Author Archives: Steve Mays

Rooting for the home team

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Matt Taibbi responds to the accustation that liberals are “rooting” for failure in Iraq. Warning: Strong lanuage.

“I’m sorry, but the next pundit who whips that one out should have his balls stuffed down his throat. You cocksuckers beat the drum to send these kids to war, and then you turn around and accuse us of rooting for them to die? Fuck you for even thinking that. We’re Americans just like you. You don’t have the right to get us into this mess and then turn around and call us traitors. Your credibility is long gone on this issue; shut up about us. This is a catastrophe, not a baseball game. “Rooting” is a kid’s word; grow the fuck up.”

Isn’t this called “Public Access Television?”

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A small television station in Santa Rosa, CA (KFTY-TV) has canceled its nightly newscasts…fired most of its editorial staff… and is soliciting programming from locals — from independent filmmakers to teachers and politicians. According to station managers, the newscast wasn’t a hit with advertisers. Media execs nationwide are watching to see if the the Clear Channel property can make money from citizen-generated stories that will begin airing within a few months.

Gutsy or stupid…time will tell. Hard to imagine how bad things would have to be (ratings, sales, etc) before this would seem like a viable option.

PBS: “News War”

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PBS’s FRONTLINE airs the first in a series entitled “News War.” What will be the future business model for the news industry? How will we get news? Where is the line between legitimate national security concerns and the public’s right to know? Should reporters have the right to protect anonymous sources?

Looks like a must-see for anyone in the news business. You can watch it on-air and online beginning February 13th. Set those Tivos.

Why no new Al Green songs?

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Scott Adams wonders why great musicians can’t keep cranking out the hits every years?

“Consider Neal Diamond, for example. He wrote and recorded some of the greatest songs ever. But then the hits stopped coming, despite the fact that his talent probably improved with experience.”

I wondered the same thing a year ago, but Mr. Adams offers a reasonable explanation:

“They can do more of the same sound, and consumers will think it sounds too much like the last album. Or they can try something different, and be unfavorably compared to their own hits. The public won’t be patient while the musician develops the new sound. It’s an almost impossible challenge.”

AP to use “citizen media”

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Podcasting News reports:“The Associated Press and NowPublic.com announced Friday that they have agreed to an initiative designed to bring citizen content into AP newsgathering, and to explore ways to involve NowPublic’s on-the-ground network of news contributors in AP’s breaking news coverage.

NowPublic.com, based in Vancouver, is the world’s largest participatory news network with more than 60,000 contributors from 140 countries. The AP is the world’s largest newsgathering organization with a staff of more than 4,000 employees located in more than 240 bureaus in 97 countries.

The goal of the effort is to expand the world’s access to news as it happens, the companies said.”

A couple of years ago I suggested adding comments to the stories we post on our news websites. The reporter to whom I offered the suggestion said he really didn’t care what readers thought about his story. No shit.

We have just relaunched our news sites and have a comments feature we have yet to enable. Should we? It won’t be my call but, stay tuned.

Sheryl Crow Birthday Drive

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Every year for the past six years, Sheryl Crow fans gotten together (on her website forums) to give Sheryl a special gift for her birthday on February 11. The idea to do this originated with a fan and it involves raising money for the Delta Children’s Home.

The Delta Children’s Home provides an emergency shelter for children that are removed from their own home by the courts or who need shelter for other reasons (family problems, etc.). It’s the only facility of its type in the area. The Delta homes do not receive money from the Federal or State government and rely on the community for support.

Sheryl Crow and Grand PrizeI’m a little fuzzy on just how this works but I think those who contribute to the fund drive are eligible to win a prize. This year it’s an autographed guitar. If I’m wrong about the mechanics, we’ll rely on Sheryl Crow fan Ann to clear it up.

Thanks to Ann for alerting us to this worthy effort. The drive ends a midnight Pacific on Monday, February 12.

dMarc founders leave Google

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Looks like Google’s plans to reinvent the way radio ads are bought has hit a rough spot. Online Media Daily reports Chad and Ryan Steelberg, the founders of dMark, an automated radio ad placement company purchased by Google in January 2006, have left the company.

The brothers resigned amid reports of growing tension between dMarc, the company they founded, and Google over differing approaches to radio ad sales. There was also said to be tension over the limited remuneration dMarc could expect under the performance-based terms of its original deal with Google.

Spook Country

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Spook Country is William Gibson’s newest novel. According to amazon.com it will be released on August 7, 2007. Fragments of the novel have been posted non-sequentially on Gibson’s blog for some time now, and have led to much speculation on the content and plot of the novel. From the US publisher Putnam’s catalog:

“Tito is in his early 20s. Cuban by ancestry, he speaks fluent Russian, lives in one room in a Nolita warehouse, and does delicate jobs involving information transfer.

Hollis Henry is a journalist, on investigative assignment from a magazine called Node. Node doesn’t exist yet, which is fine, she’s used to that, but it seems to be actively preventing the kind of buzz that magazines normally cultivate before they begin to exist. That would be odd, and even a little scary, if Hollis allowed herself to think about it much, which she can’t afford to do.

Milgrim is a junkie. A high-end junkie, hooked on prescription anti-anxiety drugs, but he figures he wouldn’t survive 24 hours if Brown, the mystery man who saved him from a misunderstanding with his dealer, ever stopped supplying the little bubble-packs. What Brown is up to Milgrim can’t say, but it seems to be military – at least, Milgrim’s very nuanced Russian is a big part of it, as is breaking into locked rooms.

Bobby Chombo is a ‘producer’, and an enigma. In his day job, Bobby is a trouble-shooter for military navigation equipment. He refuses to sleep in the same place twice. He meets no one. Hollis Henry has been told to find him.”

Gibson is far and away my favorite author. Yet another reason to go on.