Celeste talked me into taking some continuing education courses at Salem College and I have to say that I’m glad she did. I’ve posted previously about a drawing class that my oldest son, Michael, and I are taking together, and it’s only gotten better.
My second class started last night, and this is one that Celeste and I are taking together. It’s called "Wines of the World" and the curriculum consists of us sitting around a table and tasting wines while being regaled with wine history and wine data from the instructor, who drinks right along with us.
Where were these classes when I was in school full time? Come to think of it how can I get a gig like this? I can even create the curriculum myself…
The possibilities are endless!
Who could possibly figure that writing a post calling someone on the carpet for factual errors in a post about a run-of-the-mill golf tournament (by PGA standards) would generate 38 comments? That’s exactly what happened to Patrick Eakes with his post "Chip Gets French Benefits."
Maybe if I write a headline like, "Bush is a Bambi-Killing Rabbit Raper" that will work. BTW, I can’t take credit for that "Bambi-killing…" line. One of my professors in college used it to describe the John Birch Society.
Luckily tomorrow I get to meet most of the people who made those 38 comments at ConvergeSouth.
Well, bookofjoe continues to amaze me. Here’s a small sampling of some of the stuff he’s put out there recently:
I thought I’d post this today so that Celeste can get started on her Christmas shopping…oh wait, she never stops her Christmas shopping. Well these could make for some interesting additions.
The next big confab for bloggers will be this Friday and Saturday in Greensboro. ConvergeSouth has shaped into a nice event, and I can only imagine the amount of effort the volunteers have put into it.
There’s a nice Quicktime video on the Converge South site that features most of the prominent Greensboro bloggers who were instrumental in pulling together this event, and more importantly, putting Greensboro on the new media map.
It’s enough to make this Winston-Salem boy very jealous, but hey I’ll be there anyway.
Here’s one of those stories that just freaks me out. According to this article a man in Virginia is suing one of his neighbors and a company that provides access to a database of sex offenders for a fee.
To give you a synopsis of the story, this poor guy was never accused or convicted of a sex crime, but apparently he lived at a house that at one time had been the address of a man convicted of a sex crime. The state of Virginia relies on the sex offenders to inform it when they change addresses (huh?) and obviously in this case the offender didn’t. So the Florida-based company, National Alert Registry, Inc., had a classic database problem: garbage in/garbage out.
The company provides access to its database and an email alert service for a fee. A woman named Michelle Myers subscribed to the service and that’s how she came across this guy’s name. So off she went and broadcast the information to people in the neighborhood, school officials and the homeowners association.
Of course this guy is suing the woman and the company for slander. The woman’s attorney is using the old "free speech" and "it’s just her opinion" defense, but the man’s attorney rightly states that the courts have consistently found that slander does not constitute free speech.
Now I’m sure that this woman will argue that she was simply going on bad information, but she could have easily verified the information by looking at freely available court records. This guy may have lived at the address of a registered sex offender, but his name wasn’t associated with it at all. If you’re going to accuse someone of something this serious you damn well better have your facts checked.
As for the company, I’m sure they’ll argue that they are the victim of faulty state records, but again how hard would it be for them to verify a name against an address? I have no problem with tracking registered sex offenders, but it is very important that the companies that engage in this activity get it right…or else.
Lastly, what about the state of Virginia? What the heck are they thinking? They rely on a convicted criminal to keep them informed of his whereabouts? What could possibly go wrong?
The point here is that all of our lives have become an open book. Without much effort we can find information about anyone we want, and vice versa. For instance, I can tell you from a simple search on the InfoUSA.com
website that Ms Myers, who started this whole mess, lives on a road called Blacksmith Arch, which is
confirmed by the newspaper article, that her phone number is (757)
766-22** (I’m intentionally not using the last two digits), that the average yearly income in her neighborhood is
$61,000-$100,000 and that the average price of homes in her neighborhood is $200,000-$249,900.
For the most part I think that having information freely available and in the public is a good thing, but the trade-off is that we must be very careful in how we use that information. As anyone who’s been on the wrong side of a rumor can tell you it is very hard to get the right version of the story out since most people only hear the first version. It is imperative that when someone gets it wrong they pay a heavy price, which is why I hope the company and Ms. Myers get slapped silly.
The Greensboro News & Record launched it’s newest online endeavour, the "Hometown Hub." The first hub is for the Summerfield community (never been there, but it sounds nice) and here’s how John Robinson, the paper’s editor describes the effort:
Today, we introduce a Web site of news and information about
Summerfield, created by folks who live there. Community news editor
Betsi Robinson describes the mission of "Hometown Hubs: Summerfield" on
the front page of this section.
Hometown Hubs represents another step of turning the model of
newspaper publishing on its head. We will publish the citizen
journalism online first, and then move the most interesting content
into the newspaper.We have done this with YourNews,
our online citizen journalism site, but Hometown Hubs is our first
effort at building a site around a real community. As Betsi notes, it
is the first of many. It continues our effort to build a virtual town
square, where you can share your news, your stories and your opinions
with others.
I like this idea for many reasons, but the most obvious is that it creates a community dialog with the newspaper. Or put another way, it keeps the newspaper relevant to its readers, because what’s more relevant to a reader than what’s happening in her own back yard?
Another reason I like the Hometown Hub is that it seems to reinforce my perception that the News & Record has an idea of where it wants to go online. John repeatedly communicates the newspaper’s goals for its online initiatives via his blog. In fact in the post from which I got the above quote he also writes this:
"More online." That phrase has become as common in the newspaper as "Today’s forecast."
That’s purposeful. The Internet gives us new opportunities to reach
out to readers. Because it is limitless, we don’t have to worry about
space. Because it is interactive, we can talk with and listen to people
publicly and easily. Because it is not made of paper, we can produce
audio and video. Because it iss free, it is accessible.Each of these characteristics helps us in our efforts to deliver
news and information, and to build more of a sense of community among
people in both the Triad and the world.
John and his folks "get it," that’s clear. They are way ahead of most newspapers and small-city newspapers in particular.
In fact this is just another example of the N&R pulling away from my hometown paper, the Winston-Salem Journal, when it comes to the online realm. The Journal already has a couple of "hometown" editions that it publishes in the newspaper on Thursdays. One is the Clemmons Journal which also incorporates my town of Lewisville. As you can see by clicking the link the Journal has a dedicated page on its site for the hometown edition, but it is merely a "re-print" of what appeared in the print edition. Not real dynamic.
I can tell you for a fact that on Thursdays the first section of the paper I read is the Clemmons Journal. It’s where I find out what the hot topics are at Town Hall, what’s happening in terms of development, when the new highway will (or won’t) be built. It isn’t hard to imagine a "Hometown Hub" taking off for Clemmons, Kernersville, Ardmore and other sections of Winston-Salem and the other Western NC communities that the Journal serves.
But why should the Journal care? They still make most of their money on the print edition: in its latest financial report the Journal’s parent company, Media General, said that the Journal had revenue of $4,078,000 in August and $3,263,000 of that came from advertising. That’s 80% of the revenue, so it’s easy to say, "Ah well, the online stuff is nice, but it’s just a small piece."
On the other hand the same report shows that the Journal’s web traffic has grown 32% compared to last August, and the corporation’s interactive media revenue has grown 52% over last August. Now interactive media still only accounts for about 1.25% of Media General’s overall revenue compared to 50% for publishing, but publishing’s growth was minimal at 1.1%. So you don’t need to be a real business heavyweight to see things trending towards an increased contribution from their online properties.
And as someone who sells advertising I can tell you that a focused community site would be an easy sell to local retailers, and retail advertising is exactly where newspapers are seeing a decline in their print editions. I wonder if the powers-that-be at the Journal have been paying attention to the recent developments in advertising; do they realize that online advertising is where the growth is?
And one last point: the News & Record is experimenting at a time when it is cheap to do so. They do have some start-up online competitors like Greensboro101.com, and the local version of CraigsList, but because they entered the game early they aren’t playing catch up. They are also making their mistakes while their readership is still relatively small, which means that they will be ready to serve all those new online advertisers as the online readership grows.
The Journal? They’re sitting on the sidelines and are ripe for a start-up to shake them up. Things will only get harder and more expensive with time, and they’re missing a golden opportunity to really exploit their local news monopoly. Of course they still have time, but if they wait much longer they could end up playing an expensive game of catch-up.
