Author Archives: Steve Mays

Short list of must-have tools for journalists

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  • A laptop computer that the journalist maintains and for which the journalist takes responsibility
  • A digital still camera capable of shooting video that’s usable on the Web
  • A digital audio recorder capable of high-quality sound for use online
  • A blog or content management system to which the journalist can upload reports from the field, including audio, photos, and video
  • Social networks, blogs, RSS, and other means of staying connected to the community and the world
  • Software applications used for editing audio, photos, video, etc.; also software used for managing projects and information

From a post by Mindy McAdams that attempts to answer the question, “Why does anyone major in journalism?”

Chris Anderson’s Free – The Future of a Radical Price

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I’m almost finished with Chris Anderson’s Free – The Future of a Radical Price. It’s hard for us old dogs to wrap our minds around how free can be a real business model but Anderson makes his case with lots of compelling examples and insights. Here are a couple of my favorites:

“Venture capitalists have a term for this used of Free to shrink one industry while potentially opening up others: “creating a zero billion dollar business.” Fred Wilson, a partner at Union Square Ventures, explains it like this: “It describes a business that enters a market, like classified or news, and by virtue of the amazing efficiency of its operation can rely on a fraction of the revenue that the market leaders need to operate profitably.”

Gulp. And then there’s this little conundrum:

“The nature of the advertisement is different online. The old broadcast model was, in essence, this: Annoy the 90 percent of your audience that’s not interested in your product to reach the 10 percent who might be (think denture ads during football games).

The Google model is just the opposite: Use software to show the ad only to the people for whom it’s most relevant. Annoy just the 10 percent of the audience who isn’t interested to reach the 90 percent who might be.”

Watching or listening to stupid ads that had no relevance for me never bothered me when there were no alternatives. I just tuned them out. Now I find myself thinking “why am I watching Billy Mays scream at me about gluing my pants back together?

“four-wheeled hellcat from Planet Kickass”

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My pal Mal points us to this brilliant Craig’s List ad. I’m tempted to buy the car just to meet the man (?) who wrote this.

“OK, let me start off by saying this Xterra is only available for purchase by the manliest of men (or women). My friend, if it was possible for a vehicle to sprout chest hair and a five o’clock shadow, this Nissan would look like Tom Selleck. It is just that manly.

It was never intended to drive to northstar mall so you can pick up that adorable shirt at Abercrombie & Fitch that you had your eye on. It wasn’t meant to transport you to yoga class or Bath & Body Works. No, that’s what your Prius is for. If that’s the kind of car you’re looking for, then just do us all a favor and stop reading right now. I mean it. Just stop.

This car was engineered by 3rd degree ninja super-warriors in the highest mountains of Japan to serve the needs of the man that cheats death on a daily basis. They didn’t even consider superfluous nancy boy amenities like navigation systems (real men don’t get lost), heated leather seats (a real man doesn’t let anything warm his butt), or On Star (real men don’t even know what the hell On Star is).

No, this brute comes with the things us testosterone-fueled super action junkies need. It has a 265 HP engine to outrun the cops. It’s got special blood/gore resistant upholstery. It even has a first-aid kit in the back. You know what the first aid kit has in it? A pint of whiskey, a stitch-your-own-wound kit and a hunk of leather to bite down on when you’re operating on yourself. The Xterra also has an automatic transmission so if you’re being chased by Libyan terrorists, you’ll still be able to shoot your machine gun out the window and drive at the same time. It’s saved my bacon more than once.

It has room for you and the four hotties you picked up on the way to the gym to blast your pecs and hammer your glutes. There’s a tow hitch to pull your 50 caliber anti-Taliban, self cooling machine gun. I also just put in a new windshield to replace the one that got shot out by The Man.

My price on this bad boy is an incredibly low $10,900, but I’ll entertain reasonable offers. And by reasonable, I mean don’t walk up and tell me you’ll give me $5,000 for it. That’s liable to earn you a Burmese-roundhouse-sphincter-kick with a follow up three fingered eye-jab. Would it hurt? Hell yeah. Let’s just say you won’t be the prettiest guy at the Coldplay concert anymore.

There’s only 69,000 miles on this four-wheeled hellcat from Planet Kickass. Trust me, it will outlive you and the offspring that will carry your name. It will live on as a monument to your machismo.

Now, go look in the mirror and tell me what you see. If it’s a rugged, no holds barred, super brute he-man macho Chuck Norris stunt double, then contact me. I might be out hang-gliding or BASE jumping or just chilling with my ladies, but I’ll get back to you. And when I do, we’ll talk about a price over a nice glass of Schmidt while we listen to Johnny Cash.

To sweeten the deal a little, I’m throwing in this pair of MC Hammer pants for the man with rippling quads that can’t fit into regular pants. Yeah, you heard me. FREE MC Hammer pants. Rock on.”

A new website for under $60.00

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On Thursday of this past week one of our company websites “broke.” That’s my non-geek analysis. It wasn’t the first time and we knew it wouldn’t be the last, so –with the support and encouragement of our IT department– we decided to just flush it and start over.

At noon on Friday I installed a new WordPress theme ($59.95 from StudioPress) and started copying and pasting content. By four o’clock, I was pretty much done. Here’s a screen shot of the work-in-progress:

Learfield Communications is comprised of two operating divisions: Sports and News. We have a corporate website; a website for the sports division; one for the news division; and one for each of the networks that make up the news division.

The news division site was a challenge because we really didn’t have any dynamic content for the site and I hated putting up a “brochure” that never changed.

The WordPress site we tossed together in a few hours on Friday afternoon won’t win any awards but it will allow us to do things we couldn’t before. Like video. It’s becoming much easier to shoot, edit and host (yea YouTube and Vimeo!) video, so it makes sense to include it. WordPress has endless plug-ins for this task.

And WordPress is just a very good content management system, at least for our needs. I’ll be able to show folks in our marketing department how to create and update pages which makes it possible to keep the site fresh and current.

WordPress is very social-network friendly. Flickr, YouTube, Twitter… wherever you have content, you can quickly incorporate it.

The effectiveness of this –or any– website will be measured by the quantity and quality of the content and ease of interaction with the people who visit it. WordPress delivers.

It would have been easy to spend a couple of months a  few thousand dollars getting a simple site like this developed. I can now take that money and time and go improve some more of our sites. [END OF COMMERCIAL]