Author Archives: Steve Mays

Newspaper’s Internet radio station streaming fire coverage

Posted on by

“The San Diego Union-Tribune’s site SignOn San Diego offers a streaming Internet radio station, SignOn Radio. Today they’ve been supplying steady coverage of the fires, including phoned-in live reports from area residents and people following the story from other regions. News staff are manning the radio, taking calls. It seems like they’re doing a pretty good job of applying journalistic judgment to both official information and call-ins.” [E-Media Tidbits]

I’m listening to the SignOn Radio stream on iTunes. W is stumbling through a press conference. I think he actually said, “I’m from the federal government and we’re here to help you.”

They just broke for AP headlines. I keep looking at the MacBook to remind myself I’m listening to “radio” from a newspaper. Spooky. I remember boasting that only “radio” could really cover this kind of story.

Profitable blogs

Posted on by

From an article by Sam Zuckerman at SFGate.com (San Francisco Chronicle):

“More quickly than most anyone imagined, blogging is growing up. From the blogosphere’s anarchistic roots, a professional cadre is emerging that is creating an industry whose top-performing businesses now earn serious money. The industry is expanding at warp speed. Blog-based media could just be poised to elbow aside traditional print and broadcast outlets to become one of the dominant sources of news, information and opinion, many observers believe.”

This is a must read for anyone in the media business. Management or foot soldier.

Former Bush staffers consider their legacy

Posted on by

My favorite pull from a story by Peter Baker at WashingtonPost.com:

“(Rove) does not want to be identified solely by his ties to the president. He knows he will go down in history as Bush’s “architect,” but he thinks he can expand his identity beyond just that. “It’s not like my life from here forward is going to be defined by it,” he said. “I have a chance to create something else. I’m not just going to be typecast as, ‘Oh, that’s the Bush guy.’ “

We’ll see. I’d love to see someone put together a website that keeps up with all of the people most responsible for the last seven years. Maybe a big map of the world with a little red dot representing each of the players. Just showing where they are now, and what’ they’re doing. They played a major role in creating the world in which we live. I’d just like to know where they live and what they’re up to. Sort of a Marauder’s Map.

Record everything, post everything

Posted on by

In March of this year, I posted audio of a speech by Jan Hindman, author of “There Is No Sex Fairy. For 34 years, Ms. Hindman studied and researched the problem of sexual abuse, working with both sexual offenders and sexual victims through mental health endeavors, the educational realm, as well as private practice.

She was a keynote speaker at a conference organized by one of our clients. I was so impressed by her intelligence and wit that I posted the audio here at smays.com.

Today I received an email from her niece, letting me know that Jan Hindman passed away suddenly a few days ago. She found my post (and the audio) with a Google search:

“…it has been very comforting to hear her voice. It made me smile to hear her wonderful messages and her great sense of humor one more time. She was so very special.”

This kind of thing happens more than you might expect. And it’s one of the things I like best about blogging. As far as I know, the speech I posted might be the only one (by Ms. Hindman) online. I hope other friends and admirers find –and take some comfort– from it.

Snapshots

Posted on by

A woman/man/boy takes my picture at a crowded sidewalk cafe. I object and the woman/man/boy runs away. I give chase. The mysterious photographer dashes in front of a bus and is killed instantly. I look down and see the camera at my feet. I pick it up and walk away. A couple of blocks away I go into a bar and turn on the camera, looking for a clue to the identity of the photographer. There are just 12 images on the camera, the last one being the one just taken of me. The story unfolds as I attempt to unravel the mystery, searching for clues in the twelve photos.

Snapshots
To put some meat on the bones of this story, I really should come up with interesting photos. For example, let’s say one of them is crash scene of Princess Di (time stamped 5 seconds after the crash, before anyone else arrived).

And maybe one is a shot of Lee Harvey Oswald posing by the window in the book depository. (A digital image before there were digital cameras?)

If we want to take a spooky tack, the first image could be the crushed body of the photographer under the bus.

You get the idea. Would this make a better TV series than feature? You could post the images online and invite fans to help solve the mystery. Hmmm.

Comments/ideas are encouraged. And if this has already been done, please let me know.