US District Judge Alison Nathan went to great lengths to protect a company whose entire business model is based on outright theft. It’s not even a gray area – it’s just stealing, and the wrongness of it is hard to believe. This is one of the things that drive me crazy: We are clearly seeing […]
Kudos News Tribune
June 11, 2012 by
Why will newspapers never fade away? Because of great reporting. The most recent Sunday blowout was a great piece of open government watch-dogging that proved, again, that government agencies are about covering up first – and then if they are so inclined, possibly following the law second when it comes to transparency and records disclosure. […]
Out of the Box Red(e)ux?
June 8, 2012 by
Subtitle: How one simple shot on a TV news broadcast got my clearly twisted mind thinking about how news is presented. Back in the early 90′s while I was working in Sacramento, KIRO’s “Out of the Box” newsroom experiment came and went in the Seattle market. It was a big deal back then – to […]
Enough with K-9 Units!
May 30, 2012 by
It’s always strange to watch a tragedy unfold, and evaluate a news gathering team’s performance. “Attaboy” memos and “congratulations” in association with tragedy is one of the odd quirks that go along with being a newsy and may explain to some degree why people who work in the business are the way they are. The […]
Show Me the Money
May 25, 2012 by
There’s only one thing that matters in broadcasting: Getting paid. It’s not evil – it’s the same in ANY other business in these here United States. So with that said, why should the consumer have to pay twice? Want CSI? Want the news? Want sports programming or a late night movie? Somebody has to pay […]
May Day Fail: The Revolution Will Be.. at McDonald’s?
May 1, 2012 by
So I’m watching McDonald’s new ad campaign – focused on encouraging us to make the bold move to have lunch at Ronald’s house. While the digerati are obsessed with the social media aspects of this campaign, I find it most interesting for what it says socially – that leaving the office for lunch became a […]
Clean Cloud Campaign: Wrong target
April 19, 2012 by
Finding a way to be offended is the tried-and-true pathway to nurturing a parasitic message. If you can claim offense, you are blessed with the mantle of ”cause” and can thrash the world with your righteous indignation without concern about unintended consequences or having to bother with those pesky policy questions. Greenpeace taps into this […]
Sorry Facebook – didn’t mean to
April 10, 2012 by
The joke around my house with the kids is that no matter how great a “crime” is committed, the answer is always a cheerful, “Sorry.. didn’t mean to.” It gets a little absurd when, for instance, we’re dealing with a totaled car – but it does have the effect of keeping otherwise dark events a […]
Leadership, Tribes & Journalism
March 30, 2012 by
There is a TED talk done by Seth Godin that discusses leadership, marketing and messaging, and how humankind now drives change and innovation. I think it’s worth watching. When I watched this, I thought about (surprise, surprise) the mass media and journalism. What does this say about how media outlets market themselves and manage their […]
Horrified by Horrific
March 20, 2012 by
I am not a grammar cop. In fact, I am not particularly impressed by people who purvey their proofreading skills as their primary source of value. I don’t dislike these people necessarily, I just see them as technically focused service providers for whom original thought or creativity come well behind the obvious pleasure they derive […]
Enjoy Sunshine Week? Seriously.
March 16, 2012 by
Forget about the drenching we received this week – it’s been nothing but sunshine. Saturday marks the official end of “Sunshine Week” – but it’s something all of us should think about. What is it? A time when all the major press and watchdog organizations push for open government, open records and transparency. But the […]
Amazed by free TV
March 8, 2012 by
My kids hate it when I used them as crash test dummies for my blogging efforts. But as I like to say, “oh well.” I use them because they provide me with a very clear window into the generational differences that exist when it comes to media consumption. They have never read a paper from […]
The price of free
March 1, 2012 by
For years, you got Youtube, Facebook, Google and other online services for free. But did you ever wonder why? Well, as it turns out, you’ve been helping to build a database that probably requires several Petabytes of disc space to store and manage. The data contains everything your computer and online activity has ever learned […]
Rest in Peace Eric Slocum
February 29, 2012 by
I did not know Eric – only that I always seemed to catch him on TV or radio whenever I came back home here to Seattle to visit during the 80s and 90s. His friends remember him as a very decent human being – who sadly, according to what appear to be his posts on […]
An old taboo: The Sleep Country “newscast”
February 17, 2012 by
Let me first alert the PR firm that holds Sleep Country’s account and monitors the web for mentions that this isn’t a slam on Sleep Country. The Kent based company merely provides a current example of something that these days, kind of gives me a chuckle when I think about how things “used to be.” […]
Drinking from a fire hose – the AP trying to do it responsibly.
February 13, 2012 by
When a big story breaks, it seems Twitter is the undisputed leader in being first. Not necessarily being right… but being first, almost for sure. Watching a live Twitter stream flowing out of a big event is like trying to drink out of a fire hose – the volume and pressure of the Tweets are […]
