Author Archives: Jon Lowder

Pro Basketball Coming to Camel City

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The American Basketball Association has three expansion teams slotted for North Carolina and one of them, the Triad Tre4 Cheetahs, will call Winston-Salem home.

One item of potential interest to a few guys down at the Y: tryouts for the three teams will be held May 21 in Durham. Registration is $125, but hey, dreams don't come cheap these days.

I don't know if they play with the red, white and blue ball of Dr. J's ABA, but they do have some wacky rules like the old ABA did.  My faves:

  • Four points for any shot taken from the backcourt.
  • Players can stay on after picking up a sixth foul, but each subsequent foul they commit leads to a free throw and ball possession for the other team. Basically it's unlimited technicals for "sixth foul" players.
  • 3-D Rule – I've read it once and I can honestly say it makes the NFL's QB rules seem straightforward.

Could be fun to watch.

Breaking News via Facebook

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There's a bit of a political kerfluffle brewing right now in Greensboro over a recent redistricting vote by the City Council.  It's been a hot topic at Ed Cone's blog, which everyone in Greensboro knows is where you go to be seen, er heard, er read when you want to vent your spleen about the goings on in what is likely North Carolina's whiniest city. What's interesting to me is that Ed just broke the news that one of the City Council members announced that she's going to ask that the vote be reconsidered, and she made the announcement via her Facebook status.  

It would be easy to just say that this is a sign of the times, and it is, but upon further examination I think there are some fairly interesting ramifications in this simple act. Here are some that have come to mind:

  • Any reporter "friended" by a public figure who uses Facebook as a primary communication vehicle will have a competitive advantage over a reporter who isn't. Public figures have always had preferred members of media and I suspect they've always cherry-picked who they leak news to, but this is a very public way to play favorites with members of the media. 
  • Of course the public figure can also completely "disintermediate" the media by friending everyone but the media, thereby communicating directly with their audience and excluding the media.
  • Whether or not a member of the media is included or excluded, the news will be old to a healthy chunk of the audience by the time the 5 o'clock news airs or tomorrow's paper is printed.
  • This development has only reinforced my conviction that "news" operations need to move away from the shallow "breaking stories" MO and move quickly towards deep and analytical stories that provide context and avoid titillation and tattling.  In other words most of us now know what happened with the Greensboro redistricting, but few of us really know why.  Giving us the "why" is where the professional media can make hay.
  • In another interesting twist I've found that most of the really good comments on Ed's blog are posted by the professional journalists (I'm thinking of Joe Killian here) who often provide context and expert understanding of the issues in response to other commenters on Ed's posts.

Digital Pig Lipsticking

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After any event we host at work the most popular person in our office is Rachel, our Director of Communications.  She's a Photoshop whiz so people flood her with calls making sure that any picture they might be in is properly doctored before appearing on Facebook.  In other words she makes us all pretty, or at least as pretty as possible.  In the case of yours truly it's the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig, but I long ago learned to accept the fact that I'll never be asked to be anything other than a "before" model for some faux-plastic surgery scam so it doesn't really bother me much.  My attitude is that I'd at least like to be the best looking pig possible.

Before the pictures ever get to Rachel they actually have to be shot and thanks to the camera companies' arms race to make their cameras as idiot-proof as possible we're seeing an explosion of Ansel Adams wannabes and thus an ever rising tide of pictures being submitted.  I'd fear for Rachel's sanity (and time) if I wasn't so sure that at some point the camera companies are going to take care of the prettifying of portraits by introducing features that automatically "Photoshop" the pics much like they already automatically adjust for lighting conditions.  Think I'm nuts?  Check out the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP7 digital camera (found via BookofJoe) with the "Beauty Retouch Mode."  From the NYT article that Joe references:

"The FP7, which costs just over $200, has a tool called 'clear skin' that blurs blemishes and wrinkles. Another, called 'shine removal,' is the digital equivalent of powdering your nose. A third whitens teeth. (There are still a few kinks to work out; an in-house test of that last tool whitened only the lower half of this writer's two front teeth.)"

"Another set of tools retouches makeup: digital foundation and lip color can be added, along with rouge and eye shadow. The effect can be surprisingly subtle (but downright clownish if overdone)."

Automated pig lipsticking…I like it.