Yearly Archives: 2007

Demystifying blogging

Posted on by

My buddy Chuck posted the following to his blog (AgWired) today:

“Hi there AgWired fans. This morning I’m doing a new media presentation with the folks at John Deere and their agency, BCS Communications. This is an example post for the presentation.”

So what? For many (most? all?) of the people in the room, updating a web page is a Dark Art. Magic. At the very least, a pain in the ass. Some person or persons (or a committee) has to approve the copy and then send it to the web people and –eventually– the web page gets updated.

Chuck just logged in to his Word Press account. Bangs in the copy above…hits the submit button…and publishes for the world to see. It took less time than it is taking me to tell you about it.

I’ve used this analogy before but it’s a good one. When a room full of execs see a demo like this (I wasn’t there but I’ve done a few of these)… it’s like the scene in every Tarzan movie with the Great White Hunters “make fire come from stick,” or when they crank up the movie projector (where did they plug it in?) for the pygmies.

US teachers using online news sites in classroom; newspapers left behind

Posted on by

LostRemote points to a survey of over 1,000 teachers that found that 57 percent use national or international news websites as a source of news for teaching purposes, compared to 28 percent for daily newspapers and just 13 percent for local TV news.

“Students do not relate to newspapers at all, any more than they would to vinyl records,” one teacher said in the study. Local papers “haven’t recognized how quickly this transition is taking place,” said the study’s author, Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. What about local TV sites? They weren’t even mentioned.

Uh, any mention of radio news?

Futurism: Glancing sideways

Posted on by

“The thing that’s going to be quaint about “cyberspace” (that already is, really) is the inherent assumption that it’s a realm unto itself; that it’s in any way elsewhere or other. Glancing sideways is becoming more generally recognized as about the best way of doing what we used to call futurism.”

–William Gibson

Kennett expats in environmental face-off

Posted on by

Rock star Sheryl Crow and movie producer Laurie David, who helped work on Al Gore’s Oscar nominated documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” are teaming up for a two-week bus tour across North Texas and the Gulf states. The tour is designed to fight global warming and save the environment.

The tour hopes to stop TXU’s controversial plan to build 11 coal-fired power plants across the state of Texas. Governor Rick Perry’s plan to fast-track the coal plants has been attacked by environmentalists and a coalition of cities.

C. John Wilder, 48, is chairman of the board and CEO of TXU Corp., one of the nation’s largest electric energy companies.

Brother-in-law Lew connects the Kennett dots in this story. Not only are Ms. Crow and Mr. Wilder from Kennett, they lived in the same house (on Emerson Street), although not at the same time.

Sounds like the beginning of a pretty good screenplay, doesn’t it?

Jon Stewart as value-added news aggregator

Posted on by

I still try to watch one of the network newscasts each evening. But, increasingly, I rely on The Daily Show for the latest news.

Jon Stewart devoted over a third of one broadcast last week to Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Dick Cheney on CNN. Not only did Stewart go through numerous highlights from the interview, but the Daily Show staff gathered supporting video clips to provide context for the interview, using previous statements of position and policy to hold the veep accountable for the stuff he was saying now. You can watch the segment here if you missed it. [Eat the Press]

AgWired: Guerilla video

Posted on by

I refer you, once again, to AgWired for a good example of how easy it is to add video to your blog or website. Chuck Zimmerman is covering the International Poultry and Feed Expos in Atlanta. His posts include –as always– still images and audio. But he is increasingly dropping in short video clips.

He’s just roaming around the floor in this clip but he could just as easily have stopped to interview an exhibitor or speaker. The operative word here is “easily.” He ran the video through Windows Movie Maker (free) for a quick edit and a title…uploaded to YouTube (free)…and then embedded their flash player in his post. Done.

Contrast that to dragging around a cameraman and sound guy (expensive) who have to get back to a studio for post-production (expensive: time and money). Then you gotta get it to the TV station or cable channel and blah, blah, blah. Chuck is carrying everything he needs on his back and if the expo hall is wifi’d…all he needs is a place to sit down.

Radio Iowa: The Blog, getting noticed

Posted on by

Allbritton Communications launched The Politico today. It’s a free tabloid with an estimated circulation of 25,000 aimed at political junkies and Beltway insiders, and its companion website.

The Politico has garnered attention by snagging high-profile journalists to run the paper. Two of The Washington Post’s top political journalists — editor John Harris and reporter Jim VandeHei — left to become The Politico’s editor-in-chief and executive editor, respectively. Reporters have been lured from Time, U.S. News and World Report and the New York Daily News, among others.

Ben SmithOne of these superstars, Ben Smith, is blogging and includes our own Kay Henderson (Radio Iowa) in “Ben’s Favorite Blogs.” Just the latest high-profile link love for the Bloggerista.

In this 2003 post, I included Kay in my list of “Blogs I Would Read if They Existed.” And now it does. And I do.

More The Politico here and here.

Go away! We’re busy!

Posted on by

If you email the Missouri State High School Activities Association, you are likely to get an automated response that includes the following:

“The MSHSAA staff will respond first to more traditional means of communication such as telephone calls, written correspondence and faxes. The MSHSAA office can be reached at (573) 875-4880 during regular office hours. As time permits, staff will reply to email messages that include the sender’s complete name, address and phone number.”

I don’t even know what to say about this. It speaks volumes about how the organization views its relationship with the public it serves (?). I am inspired to create a new category here at smays.com: Clueless and Proud. Say it loud!

AgWired blogging from Germany

Posted on by

The Hardest Working Blogger in Show Business, Chuck Zimmerman, is in Berlin, covering the annual meeting of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists. IFAJ is “a non-political, professional association for agricultural journalists in 29 countries.” As far as I can determine (and Chuck is aware), he is the only person blogging this event.

You gotta figure that at least some of the attendees have laptops and digital cameras with them. Not one blogger in the bunch? Maybe there’s coverage of the event at the official IFAJ website…nope.

Old Media types can’t understand why I’m even asking? Bloggers can’t imagine attending something like this and not putting up a couple of posts.

Life After Death

Posted on by

“A must read for everyone who will die.” That’s how one reviewer describes Deepak Chopra’s “Life After Death.” I ordered the book after seeing Dr. Chopra on The Colbert Report. The title pretty much describes the book which got a fair amount of highlighter (my measure of good non-fiction). Here’s one graf from page 239:

“In spiritual terms the cycle of birth and rebirth is a workshop for making creative leaps of the soul. The natural and the supernatural are not doing different things but are involved in transformation on separate levels. At the moment of death the ingredients of your old body and old identity disappear. Your DNA and everything it created devolve back to their simple component parts. Your memories dissolve back into raw information. None of this raw material is simply recombined to produced a slightly altered person. To produce a new body capable of making new memories, the person who emerges must be new. You do not acquire a new soul, because the soul doesn’t have content. It’s not “you” but the center around which “you” coalesces, time after time. It’s your zero point.”

I’ve never studied or researched reincarnation, but I’ve always had a curiosity about and openess to the idea. In 1988 I wrote:

“As I think about the idea of a past existence, I feel a fondness for this “earlier me”. A sense of gratitude for whatever spiritual progress he was able to achieve. At the same time, I feel a sense of anticipation or expectation for my “next life”. And some responsibility to that future self. I’d like to move him (or her?) along as far as I can on this “cosmic lap.” To move him closer to…a perfect consciousness? Nirvana?”

“Mixed in with all of that is a sense of relief that I don’t have to complete everything in this lifetime. This is not the only shot I’ll get. And this awareness is vital because we all know –consciously or subconsciously– that we won’t “get it all done” in a spiritual sense. We hope (and work) for progress but a single” lifetime seems hopelessly short.”

Upon rereading the full post, I’m struck by how close I got (to Dr. Chopra’s explanation), given my complete ignorance.

I confess I could never stretch my common sense and logic (and faith?) around many of the stories in the Bible. And my recent read of Richard Dawkins’ case for atheism (The God Delusion) didn’t convince me. But I really enjoyed Life After Death and will read more by Dr. Chopra.