Tag Archives: blogging

Death by manure spreader

Posted on by
1

I came across a story submitted to one of our networks yesterday, about an 81-year-old man was killed when he became caught in the manure spreader he was operating. This just struck me as a bad way to go.

Which started me thinking about “good” ways and “bad” ways. When was the last time you heard or read a story about someone dying in their sleep? Okay, that probably isn’t much of story.

Or about some old guy dying in flagrante delicto, which I think means “in the saddle.” I assume those stories are hard to report. And the deceased is usually found alone in a hotel room with his shoes on the wrong feet.

While there are few “good” ways to go, some are just a damn site worse than others. So I’ve set up a little blog where we can post these stores and be glad they weren’t about us.

If you spot one of these, please send them my way (Steve Mays at Gmail.com) with “Bad Way” in the subject line. Let me know if I can use your name.

I’ve registered BadWaytoGo.com but it isn’t hot yet.

Blogging: “A basic right of being in the media business”

Posted on by
7

The always-plugged-in Amy Gahran insists your blog is “Media Career Insurance” for journalists.

“Because in a professional environment where staying findable equals sustained opportunity and flexibility, search engines are a key arbiter of your career. The more findable and linkable you are, the more search engines will reward you. … And search engines really, really love blogs.”

“Having your own blog is media career insurance. It will serve as your “home base” where you establish your personal reputation, track record, abilities, interests, and aspirations.”

Ms. Gahran offer some tips for starting a blog. Read her post where she explains each:

  1. Get a good domain name.
  2. Map your domain to your site, so every page on your site bears your domain.
  3. Stick with your domain.
  4. Don’t work for anyone who won’t let you keep blogging.
  5. Join the conversation, and link back to yourself
  6. Keep your blog going even if you also blog elsewhere

I particularly liked: “Consider blogging a basic right of being in the media business.”

Most of the journalists I know and work with do not have a personal blog. I think most of them would insist they don’t have time to blog. A few don’t think it’s “appropriate” for a journalist to blog.

Tie me up and blog me

Posted on by
Reply

I think I could count on one hand the number of times I heard or read the word “snarky” before email (and blogging) came along. I subscribe to he notion snarkiness requires a certain level of wit and charm. Otherwise, it’s just bitchy or whiny.

My first snark crush (I’m still not over her) was the Wonkette. The nome de blog of Ana Marie Cox. Ms. Cox was an early blogger who now snarks (last time, I promise) on Time’s Swampland. I trot along after her on Twitter and found a link to a delightful exchange with Megan at Jezebel.com.

“Since the world is ending around us, it’s important to take note of what parts of our civilization fell and in what order. And, really, there’s no one better at documenting mayhem than the original Wonkette (the rest of us are just pale imitations), Ana Marie Cox.”

And then there’s this exchange regarding McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds:

ANA MARIE: “They really need to stop sending the twelve-year-old intern out to the morning shows. Or cable shows, I mean. I think I was thinking “morning show” because he’s getting his ass kicked, in all cases, by heavily rougued faux-next-girls! GIRLS!

MEGAN: Actually, the man just needs to, like, fucking prepare before he goes. Your candidate is out lying like he’s Dick Cheney or something, you gotta put your big boy panties on just like Ari Fleischer did and take it. I think the real problem is that Tucker Bounds likes getting spanked by hot women.

I’ve heard the “big boy panties” reference before but it was “big girl panties.” Someone in the Bush administration?

Missouri Reality Stars

Posted on by
Reply

One of the (perhaps THE) most important elements of a successful blog is focus. The narrower the better, and it really should be something you are passionate about. Missouri Reality Stars is a good example. From the About page:

“So I’ve been paying attention to pop culture for a long long time. I happened to notice that a lot of people on reality TV are from my home state…the Show Me State of Missouri. Apparently it really is. Being from the same state makes me feel like I should root for them, home team spirit ya know. So that’s what this site is about, finding and promoting Missourians who’ve made it on reality TV.”

M.R.S is the love child of co-worker Amy. Droll is the way she roll.

Beyond the blog

Posted on by
Reply

TwittergoogleshareLike a lot of bloggers, I’m spending more and more time feeding my Twitter page. My friend David describes his “tweets” as the same smart-ass remarks he blurted out in class that left his pals in stitches and earned him a trip to the principal’s office. Twitter can be a little more personal and real-time than a blog post (“I’m in caffeine extremis at Coffee Zone, listening to Amy Winehouse”).

I’m also “sharing” more stuff from my Google Reader. I can hundreds of stories (from blogs and news sites) every day and when I see one I think is interesting, I “share” it and a link shows up in a light blue box on the right side of this page. To see more than the last 5 items, click the “Read More” link at the bottom. I usually don’t add anything to these. I just post them. But I really believe I’m better at spotting interesting/amusing stuff than coming up with it myself.

So, if you drop in and don’t see anything of interest, check the Twitter feed (which you can “follow”) and the Google Shared page.

Baseball promos riff on blogging

Posted on by
Reply

Picture_1Baseball’s playoff advertising push gets under way today, when the first spots of a $65 million campaign — the league’s largest ever — are broadcast. The spots will showcase blogging and feature Fox and TBS personalities like Jeff Foxworthy and Frank Caliendo. Separately they appear at a desk, tapping away on an Apple laptop, blogging about baseball and October memories.

In one of the spots, the scene is a desk placed at home plate, where Caliendo — an accomplished impersonator whose riffs on President Bush are hits on YouTube — sits, blogging in the voice of the president. “There’s Only One October.” (Mr. Caliendo, in his President Bush voice, closes by saying, “I’m pretty sure there’s only one.”) [Story at NYT.com]

I can’t find these on YouTube yet. If you spot them somewhere, please ping me.

Keep your Blackberry under your pillow

Posted on by
Reply

Former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach — a Republican — endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday morning. I think my friend and co-worker Kay Henderson broke the story. It got a lot of national play and her blog post generated 3,000+ page views. I’m sure we got a bunch more at RadioIowa.com. I asked Kay how she got on the story so early:

“I sleep with my blackberry. I woke up at 6 o’clock, checked the ‘berry, and went back to sleep.  As I sort of floated out of dreamland I must have heard or sensed the vibration the ‘berry makes when there’s an incoming email. I pulled the ‘berry from underneath the pillow and read the email sent at 7:14 a.m. from a source in the Obama campaign, alerting me to the fact that former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach would be endorsing Obama in a few hours, during a telephone conference call being organized by the Obama campaign.

I called the newsroom and gave Matt – our morning anchor – the details for him to include in our next newscast, then roused myself from bed and walked into my home office.  I started blogging by feel, as I hadn’t found my glasses yet.  By 7:45 a.m. I had a fairly complete blog post up about the news.  It included text from a speech Vice President Dick Cheney gave at a Leach campaign fundraiser in 2003, explaining the Leach-Cheney-Rumsfeld connection.

I kept updating the post through the day.  An addition at the top – the opening Leach quote — came from a noontime interview.  The McCain folks emailed responses, which got to my email box by 1:50 p.m.”

A couple of things in Kay’s account stand out for me. If she had waited until she got to the office to check her email, she might not have had the jump on the story. Should all reporters sleep with their Blackberry under their pillow? Well, yeah, if you expect to beat Kay on a story.

And that she blogged the story before having her Cheerios. A whole bunch of political reporters follow Kay’s blog.

And while the technology is cool, there’s no substitute for having the contact in the Obama campaign.

High Street Beat

Posted on by
Reply

Bloggers love few things as much as help a new blogger get started. George and I spent the morning with Jefferson City Mayor John Landwehr (and his wife Peggy) helping him get a blog set up. By the time you read this, HighStreetBeat.com should get you there. If not, this link will.

Hizhonor envisions the blog as a place to share news about Jefferson City…with the world. People, places, events, etc. And he’s armed with a Flip Video camera and a YouTube account so look for lots of video. The site just went up today so it’s “under construction” as we used to say.

He has a page on the official Jeff City website, called “Mayor’s Monthly Memo.” But a month is a lifetime in Internet years and memos are waaay too last century. He’s looking for ideas and feedback so hit the comment links or the Gmail link on the left side of his page.

Big Time Blogger Hangs Up (spikes/clubs/gloves)

Posted on by
Reply

Every now and then a super-star blogger “retires” from blogging. Or threatens to. One of the more recent is Jason Calacanis. From his farewell post:

“Starting today all of my thoughts will be reserved for a new medium. Something smaller, something more intimate, and something very personal: an email list. Today the email list has about 600 members, I’m going to cut it off when it reaches 750. Frankly, that’s enough more than enough people to have a conversation with. I’m going to try and build a deeper relationship with fewer people–try to get back to my roots.”

Huh. I think this is where I came in on the Internet movie. Yeah, I’d say 750 people might be enough to keep the old conversation ball in the air.

Chris Pirillo wonders if we’re getting “too big for our niches?”

“Perhaps it is time to step back and figure out what’s possible in this new landscape. Can we maintain conversation and community at a large scale without things devolving into chaos? Is beating the CNNs and CNETs at their own mass-market game what we really want, or do we need to go back to the idea of finding our niche?”

I don’t know anything about A-List bloggers but my buddy Chuck blogs (among other things) for a living and he and his wife work their asses off. I can see why someone might run out of steam if it all got too big.

I find blogging fun and relaxing. I know –or know of– many of the 250-300 people that visit here. Blogging for bucks? Not for me.

“Freedom is a shitty business model”

Posted on by
1

“(Blogging is) headed everywhere, because the underlying pattern of cheap amateur publishing is what’s important, not the current manifestations. The word blog itself is going to fade into the middle distance, in the same way words like home page and portal did. Those words used to mean something relatively crisp and specific, but became so overloaded as to be meaningless.

So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this — the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.

The thing that will change the future in the future is the same thing that changed the future in the past — freedom, in both its grand and narrow senses.

A lot of the fights in the next 5 years are going to be between people who want this kind of freedom in their technologies vs. business people who think freedom is a shitty business model compared with control.

The internet means you don’t have to convince anyone that something is a good idea before trying it, and that in turn means that you don’t need to be a huge company to change the world.”

From Clay Shirky’s  Here Comes Everybody: The
Power of Organizing Without Organizations.