Author Archives: Steve Mays

WordPress, StudioPress, Thesis. FTW.

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TS-thumbnailWe completed a make-over of one of Learfield’s websites yesterday. Like most companies, we’re watching our expenses, so I was pleased to bring it in for the $59 I paid for the theme (not counting my time and some IT help with site prep).

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve converted a dozen websites to WordPress and the process has gone very smoothly. With 50 users working in half a dozen offices, we needed a very friendly content management system and WordPress has delivered. Both for the people working in our newsrooms and for me.

There are literally thousands of plug-ins for every conceivable task. And they’re all free (or donor supported).

I’m not a designer but the variety of affordable WordPress themes is staggering. After a good bit of looking, I found myself coming back again and again to two providers:

StudioPress has great-looking themes that cost about $60 each. Use as-is or have one customized for a couple of hundred bucks.

Thesis is the theme I chose for our news networks. Out of the box, it’s a clean, minimalist design. We can add a coat of Candy Apple Glitter Flake paint later, but for now, I wanted something that was easy to manage under the hood.

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Both of these developers have great support forums and documentation.

I’ve spent less than $2,000 on the refresh of ALL of our websites. Aside from some great help by our IT folks, and the day-to-day content posting by our news and sports staff, I support all of these by myself.

If quick turn-around is a requirement, StudioPress/Thesis + WordPress is a winning combination. If the content has been assembled, I can get a site up and running in a matter of a few hours.

Fast, inexpensive and fun. For the win.

A billion Chinese, shoulder-to-shoulder

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Nobody talks about getting into a land war with China anymore but back during the Cold War, it was generally understood to be a bad idea. And someone would point out that if every Chinese man, woman and child started marching into the ocean, they’d never run out of people because of the birth rate. Which I gather is less of a problem these days.

I only bring this up in the context of more troops for Afghanistan. I don’t know if the Chinese have troops there, but they could if they wanted to. And that’s my point.

Want to find Bin Ladden? Squash the Taliban? No problem. We’ll just line up a a few million of our soldiers, about two feet apart, and walk from one end of (fill in the name of country) to the other. When one of our guys gets shot or falls in a hole, we’ll send a replacement.

Yes, it’s a dumb strategy. But not much dumber than what we’re doing. And since the Chinese leaders don’t have to worry about mid-term elections, they can skip a lot of stupid stuff. But maybe they’d do this, just to clean up our mess.

“You go home. We’ll take care of these rock piles and the whackos who live there. Fix your economy, do something about your schools, and clean up the corruption in your financial and political institutions. When you get your shit together, call us.”

“Is America Losing Its Mojo?”

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“We have hoped it would all work out, and for a while it did. The seed capital from past decades was strong enough to carry us for decades. We got talent from abroad to mask the erosion at home. We used financial engineering to substitute for the real thing. We borrowed to the hilt and sold each other our homes in an ascending spiral that made us all feel rich. And we kicked all the real problems we face down the road, hoping that someone else would solve them. This too has become part of American culture, a culture that desperately needs to change if we are to preserve American innovation and rekindle the real American Dream.”

— From article by Fareed Zakari (NEWSWEEK, 2009)

Why there is no draft

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From a new report called Mission: Readiness, an organization of education and military leaders:

Lean, mean, fighting maching“An alarming 75 percent of Americans ages 17 to 24 would not qualify for military service today because they are physically unfit, failed to finish high school or have criminal records. So says a new report from an organization of education and military leaders calling for immediate action on the early-education front.”

“Military recruiters in Kansas City report turning away prospective recruits “in every office, every hour, every day” for reasons including girths too large and credit ratings too low.”

“Even after signing up, 7 to 15 percent of enlistees return home for not meeting all that basic training demands.”

Scariest quote is from retired Rear Adm. James Barnett:  “Our national security in the year 2030 is absolutely dependent on what’s going on in kindergarten today.”

“A luxury we can no longer afford”

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“New Business Models for News” was the title of a conference held by the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism. You can read the full post by Dorian Benkoil at E-Media Tidbits but the goal of the (3rd annual) conference was “…to try to find ways that the news business can survive.”

“The 150 to 200 people there were a diverse audience — local bloggers and independent journalists trying to make a living, reps from big media companies like The New York Times and Gannett, venture capitalists, foundation funders, educators, consultants, students, technologists, advertising salespeople, ad network experts.”

“You’d better take an interest in the spreadsheets that represent your income and expenses, and cash flow statements that will determine if you can meet payroll every week — even if that payroll is just you, working alone. You may even have to consider, in the words of NYU’s Jay Rosen, that “there may be no business model to replace the old business model” — but you’ll still have to find a way to pay for it all.”

“But being unaware of anything having to do with the cash flows that support the news operation is a luxury we can no longer afford.”

nama-trends-nafb-09-7Reading and thinking about this conference brought to mind my many chats with Chuck Zimmerman, a former Learfield employee who struck out on his own (with wife Cindy) and has created a small but successful business as an ag journalist (specializing in agriculture marketing).

Over the course of the last several years, I’ve heard Chuck talk about dealing with finances, ad sales, server problems, and a bunch of other stuff that had not much to do with reporting a story but a lot to do with putting bread on the table.

“How Twitter is changing the face of media”

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This post by Soren Gordhamer (at Mashable.com) resonates for those of us who followed/participated in the “reporting” of “the hostage situation that wasn’t” here in Jefferson City.

“Sure, in the past, you could always email or call a friend to inform him or her of a quality news story or TV show; now, however, in a matter of seconds you can share this information on your broadcasting network via Twitter or Facebook, with tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people. It’s not my or your media anymore; it’s our media, and we can all broadcast it.” [Emphasis mine]

“In the past, what people thought of as “news” was what was reported that day in the New York Times or CNN. In an age where we all possess our own broadcasting network, though, smaller stations have greater power. Of course, a post on Twitter from CNN, which has over two million followers, will get more views than one from Joe Smith who has 20 followers will, but Joe Smith is at least in the game now, where he was not previously.”

“In the new media landscape, the task of defining what is the news that matters to people lies less with a few major media outlets, and much more with the millions of small outlets like you and I who each choose what to talk about. Increasingly, lots of littles, in aggregate, are becoming more powerful than a handful of bigs.” [Emphasis mine]

“Media is also becoming more personal. More and more people expect their broadcasting networks to be people with personalities, not simply sources of news. We want to know as much about the person reporting news as we do the news they are reporting. [Emphais mine] Broadcasting is more a personal act than ever, as users seek to have connections not just to content but to people.”

Mr. Gordhamer is the author of the book, Wisdom 2.0 and the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference.

This tweet just in…

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Yesterday’s dust up in Jefferson City provided a good look at how local news media (and civilians) would use Twitter to “cover” a breaking news story. I haven’t seen all the tweets posted by @misourinet but during the few minutes I was in the newsroom, our reporters we’re being cautious about what they posted. I think we did retweet some stuff that turned out to be inaccurate but I’m not sure about that. I did get he sense they were trying to be restrained and confirm information.

Some news outlets were posting corrections as fast as updates. And the public was under no constraints at all. Missouri Lt. Governor Peter Kinder had his BlackBerry hotter than Tim Pawlenty’s wife. Unfortunately, much of what he tweeted was wrong.

Old news dogs will decry such Twitter frenzy but I didn’t have any trouble sifting the wheat from the chaff. And this kind of rumor wildfire has always been there, it just wasn’t up where we could watch it. It was one-to-one, not one-to-the-universe.

At one point, I saw a young woman –a reporter, I assumed– with a Marantz recorder and microphone (I had one just like it). The plan was, I suppose, to record an interview or some “nat sound,” go back to the radio station (?), “cut up” the audio, write a story and hope to get it done in time for the next newscast. Or post it to the station website.

I don’t know if that’s enough –or fast enough– any more.

All I had was the iPhone but if I could have gotten an interview, I could have posted audio and/or video immediately. From where I was standing.

Back on Twitter for a minute… people like Tony Messenger and Chad Livengood long ago established their Twitter cred. Following their updates was as close to real-time updates as you’re gonna get in a situation like this (one of the local radio stations did cut into syndication natioal shows with updates a couple of times).

I think our network (@missourinet) picked up 50 or 60 new followers yesterday, on the stength of frequent, accurate posts.

Was there a “better” way to follow yesterday’s events? I’m not sure what it would be. Will we get better at using this tool (both to monitor events and to report them)? I’m sure we will.