Archive for June, 2008
The News & Observer is taking major hits in its news room due to declining sales and budget cut backs.
There’s no getting around it: The job cuts and other changes announced by The News & Observer last week mean that readers will be getting less. Specifically:
* Less local news
* Fewer late sports scores and less late-breaking news
* One less page of op-ed opinion each week.
* Less business news.
* All told, 14 fewer pages per week.Those and some other less noticeable effects are the consequence of the ongoing financial meltdown in the newspaper business that finally caused McClatchy Newspapers, The N&O’s parent company, to announce job reductions of 10 percent across its 30 newspapers. McClatchy previously avoided the layoffs that had reduced staffing at most other newspaper companies.
Mary Newsom, an Associate Editor of the Observer, posted on her blog a blurb explaining how she doesn’t at all feel it’s a loss of MSM integrity. She instead blames Craigslist type classified sites for a drop in revenue.
While this is probably true to an extent, I believe new media has alos played a significant role in the papers tanking level of influence and success. I mean, just look at what I quoted above for example. When was the last time you went to your local newspaper’s website to get the late-breaking baseball scores? Or late-breaking news for that matter? I use feeds or mobile versions of late-breaking news sites for that, not my hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune.
The News & Observer will be covering less local news as well. The fact is, bloggers are now doing a hell of a job covering local news. In fact, many bloggers are doing a far better job than newspapers EVER did. Business news? Who reads the local newspapers for business news? We have something called the internet for that!
Mark my words… more and more newspapers will begin to take these actions. The demise of print media is well under way.
George Carlin is, without question, one of my all time favorite comedians. Sadly, he passed away yesterday in Las Angeles.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71.
Carlin, who had a history of heart problems, died at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (2 a.m. British time) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.
A final tribute clip. (warning: lot’s of f-bombs)
On Saturday Jed published my interview with him for NetSquared. The interview, titled “Fighting Taxation Without Information“, was a lot of fun and I enjoyed talking with Jed about the power of open source and crowd powered content to provide information to the masses.
We did the interview over skype, where the audio was recorded, and Jed moved it to text format for NetSquared.
You can read the full interview here.
These are the questions I addressed.
-Jed Sundwall: What is the stated mission of the Sam Adams Alliance?
-When did you get started with the Sam Adams Alliance?
-So Sam Adams did not begin as a tech centric initiative.
-What are your largest initiatives?
-Any notable successes?
-So it was fully open?
-Which social media tools have you found to be the most useful?
-What is your rationale for embracing open source software?
-I assume that your philosophy on what makes good software transfers over to your philosophy on what makes good laws as well.
-How do you propose to get people involved with these projects?
-Tell us more about Judgepedia.
-I’m looking forward to something like Fire-chief-pedia. I’m amazed at how many people we’re expected to vote for without having any idea who they are.
Go check it out. It’s a pretty good read.
Sacramento is looking to put a text message tax on the ballot this year, and Sacramento residents aren’t happy. In fact, they’re downright pissed.
The city of Sacramento will ask voters to agree to pay local taxes on new technology such as text messaging and phone service offered over the Internet in exchange for lowering taxes for land-line phones and other utilities.
On Tuesday, the City Council unanimously voted to put a measure on the Nov. 4 ballot that would decrease the utility users tax from 7.5 percent to 7 percent. It would require a simple majority to pass.
Two main factors are driving the action: First, the city’s ability to collect taxes on cell phones and other communications methods is facing legal challenges. Second, taxes on old technology, such as regular telephones, are generating less revenue.
The City Council could use a few lessons in business management and proper use of finances. If a business experiences lower revenues, it has to make spending adjustments accordingly. Apparently, the government is not capable of such actions.
After reading through the comments, I’m confident I’m not alone with this frame of mind.
When asked if he thought the high gas prices were ok, Obama replied he would rather see a “slower adjustment”.
And remember, these are the same Democrats that refuse to let us drill both onshore and offshore here in the US.
Fantastic… Not.
Alright, I’ve tried to just ignore the constant barrage of Facebook/McCain spam coming from Sheridan Folger, but I just can’t take it any more. I’ve now been invited to 18 John McCain based Facebook groups by Sheridan Folger and they continue to come in.
Enough is enough, Sheridan. I asked you on your wall to knock it off and you still haven’t. I do not like McCain, I will not support McCain, and I certainly will not be joining any of your spammy Facebook groups.
Just sayin…
