Tip Your Huge Media Market Giant

A team of reporters from WSB-TV Channel 2 television news was there; someone apparently tipped them off to the arrest beforehand. The station has had exclusive access to the court proceedings since then.

Now I can’t speak to the matter of terrorism-related charges brought on anyone, let alone a Clayton County, Georgia woman who wanted to kill all the whities via YouTube. (Although this particular burden never stops Matthew Charles Cardinale, the editor of Atlanta Progressive News. But he’s in law school now, so off he goes. Go Matthew go.)

I can, however, speak to the stinky little underhanded and exploitative way in which virtually all federal and state-related arrest media straight out of Atlanta (that good ‘n juicy perp-walk stuff) gets handed to market-dominating WSB-TV (Cox Enterprises) alone, on a silver platter, by someone at WSB-TV’s brother who happens to work in federal (or state) law enforcement.

So let’s recap: someone who works in government serves up exploitative tidbits to a single, for-profit entity, Cox Enterprises. Over and over and over again.

This sleight-of-media-hand trick has been going on in the Atlanta media market for decades: exclusive access to media/news-gathering opportunities (those folk in big trouble with the law) which no doubt many other players in this same media market would also love to exploit for their organization’s financial gain.

May be legal, but it ain’t right.

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.

The Historical Legacy of WSB-TV Production

After pondering the despicable act by despicable people of attempting to suppress the black vote in the year 2014, in Georgia of all places, take a media moment with me as I say something nice about a Cox product: WSB-TV.

The above (click the pic of Junior Farmer to get to the video) is excellent news reporting and packaging of a complex issue breaking that day (yesterday 9/17/14). As it gets immediately to the heart of a complex and historical matter, the key players, the SOTs, and the visuals.

This type of deft political production work, by WSB-TV’s political reporter Lori Geary and her production team, could not have been done without a longstanding, working knowledge of the issues on deck for the day’s news coming down – to be able to turn around this kind of comprehensive media that fast. In other words, sit back and watch professionals do their thing, cub reporting wannabees.

Knowing exactly who to get to, in a precise and time-thrifty way, and who to focus on and zoom to in the contemporary Georgia/Atlanta political arena, is editorial and production tandem work sourced from a unique and historic talent base that exists almost exclusively in WSB-TV’s deep-benched, legacy production crew. It’s hard to duplicate that level of precision political packaging elsewhere, in other words.

And it’s something we see often with WSB-TV’s political reporting. Not just yesterday’s. They know their civil rights history and legends behind the scenes there, as their production crews have lived, worked and played around Atlanta for a very long time. If one loses a career cameraman or director of 40-years at a place like WSB-TV, they take a lifetime of some mighty historical production expertise with them. And that’s simply not replaceable with an iPhone and an intern.

Tip of the hat indeed, as TV political reporting tends to take a back seat to the more easily social-shared written word. And folk who take politics and media seriously are dismissive of Cox-derived TV news, so tainted they are by a self-directed reputation founded from featuring senseless violence, self-promotion, and roadkill carnage over more civic-minded news.

It’s important to remember that visuals and sound working together, as opposed to radio/print/static screens, are also important to a highly nuanced political story, particularly a voter fraud/voter suppression story from the south. Especially in a state with a mighty history of dubious political legacies, ghosts and legends.

Don’t miss it.

The Craptastic Digital Life Of The AJC

Don’t vote? Then don’t complain about politicians.

No doubt you’ve heard that one before. Exactly why I never miss a voting opportunity, as I sure don’t like missing out on a good political whine.

But the matter of digital at the AJC.com (and other Cox digital products too, but I’ll worry about the others later) has gone beyond whining to just embarrassment at and for our flagship, hometown, news delivery outlet. (I’d call it a paper, but I’m not referencing any print product here. Just the digital stuff.)

I think of gorgeous pictures from the Atlanta Beltline lantern parade last night that could have enticingly filled out a compelling homepage this morning, 9-7-14, shifting to exciting sports-related photos later in the day to enhance the Falcons’ season opener, alongside the numerous political stories from the week in some kind of overview wrap-up. And, yes, even that craptastic Ross Harris (the dad accused of murder-by-hot-car) story somewhere in an appealing homepage-in-my-head Sunday edition presentation… and well, I just wanna cry for what could be AJC.com. And WSB-TV.com too. (They should be one e-product really, but that’s another rant altogether.)

When you don’t give a shit about digital, guess what? It shows! “Coming Sunday” on Sunday, plus all the cliched copy and grade school headlining imaginable? Gawd, today’s AJC digital product is so pitiful I wouldn’t dream of sharing it with my social network; I’d rather bury it out behind the woodshed.

My head is reeling, because the hard-working journalists, the few left around there, the proud, have done plenty of heavy journalistic lifting all through the past week, especially regarding the nasty level of corruption all through Georgia state and local politics. There’s been great work from numerous Cox employees reporting a massive amount of hanky panky straight out of DeKalb County, our bustling courtrooms, the AG’s and the governor’s offices, etc.

Only to piss it away on digi-crap you see a sample of in the above picture/screen grab. And on a Sunday too, the prime news reading and media consuming day for a serious journalism audience. And I’m not even highlighting their hideous homepage, whatever’s there, or not, now. Nor the online AJC’s rampant level of daily copyediting (or lack thereof) boo-boos. I’m scared to go back to their weekend-neglected homepage.

Since I gave-up on the AJC’s digital presentation with my croissant, second cup, and screens this morning, I thought about buying the paper product with which to properly absorb the Georgia political and otherwise news of a busy past week.

Not now. I’ll just put my $2.50 towards a NYT and call it a Sunday.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Under The APS Investigation Atlanta Media Circus Tent

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!

Wonder if AJC 2.0 Will Look Anything Like This?

HuffPo debuts their Chicago version. Lookin’ good! Let’s just hope they get to Atlanta before the snow flies. From Queen A:

Transferring The Huffington Post’s blend of news, opinion, and community — delivered with our familiar look and attitude — to a local level, HuffPost Chicago is part local news source, part resource guide, and part virtual soap box — featuring a collection of bloggers who know and love Chicago, and are looking to share their takes on everything from the Cubs to City Hall to the hot new local band to the best place for Greek food (and I can testify that there is a lot of that in Chicago!).

Today’s featured lineup includes Chicago-themed blog posts from John Cusack, blogging from Bangkok about his hometown; Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, responding to a recent damning federal report on conditions at the jail under his command; local boy Jonathan Alter on what makes Chicago “His Kind of Town”; Playboy‘s Christie Hefner on great summer outings to be found in the city; Esther Cepeda advocating for a Chicago future fueled by nuclear power; and longtime Chicago radio host Edward Lifson, weighing in on what it will take for Chicago to land the 2016 Olympic Games.

And the Japanese tourists say… “Where was that Cox News Plantation? Out Jonesboro way?”

Hard Times At Cox Plantation

The things that appear in the Mostly Media tip jar. My, my, my. These are indeed hard times for many. Today, a memo(s) from upper management to staff at the AJC:

Folks,

You may have heard today that one of our sister papers in Cox, The Palm Beach Post, announced a voluntary separation program that will reduce its workforce significantly. Because a move like this is sure to raise questions here, I wanted to communicate directly to you and to pass along a note that Sandy Schwartz, president of Cox Newspapers, sent to all Cox publishers today.

First, let me say this: All Cox newspapers are carefully assessing their own markets and business models and will be taking the actions necessary to remain financially sound. We have been doing this work for the past two years and will continue. As we have said, we have three primary objectives this year:

Stabilize our print business
Grow our digital business
Reduce costs overall

Work on all three of these fronts is progressing. Our AJC 2.0 efforts are in final prototyping stages. Our digital traffic continues to climb, and this week, we begin overarching digital strategy work. We have made significant cost reductions, but as I said in a recent General Management Meeting, we have more to do this year.

The economic factors affecting our business have worsened. The recession, the housing market downturn, as well as soaring newsprint and fuel costs have increased the urgency to reduce expenses. We will do so aggressively and in ways that make most sense for our market, our readers and our advertisers.

Let me also assure you that we will continue to innovate, inform and engage — and we will remain the leading source of news and information for metro Atlanta.

Don’t Bogart That Video, My AJC Friend.

The AJC is now doing original, online, AJC-branded video packages for their website, such as the one you can’t see here about grits. I like grits. A lot. I like most-things-southern. I like videos. Like to make ’em. Like to watch ’em. Like to embed ’em. Especially on my blogs – and that other wildly popular blog with the thousands of (mostly southern) uniques a day I write for too.

Naturally enough, I’d like to embed the AJC grits video on my blog. Or link to it on TrueGritz. Or put it on the SGR. Or Peach Pundit, but only if it turned-out (through superior reporting of course) that grits were political. In other words… any number of places this one blogger alone could distribute that one video – for them. For free! Just because I like, uh, grits so darn much.

But AJC productions/videos are not embeddable. Oh well. Too bad. Their loss. And lost opportunity. It really does make you want to go bash your head into a wall for the level of frustration they can crank for the blogosphere over there at our hometown news shoppe. For every chance the AJC gets/buys to build their GEORGIA-based community, they take two steps back from it. Hell, it’s like they’re running away at times.

AJC management folk (and you know who you are, and I know you’ll see this because you are Googling your name on the hour or have had your secretary set-up those Google name alerts) lemme give you a piece of unsolicited advice: the people you need to support your online endeavors are no doubt many, including the passive group formerly known as “the reader.” But don’cha think you’d want to be enlisting the assistance and the support of the sort of folk who are operating as online content creators and distributors — in GEORGIA?!

How loud can I yell it? AJC: YOU ARE A GEORGIA BIG MEDIA OUTLET. WHY ARE YOU NOT BUILDING YOUR GEORGIA ONLINE COMMUNITY AMONGST THE VERY PEOPLE WHO ARE OPERATING WITHIN THE GEORGIA ONLINE COMMUNUITY? WE ARE HERE! BUT WHERE ARE YOU?

Sigh… I’m going to go Friend on Facebook that Used Car Guy who’s in charge of Cox newspapers now. Sandy Schwartz, I think he goes by. Give ‘ole Julia Wallace a DM Tweet. Or comment on the AJC’s Director of Culture & Change’s personal blog. See what she’s posted today about that good ‘ole culture ‘n change thang she’s workin’. Heck, for all I know she could have made a rap video by now!

Since these folk running OUR hometown news shoppe are, of course, so connected to the online community (as “online” is where all this “change” is coming from, right?) then of course they personally have been out there online, mucking it up in the blogosphere or wherever. For years now I’d imagine. Surely by now they should be not only using all the cool online toys and tools, new media and news mediums such as personal & indie blogs, Google Groups, Newsvine, YouTube, uStream.tv, Blip.tv,  one of those nifty Nokia 95s, Mahalo, Facebook, Twitter, etc., they should be veritable experts.

Oh wait. Silly me. Reality check needed. On second thought, think I’ll just pour another cup of coffee and mosey on over to CNN dot com.

And The Winner In The Title-Swimsuit Competition Is…

No need to travel to Communist China to meet a gen-u-ine Director of Culture and Change. You can meet the AJC’s personal whatever guru right here next week! Thursday, April 24th breakfast event info here.

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 #368! WSB Radio Discovers Facebook

Love how this morning a Cox Media Plantation/WSB Radio reporter was, uh “reporting” that a Facebook Group had been formed to support a Bob Barr/Libertarian Presidential candidacy. (And yes, I got my invitation to join already, so no need to add me to the list. I clicked something already.) I bet they ripped some random AP copy, broadcast it to a half-asleep audience, then closed the mic and said, “What the hell is Facebook?”