Keep those News Tips and Questions a-comin'

Not to sound whiny, but I take one lousy day off work and return to 258 e-mails in my in box.

Yes, admittedly it was Monday, so the tally included the weekend stuff. But it just goes to show you how reliant we've become on e-mail. The total number of phone messages I received in that same span? One.

I guess one could spend a career analyzing the value of all the e-mail - and all the time spent dealing with it. Despite some pretty heavy-duty spam blockers, a lot of irrelevant tidbits from far corners of the globe still arrive: Blatant advertisements, scams, political messages galore. Heck, we even get an e-mail telling us what spam has been blocked in case there's any we might actually want. I think. There are news releases that come from places well outside our coverage area. We bring a lot of the traffic on ourselves, frankly, with our daily news budgets, budget updates and by forwarding stuff to other editors to deal with.

One thing that has added a bit to the load are e-mails titled "News Tips and Questions." It's queries and comments sent in by our online readers. The sight of an NT&Q often sends shivers up the spines of most editors because, well, there tends to be a lot of them.

When I came up with the concept for this column, I thought I was going to say that most of these tips are off-base, irrelevant. But before blasting away, I thought I should go back and check. It was fairly illuminating.

To be sure, we get our share of the semi-irrelevant ("Business contributes to local food bank." A nice thing, but how can we write about all the businesses that do charitable things?) or the cryptic ("Please remove my name from ur Internet post on Google"). But as I poured over the offerings of the past few days, I realized - again - how much we count on our readers to be our eyes and ears. Many of the things that show up in the news tips lead to the kind of community journalism we need to be ever-mindful of. Some examples: Restaurant renovation in Glen Ellyn, citywide charity dodgeball event in Naperville, a new play opening and a free fitness screening. I cannot guarantee that every last thing will make it into the paper, but we are doing our best and, in the coming year, we'll be redoubling our efforts to make, as our Interactive people say, "user-generated content" even more a part of our mantra.

But I saved my favorite two tips for last. Sometimes these things just jump out at you and say, "I'm a story!" One of the best pieces we've done all year - on Elgin High School autistic football player Winfred Cooper, who scored an amazing touchdown with the help of his Lake Park opponents - came from a tipster passing along the word.

Perhaps not on quite as grand a scale, but certainly the type of local story we love to cover, came Thursday's Page 1 piece on 17-year-old Zach Gebis, who created a holiday lights display coordinated with music (see the video at dailyherald.com).

And sometimes, people send in things that just make you spring into action. The subject line was an attention-getter: "Bears terror alert." It read as follows: "Chicago Bears practice was delayed two hours after a player reported finding a white powdery substance on the field. Coach Lovie Smith immediately suspended practice and called the police and FBI. After analysis, experts found that the white substance unknown to players was the GOAL LINE. Practice resumed after agents decided the team was unlikely to encounter the substance again this season."

Reader Rich Biagioli submitted the missive, saying, "This was given to me and it needs to be passed on."

There. I've done my share for the day.

• jdavis@dailyherald.com