I can’t decide if it was really great customer service or really poor customer service. 10 days ago thunderstorm/lightening knocked out voice/net access. Four or five days later, Sprint got the voice up but no DSL. They told me a tech would arrive today between 10:30 and 12:30. After a couple of calls he got there at 1:00 p.m. Nice kid but admitted right up front that he didn’t know much about “this computer stuff” and called in the DSL guy. Five hours later, the DSL guy admitts he’s stumped and call Monica (not her real name). Monica doesn’t even do tech support anymore more is really the only one for a hundred miles that knows how to trouble-shoot the Tough Ones. She was amazing. I lost track of how many IP addresses she could remember. She got me back online and made it look easy. After six hours. If DSL guy hadn’t known Monica and been willing to call her, I still would not have DSL. You could pull my fingernails out and I wouldn’t give you Monica’s name. She’s mine.
How companies re-invent themselves
“…it’s easier to invent a Wal-Mart from the ground up to replace Sears than get Sears to reinvent itself.” — Hugh McLeod
Foul!
I thought I mentioned it here but couldn’t find it. A long time ago, when John Ashcroft was governor of Missouri, he played in a benefit basketball game. I think is was The Governor’s Office vs. The Media.
I somehow wound up on the media team. I don’t fault Mr. Ashcroft for ringer-ing himself with a bunch of gigantic state troopers but this photo of W reminded me what a mean and dirty brand of ball the governor played. Anyone that’s played much pick-up ball knows this type of player. First to swing an elbow…first to scream foul…and incredulous if anyone dared call him on a foul.
The photo of Bush makes me wonder how often he got his ass kicked as a kid.
The Daily Show’s Stephen Colbert
on covering the GOP convention: “We want to find out actual information about Republicans. We want to know where the pods are, where they’re grown, and we want to photograph them before they’re harvested.” Next to XM’s “Everything, All the Time,” The Daily Show’s “The Most Trusted Name in Fake News” might be the best tag line ever.
We the Media
“The Internet is the most important medium since the printing press. It subsumes all that has come before and is, in the most fundamental way, transformative. When anyone can be a writer, in the largest sense and for a global audience, many of us will be. The Net is overturning so many of the things we’ve assumed about media and business models that we can scarcely keep up with the changes; it’s difficult to maintain perspective amid the shift from a top-down hierarchy to something vastly more democratic and, yes, messy. But we have to try, and nowhere is that more essential than in that oldest form of information: the news. We will be blessed with new kinds of perspective in this emergent system, and we will learn how to make it work for everyone.
Blogs and other modern media are feedback systems. They work in something close to real time and capture — in the best sense of the word– the multitude of ideas and realities each of us can offer. On the Internet, we are defined by what we know and share. Now, for the first time in history, the feedback system can be global and nearly instantaneous.” – Dan Gillmor’s We the Media (pg 236)
Who should read this book? Newsmakers, the reporters that cover them and anyone that reads, watches or listens to those reports.
National Association of Broadcasters
The cover story (by Scott Woolley) in the September issue of Forbes is really more about the National Association of Broadcasters than XM Radio.
“For decades the radio industry has crushed incipient competitors by wielding raw political muscle and arguments that are at once apocalyptic and apocryphal. Radio station owners, who formed the National Association of Broadcasters in 1923, have won laws and regulations that have banned, crippled or massively delayed every major new competitive technology since the first threat emerged in 1934: FM radio.”
What would radio be like if broadcasters put this much energy into doing better radio?
Bloggers and journalists
I’m a couple of hundred pages into to Dan Gillmor’s We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. Gillmor is technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, and his column runs in many other U.S. newspapers. He has been consistently listed by industry publications as among the most influential journalists in his field.
Our company owns and operates several state and regional radio news networks and I thought they might find the book interesting so I forwarded the Amazon review, which made reference to blogging. One of our news directors quickly responded:
“I don’t quite buy the idea that bloggers are journalists. They might be journal-writers or journal-keepers, but a blogger is a talk show host who usually thinks somebody should be interested in what he or she has to say, whether it’s correct, accurate, based on facts… or not. Blogging has some major integrity issues that make it more entertainment than trustworthy information. I still need sources I can trust, and blogs don’t reach that level yet.”
First of all, nobody has suggested –certainly not Dan Gillmor– that all bloggers are journalists. As it happens, Mr. Gillmor writes a blog and is a highly respected journalist. Does he have “integrity issues?” Speaking of which…
A few year back we had a reporter working in one of our newsrooms that was doing a lot of anti-gun stories. When I asked him about it, he said he felt he had to do these to “balance out” the (paid) NRA ads that were currently airing on our network. Then there was the report (same newsroom) that left us become the PR flack for the state Republican party. In his first public statement he said he could no long remain silent in the face of the threat posed by the liberal Democrats in our state. Talk about integrity issues.
My colleague’s reaction reminds me of the Pharisees’ outrage that this Jesus guy would muscle in on their turf (I’m not a religious guy but I saw Jesus Christ Superstar a couple of times). I should probably disclose that I am not a journalist. At least I don’t think I am. I didn’t go to J-School (I smoked some J’s while in school but…) but I did work at a small town radio station covered the news. I went to city council meetings and hospital board meetings and wrote stories and cut up some tape and did my best to tell people what happened. If we had had the Internet and blogs back then, I might have used that tool as well.
This whole blogger vs. journalist thing has been going on for a while and smarter folks than I have written about it. I have to say the Real Journalists come across a little shrill on the subject. There are thousands (millions?) of blogs out there and very few rise to the level of anything that might be called “journalism.” But the same might be said about what passes for news on a lot of radio stations. So let’s not be too quick to slam the temple doors. We might miss something good.
XM Radio to introduce digital storage
From NY Times story: Later this week, XM is set to introduce receivers capable of storing up to 30 minutes of any live broadcast to play back at a later time. With a function that works much like the pause control of a digital video recorder, the units will also be able to replay the last 30 minutes of the channel to which the unit was most recently tuned. Both companies also offer models that let users store the names of favorite artists and titles. When one of those is playing on another channel, the receiver beeps to alert the listener. In XM’s case, the unit will also automatically switch to that other station. Next month, Sirius will introduce its Sportster model, designed to complement its introduction of NFL Radio, which is a new talk channel, and several channels to transmit every NFL game. The radio can be programmed to jump automatically to the correct station when one of the user’s favorite teams is playing.
To appeal to investors, XM’s Roady2 can display continuously updated stock quotes across the screen. Sirius plans to introduce a radio with a similar feature. Beginning this fall, XM will offer NavTraffic, giving owners of the Acura RL and the Cadillac CTS the ability to combine XM’s continuously updated traffic information with the car’s navigation system, producing color-coded maps showing traffic delays, allowing drivers to obtain alternate routings.
To make it easier to receive satellite radio in the home, Sirius will introduce a $129 accessory antenna that, mounted on the roof, will transmit a signal through the walls into a secondary unit attached to the receiver. And by the beginning of next year, Sirius will offer a receiver that can download Sirius programming from the Internet for later playback in areas where signals cannot reach.
Worst day. Best day.
What –if anything– does it say about you if you can instantly recall the worst day of your life but have to think a while to come up with a few contenders for the best day? One would hope this is because you’ve had a lot more really good days than bad. Or, maybe it’s because it’s easier to peg the misery-meter than to get a good reading on the happyometer. Or, does joy fade quickly while pain lingers like the smell of burned popcorn? What we need is a way to record every day, sort of like the security camera at the convenience store. Just recycle the tapes every few days unless you get one so good (we’re only interested in the good ones) it’s a keeper. I’m still wrestling with whether or not I’d take that little pill that would erase the past 12 or 24 hours. For those that might be wondering, I do have enough empathy and imagination to understand that my Worst Day would be a walk in the park for someone else. Or for some future me. Just a little navel-gazing on a beautiful summer day.
We the Media
We the Media. Grassroots Journalism. By the People, for the People. I’ve been reading Dan Gillmor’s blog for a couple of years and his new book is one of those rare examples of non-fiction-I-can’t-put-down. Nuggets so far:
“If someone knows something in one place, everyone who cares about that something will know it soon enough.” — pg. 47
“Nanopublishing — small sites, run by one or very few people, focusing on a relatively narrow niche topic.” — pg. 83