Life, The Universe, and all that are conspiring to put this blog on ice for the time being. As much fun as it is to write, I just don’t have the time…Also, I really want to take some time to seriously think about what I want this blog to do. The formula is lacking something.

With this post I say farewell and goodbye–farewell, of course, meaning simply that I wish you all fare well in my temporary absence, and goodbye being a contracted form of “God be with ye,” but in this case you can take that deity with or without a capital G, as you see fit.

In short, this is not the end. I’ll be back.

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The student editors of a University of Colorado newspaper were wrong to publish an opinion column written earlier this week that said all Asians hate white people and should be captured and “hog-tied,” CU officials said Wednesday. [DUH] [Original Column]

Yeah, yeah, first amendment rights and freedom of speech…but I’ve always held the opinion that if you’re going to make racist jokes, sexist jokes, whatever, your jokes had damn well better be funny. In other words, bad jokes are just bad jokes unless they’re bad hateful jokes, in which case the “but I was trying to be funny!” excuse doesn’t really cut it.

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Put the rules where everyone will see them. Check out Michelle Ferrier’s clever illustrated explanation of why this works.

…

Make the registration process and form as short as possible. I favor the kind of form that asks for exactly three things: A username, a password, and my e-mail address. The e-mail address will save me if I forget my username and password 12 years from now (I registered at The New York Times Web site in 1995). Some folks feel strongly that you should require real names. But if you’re asking for more than six pieces of information, in my opinion, you’re asking for TOO MUCH.

Make sure to scroll down and read about Daily Kos’s solution to trolls.

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Great example: Erie Media-Go-Round mentions the Erie Times-News probably every other day. But ETN reporters never join the conversation. Sure, in this particular example the “conversation” might be a little, well, woolly–but ignoring commenters won’t make them go away. You know how someone will be swearing at the computerized IVR (“Say ‘billing’ if you have a question about your bill. Did you say ‘B&DSYH$#@?’ Say ‘yes’ to proceed”) and then suddenly become mollified when they hear a real person on the line? Comments on blogs work a little like that, too. Rail all you want at the Erie reporter because he’s not going to read this!…Then you totally freak them out by posting a polite (yet non-troll-feeding) response, and then maybe, in a perfect world, they’ll realize that you aren’t a pigheaded chumswilling a**hole and that maybe your words have some merit to them.

Anyway.

What Steve has to say is that basically it’s important to respond outside of your own news website–to refute incorrect information, to say “thanks” to someone who wrote something nice about you, to show you care about your community, and to build your brand. (Gloomy aside: Most newspapers are still struggling, for myriad reasons, to get reporters to respond to comments on THEIR OWN sites, so this idea may still be in “pipe dream” stages.) And what I didn’t know is that it’s incredibly easy to find out where these conversations are happening.

Every journalist should be using “ego trackers,” which are simply accounts that track articles and blog items that mention your name. I use Google Alerts and have it track my name; it delivers both news articles and blog items where I show up. There are plenty of websites that you can search on your name (Google Blogsearch, Technorati, Google News, Topix, etc.).

I just set up an alert for myself and was pleasantly surprised to find that an article I was sure was killed was actually live at Common Ground. How’s that for instant gratification? Plus, even though nobody’s written anything nasty about me yet, I’ll be prepared when it happens.

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Enter Growing Your News Website, a blog launched last week by Steve Outing (media pioneer and E&P columnist). The idea is that every day, Steve or a guest blogger will post one tip–not news, but tips that can be implemented–for making money or increasing traffic on a news web site.

I’ve already added it to my blogroll. Wouldn’t it be great if this site took off?

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This entire article rubs me the wrong way. Summary:

1. News photographers, especially high school sports photographers, have been barred from access to sports games if their paper sells a lot of reprints online or if they won’t sign a form promising not to sell reprints.
2. Some of these photographers directly make money from reprint sales; one from the Daily Southtown called a picture of a softball team cheering “the money shot.”
3. The Illinois High School Association (IHSA), says this is necessary to protect the contract they have with VIP, a PR company hired to specifically take shots to sell to students and parents; revenue is shared with the school district. “We don’t have a problem with you giving them away or doing photo galleries online,” Anthony Holman, assistant executive director of the IHSA, told Bloomington’s Pantagraph last November.
4. State Representative Joe Lyons has introduced House Bill 4582, which states that no school or school organization “may infringe upon or attempt to regulate in any manner the dissemination of news or the use of visual images by the news media…” which isn’t really what’s at stake here, is it? What’s at stake is the COMMERCIAL use of visual images by the news media.

There are so many things wrong with this. First, the IHSA is stepping way over its bounds. It doesn’t have the right to tell a newspaper what they can and can’t do with their photos. (The Illinois Press Association sued the IHSA to get access to the state football finals and lost the case. Has everyone in Illinois lost their minds?)

But on the other hand, a newspaper isn’t in–or shouldn’t be in–the business of selling reprints. Yet some are: “[V]isit the Web site of what’s now the SouthtownStar and you’ll see the paper means business. ‘Welcome to Southland Photo­Shoppe,’ it says. ‘Your shopping choices range from traditional prints to T-shirts, mugs, computer mouse pads and other items on which our photos are imprinted.’ A simple eight-by-ten is $25.” A newspaper is a public benefit, I believe the term is. It’s like a subway system or a museum in that it provides a value far greater than its monetary worth to shareholders. (Unlike subway systems and museums, newspapers aren’t kept afloat with government money. Probably a good thing, but the Beeb hasn’t often let me down…)

Alas, the sad fact of the news industry is that papers have to pursue outside interests and investments to remain viable. The Washington Post company owns Kaplan. The New York Times has About.com. Gannett owns a job site for nurses? (What? That one came as a surprise for me, too.) So if a small paper in Peoria (or whatever) needs an extra $2000 a year to keep afloat, it’s sad, crass, but necessary. I just somehow feel that the value of the”money shot” picture is more than the photograph itself. Does seeing yourself (or your kid) on the front page of your hometown newspaper not count as a value-add anymore? Isn’t that worth more than a framed photograph? Isn’t there a way for papers to capitalize on this without becoming commercial?

In the end, nobody wins here. As Lyons says, if VIP ever decides it’s not making enough money and pulls out and there’s nobody to take pictures, “Badda bing, badda boom, you’re taking your own photos.” News organizations that have been made to feel unwelcome for years are not going to flock back to take pictures of the high school chess club.

Ugh.

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Click to enlarge the screenshot. From Rememberthemilk.com

If someone could invent a way to combine Remember The Milk’s powers to manage non-time-sensitive tasks and Google Calendar for everything else, I’d be golden. Not even Things does this. Le sigh.

Anyway, get it here.

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But I couldn’t get more than a few pages through The Areas of My Expertise. I just couldn’t. The endless charts, the digressions, the asterisks. It was funny–I knew this in an abstract way–but it was not riveting, or even interesting.

Lo and Behold, there is an audio CD which I have had the pleasure of discovering just last night. The Audio CD is the whole book, read by John Hodgman (deliciously drily), with bonus cameos and musical interludes. It is a thing of beauty. Hodgman’s delivery is perfect. The jokes, which are all decent on paper, come to life on the CD.

I wouldn’t read this book any other way. And I do suggest you pick up this audiobook if you are unfamiliar with Hodgman’s book. It is crucial if you want to be prepared for the next hobo uprising.

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