Author Archives: Steve Mays

Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill on Twitter

Posted on by

Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill has been getting a lot of interest in her use of Twitter (microblog, social networking tool, blah blah blah) to keep her constituents informed about what she’s doing. Politico recently named her to their list of the ten most influential Twitterers in DC (right behind Karl Rove).

Missourinet (network owned by Learfield, the company that pays me) reporter Steve Walsh brought up Twitter in a recent interview and the senator spoke wistfully about a day when she can “speak directly to everyone in Missouri,” describing it as “Nirvana.”

It was telling that my friend (and co-worker) Steve set his question up as “nothing at all to do with anything serious.”

Hmm. Should the day come that every elected official can speak directly to every one of the people they represent, without talking to a reporter, things could get serious (for the news media). Don’t get me wrong, we need good reporters like Steve, who can call bullshit on the politicians when necessary. They will always have a role. But it seems to be changing.

And this just in… anyone with access to the Internet can hear directly from Senator McCaskill.

KBOA voice of SE Missouri during/after ice storm

Posted on by

In the early days of the big ice storm that knocked out power to so many in southern Missouri, I kept hearing from friends in Kennett, Missouri (where Barb and I grew up) what a great job the local radio station (KBOA-AM) was doing. It was the only source for information and just a few announcers were keeping the station on the air with a generator and broadcasting non-stop with nothing but a phone and a microphone.

Steve Tyler, News Director Charles Isbell and Operations Manager Monte Lyons are all veteran radio guys (“with more than 100 years of experience between us”) who remember a time before computers and automation and syndicated talk shows. I figured they had some good stories to tell about the recent disaster. It runs about 20 minutes and –since they were on a speaker phone– you might have to listen closely.

AUDIO: Interview 20 min MP3

A tip of the hat to William Pollack, President of Pollack Broadcasting, the owner of the station(s), for deferring to his local staff and letting them make the call on how best to serve the community.

With cable and phone lines down, the Internet wasn’t much help for all those people sitting in the cold and dark, wondering when the power would come back on. But radio was there. Literally the voice of a community. Or communities.

I can’t foresee the future of small market radio but have to believe it will involve this kind of service and involvement. But that’s going to take people. People who know their neighbors and local business because they live there.

Will finding and hiring and training these men and women be easy. Doubt it. Will such staffing cut into profit margins. Probably. But if broadcasters don’t find a way to be truly local and relevant… their stations are almost certain to be cold and dark.

—–

For those that missed these earlier posts, Matthew Howard and Charles Jolliff share some photos of the ice damage… and friend and fellow-blogger Dr. Everett Mobley shares the journal he kept for the two weeks his family was without power. This is a terrific account.

Google Juice: Example #32

Posted on by

I do these from time to time, in spite of how self-serving they seem. That’s never my intention, given the modest traffic through this little alley of the Internet. I’m talking about Google ranking and how well blogs do in this most important metric.

In July of 2006, I posted passage from John Burdett’s second novel, Bangkok Tattoo. The subject –and title of the post– was “Western Concept of Self.”

Today, I happened across the post and decided to Google “western concept of self” (minus the quotation marks). Those are pretty common terms and Goggle returned almost 13 million pages with one or more of them. My little post was number two on that list.

 

So when clients ask me, how can they get their website to show up on the first page of Google search results, I always tell them the same thing: Start by making your site a blog and update it every day.

“Isn’t there some meta-thingy you can hide on the page that will force my site to the top of the rankings?”

Yeah, maybe. But I’m not your guy for that. I love that Google almost always helps me find what I’m looking for and I’m not keen on helping someone game the system. Even for money. (God, I hope I don’t get hammered by all the SEO experts. Can I just stipulate that you guys are right and I’m wrong?)

One final point and it has to do with blogs vs. newsletters. I’ve posted on this in the past. It came up again recently. The “village elders” of a local organization were unhappy with the blog one of their members maintains for them. They didn’t like having frequent, short items and wanted to go back to their “newsletter” format. Save up any news and post it all, once a month, at the same time.

Nothing wrong with that approach if you’re only interested in reaching the people who are already in the organization and know to go check the website once a month. But if you’re trying to reach more and new people, you want that Google juice. Blogs deliver. Newsletters… not so much.

What Would Google Do

Posted on by
Reply

Jeff Jarvis’ new book, What Would Google Do looks like it might be a two highlighter read. I’ll be posting some of my favorite passages here but encourage you to buy and read the book.

“In retail, media, education, government, and health –everything– the link drives specialization, quality, and collaboration, and it changes old roles and creates new ones. The link changes the fundamental architecture of societies and industries the way steel girders and rails changed how cities and nations were built and how they operated. Google makes links work. Google is the U.S. Steel of our age.” – pg 27, What Would Google Do (Jeff Jarvis)

The Onion: Another Dark Ages?

Posted on by
Reply

From remarks by Scott Dikkers, Editor of The Onion. Freedom from Religion Foundation

“We live in an age now that could easily turn into another dark ages. It’s a time when irrational beliefs that run counter to established science are accepted not just by a large percentage of the population but also by our elected leaders.

The religious like to say they’re “saved.” But after eight years of their pick for president, it’s the rest of us who need to be saved.

And the people who voted for this leadership are ready to do it again, because they are ideologues, who are incapable of learning–they reject any factual information that contradicts their beliefs.” 

You’re in my Rolodex

Posted on by

One of the reporters in one of our newsrooms has a Rolodex that goes back 30+ years. The cards are worn from handling and yellowed by the years. I have no idea if he also maintains some kind of computer file as well. Doubtful.

A well-maintained Rolodex was once the most valuable thing on a reporter’s (or salesman’s) desk and the one thing to take with you when the time came.

It’s from a time when the telephone was the sole means of instant communication but not yet smart enough to remember more than a half-dozen numbers (“I’ve got you on speed dial”).

I wonder how many fewer calls are made in our email world. Has Outlook become the new Rolodex? Or has our mobile phones absorbed that function? Losing your phone is only a big deal because it might mean losing all of the numbers of friends and contacts.

Which brings us to social networks.

Will being able to communicate with you –by calling or emailing– become less valuable than having you “friend” me on Facebook or “follow” me on Twitter. The difference is me seeking your attention versus you deciding to give me your attention.

Let’s say you’re a salesman for a paper products company. Let’s call you Stanley. You have the phone number and email addresses of your 20 largest customers. With a little time and patience, you can get them on the phone; get a reply to an email; and even get an appointment.

But suppose those customers elected to follow your Twitter feed because that’s where you posted links to information that they found valuable enough to give their attention. I submit it is a different –more valuable– kind of attention than you get when you punch through with a call or email.

One last example. I can call or email the senior management of our company. Most of them are in the same building, so I can walk down the hall and usually get some face time. But a couple of them read my blog and –in time– will follow my Twitter feed. And the only reason they would invest even a minute or two from incredibly busy days, is they perceive some value (information or entertainment).

Being in someone’s network is far more valuable than being on their call-back list. Or in their Roladex.

Pill to erase bad memories

Posted on by

I first wondered about this back in 2004. A couple of years later, 60 Minutes did a segment on one such drug. Now Dutch researchers claim to have erased bad memories by using ‘beta-blocker’ drugs, which are usually prescribed to patients with heart disease.

“The astonishing treatment could help sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder and those whose lives are plagued by hurtful recurrent memories. But British experts said the breakthrough raises disturbing ethical questions about what makes us human. They also warned it could have damaging psychological consequences, preventing those who take it from learning from their mistakes.”

Would I take such a pill? I think I might. I haven’t experienced more than my share of pain or trauma but if I’m a better person for it, I’m hard pressed to say how.

“But you are YOU because of the sum of your experiences, smays.com,” one might argue.

Yes, and I’d just be a different person if I took the pill and erased the memories. In fact, maybe I did take the pill. I wouldn’t remember, would I?

And before we leave this topic… how is this different from taking pills that alter our perception of this moment (Valuium, anti-anxiety meds, etc)?

“Democratization of information”

Posted on by

Last month I –like many others– made note of Janis Krums being among the first to report (on his Twitter feed) that an airliner had crash landed in the Hudson River. Will Leitch was in the SF offices of Twitter, working on an article for New York Magazine, as the story was breaking.

“In the midst of chaos—a plane just crashed right in front of him!—Krums’s first instinct was to take a picture and load it to the web. There was nothing capitalistic or altruistic about it. Something amazing happened, and without thinking, he sent it out to the world. And let’s say he hadn’t. Let’s say he took this incredible photo—a photo any journalist would send to the Pulitzer board—and decided to sell it, said he was hanging onto it for the highest bidder. He would have been vilified by bloggers and Twitterers alike. His is a culture of sharing information. This is the culture Twitter is counting on. Whatever your thoughts on its ability to exist outside the collapsing economy or its inability (so far) to put a price tag on its services, that’s a real thing. That’s the instinct Stone was talking about. If the nation has tens of millions of people like Krums, that’s a phenomenon. That’s what Twitter is waiting for.”

I’ve given up trying to explain the phenomenon that Twitter has become but can’t help take note of the examples that pop up almost every day.

@angelawilson does freelance work for us and works from her home. Today she had The Price is Right on (“just for background”) and one of the ladies picked to be a contestant was part of a group of women wearing shirts with their Twitter names on the front (mine is @smaysdotcom). Host Drew Cary had to explain to the studio and viewing audience what Twitter was. I hope that shows up on YouTube because I’d really like to see it.

And then this afternoon I learned (from the Twitter feed of St. Louis Post-Dispatch Reporter Tony Messenger) that some kind of big “nuke hearing” was getting ready to start in the Senate. And that there was so much interest the hearing room was so packed they had to set up closed circuit TV monitors in a room on the third floor.

I followed Tony’s Twitter feed for a bit, where I learned that one of the senators (Jolie Justus) on the committee holding the hearing, was also using Twitter to let her “followers” know what was going on. You can check out her “tweets” (you should pardon the expression) at http://twitter.com/joliejustus. Where she assured us she’d tell us more about the four hour hearing tomorrow on her blog, Fresh Meat (she’s a freshman senator?).

What does all of this mean? I’m not sure I know. Does it mean something? Yeah, I’m pretty sure it does. As Twitter co-founder Ev Williams says in the NY mag piece:

“It’s another step toward the democratization of information. I’ve come to really believe that if you make it easier for people to share information, more good things happen.”

Me too.

UPDATE: Sen. Justus started her blog as a Freshman Senator two years ago. [Thanks, JW]

50s and 60s new prime?

Posted on by
Reply

Major U.S. companies are retaining workers over 55 even as younger workers get the ax. That’s the gist of an article in Feb edition of BUSINESSWEEK:

“Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics tell the tale: The number of people aged 55 and up with jobs actually rose nearly 900,000 from the start of the recession, in December 2007, through last year. By comparison, people aged 25 to 54 lost nearly 2.9 million jobs. The share of older Americans who have jobs has risen during the recession, while the share of younger Americans with jobs has plunged.”

And a “mature” dude such as myself, who is comfortable on the Internets… let’s get us some of them!

Job interviews

Posted on by

Lots of folks looking for jobs and many more will be. I’ve been trying to remember the last time I interviewed for a job. I blush to recall that Clyde recruited me 25 years ago and “insisted” I accept his offer.

In 1972 I got a job at the radio station where my father worked so there was nothing that resembled an interview. If I was willing to work 10p-6a, the job was mine.

The short-lived gig as a postal inspector was more of a pass the test, fill out the form kind of thing. Another instance of me “falling into” the job.

I can only recall a couple of job interviews: one for the Memphis TN police department; another with a community theater in Kansas City. I wasn’t qualified for either and was damned lucky I didn’t get hired.

During my Management days, I interviewed lots of people for jobs but don’t think I ever got very good at it. And I wouldn’t be very good at applying for a job now.

I wish the very best to those now “on the bricks.”