Entries Tagged 'Web/Tech' ↓

Then: “What is a blog?”

Now: “What is Twitter?”

Then: “Why would anyone want to read your blog?”

Now: “Why would anyone want to read your Twitter updates?”

Then: “You really think people care enough about your opinion that you should have a blog?”

Now: “You really think people want to read about what you are doing all the time?”

Then: “Blogging is for egomaniacal exhibitionists.”

Now: “Twitter is for egomaniacal exhibitionists.”

Then: “Blog is a funny word. It sounds stupid.”

Now: “Twitter is a funny word. It sounds stupid.”

Then: “Blogging will be the death of legitimate, long-form journalism.”

Now: “Twitter will be the death of legitimate, long-form blogging.”

Then: “I would never have a blog.”

Now: “I would never have a Twitter.”

Then: “Heyyy, I finally got myself a blog, check it out!”

Now: “FormerSkeptic is now following you on Twitter.”

This morning I woke up on the right side of the bed. I looked out the window onto a hazy landscape and declared that today would be a good day.

So, imagine my thrill to find in my inbox a note from my dear friend Adam about his brand new political blog Post Politics hosted by the very wise Nashville Post*. It’s live. He’s back (opinion and analysis and all!). And I’m elated. More elated than someone should rightly be about a blog.

The day continues to be a good one.

*Had to scroll allll the way to the bottom of the blog to find a link to their front page. I am a fan of the subtle branding. And the blog looks fantastic and robust.** Did I mention I’m thrilled?

**Nope, not jealous in the least.

This is a first. I’ve been blogging for almost ten years now, and I’ve never been a victim of anything this invasive. Please help me figure this out:

When I make new posts now, somehow, some way, spam links to nasty porn sites insert themselves into my post code! The links do not show up on the front page of this blog, but they do occur in the displayed RSS feed. I’ll take a look at the code of this post before I post it and it won’t be there. But when I come back to it and hit “edit,” I find links to pages about “BBW fingering.” I do not want that.

The more I think about it the more pissed off I get. Is this because I changed my template? How the fuck did these spammers infect my blogging platform? Ugh! Make it stop. Any help or hints you have would be greatly appreciated.

As you can see I just broke my own webpage trying to be cute and hand code CSS. I don’t have the wherewithal to fix it right now, but rest assured that a) I know it is fucked and b) I will rectify it sooner rather than later.

[Cross-posted at Eye on Blogs.]

The 600-pound gorilla in the newsroom where I write right now is that 14 people have been terminated from KPIX due to drastic budget cuts. No, this isn’t a twisted April Fools Day prank, since the involuntary cuts happened yesterday. It’s a reality; seasoned, veteran reporters who have decades upon decades of Emmy-winning experience have been shown the door because advertising revenues are way down in this election year (when they were projected to be much higher). And it wasn’t just on-air individuals who lost their jobs, but those behind the scenes as well. Every single department in the station was subject to cuts.

Word of cuts left the newsroom in near solemn silence, which is a departure from the lively chatter that typically permeates the building. It was (and is) a day of mourning at CBS 5–for those who had to leave, for those whose dear friends are no longer their colleagues and for those who were put in the difficult position of making such hard decisions. Manny Ramos, Bill Schechner, Tony Russomano and John Lobertini are class acts and have brought 60+ years of top-notch journalism to the Bay Area. Their contributions cannot be overlooked. The outrage from SFGate readers is palpable (and suprisingly coherent for newspaper web comments, frankly). Many in the community are feeling a sense of loss today, and not just sadness for good newsmen who lost their jobs, but cynicism about what kind of news they’ll get going forward. These journalists have been a foundation of ace television reporting for decades. Their absence will be noticeable for a long time to come.

I can’t quite describe how strange it is to be writing about this situation from where I sit. I have only been employed at KPIX since mid-November when I was hired to do a job that didn’t exist before. Full-time blogger at a news station is not a common position, in fact, it’s pretty rare (though becoming more and more common). Having a newsroom staffer monitor and produce blog(s) as their sole responsibility is not something even I, a blogger since 1999, would have imagined five years ago. Now stations across the country are making new media, social networking and online publishing a priority as advertising dollars are moving from the silver screen to the computer screen. They are hiring up bloggers who are well-versed in internet news and culture to manage those web properties. Some would debate that a position like this is superfluous, and frankly, they’d have a lot of good arguments, no doubt. Other still would say that the landscape of news dissemination is morphing so quickly that to ignore new media innovations like blogging is a death knell. Those people, too, have many valid points.

It is undeniable that, despite current economic trends that do not bode well, the t.v. news and newspaper business is struggling. They are struggling to catch up to the power of the web which has, in many ways, robbed them of many of their most valuable assets. News gets made online and broken online before traditional media types can even react. Not their fault, exactly, the machine is just too huge and cumbersome. Mainstream media organizations simply aren’t as nimble as independent online newsmakers. However, what the machine lacks in dexterity, it makes up for in spades with exclusive contacts, years of knowledge and hard-won reputation. It’s a morphing industry, no doubt about it. These cuts are an illustration of that inevitable fact.

Here is what other bloggers are saying about the unfortunate KPIX layoffs:

TV Freak:

Yesterday was a sad one at KPIX-Channel 5, where the downsizing trend that has had the newspaper industry in its grips came to the local television station…In the case of KPIX, the station is losing plenty of valuable experience. Ramos and Schechner have five Emmys between them and decades of on-air experience. Schechner has been on TV in the Bay Area since 1972.

TVPhotogBlog:

I recieved a phone call tonight from a friend in the know. He’s lucky to still have a job but he’s still worried…

From Forbes Field to the Bay and Back:

So much for stations being loyal to long time employees.

Ever notice they never fire the General Manager ?

Or so it seems anyway…

California Majority Report:

Lobertini is a solid reporter, one of the best of putting the inner workings of state government into laymen’s terms. He also isn’t shy about putting state leaders on the spot with tough questions, as Gov. Schwarzenegger (and Gov. Davis) found out the hard way on several occasions. I’m sure he’ll land a spot somewhere, but it’s sad to be reporting nearly weekly on the further decline of veteran Sacramento reporters.

And here are some select comments from the active SFGate section in regards to this development:

norcalguy101 wrote:Who watches news on tv anymore. I’ve cancelled my cable. If I want to watch baseball, basketball, or live video coverage, or read the news….it’s all online….plus you get what interests you rather than have to sit their and get stuffed with what a producer thinks I need to know….which based upon the three leading Bay Area news programs is not much…

<WeatherGuy wrote:I don’t know any of these fired reporters. I stopped watching the news when the internet came around in the middle 90s and I could find my own information at my leisure. Local news is just depressing anyway

hoecakes wrote:That’s a shame. Those fired reporters were really good and credible. I worry that they’re going to turn into KRON with idiots like Ysabel Duron (laughs inappropriately and cuts everyone off with her inane driver) and Henry Tannenbaum (complete idiot blowhard). KTVU’s new male morning anchor sucks too with his yukking delivery. Man, local news used to be so good, and now?

wakeupalive wrote:You will all be missed. Just another reason not to watch local news anymore. They are putting on people that can barely read and definitely aren’t news reporters. PBS or nothing else at this point. Sad.

spidra wrote:I’m sorry to hear about these folks joining the host of others in the Bay Area who were laid off or will be laid off this year. It would be great if the experienced reporters, the ones who are truly journalists, could take advantage of not having to please a corporate boss anymore and produce their own blogs and podcasts. It would be interesting to see what they’d come up with if they no longer had to worry about sponsors and shareholders.

leake wrote:Local news is not news - it’s advertising dollars. So what if they move the props around a little, or give the anchors new haircuts every now and then - it’s all about the packaging, not the content. Let’s face it, from a business perspective KPIX and its local news programming is not and will never be “60 Minutes”… And older TV news reporters are not about to start blogging their way to success anytime soon.

I’ve invited some staffers here at CBS 5 to contribute their words on what is a great loss this has been to them both personally and professionally. I hope they do so. I watched yesterday as those who have seen one another most mornings for many, many recent years shed tears for those who were affected. Those wrapped in embraces were then called into manager offices to get the same news that had just stricken their friend. It was hard to watch. I can’t imagine how hard it was for those sent home after 20 or 30 years. The level of distress was at a fever pitch. Employees talked in tiny puddles, wondering aloud if they’d be next. They wondered to their comrades how this news organization would change in the days and weeks to come. Would there be enough of them to get it all done? Their work is done at break-neck pace as is.

Friends are gone. They aren’t coming back. It’s been hard around here, and I imagine it won’t get easier, at least on an emotional level, for a long while.

Readers, you are welcomed to comment on these unfortunate turn of events in our comment section below. Leave well wishes for those who are gone or express your displeasure. You have the floor.

RELATED:

WBZ Boston Appears to Be Hardest-Hit; KPIX San Francisco Bloodied, Too

Latino Casualties at CBS

1% of CBS News Staff Cut in Round of Layoffs

I made a mix on Muxtape.com, the biggest shit this side of the Tumblr/Twitter line*, of bands from Nashville (and Murfreesboro) that I like. Some of those songs are demos, so forgive the quality. I know many of the people in some of these bands, I hope they’ll forgive me my trespasses.

*Muxtape.com went up about two days ago and basically blew up like nothing I’ve ever seen. Because it’s awesome. And about to get shut down soon, I imagine, so I had to get in on that.

I’m no fan of Bill Hobbs*, but I try to give props where they are due, so here goes nothing. Hobbs left a comment at the farewell post at Volunteer Voters that deserves praise on a couple of levels. First, I’ll make with what he said:

It’s been a week, and I’ve come to a conclusion about the demise of VolunteerVoters.com. It’s not a big loss. It’s a MAMMOTHLY HUGE loss. There is a giant hole in the media fabric in Tennessee when it comes to political news. VV was the indispensable go-to source for all things political involving Tennessee, and provided depth and context that the various disparate news outlets often lack.

Additionally, while MSM outlets mention or quote from press releases and documents and such, VV often uploaded the whole thing, or gave readers a link to it - making it a far more valuable resource than any single MSM outlet for politics junkies.

It’s a damned shame that WKRN couldn’t figure out how to monetize the single most valuable political news property in the state. Here’s hoping that some other news outlet, one which understands the new media - and the new media consumer - and wants to be an information portal for its readers rather than just an information destination, decides it wants to take over VV, or at least hire Kleinheider to build a VV replacement for them.

This comment from Hobbs is about as close to how I feel about the situation as it can be. That site was special. It did something no other site does, at least not on the same level (hard for those with other jobs to compete with a full-time, paid blogger), which is streamline local and related national political news and opinion for an influential and sizable audience. Nashville editors, Tennessee senators and journalists all over the country logged in on a daily basis to read what Kleinheider brought. Surely someone with some smarts and a little vision can turn that into a profitable endeavor, at least in the long term. Bill’s dead on with that statement.

Here’s what also deserved recognition, and what prompted me to write this post: Kleinheider gave Hobbs hell. I mean, he deserved it, but VV was relentless when it came to the GOP blogger who is, no matter how you slice it, a force to be reckoned with. And yet, Hobbs comes to one of his biggest critic’s defense because what Volunteer Voters gave to its readers was bigger than all that. Cheers to Bill for being a big man. At least about that.

*Oh hai, understatement.

I went to Carmel this weekend. I wrote about it on Twitter. Truth be told, Twitter now serves as a microblogging platform for me, whether I want to admit to it or not. If you like S&21, and aren’t following me on Twitter, it’s safe to say you are missing out. You can even subscribe to my Twitter feed.

Matt Pulle’s column “Desperately Seeking the News” in the Nashville Scene this week may reek of petty sniping between former colleagues, but if you can wade through all the posturing about how much money each paper earns there is some surprising news located within it. The free daily newspaper in Nashville known as The City Paper is moving to a web-only presence:

Eight years after it first rolled off the presses, the free daily is positioning itself to become an online-only publication in a move that will reduce costs—and maybe threaten the paper’s limited advertiser base.

“In the not-too-distant future, that’s how most readers, particularly the ones that advertisers care about the most, are going to be getting their daily news,” he writes the Scene in an email.

Del Favero, who held the same job with aplomb at the Scene for 15 years, first hinted at his paper’s looming transition in a little-noticed trade press release in November.

“Our readers are more likely to read The City Paper at their desks in the morning. And what we found was that, increasingly, more of them were actually reading the paper online,” he said then. “Because of that online readership growth and the expense of delivering the paper each and every day, we are slowly evolving the paper from a print product to a primarily digital product.”

Aside from the rare astute editorial insight or worthwhile investigative piece, what The City Paper has to offer its readers and its advertisers is that it is free. People pick up The City Paper in coffee shops and restaurants because they want something to occupy their eyeballs while they slurp up caffeine and calories. They do not seek out The City Paper for its high-caliber journalism, fine writing or information unavailable elsewhere.

I used to read The City Paper online as part of my job as a media blogger in Middle Tennessee. It served its purpose as fodder for posts. However, I stopped reading the paper when it moved to the confusing calamity known as the E-Paper, because the new format was ugly, unfriendly to users, if not damn near impossible to navigate. For instance, this page looks great. There are paragraph breaks, relevant imagery and text large enough to read. However, this page is what is commonly called a clusterfuck. Start clicking around to see what I mean.

I have no stats or numbers or traffic reports to illustrate my belief that if the City Paper moves to the web only and does not abandon the e-paper format that they are making arrangements for their own funeral. But I am still confident that that will be the case.

I hope they prove me wrong.

Previously at Sparkwood & 21: E-tarded