Entries Tagged 'Work Related' ↓

I’d totally be going to see Feist at the Ryman if it weren’t for the fact that I start my job at KPIX two days prior, on November 19th. Poor me. I imagine we’ll be packed into a Budget rental truck–me, him, the dogs and all our stuff–by the 14th at the very latest.

Whoa, I have so much to do before then.

Should I vote in the Nashville mayoral election if I am moving to San Francisco before the end of this year? That is the question I face on this gray and rainy day. I prefer Karl Dean to Roberto Clemente, but is it fair to vote for either if I’m just going to be living in the Bay Area inside 3 months? I’m not sure that it is. I’d really like to see Megan Barry win a seat on the Council, though, so I’m going to cast my ballot anyway. I’ve always enjoyed the Barrys. Plus, I think she’d make a great progressive addition to the World’s Largest City Council. I’ve lived in Nashville for nearly 30 years of my life, so I think the city owes me one last say in the matter. Besides, I’ll be back to visit.

You see, I’ve taken a job with the local CBS affiliate in San Francisco, California, the land of godless liberals who have gay sex on the streets while shooting up. The kind folks at KPIX (whose website was voted best in the state by the Associated Press) recruited me to run a blog aggregator much like the one I used to run at WKRN here in Nashville. I took them up on their offer to fly out for two days to interview, and after some negotiating I agreed to take them up on a full-time position. I’ll be working from within the newsroom Monday through Friday combing through all the blogs updated daily in the Bay Area, highlighting posts I find funny or provocative or insightful or informative. There will also be an automatic aggregator. Many of you may be familiar with the concept.

If you are wondering why I said I wasn’t cut out for moderating a community blog site, only to take this job 8 weeks later, you likely aren’t the only one. I asked myself that question many times in determining whether to pack up The Boyfriend and the dogs and move 800+ miles to one of the most expensive places in the country. But, luckily, I learned from my very public mistakes made at NiT, and I’ve taken them to heart. This new venture will be less about me. I’m not that interesting anyway. What I mean to say, though, is that I will put less of myself “out there” and concentrate more on building a vibrant blogging community in what is already one of the most wired places on earth. Also, there were some behind-the-scenes issues going on at the old station that I never felt the need to air publicly that had a lot to do with my decision to leave. I denied it at the time, because the pain from The Situation was so overwhelming that that was easy to do. But it was a factor. Also, the area out there is just different. My “radical liberalism” that makes me, according to the locals, “as far left as you’ll find on the internet” would not raise an eyebrow where I’m going. Crusades by blogging GOP mouthpieces when I dare state that Gitmo detainees might not be guilty (of what they were never charged with) won’t set off a firestorm. I’ve always been a liberal in a Republican oasis, but now I’ll be more conservative than most just be virtue of my home state. I relish the thought.

But that site isn’t about politics. It’s about the people of the Bay Area. It’s about mothers and strippers and activists and students. It’s going to be what San Franciscans are talking about, so to speak. I’m thrilled at the idea of getting back into the newsroom. There is a hum in the newsroom, a sense of urgency and excitement that comes with daily turns and breaking news. This one happens to be filled with smart, engaging people who seem excited about the new media possibilities that await them. (Or, the ones I met at least.)

And I’m so excited about living in my favorite place on earth. The weather is phenomenal all year long, the people are diverse, the art scene is incredible (indie and foreign films in the theatre ’til my heart’s content!) and the opportunities are endless. There is a magic to that place, and I’m about to become a part of it. It hasn’t exactly been easy to absorb.

I’m going to miss my friends and family like crazy. I’ve lived here my entire life, so all my roots are here. But I’ve always wanted this. I used to drive down the long stretches of bending roads in Ashland City dreaming of taking the subway. The BART is close enough (and now I’m going to sell my car!). Long ago my “about page” on this blog said that I’d be moving to the Big City very soon. It was up there forever then I took it down one day, resigned that it would never happen. It’s back now and better than ever.

We haven’t decided yet on the timing, but I’m leaving no sooner than 6 weeks from now. I want to get together with many of you before I go for drinks and hugs. And mailing addresses. I’ll be 30 in October and everything I have ever known is here. I’m going to be homesick for a while I’m sure. But I can’t think of a place I’d rather be homesick in.

P.S. In the time since leaving WKRN I have been working as a copy writer at Magazines.com. I just want to take this space to thank the generous and jovial people who make up that great place. They took me on as one of the family–even if I was the black sheep–and made me feel very appreciated. And I learned so much in my time there. I’d recommend it as an awesome place to work for any copy writer in the area who wanted to earn a competitive salary while building what will be a world-class brand one day. It’s an exciting place to work, so if you are interested in doing that, please let me know.

My love affair with junk food is well documented. I’m not huge into candy or anything, just junk in general. Chips, cookies, french fries - - full-fledged crap. I try to resist the siren song of the Sun Chips, but occasionally I fall a lumpy victim to their crunchy cries.

My boss at work, the VP of marketing, keeps a dish of bite-sized candies on his desk, he readily admits, to draw employees in to chat with him. He keeps the good kind, too - - mini-Snickers and little Milky Ways. I always eye them, but never take from the bowl. I have no problem feeding the break room vending machine money for its fruit chews, but for some reason won’t eat a piece of chocolate free for the taking.

However, one day I really, really wanted a piece of chocolate. I’m not a sugar addict or anything, but I cave easily to cravings, especially at work. They can distract me from creating masterful copy. Heh. So, I dug into my giant laptop bag/purse for my wallet only to find twenties and a pocket full of pennies. No machine-ready bills or coins. I refilled my water glass and tried to forget about it.

I went back to my product descriptions, trying to decide which adjectives worked best, when the mingling of soft caramel and puffy nougat consumed my brain. I bit my tongue, but soon remembered the dish of bite-sized candy bars in the VP’s office. Ooh, he had just the candy I wanted, no coins needed, sitting at the ready on his desk. I made my way over even when I remembered he was out of town. They were two steps from the door, which was wide open, so I kept going. I saw that the office was empty, strode in and grabbed a single piece from the bowl, then spun on my heels when the overheard lights came on. I dropped the mini-Snickers and jumped backwards, hands in the air. I thought I’d been busted by the candy cops. I learned that day that some office lights where I work come on when a sensor notices movement in the room.

I ate the candy, but it was disappointing after my little scare.

I’m trying my hand at something new–magazine reviews. See my first two, one for The Bark and the other for Skeptical Inquirer at BlogMagazine.

Thank you, pull  up to the second window.

Lookie here, we’ve been up for under a week and already we made the pages of the Tennessean. Some feat! In a column by an unnamed 100 Broadway scribe, my brand new work blog gets some ink and a bit of snark:

Former blog producer Gilbert is talking again

Brittney Gilbert, the blog producer hired in 2005 by WKRN-TV Channel 2 to run a new site called NashvilleIsTalking.com and who very publicly resigned that post in June, announced on BrittneyGilbert.com on Thursday that she has a new gig writing a blog about magazines.

Gilbert, who took on a kind of celebrity (or notoriety) in the small circle of Nashville bloggers, will run BlogMagazine.com, a site that will “cover the magazine industry at large, news of brand-new or dying periodicals, hot content, trends in coverage, as well as covers and more.”

But reading through some of Gilbert’s debut posts on the site, one got the feeling that she’s not taking the same no-holds-barred approach of some of her peers, sites such as Jossip.com or Mediabistro.com.

One prominent item posted Wednesday, for example, heaped unabashed praise on a recent cover of Time magazine that basically pictured nothing more than part of a stone wall and a thick block of blue text. Other items cooed over similarly unremarkable features of various titles in much the same way — and mostly for those owned by Time Inc., one of the world’s largest magazine publishers.

Perhaps this has something to do with it: Magazine.com [sic], the Franklin-based magazine subscription service that hired Gilbert to start and run BlogMagazine.com, boasts on its Web site that Time Inc. is a major investor.

Ouch. And the funny part, to me at least, is that I barely knew of Time, Inc.’s investment in Magazines.com. Oh well, it’s a keen observation, if not a bit of a stretch.* Truth is, BlogMagazine will not be a shill site for any owners or investors of the company for whom I work. It is going to be a general interest site about magazines, with no real agenda at all. I hope to do interviews with B2B publishers (I’m looking at you, Rex.), start-up and anyone else in the industry who will let me throw dumb questions at them. I hope to be just as critical of Time-owned rags as I am of Hearst or Conde Nast produced-publications. Truth be told, I couldn’t tell you which publishing houses make which magazines. I’m pretty brand new to all this. What I will do, unapologetically, is link to our site and our products whenever possible. BlogMagazine is not just about increasing the profile of a growing e-commerce company, but about selling magazines. It is a distinctly commercial endeavor.

While I love sites like Jossip and Valleywag, I do hope to refrain from so much of the sarcasm and snark. It will be tough, but that is what my personal blog is for. Smarmy industry inside-jokes seem to be a great gig for those sites, but they’ve got that niche covered. I’m going to try to do something a little kinder, a bit more sincere. I may fail, but that is indeed my aim. But, that doesn’t mean I’m going to give a pass to Time, Inc.-run reads–that just ain’t the way I roll, and I think most people who know me know that.

Good for the Tennessean, I suppose, for keeping me on my toes, though. BlogMagazine, much like NashvilleIsTalking was when it began, is a work in progress. We’re not sure where we are headed, but you can be assured we will do so with transparency and good intentions.

*What’s that that Liz & Co. say about the difference between bloggers and journalists? That journalists always pick up the phone to call the subject of their pieces to get their side of the story before going to print? No such courtesy in this case.

CORRECTION: I mistakenly thought the article was penned by an unnamed writer. It was, instead, written By RYAN UNDERWOOD, who is now #1 with a bullet on my Shit List. Okay, not really, I don’t have a Shit List, because if I did it would be too long.

I can’t even go there anymore. I can’t look, it’s one of the slowest, bloodiest deaths I’ve ever been privy to. It hurts to look. I finally did it. I unsubscribed.

I shouldn’t be sad about that, but I am.

EDITED TO ADD: This bit from Newscoma is a good way to sum up my feelings:

What I know I experienced and that I think others did was grief.

Grief that NiT will never be what it was when folks got involved. Grief that something beloved (or in some cases with certain bloggers let’s just say not beloved) was going to be different. Grief that something that was so transparent and filled with vitality that at times it was almost too raw was going to be different. Grief has many faces, and it’s not about death, it’s about loss.

LAST UPDATE, I SWEAR: Will you local bloggers be adding yourselves to the roll of the NewNashvilleIsTalking? (cue old man voice: Back in my day, we scoured the web and wrangled blog URLs by ourselves up a hill both ways. And we liked it!)

I wrote an e-mail today to a million people. The copy I wrote consisted of about four words. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. Writing by committee. That is going to take some getting used to.

I just totally walked into the mens’ restroom.

To which magazines do you subscribe?

If I had any idea that my farewell post would be quoted in Forbes magazine, I would have taken more time with it. I couldn’t have written it not in a state of emotional duress, but it could’ve used some editing.