is fine, I guess, to see Megan Fox’s rack sell a movie, or Hollywood picking up way too much on a trend like the latest: vampires. Gone are Buffy and Angel, here are: True Blood, Twilight, The Vampire’s Assistant, and don’t forget — The Vampire Diaries. I’m sure I’m missing a few, but you get the point.

Either way, all of this brings me to something I found pretty hilarious. A couple posters a bit too similar for (hopefully) any average consumer’s taste…no pun intended:

A striking similarity between “Jennifer’s Body” and “True Blood” –

lick in the lips left

lickin the lips right

OH…and don’t forget Six Feet Under, with the lipstick, reminding me of the above posters.

lipsticking the lips

…But the avoid the cliché award shockingly goes to Lipstick Jungle for simply showing the women and not the lipstick.

no lips here

Back on January 27, The Poly Post put out “the economy issue” and created CALOPOLY, the economic crisis game of chance, distress, and foreclosures.

I would really like to see our creation turned into an interactive graphic available on our website. That would mean putting my graphic designer/web guy to work even more, as he already has the weight of our website on him weekly. If not an actual animated game, at least something where people can scroll over different boxes for information and links and the related stories we published.

Not too shabby for Cal Poly standards – sorry CPP, but I’ve seen many an empty event in my days.

Along with watching free chicken fly out the door, the Poly Post editors had the opportunity to identify ourselves in person and show off a newly redesigned thepolypost.com.

I had been working all last quarter with my graphic designers, marketing director and editors to find out what we wanted to offer and how we wanted things to look.

My favorite aspect of the new site is the more modern appearance that is immediately noticeable to the viewer. High quality photos show off our lead stories with a headline to link you to the rest, and buttons above provide easy links to advertise, submit a letter to the editor or check out our multimedia page.

You’ll notice the blog button doesn’t direct you anywhere just yet. That’s because the feature is still on its way. The idea here is for each columnist on staff to develop a following through updates in between editions of the newspaper, and allow for more feedback from readers.

In addition to that, the photo editors will be displaying the talents of our photographers and offer some artistic insight in a photo blog.

Even more exciting is the long overdue campus blog that is well on its way.

There is so much that happens on Cal Poly’s campus that goes overlooked, and due to space constraints, not everything can make its way into our weekly newspaper, or any of the other university media outlets.

Expect daily updates here, as the theme is a noticed or observed around campus kind of reporting, that will also include follow-ups on big news like the ASI strategic plan, student government elections, Mr. and Ms. CPP and the university’s identity campaign.

What I hope was made clear in the info session portion of Thursday’s event was that the nine editors at The Poly Post devote a large part of our lives to this job for very little compensation.

We do it because we love it, but we would all like it to take up just a little less time. We sacrifice our weekends and meet three times a week to make sure everything is coming into place and on schedule. And that’s just the surface.

We are all qualified to be paid a lot more for what we are capable of, yet my max stipend earns me about a dollar an hour based upon my calculations.

We’re volunteering hours upon hours while most of you have the day off – from school, at least.

Before the unexpected, but welcome, accusations from the audience during a brief Q&A, we kicked off the event with a photo slideshow and entertaining video asking students what they know about The Poly Post.

The answers in the video – which is available on the home page of the new Web site – were revealing in both good and bad ways.

We discovered from a random polling of 10 to 15 students, that they all knew what The Poly Post was and each had a few favorites.

But they were definitely not very aware of our Web site, which was why we wanted to promote it with the launch party.

What students and campus organizations must realize is that the Post exists to serve you. While we enjoy sharing our opinions, we’re a group of less than 30 people trying to cover a university of around 22,000 students.

So take that into account before you start tearing us a new one.

If you don’t think we’re doing our job well, I encourage…no, I challenge you to do something about it.

Apathy is death, after all.

Feedback fuels our drive to keep doing what we’re doing, so show us some love – or hate (OK, dislike would be preferable) – with a comment, letter or e-mail.

Basically, we’re asking you to utilize us.

E-mail calendar@thepolypost.com or advertise@thepolypost.com to promote an event.

E-mail news@thepolylpost.com to get your story heard. And check out thepolypost.com to see what’s going on around you.

Use your campus newspaper and an online media hub to reach the campus population.

Or join up and take the reigns after I leave.