Delta Bashing Makes Editorial Data Fly High

Here’s a fun, Atlanta-specific, advertising/sales v. editorial modern media dilemma!

Clearly, anything related to Delta-bashing, particularly Delta‘s frequent flyer program SkyMiles, makes data go hog wild. As it did with some impressive CTR numbers I sent to the Atlanta Business Chronicle from my Facebook alone. (See graphic below. If you don’t know what CTR means by now, you shouldn’t be in the ad/sales side of the media biz. However, old fogey journos, I will give you a pass on it.)

I’ve yet to notice the AJC cranking out any of this trendy SkyMiles-bashing editorial product as did, rather gleefully, the Biz Chron. WABE also seems to have caught an editorial-minded whiff of blood in angry Delta customers’ waters.

(I can only dream of one day running a company whose profit margin and stock price chronically deflect the hatred of its own customer base! But let’s move on.)

And why would the AJC jump on the I Really Hate Delta! bandwagon? Delta’s a fine, legacy, ad-buying customer for the AJC and all of Cox Enterprises. I expect what Delta wants by now, editorially speaking, at the AJC or WBS, Delta’s going to get. Or have quietly overlooked. Barring plane-related disaster media, of course.

But there’s your data-driven media rub right there. As what the people want, editorially and as displayed by the numbers, is hardly what your dearest ad buyer would like to have lying around the house.

Torn loyalties. ATL style.

Grownups Are Corrupt

 

Pheeeww weeeee! Of all the smelly players in the theft of WRAS by GPB deal, Georgia State University’s VP of Student Affairs, Douglass Covey, could be the stinkiest. And it’s a tough tough competition.

Seems Covey made sure GSU student fees were used to pay for a brand new WRAS transmitter in April of 2013. And then tossed that brand new student-paid-for (unknowingly and undisclosed to them, of course) transmitter into the sweet GPB deal for use when GPB took over WRAS.

Which, according to rules and guidelines of Georgia’s state universities’ behaviors, may not have been a sanctioned/legal use of university student fees. The sweet deal itself also not known to the public or students of GSU/WRAS at the time, of course. Come to think about it, the deal was known mostly to just Douglass Covey, his inner circle of intimate cronies, and key committee folk only. (Remember kids, these are all state organizations we’re talking about here. Thus all beholden to Georgia’s Open Records laws.) 

From Jennifer Waits in a Radio Survivor blog post:

Although it hasn’t been mentioned much in reporting about the situation at WRAS, in April 2013 the Georgia State University Student Activity Fee Committee approved a proposal to replace the WRAS transmitter. Estimated costs at the time were between $676,000 and $750,000. Meeting minutes also reference a construction permit to “install its main antenna on a downtown tower, allowing for a much improved signal in North Georgia, especially on campus, and in the Georgia Dome.” A few months earlier, discussions were well underway between GPB and GSU. An early draft agreement from January 2013 even proposes that GPB would help pay for the cost of a transmitter. The old proposal suggests that GSU and GPB would partner “to acquire bond dollars to cover all one-time costs of transitioning WRAS to digital broadcast…” Throughout the conversations between GSU and GPB, GPB was kept up to date about the timeline for WRAS’ new transmitter.

According to Georgia State email correspondence, the new transmitter was delivered in late April 2014. Interestingly, around this time (late April), Georgia State’s Vice President for Student Affairs Douglass Covey resigned from the board of Public Broadcasting Atlanta (which runs competing public radio station WABE). The GSU/GPB agreement was announced publicly in May 2014. Although the new transmitter has yet to be installed, it’s been pointed out that since student fees were used to pay for something that will be largely used by GPB, it could be construed as a misuse of student funds or even fraud.

Talk about a low life maneuver! And that’s not even counting Covey’s utter duplicitous skunkiness of sitting on the other public media folks’ (PBA/WABE) board throughout the icky and secretive maneuvering between GPB and GSU for expanding GPB’s public airwaves reach beyond the 24/7 grasp of the kids of GSU.

Man, what a skunk. I wouldn’t trust Douglass Covey to walk my dog to the curb.

 

Kids of WRAS and GSU, Meet Your New Overlords!

Teya Ryan (President & Executive Director, GPB) to the left. Mikey McDougald (Chariman of the Board, GPB) to the right. And they are coming at you WRAS/GSU kids with some wow kinda “significantly different” news programming products you young people can get all up in.

Like that three helpings of Bill Nigut programming product on WRAS GPB! (If you add in Nigut’s TV show.) From Rodey Ho of the AJC’s blog post:

He [McDougald] said duplication during mornings and afternoon drive-time are common and that the local news content will differ. While WABE focuses on Atlanta, GPB’s news content will be “significantly different” with a promise to increase its news operation, he wrote, noting GPB’s state-wide reach.

McDougald wrote that WRAS will have three original programs including a 9 a.m. weekday news program that starts in the fall, a political roundtable that debuts today and a Saturday arts/culture show that launched last Saturday hosted by Bill Nigut. He hopes more original programs will come in the future.

And they’re just getting started! Help ’em power up a laptop desktop all by themselves when you get over there to GPB headquarters to do your blessed intern thing. They need strong young folk around to work their droopy farm into shape, especially now that they’ve got all that exciting, new, and “significantly different” Bill Nigut-powered programming.

But don’t ever forget who calls the programming shots and ideas at Farm GPB. Those two in the above picture! And their political media henchman, Bill Nigut, of course.

You kids have you some fun now, ‘ya hear! (The nearest Starbucks is .5 miles away. Across the Connector. Mapped it already for you. Start hoofin’. Ryan likes a Grande Latte no sugar at 10am sharp every morning.)

GPB Claims Stealing Is Giving – To Georgia.

On the long-gone back of possibly the most hardass military freak known to war history, General William Tecumseh Sherman, GPB is trying hard to raise money to support its limited supply of quality programming. As they simultaneously grab WRAS’ programming from GSU college students learning a trade and give it to a self-absorbed mouth-in-a-suit, Bill Nigut.

GPB’s chairman, Michael H. McDougald (yeah I know, Mike who?) banged-out a windy reply to Dr. Louis Sullivan’s, chair of WABE/PBA’s board, recent sound and decisive condemnation of GPB’s theft of WRAS programming. Here’s a self-congratulatory, defensive sampling of McDougald’s letter to Sullivan. (You can trudge through the entirety here if you wish.)

We [GPB] produce original programs which enhance the learning experience, such as a 365 segment series titled, Today In Georgia History, which covered a year’s worth of Georgia history; and more recently, 37 Weeks: Sherman on the March, which is a week-by-week chronicle of Gen. Sherman’s march through Georgia.

Odd way to go about asking Atlantans for their money, eh? By evoking the name of General Sherman?! Good series, though. I watched some of it; before GPB killed WRAS, that is.

But the hard, cold, cash-based fact of the matter at hand is that donors and their money are what will keep GPB alive, well, and perfectly able to dig-in like a Yankee in North Georgia for the we’re-never-ever-giving-WRAS-back-to-the-GSU-kids long haul.

Mikey knows that. We know that. And yeah, we also know the odds of winning any fight to get back WRAS for the kids of GSU are as meager as Gerald O’Hara’s cotton fields circa 1865 or thereabouts.

But of course stealing WRAS away from just kids is a great way to encourage even more donating to GPB. Use those WRAS 100K power watts for what they can really do: be the best fundraising bully pulpit GPB’s got in its money-raising arsenal now. Hear Bill Nigut roar. Oh god but will we. I’d rather Sherman himself stomp across my patio. Trust me, they sure know that value-added fact around the dingy halls of GPB, or they’d never have gone to all the bother of stealing WRAS in the first place. So now they’re giving nothing back.

Also from Mikey’s letter to Sullivan:

Clearly, our intention is to offer Atlantans an alternative service to WABE, and we believe our differentiated programming will bring new donors to the public media table. As a result, we do not see this partnership as you suggest, as “a waste of taxpayer’s money.” GPB has no intention of using taxpayers’ money to support this new initiative. We fully anticipate, as with WABE, that the marketplace will support our programming on GPB Atlanta.

If you’re tired of Mikey, Teya Ryan, and Bill Nigut’s hideous march through WRAS, burning out the kids of GSU from the music programming they’ve commanded and championed for 40-years or thereabouts, there’s really just one thing you can do now to fight back: hit the GPB weak spot, the market place, and cease all giving to GPB.

Oh, and be sure to stop by the #SaveWRAS protest of GPB’s takeover of WRAS today, Friday July 11 from 3:30-6:30pm at the GPB headquarter in Midtown Atlanta, 260 14th Street. Bring a clever sign or three, some water, and a good attitude. No bullhorns or amplification or bad manners allowed. Parking is free on the third floor of the GPB building. But don’t go into the building! Go outside to 14th street to peacefully protest in front of GPB.

Show Atlanta how you really feel.

 

Get On Board The GPB Programming Theft Train!

 

In a rigid environment stripped of anything remotely representing a “two way street,” GPB’s Bill Nigut babbled non-freely away recently (Thursday, July 3, 2014) to AJC’s Rodney Ho about not one but two upcoming WRAS shows he’s stolen carved-out for himself. One being called, snort, “Two Way Street.”

Given that no one’s the least bit interested in organic Nigut dung radio product, but rather far more interested in the outrageous public relations heap GPB’s laid in the wake of their mindless decision to raid WRAS, Ho dutifully attempted to steer his Nigut chat time toward media issues people actually want to hear about. Only to be shut-down by a free speech wrangler named Mandy. From Ho’s Radio & TV Talk blog:

When I mentioned that some WRAS fans are making him the bogeyman, he shrugged. “As a guy who covers politics,” Nigut said, “I know people decide to assign a motive and give you an agenda. It has nothing to do with reality or who you are.” Twice while I was on this subject, GPB spokeswoman Mandy Wilson interrupted me to say, “We’re here to talk about Bill’s radio shows.” I wasn’t expecting Nigut to saying anything except positive things about the deal and he didn’t appear to mind talking about the deal. But with a publicist in the room clearly uncomfortable with me probing that subject, I backed off.

Because what Atlanta really wants is to consume news from news farms where the news product is locally-sourced by obstructionist publicists named “Mandy.”

But wait! There’s more! More Bill Nigut in our futures! Of course Bill Nigut just had to have another politics show all for himself, in the way a toddler hoards all the red and green trucks, now that he’s playing with his stolen programming booty there at GPB.

Blessing GPB’s Act of Media Thievery

I had to drive around during the day for a few hours yesterday, throughout metro Atlanta. I listened to the “new” GPB-ized programming on WRAS 88.5 (no longer “Album” 88.5 of course) through most of my drive time.

It’s exactly what I, and plenty of other Lois Reitzes-haters, have been hoping for on our Atlanta airwaves, which we’ve never had and often wished for as quality news programming in our cars/wherever from the 9am-3pm hours.

I never in a million years thought I’d get my wish, some 25-years later, on the backs of the kid-powered Album 88.5 programming that shaped my life throughout young adulthood

I felt absolutely dirty the whole time I was listening, knowing what an ill-gotten act of outright thieving and programming-gain it was on the part of GPB’s Teya Ryan and her nasty media henchman, Bill Nigut.

At least Nigut’s personal act of thieving windbaggery wasn’t yet ready for air. That’s an ugly lying in wait – to incite more than a mere blog post by one person.

Or is it? I wonder about my Atlanta/Georgia media peers being far too excepting of the status quo, the way they always have been. I expect they’re meeting already at The Atlanta Press Club to gush and drool over Teya Ryan and Bill Nigut’s programming coup. And hand them a manufactured award for what they’ve done to the kids of GSU, of course.

Now I feel dirty and disgusted. There is no amusement in this particular mostly Atlanta media matter. At all.

#SaveWRAS

How To Be An Old Media Bully. A Primer.

UPDATE: Seems GPB has abandoned their attempt at a “two way street” and removed all comments and commenting from Bill Nigut’s blog post referenced in this post and associated hyperlinks. Too bad. Loved the “Whatever Saruman” one! 

Bill Nigut is “thrilled” to be back on the airwaves of radio, via WRAS. That makes one person in Georgia. The rest of us? Not so much. (See the comments, coming fast and furious, at his blog post trumpeting his latest broadcasting theft thrill.)

Mr. Nigut’s on-air and in-real-life persona has always been loud, large, and obnoxious. He’s that person who insists on being heard through the din of a crowded networking event or cocktail party. Sucks the wind right out of any space, and takes it all for himself.

It helps that he’s a tall guy, but Nigut can bray and preen with the best of ’em. I once made the mistake of walking past Bill Nigut and Neal Boortz chatting together at some random Atlanta Press Club event. I was hurled three city blocks away by the gasbaggery posturing alone.

Nigut makes claim to being a champion for pretty much everything and everyone he can think of: the helpless, the homeless, the voiceless, the poor, but especially Richie Rich Chamber-types, in his windy GPB blog post declaring his latest radio show intentions with WRAS, awww shucks, ma’am style:

I am thrilled to be back in radio and hope you’ll join me to meet extraordinary people, hear important ideas and explore the rich arts and cultural work being done in Atlanta and Georgia. It should be fun; it should be illuminating, and if I do it right, it should make us all just a little more aware of what a remarkable place we live in.

Beware a wolf in sheep’s clothes. Nigut is merely an old media bully worming his way into a place, space and time where he is not wanted because he believes his own hype, and is still in love with the sound of his own voice, and has sorely missed hearing it bellowing hither and yon from whatever Atlanta microphone he can grab first before anyone else has a chance to get there. Everyone knows this, because they’re watching it happen. In real time, more or less, given the enduring popularity of the #SaveWRAS hashtag.

GPB stole programming out of the mouths, minds and hearts of numerous Georgia State University students, and took it for a very select, very few one old media talking heads. No one’s believing a wisp of spin put on the matter by anyone at GSU or GPB leadership. They’re operating in an echo chamber, as that deafening sound you don’t hear anywhere in Atlanta is anyone other than Bill Nigut and Teya Ryan themselves coming to their own sorry little defense of what they’ve done to raid WRAS.

The best thing Bill Nigut can possibly do for his rapidly fraying Georgia media legacy, and trust me, he surely thinks he’s still got a shot at one, is to give the programming of WRAS back to the kids of GSU. Now.

Student Press Law Center Questions Legitimacy of GSU/GPB Agreement To Run WRAS

 

The Student Press Law Center’s executive director, Frank LoMonte, has sent a blistering, scathing really, 5-page letter to Georgia State University president Mark Becker declaring GSU’s agreement (hammered out in great secrecy and urgency by GSU and GPB so GPB could grab GSU’s student-run station, WRAS, and hand it over to the grownups of GPB) essentially wrong on every possible level, and merely the paper result of ragingly arrogant and “tone-deaf,” possibly illegal, behaviors on the part of Becker. And some equally bad lawyerin’ on the part of the GSU attorney, Kerry Heyward.

From the letter:

Your (Becker’s) remarks as quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on May 7 are, quite frankly, contemptuous and tone-deaf. Your assertion that “anything with this level of complexity and this level of benefit really is not the kind of thing you can play out in a public forum” is exactly, 100 percent wrong. Things that are “beneficial” will be understood and welcomed by the people they are intended to benefit, unless you hold those people — your students — in such low regard that you believe they are incapable of being reasoned with.

LoMonte then goes on to urge GSU and GPB to not try to get rid of any of their documents associated with their agreement, as he’s gonna sue to the crap out of them. Possibly.

Take time to read the document in its entirety. The SPLC is making all the right legal moves to shut down not only poorly constructed legal agreements, but also, hopefully, the petite bourgeoisie criminals plaguing state organizations such as GPB and GSU. 

Ugly GPB Media Takeover Continues To Burn Atlanta

Bill Nigut of Georgia Public Broadcasting shows his hand as to why he was so excited about the WRAS Album 88 kids getting kicked to the curb: he gets to expand his own personal talk show, On The Story, to another platform. What a preening douche. ‪#‎SaveWRAS‬ indeed. From that.

The full GPB press release is at the jump.

Atlanta, We Have A Media Problem

I am deeply concerned about the dire condition of metro Atlanta online news outlets owned by the Cox Plantation (CP). Specifically the AJC and WSB-TV. Their homepaged car wreck carnage-media obsession is off the rails. Kinda literally, eh? I won’t bother to steal their freak show media and post it, or link to it, here though.

Headlining, banners, Tweets, Facebook posts, photos, alerts, whatever, on both sites (I don’t dare check on the broadcast product) are mostly scenes and shoutouts to ragingly gruesome car wrecks where people are mangled. To death. On our many metro Atlanta roadways. A never-ending supply of human roadkill. The more people killed in a single car, the more twisted and maimed the scene, so much the better for the Cox Plantation clickbait keyboard monkeys. And management too. More on that later.

But the CP will fall behind the times if they don’t soon turn their sicko and ghoulish headlining into that related to — suicide! The NYT (CDC) reports today that suicide rates in America have now surpassed death by car wreck. And this being Georgia, surely we’re way up on the top of that particular mortality listing, too.

Thus, the CP should have a good supply of suicide scene media for their homepages. Slide shows galore. The more hideous and bloody a suicide scene, the better for the CP. Suicide by gun can get top billing. Maybe even an award-winning (sure, tell the clueless intern that) shot of a family member discovering the scene of a relative hanging, dead of course, in a closet, if they’re lucky?

And if they’re really enterprising at the AJC or WSB-TV, their camera-burdened reporter bot/intern can sneak in some place and grab video of, hopefully for the management and data-watching team, some shotgun-blast-to-the-head video!

Hope it goes viral for them. Someone will get a pat on the head for their good-dog suicide scene multimedia efforting. Go for it, kiddies. And management too.

After all, it’s CP management that has allowed their deplorable, clickbaited editorial condition to deteriorate into mostly digital online news content that reeks of disgust and carnage.

Local Data Mining: Where No Georgia Press Dare Go

Investigative tech reporting in Georgia is non-existent. Other than cheerleading, Chamber-type stuff from the Atlanta Business Chronicle. There are startups incubated at Georgia Tech in the for-profit business of scraping data from social media sites, and then selling it back to organizations and business people, particularly folk in law enforcement. What’s commonly called “enterprise data mining.”

I know this because one company tried to sell me their lovely dashboard thingee. To which I replied, in a business-like manner of course at the meeting, “No thanks, I roll my own.”

Georgia law enforcement stores (years of) data scraped and mined from the general (presumed innocent) public, via such technology as license tag scanning. Lord knows what they then do with such data, and where (NSA?) they then feed that data, and the associated metadata, on to.

The head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Vernon Keenan, announced that factoid, rather proudly, to a room full of journalists at the Atlanta Press Club this summer. Not a single follow-up story on that matter, at least any I’m aware of. Not one.

Hasn’t the data-mining dilemma revealed by Glenn Greenwald piqued the slightest bit of interest on local angles to the dilemma just a little bit amongst Georgia press leadership? Seems not.

Come on MSM in Georgia. Do better.

SEO, Exclusives, And The Atlanta School Gunman

Suffering from a case of what we in Atlanta call “Coxitis”, WSB-TV has been crowing, in their balls-to-the-wall coverage of the August 20, 2013 Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy incident, of how the gunman asked that WSB-TV be called.

This is not exactly how WSB-TV came by a call to their assignment desk from the person who turned out to be an excellent hostage negotiator – McNair Academy’s bookkeeper, Antoinette Tuff, who’s compassionate ability to talk the gunman out of his harmful intentions at the elementary school likely saved lives in Atlanta.

In her subsequent interview with WSB-TV’s Jovita Moore, Ms. Tuff recounts what the obviously troubled man ordered her to do when she was with him yesterday.

Seems WSB-TV’s assignment desk got the call because of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and not because the gunman specifically asked for WSB-TV.

From the Tuff interview, 4:30 to 5:11 on the tape: 

Jovita Moore, WSB-TV: “That was another part of this. He [the gunman] told you to call Channel 2. He said, ‘Call Channel 2!'”

Antoinette Tuffs, McNair Academy bookkeeper: “He told me to call one of the news stations. But I asked him which one, it was so many. And he said, ‘I don’t care. Just call one!’ And so I said, ‘I don’t have a number.’ He said, ‘I have a number.’

And so I was like ok, and I was just sitting there and this time just praying. And he said, ‘Well, call somebody!’

And so I start looking on the Internet, and I said ‘Well, Channel 2 is here. And Channel 5 is here.’ And I was like, ok, I got to the first number and it was Channel 2, and so I called Channel 2. And he says, ‘Tell them this: Tell them to get out here.'”

Crowing about an exclusive media event is fine. We all do it. But it’s best to get one’s crow-able story straight before launching into hyper promotional warp speed mode.

Dear News Farms Who’s Product I Consume, Refer: Let’s Make A Deal!

I figure by now I’ve given away thousands upon thousands of clicks/hits to the NYT and the AJC. Via ye olde hyperlink method. I blog, Facebook, Tweet, suggest, cajole, email, you get the point, linkage to their editorial product — all the time.

Heck, one Tweet alone once resulted in over 300 clicks to one AJC story, according to my bitly stats.

Thus I have a modest proposal to the two aforementioned news farms: I hyperlink to you (as I see fit, and as serves my own editorial, usually southern in nature, needs). You give me all digital access to your news products, all the time.

Deal?

Loose DeKalb Lips Make Waves (Of Oppression) For AJC

Ahoy! Botched metaphor. I know.

Loose lips might sink ships, circa 1942, but they never torpedoed any ships of journalism. To the contrary. Lip flappers, whistleblowers, gossips and media whores power and embolden entire journalism empires, causing ships to rise off of copy tides. Just look at the numbers for the Guardian empire lately. Off the charts!

Over in less high profile seas, say here down South, in today’s 1-minute news cycle there really is no such thing as a genuine “scoop” brought about by wildly exclusive information. Except when there (rarely) is, of course.

But don’t tell that to the powers-that-be at the AJC, as they’re lashing any remaining, hardworking reporter-bees left on their deck to the mast and thrashing them mightily, as punishment for having failed to sight enough scoops in their cruddy little scopes.

Two independent sources have now told me how Atlanta Journal & Constitution reporters, good ones, are being “written up” (or threatened with some type of disciplinary action) for failing to bring home the bacon fast enough. Failing to reel in genuine news “scoops.”

(“Scoops” being 100% exclusive 411 about specific, non-public events – but before the event occurs, allowing for a news organization to be first out of the gate on disseminating word of that particular news situation; to “own the story” in other words, something that’s increasingly hard to do in our hyper-connected world unless Edward Snowden or Julian Assange just happens to waltz by your office and dump raw intel on your desk. And “written up” being a documented threat by one’s superior to take away one’s job, rank, authority, paycheck and/or general livelihood should you, the super’s underling, not perform in some sort of, subjectively, better manner.)

Mark Winne at WSB-TV, for example, often gets genuine scoops about soon-to-be-made arrests by various Georgia law enforcement, and is thus frequently the first and only reporter in place for that classic, high-value video, law enforcement-enhancing moment – ye olde perp walk.

Of course it’s one of those open secrets in Atlanta old media circles that Winne’s brother is an FBI or GBI agent (I forget which agency) who tips his family member, Mark, off to lots of special events soon to happen. If that’s the case, they’ve had a lock on a good-visuals franchise for years now, and will continue at that game for as long as the gig works, I suppose.

Georgia Politics Continue To Inspire Georgia Media To Heights Of Status Quo

I am concerned about Michelle Nunn’s campaign for U.S. Senate already. And not because of her qualifications as a candidate to represent us here in Georgia. (Those seem just fine. Far better than most, come to think about it.)

But rather, what concerns …me is that, IN LESS THAN 24 HOURS, this candidate for U.S. Senate has already done two Georgia media-related things that annoy me something awful:

1.) Given Karen Handel yet another reason to NOT shut up and go away.

2.) Inspired Georgia’s usual-suspects-posse of mostly white male political writers to even greater heights of their predictable copy/keyboard pounding.

Perhaps my favorite example, thus far, is the AJC’s Jim Galloway attempting some Pat Conroy-like (gooey) prose in his “exclusive” interview with candidate Nunn, whilst sitting at Thumbs Up diner, of all non-interesting settings to announce one’s senatorial aspirations:

… a last name that bespeaks Georgia centrism.

Wake me up when anyone in Georgia political media ever does anything remotely innovative, disruptive, or interesting.

Eggs Into Cox-Only Basket Spells Trouble

And on the Don’t Put All Of Your Eggs In The Cox-Only Basket beat we have this breaking news item from Reporter Hobbs at the Daily Report. Cue the banging typerwriter music:

Dow Lohnes’ Atlanta office is undergoing a shakeup after a major client, Cox Enterprises, decided to pull some of its legal work from its longtime outside counsel.

Full story about the hemmoraging of lawyers at Dow Lohnes here.  Note to self: File under Things This Professional Basket Lady Knows Well.

Skewed Georgia Political Journalism On Most All Georgia Media Farms

There is a good bit of chatter (on Facebook) about Nikema Williams’ excellent decision to open-up the process of electing a new Democratic Party of Georgia (DPG) chair to more than white male-only candidates.

A little background… seems there was something in the DPG’s by-laws about if a white male (or black woman presumably, or whatever was the most matchy-match) was serving as chair of the party and left that post early, then the person to fill the chair/leadership void would have to share not just a similar but also an identical demographic. Such as also being a white male, as was Mike Berlon, of course, who recently and unceremoniously left the chairpersonship of the DPG.

So Ms. Williams has changed the chairpersonship rules up a bit, in her interim, between-chairs-role and duty. And that’s ok, ‘far as I’m concerned.

But what concerns me as a writer/editorialist, and also as a pan-media and prolific content provider (of more than mere text, in other words), much more than the fate of DPG leadership, is the dearth, lack, and scarcity of women or minority writers at the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on issues and matters pertaining to Georgia-based politics. And other media outlets too, but let’s start with the most influencial.

DPG rules can change all they care to, and that’s fine. But there are some other unwritten “rules” around this town that need to change too, if you ask me. Which of course no one did.

Oh, but they should. Ask me.

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.

Cox Media Group – Contradiction, Confusion, Clownage

You’ve all heard and seen it by now. (If you’re in Georgia.) Some expensive, marketeer-driven slogan the Cox Media Farms Group is using to pimp their AJC product. Something about being clear, complete, correct. Three Cs. I forget the exact three Cs, so un-inspired I was by the campaign.

The AJC, the flagship Cox Media Farms Group product according to Wikipedia, is under new leadership. The first bit of non-inspiration out of the new AJC editor, Kevin Riley, was to start banning stuff.

But Riley’s got a sturdy ego, allowing himself a burst of uninspired face time with us *audience*, trotting himself at a nice clip through a newsroom in a particularly awkward moving pictures ad spot. Look busy! Nothing like a campaign of more middle-age white guys trying on *leadership* roles to inspire a Cox-only media consumption movement in the metro Atlanta masses.

(And can they ho-out Mike Luckovitch any harder than they are now at the AJC?! Jeez, they’re gonna break him they keep up this pace. But I diverge.)

Overall, the best part of whatever the heck it is they’re trying to do around the Cox Media Farms Group Of Stuff was a recent interview with their new president, Doug Franklin. (Lot of new, new, new fever around that barn, eh?) Whereby Franklin said this:

One of the things I (Franklin) should point out is that our goal is not to homogenize our media businesses.

Well, could have fooled me as a recent Cox internal memo, now in wide digital circulation, about how to “co-brand” Cox properties, but at the same time not let us out here know about this co-branding stuff, said this:

The decision to co-brand will be determined on the front end, in the story conception meetings between the respective properties. The branding will need to be communicated fully to the newsroom production staffs so they’ll know to use the labels.

Labels and everything too! Already in the pipeline, should the non-homogenization process need to be trotted out. (Cute how they’re still beating that dead print horse too.)

Yes, but us simple, passive, media consumers out here in the A are still not supposed to know there’s a Cox Media Farm Group Of Stuff homogenization effort under way. Again from the internal meme:

As a rule of thumb, most collaboration efforts will NOT be made known to readers/viewers/listeners.

That’s ok, because in the interview with TVNewsCheck Franklin goes on to tell us he will tell us this:

I will tell you that we have recently moved 30-50 journalists from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and they are now housed at the WSB building. We are moving more content people in with the television and radio newsrooms and I think you will see continued increased shared work there. So, yes, we are going down that path, but prudently to make sure we protect the outstanding brands we have in Atlanta.

But who needs to know what they heck it is they’re doing with their various media products, in the name of journalism, when we consumers out here have full access to whatever it is they’re trying to do up there in the C-suite!

You know how to get in touch.