Facebook – Cox Media Farm Slayer

I figure the Cox Media Farm’s AJC will eventually be folded, gradually or maybe not, into WSB. Here’s a great example of the process at work today.

Right now we’re seeing a stage of patronizing redundancy, with two Cox Media Farm products producing like-minded content… on the same page/URL. That too will pass. As the AJC passes into WSB broadcasting, Internet-minded properties.

Why? Cox needs a Bo Emerson (byline on the copy/text stuff) the way I need another Clinique giveaway lipstick. I’ve got six New Shade of Grape in the basket as it is.

Why have a Bo Emerson only banging-out redundant, old-school style text… in a high-speed Internet media kinda world?

Anything he’s alerted us to, in this piece, is readily available on Facebook. Which has 800 million users now. And growing. If you desperately need to ask a question about who got there first (to the park protest tonight, for example) you’d just Tweet ‘em.

Even way up in the air in his Gulfstream James Cox Kennedy (JCK) can see those kinda numbers. He’d better make hay with mommy’s money for his family while he can, as soon even WSB properties will be redundant and superfluous. We simply will not need them. Already, plenty of us do not.

But back to the present tense. Can you take a Bo Emerson and make him, say, a video journalist? Hand him a SLR and a tripod? Probably. Especially if he was straight outta J-school. He is not. Bo Emerson is a well-seasoned journalist.

One who’d better start banging out some other kinda media product, e-books maybe in his case, if he hasn’t already. (Trust me, as a seasoned multimedia-ist, it ain’t brain surgery, but I diverge.)

So thus Emerson’s wages are, presumably, already way too high, even though I seriously doubt JCK is overpaying anyone on staff with his mommy’s money.

And with J-schools cranking-out even more eager beaver kids with journalism degrees than ever before, cheap content-churning monkeys are merely… a job board away.

Anyway, James Cox Kennedy (JCK) isn’t the least bit interested in journalism and piddly, cumbersome product such as the AJC. He says as much in this 2002 interview.

Nope, JCK’s a cable/broadcast kinda guy. Although I bet he’s trying to be the best Internet content kinda guy he can be by now. To go with all those Internet supply chains he already owns. But Facebook’s pre-emptied so much of the grand plan of any good old-school media tycoon.

And that makes a Bo Emerson, and even Gal With The Pink Faux Chanel Jacket, well, superfluous. Cox Media Farm too, come to think about it.

As should we need to tune-in fresh media from the Occupy Atlanta movement tonight at 6pm we need only click, once, to its Facebook page… or those of its 4K-plus followers.

And we’ll do so with our Apple product and some (free if we can find it) wi-fi, not some big fat TV that comes complete with a whopping cable bill.

Cox Media Group Using Mentally Ill To Sell Product

They are indeed busy little bees up there in the C-Suite at the Cox Media Farm! I gotta hand it to them this time – for their latest marketing campaign we’re not supposed to realize is going on. (See this post/internal memo for Cox history on what we don’t need to know as an audience.)

The flagship Cox product, the AJC, has an excellent series now about the mentally ill in Georgia, the weakest members of society, that AJC management is using (good journalism or otherwise aside) as a means to promote their print product and increase app downloads.

See this footer they’re slapping on the brief, online products for this series:

In Friday’s newspaper, the AJC presents the second part of an update to our “Hidden Shame” series on Georgia’s psychiatric hospitals and group homes. The full, deeper story is one you’ll get only by picking up a copy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution or logging on to the paper’s iPad app. Subscribe today.

Now I’m all for linking up the world and the various media products in whatever ways you can dream up. I do it all the time.

But using the mentally ill in Georgia, and one’s access to creating media like this around the most troubled members of society, causes me a few troubling concerns. (NOTE: The AJC has since pulled down what was a slide show of pictures of the mentally ill in jail. Try this video instead.)

I love digital marketing and new ideas in new media as much as the next good capitalist, but using one’s access (in good faith presumably) to the mentally ill to do so? Does Cox have full, written (lucid and coherent) permission to use the sick people’s images in such ways? I sure hope so.

I feel a little disturbed seeing distressed members of society being pimped-out in such a blatant, no-holds-barred, crass media way as to create a special pipeline and a need for more AJC print products, and to increase iPad app downloads. All with the intention of showing one’s advertisers all that great new data/analytics.

This great marketing campaign sure seems a long way from the work Alan Judd did to bring to light horrors in the Georgia state mental patient care system.

Who knows how this series on the mentally ill will play or be cross-promoted at Cox’s other large product, WSB-TV, if at all. I’m not sure I care to see that much Cox product anyway. Everywhere. As I’ve got the marketing message down by now.

After all, it is the most important part of this story.

The Once-Great AJC Now. As a Word Cloud.

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.

Note For Those Seeking AJC Related Dirt

UPDATE FOR THOSE HITTING THIS BLOG WHILE LOOKING FOR DIRT ABOUT SOME JULIA “THE UNDERTAKER” WALLACE-RELATED MEMO:  THIS AJC-IS-TANKING STUFF IS OLD NEWS. I’M NO LONGER WASTING ONE MORE DIGIT OF TEXT (AND NEVER A FRAME OF VIDEO)  WRITING ABOUT SOMETHING THAT LOSES ONE MILLION DOLLARS A WEEK.

YOU WERE LED OFF A CLIFF BY INSANELY UN-VISIONARY AND ARROGANT LEADERSHIP.  IT HAPPENS TO ALL OF US FROM TIME TO TIME. NOW WIPE YOUR TEARS, DUST YOURSELF OFF, AND START CLIMBING OUT OF THE RAVINE.

IF THERE IS ANYTHING I CAN DO TO HELP, I KNOW A REALLY GOOD WEB DESIGNER. EMAIL ME.

Would You Buy A “Media Solution” From The AJC?

From the institution that’s downsized itself into oblivion… how about a nice streaming bowl of “media solutions!” All the while the AJC, (aka “Panda Press”) has managed to set absolutely NO standard for online anything, other than to issue bleating memoranda via Julia Wallace (who doesn’t even blog last time I checked) that end-up all over Romensko claiming the AJC’s going to dominate online-everything in their path. Oh sure.

Have you ever tried to use the commenting interface on their blogs? Now that’s some scary shit. Crashes everything from Windows ’98 to entire HVAC units. “Media solutions” from the AJC. LMAO! Hey, it’s your money. From Atlanta Daybook today:

“We have fundamentally changed our organizational structure and go-to market approach based on research and feedback we heard from our advertisers and prospects about their continued challenges,” said W. Michael Clay, AJC Senior Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer.

“We’re responding with AJC Media Solutions. We’re more than a newspaper, we’re now a one-point-of contact solution across digital, print and direct marketing platforms that can help businesses navigate their messaging to the audiences and consumers they seek and that will truly help them grow their businesses.”

Full boast here. This is about like saying local TV news stations have functioning video archives on their websites. Oh sure. Let’s all “skip-to-market” while we’re at it.

Quote du Jour. Possibly of Year.

Yeah, we are robbing Peter to pay Paul, he said. But that’s OK because Paul is dead.

The above bon motes are from Elliot Eisenberg, an economist with the National Association of Home Builders. Eisenberg then went on to say, according to the AJC, ‘Atlanta should continue to build even though demand isn’t there.’

Full story is here. Read it and weep.

Still not sure if Eisenberg is brilliant or a babbling idiot who’s just making shit up off the top of his head. But that’s the whole economic mess in a nutshell, eh? Just who ARE the smartest people in the room? No one seems to be able to tell the court jester from the king anymore.

Cox Media Plantation Assaults Audience With Garbage

Below is the news alert found my InBox today from the increasingly hideous Cox Media Plantation product, AJC.com:

AM News: Man assaults girlfriend with cheeseburger

It lives on their homepage this morning too. See for yourself, but you’ll have to get there on your own devices. Out of principle, imaging that I have some that is, I refuse to link to the insult.

I mean, I’ve been insulted many times before, and will likely be many times more. But the violation of my InBox with this kinda trash really takes the cake.

Atlanta Gas Availability Info – Use Twitter

Best place for real-time gas availability updates in the metro Atlanta area remains Twitter. You can subscribe to the #atlgas hash tag for your news reader, and keep a real-time availability update right on your desktop or cell. Couldn’t be easier.

Too bad ATL MSM are too arrogantly ignorant about social media and crowd sourcing apps and tools to be able to inform their audience and readership about such kinds of consumer-friendly tips and tricks. Wasn’t like they hadn’t been warned. Pity.

While WXIA has cleaned-up it’s map act of gas availability some (all pins are now a neutral blue), it’s still cumbersome. Other TV stations and media are still linking only to that bulky gas price site, the one that gives no information about gas availability.

WABE informed their listenership today about the gas price site with some bizarrely lame aside of “if you are able to get online.” Like they have a listenership of only the elderly and severely disabled? Maybe they do… come to think about it.

But fer chrissake WABE, this is a gas shortage in a major metropolitan area, not a freakin’ natural disaster in Haiti! Who among the WABE listenership does not have “online availability” in some capacity? Other than some Luddite-weirdo types who might adore 6 hours of classical music a day, but I’m starting to diverge…

And this is what passes for “continuous coverage of the gas crisis” at Channel 46. No shit. Jeez Atlanta media… this is like handing out media maxi-pads when the sleek OBs are right on the other shelf.

Sunday 9/27 12:18pm UPDATE: AJC now sending all their (claimed) ga-zillions of eyeballs off the Cox Media Plantation (see title/link “Real Time: Where To Find Gas”) and over to Twitter Farm to give their “audience” what they want right now: those priceless real time gas availability updates. LMAO and cue the Peter, Paul and Mary.

CRASS APPEAL FOR YOUR EYEBALLS!!! Now that I’ve got ‘em here… please take a moment and click-on a cool video promo for the upcoming Oct. 4th 688/Metroplex reunion show. It’ll make you happy, I promise.

HERE’S AN AD:

LIKED WHAT YOU SAW ABOVE? NEED ONLINE VIDEO PROMOTIONS FOR YOUR COMPANY’S UPCOMING NEEDS/EVENT?

Contact WaySouth Media, Inc.: gdaughters at waysouthmedia dot com.

We’ll set you up online-right at WaySouth Media!

Lack of Social Media Awareness and Tools Has Local TV News Failing Consumers In A Crisis

A complete failure to keep up with technological advances and the needs of the citizenry via social media tools and citizen journalism applications is making Atlanta TV stations look like media dino imbeciles… at a time when they could be serving the community in a real-time way.

Bless their heart, WXIA is trying to let people know, via a map on TV and on their website, WHERE available gas is in the city, but when I checked it, the citizens’ posts located under the map appear to have been last updated yesterday. And not everyone looking at the site might not know to click-on the green or red arrows to see when info at that particular arrow/place was last updated.

Besides, when you do click on a green arrow for a particular station, you see that it/the info was, in some cases, last updated 20 hours ago! Or was presented/updated to show NO gas about 2-hours ago, yet the arrow remains green in color. (For “Go” presumably.) But hey, bad information is better than NO information? In this particular case, I think not.

Loyalty Leaking Out Of AJC As Well As Staff

UPDATE FOR THOSE HITTING THIS (OLD) POST NOW… IN APRIL OF 2009 WHILE LOOKING FOR DIRT ABOUT SOME JULIA “THE UNDERTAKER” WALLACE MEMO: THIS AJC-IS-TANKING STUFF IS OLD NEWS. I’M NOT WASTING ONE MORE DIGIT OF TEXT (AND NEVER VID!)  WRITING ABOUT SOMETHING THAT LOSES ONE MILLION DOLLARS A WEEK. YOU WERE LED OFF A CLIFF BY INSANELY UNVISIONARY AND ARROGANT LEADERSHIP.  IT HAPPENS TO ALL OF US FROM TIME TO TIME. NOW WIPE YOUR TEARS, DUST YOURSELF OFF, AND START CLIMBING OUR OF THE RAVINE. IF THERE IS ANYTHING I CAN DO TO HELP, I KNOW A SOME GOOD WEB DESIGNERS. EMAIL ME.

My my my! How the hot line here at MM filled right up when I took-off to Land of The Dueling Banjos for a few days off da grid. Among the most interesting in the tip jar upon returning home to the ATL was a note on how a whopping 73 buyouts were accepted by the AJC last Friday, a rather huge-normous number. And right after that, the AJC had to promptly fire three of their “anointed ones” editors.

Apparently the editors were apprehended passing along (presumably to outsiders) some AJC market research data that were being compiled for the paper’s big re-design to that AJC Two Points To Zero campaign. (AJC 2.0. That’s the yadayadayada hype Julia Wallace is always issuing memos about. As the rest of the world yawns and moves beyond 3.0)

UPDATE to this little number here.

When Even A Bad Cell Phone Snap Would Do

The AJC online is so pitifully multimedia-deficient that it failed to run even a (very good) reporter’s grainy cell phone photo with this story about a Georgia bird:

Anhingas normally are found on the coast and in the coastal-plain region of Georgia. However, they are showing up now in the Piedmont, including suburban Atlanta. Naturalists at the Newman Wetlands Center in Clayton County said anhingas have been spotted during all seasons of the year in swamps and reservoirs managed by the county’s water authority. Several anhingas also have been seen in Henry County wetlands. No one knows for sure, though, why the birds seem to be spreading inland.

Full naked story here. (I will remove this post when/if any picture/video presentation of this bird is made available.)

BS-1 and BS-2

With a sweeping staff cut, the AJC has iced-out daily print news coverage of life in Gwinnett County. Seems nothing’s terribly interesting out there. And whatever there is, it’s certainly not impacting the bottom line. Given last night’s MARTA referendum, maybe Gwinnettians should just build a moat and a drawbridge now. And oh yeah, get a few blogs going. You’re gonna need ‘em out there in the ‘burbs. Now more than ever.

And if you haven’t had enough BS with your morning coffee, read this funny memo from AJC publisher, John Mellott. Funny because Mellott neglects to mention the biggest phenom that’s tanked newspaper advertising nationwide: Craig’s List.

A few key blogs in Gwinnett, and hey, even the AJC’s Editor, Julia Wallace, might have to curtail churning out her special brand of bs-laden memo too. You can read yet another prime specimen of her notes ‘o arrogance here. No one does corporate spin like that gal Julia!

Paging Arianna. ATL primed for online local news showdown at the lagging Marietta Street corral.

UPDATE: OMG! Stop the presses! (Ooops, they’ve already done that.) Alert the media then. Julia Wallace has been sighted commenting on a blog. I swear to God this is true. With full transparency too, albeit it IS an AJC-generated blog. Pigs are surely flyin’ overhead in Dixie now. Scroll comments here to see for yourself.

Welcome To The Blogosphere Day For AJC Staff

I hear it’s cut day at the AJC today, Wednesday. Many heads on the block, and not just in editorial. Hmmmm. We shall see. Romenesko will probably get any news first. But anyone is free to leave comments here, or email me with info. Post anonymously if you feel like you need to. Let it out, baby, let it out.

Discretion is always a top priority on MM. (No, I will never name names. The only time I EVER named a name was when the S.E.C., uh, formally asked me to. Once. It involved a CEO I’d interviewed for a magazine. Long story.) Email is: spaceygracey at bellsouth dot net.

UPDATE: No sooner did I hit the “Publish” button, then low and behold, up pops the news here. And here.

Bless This Transition

Why is it so easy to instantly forget the humanity that exists within an entire industry? Newspapers in this case. Hell, in cyberspace it’s easy to forget just about anything we used to be tactilely associated with.

Standing within six feet of three Pulitzer Prize winners in Journalism, at a party (I crashed) to honor Hank Klibanoff’s departure from the AJC (Klibanoff himself a Pulitzer winner for the book The Race Beat) an unexpected wave of sober, strong admiration for the people who are going to now face the end of their industry as we all knew it came upon me. It dawned on me that these people will face the end of an era, the end of their industry, with strength and dignity and humor, and a respect for their colleagues in a way that will humble us all.

I Twittered some during the party and took a few of those grainy indoor iPhone snaps. But I really wish I had live-streamed; the toasts and the roasts were good, but mostly, folk out here in the swirl of the Internet’s crashing vastness need to witness the humanity of which I so glibly, and merely, blog about.

This post put together by Cat Stevens’ Teaser and The Firecat.

Another One Flees Cox Media Plantation!

Lost a Pulitizer winner this time too. Even the lure of new used-car money can’t hold ‘em down on the plantation. From Romenesko:

Memo from Atlanta Journal-Constitution managing editor/news Hank Klibanoff

To: The AJC staff
From: Hank
Date: June 24, 2008

I don’t have an anecdotal lede, a way to foreshadow a suspenseful ending, or some clever device to hook you. I have some news that is difficult to write and best served straight up: I am leaving the paper.

Over the past few months, the feeling that I might want to do something else has grown even more intense. And I kept hearing, from deep in my childhood, words of the man best known for uttering the Golden Rule, Rabbi Hillel, some 2000 years ago. But the Hillel maxim that landed in my mind and would not leave was the third question in the challenging series of three queries Rabbi Hillel asked, questions that exist at the interplay between selfishness and selflessness: “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”

Julia Wallace’s response here. Bye bye party at Manuel’s Friday at 7pm. (Great blogger crash-op, eh?!)

Possibly Worst “News” Copy Ever Penned

Fire the editor! Fire the publisher! Fire somebody! Hell, call a fucking exorcist over to Marietta Street at this point. There really should be an award given to this story for the hideous, patronizing writing “style.” From the AJC – apparently now hiring only the most ridiculous writers on the planet. 

Whatcha wanna bet the Used Car Guy they just promoted to run Cox Plantation Newspapers thinks this is, like, Pulitzer kinda material. Pardon me while I hurl as you read over just this portion of the whole monstrosity about something that was never newsworthy in the first place:

Donnelly turns the pages in the photo album to a picture of an African-American boy standing next to her at school back in New Orleans. “He and a white guy and I would fashion ourselves after the Mod Squad,” she says. “We liked to think of ourselves as a little club.”

The friendship started in fifth or sixth grade. And Donnelly sees it as evidence that children have the right instincts.

Truth is, many paths to the future start with the past. Donnelly thought she’d left that Princeton dorm room for good. Then those long fingers from the campaign trail waved her back inside. At first, she saw only herself and two roommates.

Now she sees her children and Obama’s children waking up in those beds, in a room with no barriers.

AJC Wets Its Pants Over Boring Corporate Video

Having produced years of really boring corporate videos myself, all underscored with a similar, sleep-inducing canned looped score, I fail to see anything remotely compelling about this one, other than nice cheekbones maybe. Yet it’s the most-clicked story on AJC.com today, making a compelling case for just how culture & arts-deprived the Georgia plebe public tragically must be.

Alert The Media! AJC Discovers YouTube!

Dont’ they just crack you the fuck up over there on Marietta?!

AJC Shifting Folk Around As LA Times Tries e-Billboards

I love the e-billboards concept to promote “news product.” As if we weren’t all about to wreck our cars at any moment while texting and drinking coffee and driving…

From the San Antonio Business Journal:

The Los Angeles Times will use the electronic billboards to display exclusive news content from its print and online editions and special editorial features like the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and the Metromix L.A. events, culture and nightlife guide.

From the Atlanta Business Chronicle:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reorganizing its sales and marketing functions, and its advertising vice president and classified ads director are leaving.

The daily newspaper, whose circulation is dropping, said Wednesday it has separated its sales execution and sales operations, promoting Ranald MacDonell to vice president of advertising sales. He’ll be responsible for driving revenue across all advertising categories, the paper said. MacDonell was previously the AJC’s vice president of targeted media.

How about some of those e-boards, eh Ranald (wtf) MacDonell? Give us something to do here in our traffic wonderland that is the ATL.

Where Were You While We Were Getting High?

This is just plain meanness, and things are really pathetic on Marietta Street when they make their Pulitzer Prize winners face their ”audience” via the crude muck that is the blogosphere. Blogging is simply not for everyone. Anyone who’s spent even an hour blogging could tell you that.

But bureaucrats don’t actually DO things like submerge themselves in cyberspace for a few years to find out, firsthand, what it’s all about. Rather, they just hear they should be ”interacting” someplace they personally would never be caught dead at; for example, the Clermont Lounge twenty years ago.

Sign of a perfect bureaucrat? When they have no qualms about making others slum for them. Then everyone on Marietta can pass themselves off as being so “in the know.” Even carrying on like “online leaders.” Careful what you ask for.

The AJC’s bureaucrats, maybe even a Director of Culture and Change, remind me of the evil step-sisters in Cinderella who wish to cram their feet, or Cynthia Tucker’s delicate toes in this particular case, into glass sausage casings, making them appear… obnoxious and ugly.

Leave Cindy T. to her quiet hearth and ashes, for chrissake.