Oh this is classic! CNN mocks all-things Occupy Wall Street, as a movement. But with its other hand doesn’t hesitate to solicit the movement’s media – without paying for it! Via iReport.
I hope no one’s stupid enough to give away their media to a corporate hater. At least charge ‘em for it. Jeez.
Note the insertion of the iReport ads soliciting free media stuck in here.
Practice safe media, kiddies!
I sleep like a baby at night, knowing I always bust MY butt to be the best illegitimate media source I can be. And there are plenty of others in Atlanta/Georgia who go at their illegitimate media efforts like bunnies, too.
Recent good examples are Todd Rehm at Peach Pundit and Matthew Cardinale at Atlanta Progressive News. Heck, Cardinale takes illegitimate media to a whole new magical level; suing the crap outta the Atlanta City Council for violating Open Meetings/Open Records law. And winning too.
I don’t want to re-cap that long and very winding issue right here. The Daily Report, Atlanta’s legal community daily, just did a good cover story on the messy matter of Mr. Cardinale. Alas, they’re big honkin’ capitalist pigs over there at the Daily Report, and they lock-up their legitimate media behind a firewall. New media curses on them.
Of course anyone with an Internet connection and a Facebook account has already copied and pasted the Daily Report’s story about Matthew Cardinale, and is merrily circulating it that way amongst Atlanta’s media and political cognoscenti. I’ll leave you on your own to find your, er, unique way to it.
But Peach Pundit, for a bunch of boisterous, loud conservatives (with fun, boozy happy hours too!), is very good at keeping information free and flowing to us lowly masses. So there’s an ongoing updating of the Atlanta City Council open meetings/records saga there. Seek away.
And please… do your part. Always be the illegitimate media YOU wish to see. You never know who will be the one to legitimize you with their magic, media-legitimizing wand.
I know I stash several, top shelf Media Legitimizers around my palace. Now if I could just figure-out where I put the damn things…
Do you think of Internet access as a civil right? That’s the new buzz term being tossed around by Comcast. Seriously.
Comcast has been mandated by the feds to reduce the price of Internet access for low-income households… as a term of the Comcast/NBC mega-merger.
Please… let me know what you think about Internet access as a civil right. My opinion is just that – only my opinion. I want to hear others’.
To find out more about the Comcast Internet Essentials program, and how it will be applied to metro Atlanta, which has its own severe digital divide, please watch the video.
WSB-TV‘s Richard Belcher warned about *community pushback* over prosecuting the APS cheating investigation during a Sunday, July 17, 2011 TV special about the cheating scandal (as they’ve now branded it with special graphics and everything), up to that day’s point.
Go to 5:00 on vid for Belcher’s quote and avoid the audio dramatics at beginning.
I witnessed some of this at the community open house with new, interim APS Superintendent Erroll Davis on July 21, a man not the least bit stingy with his words and rhetorical side roads, highroads and by-ways.
I live-Tweeted during the July 21 community open house and Q&A session with Super Davis. One parent’s heartfelt remarks were powerful:
From my Twitter stream: *Parent in tears at mic over beloved #aps personnel who will no longer be there. People she felt, deeply, loved and cared for her kids.*
I think that’s pretty much what Belcher was alluding to in the TV special. And when that kind of raw (genuine) emotion gets fanned from the pulpit by preachers/emotion manipulators, well… hey, you’ve got yourself some good old fashion religion. A style!
I’m hoping MSM will visit some metro Atlanta churches so we can get their, uh, unique perspective. Because… nobody can play church like we do in the A.
I should also mention that security for the July 21 open house/new Super Erroll Davis was considerable. For good reasons too, I’d imagine.
There is no shortage of emotion-letting & vetting and general hand-wringing going on in Atlanta over the APS cheating matter.
And long-known local crackpots, trashcan media, assorted contract-seeking vultures, citizen journos, Joe Blows, MSM, national media, parents, onlookers, snake-oil sales types, very dubious leaders, people who kinda give a shit, you get the point, are all mixed into this civic stew still bubbling steadily along on the cooker.
Dish it up.
UPDATE: The second July 24, 2011 WSB-TV special on the APS cheating investigation is here.
As I’ve died and gone to Atlanta media circus heaven lately it’s been hard to break away to play ringmaster by providing the necessary, critical blog posts. Facebooking and Twitter alone are about to do me in.
Honestly, I’ve been having too much fun sitting back with my peanuts and cotton candy watching from here in the cheap seats. But someone’s gotta play local TV news farm media critic in this town, other than @RichardsDoug; and there is, of course, no one better qualified to do so than me.
Thus, let me take a moment to pry open the laptop and reflect on just last night’s Atlanta local TV media hightlights and lowlights before I go back in for more. (Thank goodness for that new, 4-5pm block from Channel 2, eh?)
Last night WSB-TV, or WizBee or Death Star Two as it’s called in the biz around here, was on disjointed fire! When they open a 6pm with longtime, hysterical crime reporter Mark Winne (his Facebook fan page is here) rest assured we’re going to be served drama.
The local TV news station that can’t do ‘em some news drama, in a city as ragingly dysfunctional as Atlanta, is just dead to me. Otherwise, why bother to exist? Anyway… getting to the point.
Winne led-off with pretty good shrieking over the hilariously mule-headed refusals by a few implicated (now kinda sorta fired) APS school administrators to… go down without a public fight. I think they were bellowing for a publicized *hearing*, whatever the heck that is. Good luck with that tall order.
The best part was a replay of Winne grilling, weeks ago, one of the most mule-headed APS admins fingered in the whole royal cheating mess, Tamara Cotman.
Low and behold, Cotman was, once again, right up in our living rooms. Still looking slouched down and bloated from all the investigatory stress and educator cake she’s been consuming over the years, defensive and sliding down a slippery conference room leather chair slope of no-where-else-to-go prayer.
Cotman was posed in the classic ATL local TV media perp tableau – lawyer on one side, Mark Winne leaning in with a question on the other. Talk about media places you never want to be seen in this town.
Bless her tired, stressed, cake-laden heart. I almost felt sorry for her, as, so far, Jesus has yet to come to her emotional or otherwise rescue. Maybe next year. Keep those prayers and cards and letter coming, Atlanta!
Many heartfelt congrats to my Faceboook friends who won awards for their reporting last night at the The Atlanta Press Club’s annual Awards in Excellence.
Including: Dale Russell for being Dale Russell and just so gosh darn Dale Russell-y. (And other things, of course.) Jim Burress for Best Radio Reporter/Eagle bar raid reporting. Alan Judd and his AJC colleague, Heather Vogell, won Journos ‘O Year (2010) for their (ongoing, eh?) reporting on the APS cheating scandal.
Thomas Wheatley was nominated in Best Online/Multimedia reporting, and should have won for his constant gardening over at the terrific Fresh Loaf blog, but whatever. He was far more gracious about some other person winning than I was, on his behalf.
I was delighted to meet newer FB and Twitter pals face-to-face for the first time too, such as Mr. Burress and Mr. Charles Edwards, both of WABE radio here in the ATL. And the innovative and interesting Ms. Orit Sklar.
Journalism is alive and well in the ATL. But there is no Men’s Warehouse kinda guarantee that it will stay that way forever. Or even through next week.
A bad editor could pull a great reporter off of a key beat. The elderly people in the biz might continue to ignore innovations in journalism-related technology. The recession could continue for decades. The AJC could add more layers of dopey bureaucracy, with their finger on the pulse of, for example, just Walton County.
We must support the troops out there in the fields. Lordy knows there’s enough muck to rake through in this town to keep the journalism industry here flourishing… with our support. Do what you can.
That is all. Back to work. Complete list of winners on Facebook here.
“Once we heard the gunshots and got up, we were watching out the window, and I actually started Tweeting it, what was going on,” said Jeremy Powell, who is the morning show producer on Dave FM.
Everything plays out now, moreorless, in real time. (Witness the dude in Pakistan inadvertently Tweeting bin Laden’s demise.) Via Twitter, uStream.tv, Facebook and YouTube. Everything except for crippling disasters in the rural American south.
NPR’s Morning Edition today focused on a small town in AL ravaged and wrecked by the storms of Wednesday, April 27, 2011. The worst series of tornadoes ever recorded in the United States.
We were able to watch this tornadic mayhem play out in real time from the Tweets, and the seemingly endless stream of citizen media, coming out of the Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, AL areas; Tuscaloosa being the home of (fully wired) University of Alabama, so it’s little wonder so much media came from there.
There was so much out there to follow I gave up trying to curate it in real time, such as with a paper.ly product, as I like to try to do with real time disasters in the nearby (GA) area.
I just slapped a #tornado hashtag-generated column onto my TweetDeck and let that serve as my eyes and ears until I collapsed from pan media-watching exhaustion later that evening.
But there was no real time media coming from the more rural areas of AL, places also in the paths of some 300-plus tornadoes that day/night. Morning Edition finally caught-up with what’s on the ground now, for a national audience, almost a week afterwards, in Hackleburg, AL.
That story is here. No mention whatsoever of any Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. Internet = zero in rural AL? Or just another case of MSM herd mentality? Could be some of both.
One has to assume that rural AL is not wired for real time crisis communication use the way we’re becoming accustomed to now, though. And that needs to change.
Several new media things jump out today… Facebook is such an amazing tool for tracking legislation going through the legislative process. The Sunday Sales/Senate Bill 10 may or may not be before the Rules Committee today. Advocates such as Rich Sullivan and co. are at the Georgia State Capitol now Tweeting and posting Facebook updates about this one bill’s progress.
Lobbyista, media, advocates and ordinary folk, take note! Could save tons on tasseled loafer polishing costs by not having to hoof it along the hallways of the Gold Dome. Watch and learn from the comfort of your connection.
Then again, just being at the Capitol on a busy day is exciting in itself. Go live and in person whenever you can. Just report back for us what is going on… as it happens. Social media tools make it very easy to do. (They’ve got great wi-fi at the Dome.)
Other quick note… when giving interviews to text-only outlets avoid passive language, such as Michael Bond’s here. While it’s earnest, and might work in a broadcast environment, it always prints bad.
Councilman Michael Julian Bond pointed out that Sandy Springs and DeKalb County have full government participation and the continual council snubs are “almost getting to the point where it is beginning to be offensive.”
Elsewhere, Bob Barr believes in the intended effects of mass media propaganda. The best money can buy. Cute, huh?
One more… from what I hear, bloggers are already revolting on donating free content to @11AliveNews/@gannett‘s Where U Live project. Must give back, news farms! Must. Think of better ways to give back to the blogger (on-air time comes to mind), and you might get more better content from ‘em.
Today is the deadline to nominate your fave Georgia journo/blogger now for The Atlanta Press Club 2010 awards. It’s easy to do.
That’s it for the morning. Make it a great use of new media day!
A mere 13% of the entries within the invaluable, online, open encyclopedia Wikipedia are written by women. This needs to change! I urge all women business owners to get in there and get an entry about themselves/their company on Wikipedia. If you need someone to write it for you, contact me. Now. Let’s change this critical, interactive, participatory, FREE and very important dynamic.
From the NYT:
Everyone brings their crumb of information to the table,” she said. “If they are not at the table, we don’t benefit from their crumb.
All words to make the cloud were pulled from AJC.com’s above-the-fold headlines at 1:01pm on Saturday, September 18, 2010. Click image to enlarge.
I once made a ton of media at the beginnings of places like Kyte.tv and uStream and Vimeo and iReport. And strew that media around all over those places. Maybe others too I’ve forgotten all about by now. I was kinda surprised that some sites, such as Kyte.tv, are still going.
Honestly, now if it’s not Facebook, YouTube or Twitter (and my personal fave Twitter photo/vid upload app – TwitSnaps) I never even bother with tinkering around in the garages of other media sharing platforms.
With the rise of the Big Three I’ve gotten far less experimental, if at all, with the many other assorted media platforms out there. And that’s a pity, but it’s far more convenient to stay on three farms rather than dot the landscape with dozens of wee media sprinkles here and there that in a couple of years you forget all about.
I’m anxious now that I’ve always had, for reasons unknown, a superfluous two YouTube channels. And I stay awake thinking one day, soon, I simply must consolidate those into one. And then brand-out a separate corporate channel too. And be sure to put some Shout on that nice new skirt after that soy sauce spill. And the dog needs a flea med refill…
Oh woe is me. How the multimedia chores never end! What new media sharing platform are you liking that I should try to not ignore?
