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On The Demise of Volunteer Voters

I continue to be amazed by big media’s short sighted decisions.

This week, Nashville’s WKRN pulled the plug on one of the blogosphere’s dishes I devour daily–Volunteer Voters. This decision was apparently part of budget cuts, which I assume means that the dollars spent on VV were greater than the dollars it generated.

What does it say about the state of news when a regional media outlet can’t afford to be among the leaders for regional political discussion? Does WKRN think this void won’t be filled by someone else? Is that something they can afford?

Here’s a sound business strategy:

  1. Eliminate the things that set you apart.
  2. Make sure you do exactly what your competition is doing–nothing more, nothing less.
  3. No matter what it costs long term, strive every day to be…ordinary.

ACK, hope you’ll continue to be active elsewhere in the future.

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Jitterbug Cell Phone For Older People…Seriously?

I get the fact that there is a big demographic of seniors that may not be reached by the majority of mobile phone services. But I don’t think this commercial sends that message. To me, this is borderline insulting to older people. Watch it first, and let me know what impression it makes on you.

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OK, to me this commercial says:

“We understand the needs of older people, and we’re doing something about it. Our phone has big numbers, since you’ve probably never used any touch tone phone and can’t count to ten. We don’t expect you to have that complicated keypad layout memorized.

And sure, you can control the volume on any other phone, but that’s complicated. This phone has one setting–LOUD. That will make it seem more natural when you yell back into it.

Besides that, old people are too stupid to figure out something as complicated as a cell phone. You’ll need us to help you save names and numbers into the phone, because there’s no way you’d ever think of something as clever as writing them down instead.”

Not my words, mind you, just what this commercial says to me. Was this made by SNL? It reminds me of the “DVDs My Wife Made” digital short from a couple of weeks ago.

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A Little Editing Wouldn’t Hurt

Note to Commissioner Paul Pinkston, who released a taped conversation with Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale to the New Sentinel:

Audacity is free and easy to use.

Although I’d rather not hear the toilet flush, I’m at least thankful that you waited until you were “done” to start the tape.

One may wonder why the KNS didn’t edit that out themselves. I’m sure journalistic integrity had a little something to do with it–leaving the recording in tact as they received it. But the toilet flush is probably what will make this thing go viral…it’s just good marketing. Somebody over there knows what they’re doing!

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I Can Take a Hint

Either I’m off the radar or my blog design is average at best, which isn’t good enough.  Either way, I’d rather make this list than not.

I’ve got work to do on both fronts.  I’m a little behind on some other stuff right now, but hope to improve on both fronts by the end of Q2.

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A Great Story Opportunity

A while back, I wrote a post about a few advantages newspapers have in the market and how they could use them to remain relevant. Using these assets–excellent writing, investigative journalism, and local marketplace branding–newspapers can give us something no one else can.

Today in the KNS, at least on their web site, there is a relatively short piece from the AP about a man who escaped prison 46 years ago and has been apprehended. This is the exact type of story I’d love to see local newspapers tackle. It’s the perfect opportunity for them to give me something no one else can give me.

Leroy Albert Morgan’s crimes occurred in Hamilton County, he escaped from a Nashville prison, and he was caught in East Tennessee, so it is of local interest. Using great writing and investigative journalism, why not tell us this story? Take us beyond, “he escaped in 1961, he’s been using an alias, and he was arrested this week.”

Tell us the story.

How did he escape prison, and how was he able to avoid authorities for so long? Has he been in Tennessee the entire time? Was he assisted by friends and family–how many people were in on it? What has he done in the time since the escape? What did the State do immediately following the escape to try to catch him, and why did these efforts fail? What (exactly) have they done since? How did they eventually track him down, how long did it take to find him, and how long have they known his whereabouts?

Seriously…this is the stuff movies (or at least made for TV movies) are made of. A good great writer can do some investigative journalism and tell us a great story from so many angles–the escapee, his friends and family, the penal system. And again, most bloggers don’t have the time and resources available to cover something like this.

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White-ity White

HT to Coma for introducing me to Stuff White People Like.

After spending a little time here, I’ve discovered I’m a lot whiter than I thought I was, especially with this timely post on The Wire.

Check it out…lots of funny stuff.  It’s definitely one that will stay in the feed reader.

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Time For SNL To Get Beat Down By the Hansons

SlapshotA couple of weeks ago I watched Saturday Night Live for the first time in a long time. It was the first show after the writers’ strike ended, and Tina Fey was hosting. It was one of the best episodes I’ve ever seen. I didn’t get to see last week’s episode, but I started watching tonight thinking they’d gotten back on track.

Nope. Honestly, I think it may be time to end this show. Just a few reasons why…

Weekend Update

Weekend Update, when it was good, worked because of the snarky commentary on current events. But it doesn’t work anymore. Why? Because by the time I watch the Weekend Update snarky commentary on Tuesday’s primaries, I’ve already been reading snarky commentary on blogs for five days.

The Intro Skit

This skit is almost always political in nature, and because of that it is much like Weekend Update…played out by the time Saturday rolls around. This week they did a spoof of Hillary’s “3 am phone call” commercial. That’s great. It was even better on YouTube this week when everybody else did it.

Musical Guests

I know I’m old, but geez. Does anyone care about these musical guests anymore? They had Tom Petty in his prime, The Cars in their prime, and next week’s musical guest is…Janet Jackson? She was on Tyra Banks this week…’nuff said.

Anyway, I turned SNL off and am watching Slapshot for the upteenth time instead. It’s still funny. Besides the digital shorts there’s nothing left worth watching on SNL.

Time to put on the foil coach.

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Speech to Text Software

We’ve been contemplating buying the Dragon NaturallySpeaking software so that The Missus can “write” content for our new project while holding a baby.  It would also be a lot easier for her to dictate everything–she’s an excellent speaker–as fast as she want to go.  I can go back in later and edit if needed, but the reviews I’ve read of NaturallySpeaking say it does a good job of punctuating on its own.

I’m also thinking it would be great for my dad.  He’s losing his eyesight rapidly, and can hardly read a computer screen anymore.  I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this software.  A guy I used to work with swears by it, just because he can’t type.  It says it can handle over 100 words per minute of human speech.  Being from the South, that should be plenty for my family and me.  🙂

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LOSTer’n’a Easter Egg

Last week’s episode of LOST (“The Constant”) answered a lot of questions for me–I thought.  My idea was that the island is the nexus for all possible universes.  This would explain why Jack’s father is alive in the future and Kate is so protective of Aaron.  I think that in the universe they return to Jack’s dad never went to Australia, so Claire was never born, therefore Aaron couldn’t exist.  But Claire came to the island from a universe where she does exist, and Aaron was born there.  Via the island he was able to move from a universe where he does exist to one where he doesn’t, or at least isn’t supposed to.

I was really looking forward to getting more answers this week.

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Spoilers coming Continue reading “LOSTer’n’a Easter Egg”