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.

Google Glass — Can I Get A Witness?

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Don’t get me wrong, I can’t stand gardening. But the first thing that came to mind when I put on Google Glass was my mother’s organic garden.

You won’t catch me outside in broiling 98-degree southern humidity struggling to hack through a dense, painfully stinging row of okra, or pulling nasty, squirming wormy things off dozens of tomato bushes. No siree! But you will catch my mother doing that crazy stuff. For hours on end, day after day, week after week, throughout the south’s high summer months.

That said, if you can get past the oppressive heat and humidity there really is no more verdant and glorious vision of bounty, robust health and natural beauty than a southern organic garden at its summer harvesting peak.

Thus the thought of me strolling, beatifically wired, through rows of an organic garden in full, wearing a pair of Glass with my mother narrating the purvey and provenance of every lush plant and vegetable, set my pan-media-tuned mind into high and sunny gear.

Who wouldn’t want to document and share that kind of rich media in our connected world? To be fresh content-enabled, breezily so, by merely putting on glasses, something I’ve done every day since I was 7-years old anyway.

One of the great things about living near the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech, of course) is participating in some of the innovations and events churned from there. Whether beta testing products in development, networking, attending concerts or lectures, there’s a wealth of experience and knowledge available to the university’s surrounding community, so last night (July 11) I hopped over to nearby startup nurturer, Flashpoint on West Peachtree Street.

There, Randy J. Mitchell, the founder and CEO of Plisten, along with Google and Hypepotamus, hosted a meetup for Google Glass developers and designers. My friend/mentor and sometime colleague, veteran political reporter Tom Baxter, who’s always up for some new media-creation adventures, tagged along too.

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.

Old Field Producer’s Hurricane Coverage Survival Tips

1.) Bring a large bag of quarters with you when heading out to the hurricane. Upon arrival, immediately use it to empty out the hotel hallway vending machine before all the other journos get there.

2.) Never leave the hotel. If you must leave, then never leave the crew van. Satellite trucks are preferred vehicles. They don’t blow over too easily.

3.) Satellite truck operators always stash extra rain gear in truck. Steal it when they’re not looking.

4.) If you can’t bring yourself to steal stuff, barter for extra rain gear with booty from vending machines. You’ll need it. Snickers bars are most valuable.

5.) Bring extra AA batteries and extra dry tube socks (men’s). Use for currency to get first feed priviledges from sat. truck operator if only one truck is operational for entire country’s network news providers.

6.) Don’t look in other journos’ hotel rooms. You want to be able to say you know nothing when all of you are returned to civilian life.

7.) Make friends with the fattest first-responder in charge first. They won’t want to have to walk anywhere either, and they may offer you a ride in their super-duper motorized whatever.

8.) Bring drugs, beer and ice. Share only with those who’s hotel rooms have all four walls left.

9.) Law-enforcement will lie their butts off to journalists. For sport. Never trust them for start/end presser times. Or for directions.

10.) Everyone around you will wig-out from stress and sleep-dep long before you do because they all think they’re too important to the disaster recovery effort for sleep. Get your 8-hours and they’ll make you president by Week 2.

11.) Stay on-scene post-hurricane as long as you possibly can. Milk the post-disaster scene for all the dopey, cliched features you can. Your paycheck, once you load all your OT onto your time sheet, will do the happy dance when you do get back.

12.) Never drink until you’ve fed everything to NY. And the sat. truck has powered down. If NY desk calls you to feed something after you’ve started drinking tell them the sat. truck has to save gas for the morning shows.

13.) Buy the hotel bar a round by first or second night on scene. During a hurricane it’ll just be full of other media. They’ll get you back when you’re all still there 10 days later.

14.) Don’t forget to get your mean, grouchy, sleep-deprived cameraperson to get the final shot when all is said and done.

• EXAMPLE: When Dr. Bob Sheets finally left the broadcast desk at the National Hurricane Center after two solid weeks of around-the-clock coverage before, during and after Hurricane Andrew (in which his own home had been destroyed) one veteran network news producer had the great cinematic sense to order his cameraman to get the shot of Sheets laying down the lav mic and walking away.

15.) Try not to swagger in front of the desk jockeys when you get back to the newsroom.

Upcoming State of Media Forum In Atlanta

On Sept. 15, 2011 I will be speaking on a panel hosted by the marketing division of the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG). This is titled: The State of the Media: Traditional, New Media, and Analyst Panel.

Registration for that panel discussion/breakfast is here. More deets are not yet available. Hope to see  you there!

And I’ll add more deets about the rest of the panel when TAG adds more to their page on this particular panel. They crank through about 5 panels a day, so it seems, at TAG, so updating each one could take a little time. Be patient.

The Tooting of the Atlanta and Georgia Journalism Horns

Many heartfelt congrats to my Faceboook friends who won awards for their reporting last night at the The Atlanta Press Club’s annual Awards in Excellence.

Including: Dale Russell for being Dale Russell and just so gosh darn Dale Russell-y. (And other things, of course.) Jim Burress for Best Radio Reporter/Eagle bar raid reporting. Alan Judd and his AJC colleague, Heather Vogell, won Journos ‘O Year (2010) for their (ongoing, eh?) reporting on the APS cheating scandal.

Thomas Wheatley was nominated in Best Online/Multimedia reporting, and should have won for his constant gardening over at the terrific Fresh Loaf blog, but whatever. He was far more gracious about some other person winning than I was, on his behalf.

I was delighted to meet newer FB and Twitter pals face-to-face for the first time too, such as Mr. Burress and Mr. Charles Edwards, both of WABE radio here in the ATL. And the innovative and interesting Ms. Orit Sklar.

Journalism is alive and well in the ATL. But there is no Men’s Warehouse kinda guarantee that it will stay that way forever. Or even through next week.

A bad editor could pull a great reporter off of a key beat. The elderly people in the biz might continue to ignore innovations in journalism-related technology. The recession could continue for decades. The AJC could add more layers of dopey bureaucracy, with their finger on the pulse of, for example, just Walton County.

We must support the troops out there in the fields. Lordy knows there’s enough muck to rake through in this town to keep the journalism industry here flourishing… with our support. Do what you can.

That is all. Back to work. Complete list of winners on Facebook here.

Georgia New Media Notes March 31, 2011

Several new media things jump out today… Facebook is such an amazing tool for tracking legislation going through the legislative process. The Sunday Sales/Senate Bill 10 may or may not be before the Rules Committee today.  Advocates such as Rich Sullivan and co. are at the Georgia State Capitol now Tweeting and posting Facebook updates about this one bill’s progress.

Lobbyista, media, advocates and ordinary folk, take note! Could save tons on tasseled loafer polishing costs by not having to hoof it along the hallways of the Gold Dome. Watch and learn from the comfort of your connection.

Then again, just being at the Capitol on a busy day is exciting in itself. Go live and in person whenever you can. Just report back for us what is going on… as it happens. Social media tools make it very easy to do. (They’ve got great wi-fi at the Dome.)

Other quick note… when giving interviews to text-only outlets avoid passive language, such as Michael Bond’s here. While it’s earnest, and might work in a broadcast environment, it always prints bad.

Councilman Michael Julian Bond pointed out that Sandy Springs and DeKalb County have full government participation and the continual council snubs are “almost getting to the point where it is beginning to be offensive.”

Elsewhere, Bob Barr believes in the intended effects of mass media propaganda. The best money can buy. Cute, huh?

One more… from what I hear, bloggers are already revolting on donating free content to @11AliveNews/@gannett‘s Where U Live project. Must give back, news farms! Must. Think of better ways to give back to the blogger (on-air time comes to mind), and you might get more better content from ’em.

Today is the deadline to nominate your fave Georgia journo/blogger now for The Atlanta Press Club 2010 awards. It’s easy to do.

That’s it for the morning. Make it a great use of new media day!

Live Blog for GA General Assembly Crossover Day

Have at it here.

What’s Ahead With WaySouth Media, Inc.

A few notes about what’s in the works with WaySouth Media, Inc. (my co.) for the weeks ahead. In hope that you will join some of the pan-media reindeer games all through metro Atlanta.

1.) WaySouth Media, Inc. is one sponsor of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s luncheon address to the Atlanta Press Club on Monday, January 31, 2011. This event is open to the public and is sold-out, but there’s a waiting list, and tickets usually free-up at the last minute with Press Club events. (News can break, and journos and media suits have to go fix it.) To get on the waiting list to what should be a timely and newsworthy luncheon (will the mayor seek control of APS?!) contact the Atlanta Press Club Monday morning.

2.) Coming February 4-5, SoCon11, Atlanta’s oldest and biggest social media conference, is back in town… now in its fifth year. I’ll be leading a workshop on mobile media and politics during the afternoon on the 4th, but come to SoCon11 for the fun kick-off party at the Carter Center on the 4th, and prepare to hang-out all day on the 5th at KSU for the great networking and interesting lineup of speakers and interaction from a multitude of backgrounds, services, businesses, and disciplines. SoCon is very much an UN-conference, so everyone participates. Or else! But register now as it’s about to sell out.

3.) February 26, I’ll be back at the 20th Annual Georgia Bar Media and Judiciary Conference, as a panelist on a panel about online reputation management (or lack thereof). Need to meet some lawyers, judges, media execs, bloggers, crime fighters, reporters, journos, politicos, even more lawyers? Well, the annual Bar/Media seminar is the place for that. Contact the Georgia Bar Association for info on this conference.

I’m looking forward to such a dynamic kickoff to a fast-paced and innovative all-media year ahead in 2011!

Ending Song Eddie Horst Memorial Service.

Novemeber, 21, 2010. http://www.cinchcast.com/spaceyg/120051

Amani Channel Post-Morts The CBS46 Blogger Summit on 7-20-09

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I Went To An Atlanta Local News Station And All I Got Was This Flip Cam

In all fairness, I also got a tee shirt when I went to the CBS46 “Blogger Summit.” And a nice highlighter pen thingee in the goodie bag, in addition to the Flip cams CBS6 news director Steve Schwaid and co. handed out to the 25 or so assembled Atlanta blogerati who filled up an empty studio with pizza and some lively chatter about community, social networks, and what bloggers can and cannot add to the broadcasting milieu on July 20, 2009.

Come to think about it, CBS46, or WGCL, did a remarkable thing this evening – they invited Atlanta bloggers and social media utilizers from the metro area into their station to talk about, er, stuff. I can’t say this has ever happened before in Atlanta – the MSM reaching out in such a way, other than that one ill-fated meeting at WSB-TV a couple of years ago, but that meeting was so pointless and futile it’s not really worth mentioning so I’ll leave it at “ill-fated.”

I admire their chutzpah at WGCL if nothing else. It may be a case of nothing left to lose so why not go for broke? But to widen the net towards taking seriously Atlanta’s numerous community content providers seems like a reasonable, if not likely highly lucrative, approach.

The chit chat at CBS46 was brisk and spicy, as was the A-listing of some of Atlanta’s longtime, well-regarded bloggers who showed. Spotted in the crowd were Blog For Democracy’s co-founders Catherine Smith and Melanie Goux, Peach Pundit’s Buzz Brockway, Dan Greenfield of BernaiseSource, Amani Channel of My Urban Report, Rusty Tanton of Georgia Podcast Network, Tessa Horehled of Drive A Faster Car, and Doug Richards of Live Apartment Fire.

(Oddly enough, as CBS46 isn’t a Cox Plantation property, a couple of reporter/bloggers from the Cox Plantation Big House showed too, but I’m not sure why they were there as they never said a word. Go figure. Your guess is as good as mine.)

CBS46 wasn’t too coy about why they wanted us bloggers and SM users there. They wanted us bloggers and citizen journalists and writers and marketeers and promoters there to ask us to provide content. For free. To them. (Thus the handing out of the Flip cams.)

And that’s ok. I didn’t think we were invited in to be given paying jobs as journalists and anointed Queens and Kings of the ATL. CBS46 wants to try new things. I assume they need to try new things. They’re willing to experiment, in a rather large way, with citizen journalism and the news content they broadcast. My hat’s off to anyone willing to experiment with change in a traditional medium and not be crystal clear as to what, or even where, the road ahead is going to be. (That approach having been my personal MO for the last couple of years or so.)

But I gotta tell you, with so many places to give our content away for free, other than our own blogs, at some point I’m going to get hyper-picky. No one’s offering grownup money, so until they do we’ve got to be happy with a tee shirt, free pizza,  and an occasional guest flash of our homemade news-style content wherever we can get it.

I don’t know if this is the formula for changing the world, and somehow I doubt it is. But in the Atlanta market at least it is a fresh approach and a start to messing around with the status quo of local news broadcasting as we’ve historically known it.  (White anchor, black anchor, traffic chopper, and a whole lotta crime scene tape.) And that’s got to be a good thing.

So is the nifty Flip cam handed out by CBS46. I’ve been wanting one of those puppies for a while now. I got mine home and pointed it at the dog. She didn’t seem to mind:

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Twittering Through The Big One

Imagine this scenario… there’s a “real” pandemic and you’re charged with acquiring 5000 laptops for your company so the entire company can work from home – given that the country’s been moreorless quarantined by now. Your people aren’t coming into your company’s physical spaces, your offices or warehouses, sprawled all over the place in 10 different cities.

But wait. Office Depot, and everywhere else for that matter, sold-out of laptops a week ago. Who you gonna call? You’d call Agility Recovery Solutions. They’ve got your laptops. And your servers, your monitors, your workspaces, your cabling, your satellite dishes… all by the truck load. And of course the generators you’ll need to run all that stuff on too. Heck, knowing the good folk at Agility they’ve probably got your coffee hot and ready to go, and already know whether your people take cream or sugar.

But if you are a business continuity manager worth your salary you’d have already established a relationship with Agility Recovery Solutions as part of your disaster relief/business continuity plan, right? Right!

At their Atlanta facility open house on May 13, 2009, Agility’s Operations Manager, Chandler Smith, told me that he had taken a rather panicky call from someone looking for 5000 laptops during the recent swine flu, er, “media outbreak.” The scenario of needing lots of  temporary gear is not slightest bit far-fetched when people and businesses feel threatened, or are in an actual crisis or disaster-related situation.

Also at the Agility open house yesterday, I spoke with Jeff Jacobson of Oodalink. For my geek pleasure, Jeff demo’d a communications center that fit in a TSA-approved carry-on case. This was a portable, satellite-based, broadband wireless network in a box – complete with battery power. Available from Agility too.

The satellite/GPS component in the kit is from Inmarsat, and you can watch a cool video about connecting one of those puppies up here. Easy as pie. Even I could do it… with a couple of years of training. 😉 And by that time, maybe Oodalink will be making the kit in a nice shade of pink too, for a very reasonable price. But I diverge…

A disease-based pandemic may not necessarily impact terestial broadband infrastructure; however, a Katrina-scenario sure can. And who wants to have to stop Twittering in a crisis? Not me!

Atlanta Police Department May 8, 2009 Press Conference Raw Footage.

Atlanta, GA, May 8, 2009 – Raw footage from Atlanta Police Department press conference to announce an arrest in the Jan. 7, 2009 murder of The Standard bartender, John Henderson. APD speakers include Chief Richard Pennington and Lt. Keith Meadows.

Pardon the low audio. I didn’t have cabling long enough to reach their podium that day with me. The typical pitfalls of trying to apply the one-woman treatment to breaking news media. If you use headphones and max out your volume you should be able to hear it fine though. It gets stronger at points further into the media.

From WaySouth Media, Inc.

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Twitter For A Small Business Special Event

WaySouth Media stopped by Criminal Records in the Little Five Points neighborhood of Atlanta, GA on Record Store Day 09, 4-18-09. We asked Lillian Hughes how Criminal Records was using Twitter to engage their customers during this special event.  (And every day for that matter!) Needless to say, #RSD09 was a roaring success for Criminal Records and their highly engaged customer base.

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What Atlantans Like About Kwanza Hall

On a gorgeous spring afternoon, WaySouth Media cams went to Atlanta City Council District 2’s councilperson’s, Kwanza Hall’s, re-election kickoff party. Inman Park neighborhood. Atlanta, Georgia. Sunday March 22, 2009. We asked people at the event what it was that they liked about Kwanza Hall. Their answers are on the vid!

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Georgia Gang Too Cool For School

Well color me WRONG! All this time I’ve been blogging about what fuddy-duddys they were on the Georgia Gang. Then the Mostly Media roving iTeam snapped this shot of one of the Georgia Gang regulars sporting so much chrome Yours Truly had to avert mine eyes… at the kickoff party/fundraiser in Inman Park Sunday night, March 22, 2009, for the re-election campaign of social media-driven Atlanta councilperson, Kwanza Hall.

My my my! Guess who it is, win a prize. Prize to be determined by the Mostly Media party committee.

Bob Lefsetz Eviscerates Gene Simmons

Music industry analyst Bob Lefsetz takes a moment to efficiently dispense of not only Gene Simmons, but any cobwebs left of the music industry as it used to be… in theYouTube clip posted below from the recent Canadian Music Week.

Lefsetz, or Ugly Bobby as I like to call him, is my second fave media analyst, falling in right after the also rather annoying Jeff Jarvis. Lefsetz writes the astonishing blog, Lefsetz Letter. Subscribe. You will be annoyed, but rarely disappointed.

There are days when I cannot take Bobby’s relentless, sometimes 3x daily, streams of text-only rants about the state of every media industry on the planet. I’m just not up to it all… every single day. His posts are angry, they name names, they are slogging, rather unpoetic unattractiveness back to male adolescence.

Most of the time though, his posts possess a passion that simply astonishes me in its relentless verbosity, and can, like a cyclone crashing in under the radar, reduce me to tears with a crushing, inevitable humanity.

And yeah, life with someone like that gets simply exhausting, and it must be turned-off just to unload the fucking dishwasher. Else we get swept away too.

Needless to say, Bobby’s typing morphs nicely to the verbal, and he gives good panel. At Candadian Music Week, this past week, Ugly Bobby just shuts DOWN that disgusting hag of a shill, Gene Simmons of KISS. Enjoy the squirm!

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Someone IS Trying To Break Our Hearts

These are the faces of the human beings who have been led by those who failed to see the vast chasm as they drove straight at it. WARNING: This slide show of the faces of the people of the newsroom of The Rocky Mountain News as they got word that they were being shut-down for good will make you cry.

And yeah, I lay the blame on leadership and management that failed their people. They failed to show vision and adaptability. They simply were not good enough.

Digital Bootcamp At Georgia Tech February 28

UPDATE: this Digital Bootcamp was postponed to… sometime in April ’09. I’ll update when new info becomes available.

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