School closings via text message

Posted on December 16, 2008 by Steve Mays

I did the sign-on shift for most of my time on the radio. And on days that it snowed (not that often in southeast Missouri), the phone would ring off the hook from parents (and students) asking about school closings. The superintendent would get out early to check the roads and then call the radio stations.

Even though we gave the closings every 5 minutes, the phone never stopped ringing. It was madness.

We got a little snow here in Jefferson City overnight and while Shawna was bringing me my oatmeal, she got a text message from the Jefferson City school system, alerting her there would be no school today.

The school uses texting to communicate a variety of things, even providing updates throughout the day.

I assume the local radio stations still get a call and many people rely heavily on the on-air reports. This is just one more instance of disintermediation. The people with the information (schools) communicating directly to the people who want/need the information (students/parents).

I’m guessing most folks don’t give their mobile numbers to just anybody. And how valuable is it to the schools to have the mobile number of every “customer?”

Do most radio stations have the mobile numbers of the listeners? I would hope so. And are they using those numbers to provide something as valuable as school closing information?

Forrest Gump on the bailout

Posted on December 15, 2008 by Steve Mays

This showed up in my in-box and I don’t know the source or the author but will be happy to properly attribute if anyone knows.

“Mortgage Backed Securities are like boxes of chocolates. Criminals on Wall Street stole a few chocolates from the boxes and replaced them with turds. Their criminal buddies at Standard & Poor rated these boxes AAA Investment Grade chocolates. These boxes were then sold all over the world to investors. Eventually somebody bites into a turd and discovers the crime. Suddenly nobody trusts American chocolates anymore worldwide.”

“Hank Paulson now wants the American taxpayers to buy up and hold all these boxes of turd-infested chocolates for $700 billion dollars until the market for turds returns to normal. Meanwhile, Hank’s buddies, the Wall Street criminals who stole all the good chocolates are not being investigated, arrested, or indicted.”

Mama always said: ‘Sniff the chocolates first, Forrest’.

Quote of the day from a fund manager: ‘This is worse than a divorce… I’ve lost half of my net worth and I still have my wife..’

And one more perspective:

“Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the economy of our country to a pack of nit-wits who couldn’t make money running a whore house and selling booze?”

Google News Reader on iPhone

Posted on December 14, 2008 by Steve Mays

I have difficulty eating unless I am reading something. It can be anything. The back of a cereal box I’ve read 100 times before, a phone bill, anything.

I used to buy USA Today each morning but stopped a couple of years ago. Since then I have book with me or stories from the web, printed out the night before. When eating breakfast at home, I sometime just flip open the Mac. Not practical at the Town Grill.

But the iPhone… with Google’s News Reader app? Hard to resist. Flip the phone to landscape orientation and the stories are easy to read and flip through.

Only marginally related…

I’ve been making more phone calls since getting the iPhone. Old friends I haven’t spoken to in years. I’ve been thinking about why I didn’t call them on the tracfone (which expires today, I believe). The reason, I’ve concluded, is that it was too hard to enter all those phone numbers. I just never got around to it. Since the iPhone syncs with damned near evertything on the MacBook… there’s very little data entry on the phone. And you know what, I love associating a photo with each contact. Yeah, this is old stuff to long-time mobile users, but still new and fun for me.

Missouri prison life in 1800’s

Posted on December 14, 2008 by Steve Mays

The Twin Hells, by John N. Reynolds, claims to be “A Thrilling Narrative of Life in the Kansas and Missouri Penitentiaries.” I haven’t read the entire account yet but will share this excerpt about the Missouri penitentiary:

“The inmates of the Missouri penitentiary are well clothed. In this respect, this prison has no rival. All the prisoners presented the appearance of being cleanly, so far as their clothing is concerned. All are dressed in stripes. None are exempt. Here are nearly two thousand men on an equality. None of them can look down upon others, and say, I am more nicely dressed than you. I never saw a convict dude in the entire lot. The prisoners are well fed. For breakfast, the bill of fare consists of bread, coffee, without milk or sugar, and hash. There is no change to this bill of fare. If the prisoner has been there for ten years, if not in the hospital, he has feasted upon hash every morning. Boiled meat, corn bread, potatoes and water makes up the dinner, and for supper the convict has bread, molasses and coffee. The principal objection to this diet is its monotony. Whenever a change of diet becomes a strict necessity, the prisoner is permitted to take a few meals in the hospital dining-room. Here he receives a first-class meal. This is a capital idea. A great deal of sickness is prevented by thus permitting the convict to have an occasional change of diet. On holidays, such as Thanksgiving day, Christmas, etc., an extra dinner is given, which is keenly relished by all. I have before me a statement of the expenses for a Sunday breakfast and dinner. There are only two meals given on Sunday. The hash was made up of 612 pounds of beef, 90 pounds of bacon, and 30 bushels of potatoes. Fifty-one pounds of coffee were used, and four and a half barrels of flour. The entire meal cost $68.38.”

It appears the account above is from the late 1800’s. I have not idea of the time period represented by the postcard below (from Bob Priddy’s extensive collection of Missouri postcards)

Updating MissouriDeathRow.com

Posted on December 13, 2008 by Steve Mays

MissouriDeathRow.com was one of the first websites I did. And it looks like it. This was before flickr and Typepad and such. So I’m doing a little make-over. Hope to have it complete by the end of the year.

I’m starting with images and documents related to those executed in Missouri’s gas chamber. First time out, I just posted photos of the condemned. This time I’m posting the… not sure what to call it… the record or card for each inmate [flickr slideshow].

I scanned these from the state archives. For some reason, I find them fascinating.

The state archive has a file on each of the inmates executed in the gas chamber. I spent a week going through these, scanning as much as time allowed. Letters, notes, telegrams…

On June 24, 1962, Odom and another Death Row inmate attempted an escape. Odom’s file contained a report by the guard on duty at the time. I’ve also included (from his appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court) a description of the crime for which Odom was executed.

Lucy: Chewed glasses

Posted on December 12, 2008 by Steve Mays

Lucy the Golden Retriever ate not one, but two, $400 Palm Trio cell phones (back when they cost that much). But her favorite forbidden fruit is reading glasses (dirty underpants don’t count). I drop a pair about twice a week and Lucy scoops ’em up and heads for her spot under the bed. I only pay about $8 for a pair of cheap readers online but we worry about here swallowing glass or a sharp piece of plastic. Yeah, I know… I could wear one of those little cords around my neck that are so popular with librarians. Naw.

“You can’t create larger audiences by trying to create larger audiences”

Posted on December 12, 2008 by Steve Mays

The following excerpts are from an interview Mark Ramsey (Hear 2.0) did with Tom Asacker, a marketing and branding adviser and author (A Little Less Conversation: Connecting with Customers in a Noisy World).

One of the larger challenges facing radio?

“It seems that we’ve got a catch-22 on our hands, right? We need to get out on the street and keep selling in order to keep revenue coming in, so nobody wants to slow down in order to change the way they’re doing things, to really rethink it, because that might take away from sales time. I mean we’re putting out fires, and nobody wants to step back and say, “Wait a minute. Is there a better way of doing this?”

“It’s a difficult thing with an industry that’s been around this long, with people that are well entrenched in relationships up and down the chain. It’s tough to get people to change — to just say, “Put on the brakes, and let’s rethink radio.” But I think that that’s what needs to be done: Let’s rethink radio. Just like Steve Jobs said, “Let me rethink the MP3 player.” He didn’t say, “Well, we can do the MP3 player and slap this thing on it”; he said, “Stop, and let’s rethink the MP3 player.”

That’s a tough thing to do. It takes guts.”

Yes, it does. And he offers this rather brilliant (IMO) insight on creating audiences:

“You can’t create larger audiences by trying to create larger audiences. You can only create larger audiences by trying to get deeper with smaller audiences.

Think about how to get deeper and make more relevant, valuable connections with individuals in a culture or a subculture.

Don’t think about audience size. Think about the depth of the relationship and how important it is and how valuable it is. The more you do that, the bigger the audience gets.”

That’s probably true of friends as well. Best way to have a lot is to be a good one. You can listen to the entire interview at Hear 2.0.

“News has cooties”

Posted on December 10, 2008 by Steve Mays

Jeff Jarvis recalls "the golden age" of newspapers when "cities had many papers, many voices, many views, and papers still spoke for and with the people." And that's where we're headed again with the internet but "now it's the people talking."

"I have no doubt that there is a sustainable business in local news. The problem is that, at least for the present, the current and former owners of local news ruined it. Thanks to them, news has cooties."

Online advertising

Posted on December 8, 2008 by Steve Mays

“The Tribune Company owns businesses (which) make money by placing ads in between (broadcast) or alongside (print) scarce content. That model, I’m afraid, is dying for two reasons. One, content isn’t scarce anymore. Two, advertisers have other, cheaper ways of reaching the people formerly known as the audience. I’m not sure there’s any form of government help that can protect traditional media from that.”

— Terry Heaton on Tribune bankruptcy

“This change has been more like seeing oncoming glaciers ten miles off, and then deciding not to move.”

— Clay Shirky

Fortune: “The genius behind Steve”