The Trouble With NDAs

Do NDAs trouble you too? I’ve had to sign a few NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreement) over the last few years. And they’ve stressed me terribly, as they are sometimes used as an intimidating, bullying tool, slapped in front of you at perhaps a vulnerable point in your life, and you’re told, “Sign, or else.”

I’ve refused to sign a couple, though. Particularly ones that have a non-compete clause in them. Be firm with these things and also with the kind of people waving them around. Have confidence in yourself. Don’t be intimidated. Take time to READ through documents carefully before you sign, well… anything.

And seek a lawyer. I’ve bugged the crap out of lawyerin’ friends and family with these NDA docs, getting them to review them for me, at no charge to me of course. And I’ll do it again if I have to.

From the About.com article – things to look out for in your NDA:

• That you can’t work for a competitor for one to two years
• That anything you conceived of while employed is the property of the company, even if you did it on your own time
• That you give up your right for a trial if there is an issue with the contract

For the Content Creator a New Website is a New Car

Seeing an appealing new website come online is to a content creator what an exciting new model of car is for the auto enthusiast: One is itching to get behind the screens to an operating dashboard and take it for a rich content-creating spin.

Because the best sites make it a delight, not a burden, to create and showcase new content – particularly if you’re an enthusiastic writer and photographer.

The Coastal Conservation League (CCL) of South Carolina has just such a new website. It’s gorgeous. And immediately displays the astonishing amount of conservation work done in the southern United States lowcountry by the CCL.

However, as a media professional, I went right to the press releases portion of the site, and I am now busily touting how the CCL has presented their releases within the new site.

As someone who is often called upon to write press releases, which too often serve as a client’s only new content, I am constantly bemoaning how releases are not getting the “workout” some deserve.

Not only are too many of them poorly written (not by me!) and merely fired-out via PR Newswire, they are not made interactive (live, working links), they are not visually appealing, they’re not easily found on websites, and they’re not made easily share-able in social.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

CCL’s Laurin Manning, working with Wide Eye Creative, has clearly conquered all those media-related hurdles within their new site. I’m delighted to have their example with which to beat folk over the head with.

Rather, show them. Of course, it’s up to clients where they wish to spend their time and money. But nudging them towards investing in a better website and a better press release is always a media professional’s time well spent.

Marketing The World Cup To Sports Haters

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like soccer (football). I don’t like most sports. It’s not so much a sport itself, but rather the mass-marketing and the mass-marketed-to people surrounding teamed ‘n themed sporting franchises that puts me off.

I find conversations from people engaged by mass-marketed team sports to be clichéd, hyperbolic, robotic and grossly uncreative. In other words, people talking about sports bore me to tears. Within 1-minute of someone talking about and/or watching sports I’ve pretty much left the room.

Needless to say, I’ve watched zero seconds of World Cup action thus far.

Then why would someone like me, who hasn’t watched or cared about 3-seconds of World Cup action, (almost) buy a U.S. Soccer team/franchise jersey?

Because the purchase of a U.S. Soccer jersey meant something to me. It spoke to my ego. A single picture of a customized soccer jersey fed my ego and my self-centeredness, along with my need for instant gratification.

The U.S. Soccer team jersey I almost bought was cute, in a patriotic red, white and blue. Best of all it was customized. On a mock-up photo, auto-generated on Twitter to get my attention, “my” jersey had my Twitter name (@SpaceyG) stamped across the back.

I wanted that thing. And to be mine, it was just a few more taps ‘n swipes away on my iPhone. An impulse sale was almost made in a mobile environment, something very hard to do, so it seems. 

Top 5 Ways To Fall Back In Love With The South

Ah, springtime in Crackerstan! As we recover from the flood of goober politicians and their moronic policies polluting our state legislatures, while ignoring the pending tsunami of awful political media designed to make Gomer Pyle’s chest swell, there really is no better place than the Deep South for springtime frolics. We’re prettier than the rest, so let’s get on with our fun, sun, and glory. Here are my suggestions to help remind the world of our beauty and our elegance. And yes, we do have a little bit left.

1.) The Spoleto USA Festival in Charleston, SC. May 23 – June 8. You’ve stumbled into as much Old Euro elegance, grace and glamour as you’re going to get within our mostly Moon Pie walls with this one. Gorgeous people, gorgeous events, beautiful city, beaches, fabulous weather created just to show-off your best sundresses and sandals, even with its notoriously haughty and dull Charlestonians. And heck, even those people are on their best behavior during Spoleto. Just go.

 

2.) The Carolina Cup. A steeplechase race. Camden, SC. March 29. This one’s just genuine Old South. The ponies and understated 100% cotton finery give it away. And where else can you see adorable little college students hurling their cookies into the grass whilst wearing their Sunday best? (Other than on every southern college campus, of course.) Forget the SC colleges mass-partying on the infield though, and take in the horses and the serious equestrian scene around the paddock area. Southerners do horse stuff almost as well as rich Saudis. (You’ll even spot a few of those there too, but they’ll be wearing their Aiken-inspired southernwear as camouflage, and their womenfolk won’t be all covered up.) If you want a true Garden and Gun culture-feel of the South, you’ll find it at the Carolina Cup. Drink when you see an aspic on a tailgate eaten by a startlingly handsome young buck in a seersucker suit. You will, if you can stay sober for just a minute or so. Some of the gents are so comely they could give even Ralph Lauren’s male model, Nacho, a run for his horse-people money. Besides, it’s no secret now, not since that Appalachian Trail business, that South Carolinians and Argentinians have been mingling for generations. It’s a polo thing. Don’t forget your Croakies, menfolk. Even if rain is predicted this year.

 

3.) Intown neighborhoods – Atlanta. Now until late May. If the traffic and the freeways and the Braves moving to bland, kinda ugly Cobb County have just worn you down, a calming Sunday afternoon drive through Atlanta’s oldest intown neighborhoods such as Ansley Park, Peachtree Battle, Brookwood Hills, even the more gaudy nouveau riche Buckhead enclaves like Blackland Road, will perk your spirits right up with their display of floral riches and lush, leafy tree canopies. Picture pretty lawns galore, and until some piece of shit ’95 Toyota Corolla wrapped together with Bungee cords and fishing line lunges into you, you can close your eyes and think you’re on the prettiest boulevard in France. Tom Wolfe describes it well in A Man In Full. Springtime as tonic.

4.) Lakes, rivers, and water-skiing. Anywhere South. Friends-with-boats are a good thing. Make some. Borrow some if you have to.

5.) The fields and valleys of Western North Carolina. Just go driving up there until you find them. You will. Take someone you’ve been hoping for with you, if you need to fall in love somewhere special. You will.

Free America

On freedom.

During the tedium of kids’ long, weekend sporting events (the wait around to wait around parts) the team moms’ thoughts turn to… Edward Snowden, whistleblowing, and the NSA. Naturally enough! Well, not really, but it can happen every now and then.

After the subject was broached to me by another news-savvy mom, along the lines of: Edward Snowden – traitor or hero?, I realized framing the Snowden whistle-blowing saga in that way (traitor or hero?) has me in a bottleneck. As I simply cannot answer that question. As it is an infinitely vast issue I refuse to frame in that way – merely boiling infinity (moreorless) down to two simple choices and/or components.

But in the spirit of putting everything in their simplistic little boxes I will now say that I think of Edward Snowden as a dark angel. Sent to tell us Americans we are by no means free. Nor do we enjoy freedom. At all. And to pity the fool who thinks otherwise.

Where do we go now? As if we could answer THAT question.

Stumbling Into The Fifth Estate. Movie Review.

So I went to see a man about a dog and ended-up at a screening of The Fifth Estate. Who knew bringing about world information transparency was just a simple tale of a bro’mance gone sour?

Had Benedict Cumberbatch not been so convincing as odd-man-out, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the film would have been unwatchable, with its cheesy, thin dialog punctuated by periodic stabs at bold statements of moral grandeur from the bottom of a pint glass. Trust me when I say Captain Kirk used to make the exact same kinds of speeches, except Kirk had a better haircut and he meant it.

My big mistake was to go into the screening (thank you for it, Atlanta Press Club, regardless) expecting a grand newsroom drama, as that’s how I’d always framed the Assange/Wikileaks phenom in my head: as a newsroom-based struggle (to redact or not) between Assange and Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian. Especially after having read the excellent book on the matter, Wikileaks, by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding.

But in The Fifth Estate, Assange gets schooled-up and sent out in the cold by flat, wet noodle Daniel, so boring he doesn’t even warrant a last name, his Wikileaks partner who, as the dreary, millennial-like IT guy, wouldn’t have known a journalism ethic if he’d accidentally fucked one.

Which, surprise, is how the filmmaker attempts to tack some character onto little Daniel – by giving him a woman; whereas Assange, by comparison, doesn’t get a princess-lady figure. As if he doesn’t deserve one. He does. But let’s move on.

Alas, the film is not the edgy, excited newsroom drama it easily could have been. Rather, it’s a story about how an unenlightened IT guy stumbled briefly in and out of greatness by hanging-out with Julian Assange at a conference, once; then blinged-out for younger, flimsier minds with sparkly footlights of unreadable digi-screen data scrolls, what passes nowadays for set decor.

That said, if you’re a borderline Assange groupie (admittedly, that would be me) and you’ve been jonesin’ for him bad during his self-imposed exile, the film will set you up nice with the calm of a Benedict Cumberbatch paper cup of fascinating-actor methadone, if not the real deal.

In other words, you’re in no danger of having troubling nightmares over The Fifth Estate, so do something nice for yourself and go see Cumberbatch on a big screen. And wake-up with a smile on your face instead of a questioning, roiled mind.

A Piece Of One’s Own Action

You know what’s a little scary? This is:

While visiting my bank today (and I’m not going to link to them because I truly don’t want to get my “personal” banker in trouble; he’s a good guy) I was surprised to see just how much our bank(s) know about us. And how much data they’re storing. And likely selling to whomever. Or heck, giving away too, to the Justice Department, just like Facebook, Google, AT&T, etc. And those are just a few of the server farms I “contribute” to.

During our sit-down today, my “personal” banker quietly turned his computer screen towards me, so that I could see everything on the screen too, as we went along with a seemingly innocuous bit of business.

Wow! That bank is keeping all kinds of information on me/us. They know a scary amount of stuff about my life over the time they’ve had me as a customer.

And they had a very nice, er, “content management system” for it all too. It’s all just one click away. For anyone with access to that “content management system.”

Dammit! I want a piece of my own action back.

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?

How Committed To Your Constituency Are You?

I started reading Ron Fennel’s (Smyrna, Georgia, City Councilperson, Ward 7) newsletter to his constituents, and several weeks later…

The exhaustively comprehensive newsletter was nothing if not long, detailed, and ridiculously informative. Seems the Smyrna councilperson loves pounding the keyboard almost as much as another Smyrna resident, Bob Barr.

Heck, within a few graphs I found out who the police chief was from a detailed photo, noted an email address I needed, and saw at least two Facebook friends mentioned in the copy.

Now I’m all for brevity on online communications, but the darn thing was so informative I say… go for it. Inform your constituency! And don’t stop until you’re done.

But how I wish other public servants who represent us would do the same.  And comprehensively and exhaustively so is just fine by me — if you’re elected to serve us the people.

In fact, our elected servants should seek clarity and transparency of communications on their keyboards until they drop from exhaustion, you ask me. That’s what good writers do. Write to the point of exhaustion, right?

You don’t have to thrown in what you had for breakfast three Tuesdays ago, as Councilperson Fennel almost does, but if  you do not yet have a newsletter but you do have a constituency (to serve) I suggest using Fennel’s newsletter as a model… for how to improve and clarify your community outreach and communications. After all, it really is your responsibility and duty. To us.

Your newsletter certainly doesn’t have to be as long and detailed as this one, but don’t forget some photos! Videos are good. Kitchen sink, too. And don’t be intimidated at the thought of starting one. Just a few graphs and an e-mail distribution list (you already have that) will do for a first effort. Set a time expectation too. Will you publish/send a newsletter every month? Every week? If so, let your audience know what exactly you’re going to be doing. Then go do it.

You can add bells and whistles to a newsletter as you gain confidence with your writing and your multimedia inclusions. Up the quality of your photos, eventually. Follow-up on things mentioned in a prior newsletter. Add a helpful link or three.

For example, I’m hoping the next newsletter from Mr. Fennel of Smyrna, Ga. will include a link to that Instagram account mentioned in the July letter regarding some Smyrna Boy Scouts and a sidewalk mapping project. Sounded interesting!

And if you need a newsletter written, edited, and distributed for you, well… you know who to ask.

BTW… if you haven’t been to Smyrna, Georgia lately you should go. Do a drive about. Snoop around over some pretty real estate. Place looks great.

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.

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.

Wave Your Magic Media Legitimizing Wand

I sleep like a baby at night, knowing I always bust MY butt to be the best illegitimate media source I can be. And there are plenty of others in Atlanta/Georgia who go at their illegitimate media efforts like bunnies, too.

Recent good examples are Todd Rehm at Peach Pundit and Matthew Cardinale at Atlanta Progressive News. Heck, Cardinale takes illegitimate media to a whole new magical level; suing the crap outta the Atlanta City Council for violating Open Meetings/Open Records law. And winning too.

I don’t want to re-cap that long and very winding issue right here. The Daily Report, Atlanta’s legal community daily, just did a good cover story on the messy matter of Mr. Cardinale. Alas, they’re big honkin’ capitalist pigs over there at the Daily Report, and they lock-up their legitimate media behind a firewall. New media curses on them.

Of course anyone with an Internet connection and a Facebook account has already copied and pasted the Daily Report’s story about Matthew Cardinale, and is merrily circulating it that way amongst Atlanta’s media and political cognoscenti. I’ll leave you on your own to find your, er, unique way to it.

But Peach Pundit, for a bunch of boisterous, loud conservatives (with fun, boozy happy hours too!), is very good at keeping information free and flowing to us lowly masses. So there’s an ongoing updating of the Atlanta City Council open meetings/records saga there. Seek away.

And please… do your part. Always be the illegitimate media YOU wish to see. You never know who will be the one to legitimize you with their magic, media-legitimizing wand.

I know I stash several, top shelf Media Legitimizers around my palace. Now if I could just figure-out where I put the damn things…

Internet Access as a Civil Right

Do you think of Internet access as a civil right? That’s the new buzz term being tossed around by Comcast. Seriously.

Comcast has been mandated by the feds to reduce the price of Internet access for low-income households… as a term of the Comcast/NBC mega-merger.

Please… let me know what you think about Internet access as a civil right. My opinion is just that – only my opinion. I want to hear others’.

To find out more about the Comcast Internet Essentials program, and how it will be applied to metro Atlanta, which has its own severe digital divide, please watch the video.

The APS Scandal As Cast Of Harry Potter

Let’s take a cue from The New Republic and re-cast the Harry Potter series with players from the APS cheating scandal! The New Republic did this same exercise with Murdochgate. (It’s a must-peruse.)

Here are some suggestions:

• Alan Judd – Harry Potter
• Heather Vogell – Hermione
• Mark Winne – Ron Weasley
• Richard Belcher – Neville
• Bev Hall – Voldemort
• Cheating teachers – Dementors
• Sam Williams – Cornelius Fudge
• Renay Blumenthal – Wormtail
• Mayor Reed – Lucious Malfoy
• Tamara Cotton – Umbridge
• Mike Bowers – Dumbledore
• Ryan Abbott – Mr. Longbottom
• Richard Hyde – Snape
• Kathy Augustine – Nagini
• Shirley Franklin – Belatrix
• Vincent Fort – Mr. Weasley
• Jeff Dickerson – Filch

The above could use fleshing out with a brief explanation, as The New Republic did with each of their choices, but as I’m an unpaid blogger and not a paid journalist I’ll have to crowd-source out the rest of this fun job.

How Does An Atlanta Fox News Affiliate Cover Murdochgate?

Very quietly, that’s how.

After seeing some stuff in The Atlantic and on CNN (what’s a 10-foot turban?) about how Fox News/News Corp’s many American media outlets are being very quiet, ok almost silent, on the parental company’s, News Corp’s, Murdochgate scandal raging overseas, I got curious. (Every now and then curiosity will happen. Even to me.)

What kind of internal memos are being issued (and I’m almost certain there are memos being blasted out) across Fox News/News Corp’s vast American media farms right now on just how to cover (or not) Murdochgate stateside?

Being that one’s backyard is always a great place to start, and up to this point no one has fowarded me any internal communiques, I checked-in with the Fox News affiliate here in Atlanta, Fox 5 Atlanta. Or just plain WAGA, as us longtimers still call our TV news stations.

I found a few links on the My Fox Five (hey, it’s mine, so let me see what’s going on inside) website’s International section, the latest being a scrubbed-up piece about the Murdochs now agreeing to testify in the British Parliament. But that was about it. Anyone heard anything on their broadcast product? If so, let me know in the comments here. I could have easily missed it.

Creative Loafing used to, moreorless, be on the e-blast list every time Julia Wallace issued one of her now-infamous memes to the AJC staff about how great they all were but they were getting the ax. And thus I (we) could tune-in to Cox Plantation internal maneuvers that way.

But that, er, two-way street isn’t quite as wide open in Fox News/News Corp Land – Atlanta. So I gotta get out a machete and hack around a bit. Make phone calls and stuff.

As of 2:45pm I called the VP of News at WAGA and got that person on the phone, and, once I explained that, yes, I guess you could call me a reporter, although I’d rather be called a blogger, I asked if reporting *guidelines* on Murdoch and co. were being circulated there on Briarcliff Road.

I was politely referred to, conveniently with name and contact number, the Fox News corporate PR person in NYC. A Claudia Russo, a familiar name actually, although I can’t place where I’ve come across it. Likely Mediaite or some other TV news blog. Or maybe she used to be with GMA? Every time I can’t place a name in corporate news I assume they worked for GMA – a people-churner if there ever was, but I diverge.

I put in a call to Ms. Russo, left a message, and never expected to hear back from her. Ever. But, get this, I just did. Russo referred me… on down the line. Sigh.

Will keep at this little endeavor in media bureaucracy and let you know what I come up with. But should I ever get someting, and that’s doubtful, you’ll get it first and faster on Twitter. Of course.

Or someone with My Fox Five Atlanta WAGA Whatever could just forward me any internal memos! I promise not to tell where I got ’em from.

Until then…

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed On Dredging Savannah Harbor

From the Georgia Ports Authority forum on December 2, 2010. Mayor Reed addresses the impact the proposed (pending receipt of many earmarks) dredging, of the Savannah harbor to allow for bigger ships, will have on the metro Atlanta area.

GA House Bill 277, referenced by Mayor Reed, is here: http://www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2009_10/sum/hb277.htm

Media by WaySouth Media, Inc.

The Rise of the Big Media Three – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube

I once made a ton of media at the beginnings of places like Kyte.tv and uStream and Vimeo and iReport. And strew that media around all over those places. Maybe others too I’ve forgotten all about by now. I was kinda surprised that some sites, such as Kyte.tv, are still going.

Honestly, now if it’s not Facebook, YouTube or Twitter (and my personal fave Twitter photo/vid upload app – TwitSnaps) I never even bother with tinkering around in the garages of other media sharing platforms.

With the rise of the Big Three I’ve gotten far less experimental, if at all, with the many other assorted media platforms out there. And that’s a pity, but it’s far more convenient to stay on three farms rather than dot the landscape with dozens of wee media sprinkles here and there that in a couple of years you forget all about.

I’m anxious now that I’ve always had, for reasons unknown, a superfluous two YouTube channels. And I stay awake thinking one day, soon, I simply must consolidate those into one. And then brand-out a separate corporate channel too. And be sure to put some Shout on that nice new skirt after that soy sauce spill. And the dog needs a flea med refill…

Oh woe is me. How the multimedia chores never end! What new media sharing platform are you liking that I should try to not ignore?

How To Make The Media Your Bitch

Did you hear the uncontrollable sobbing? See the river of tears? Cringe a lot but keep watching and listening? Feel those familiar, empathizing stabs-through-the-heart as a parent? Sure you did. Who could miss the bizarre, loud, soggy and sloppy vehicular homicide perp-‘fession yesterday in Atlanta media. It played big.

Now I will confess. I am in shock and awe with defense attorney’s, Lawyer David Wolfe’s, sick and brilliant and kinda wild media tactic. Trust me, ALL local Georgia media are now his personal media bitch, even the usually crime-reserved WABE. Watch him as he trots out the hysterically earnest nice white folk with the cute white folk names… such as Christa. What media could resist? And why would they? Gonna print big. Sell some papers. Tune-in. Click-on.

And the terrible thing is that all this Get To Know Me And My Deep Regrets tactical media ploy by Wolfe could keep this remorseful, hysterical-on-cue, stupid young woman out of the pokey… in what will now become a trial of the year, if it ever gets to trial. (NOTE: One atty. says the D.A.’s office will never plea down here.  Too high-profile for that.)

This one plays close to home as I just spent four months downtown at the Georgia State Capitol during the 2010 legislative  session, where earnest young folk such as the victim in this terrible accident (not crime), Jordan Griner, made the whole silly place hum.

Jordan Griners were everywhere. Young Griner was very much the face of the next generation of Georgia political operatives. Far too young to yet be turned manipulative and hard and unfriendly and cunning by the relentless power drama at the Gold Dome. And far too young to die, at just 24, on a Midtown street two blocks from the safe confines of home after a fun and casual night out with friends.

On an almost daily basis I too drive through the intersection where Jordan Griner was killed by the stupid drunk club-goer, thinking of young Jordan but also thinking of how I too was once a young, stupid, Atlanta night-clubber. In other words, ye olde classic There But By The Grace Of The Goddess scenario.

Now that I’m older, wiser, less energetic, and presumably more analytical, particularly with media matters, I really want to have a nice long chat with Lawyer David Wolfe about his media mechanizations for his stupid, drunk, club-going client; I’m fascinated by Wolfe’s mad legal-media skills and tactics. He waves his client-wand, and wow, all Atlanta media step and fetch to do his get-this-on-cam-for-your-A-block bidding… all without spending one dime or lifting a finger. Just a phone call or email or two or a dozen.

Naturally, I want to hear all about his overall media strategy too, which of course he’s not going to reveal to me or any other media-type or reporter. (Dale Russell may get an interview after all is said and done. Maybe.)

So until I get motivated enough to find a trial lawyer in my social network to interview, please leave me YOUR thoughts on this public, Georgia-specific, legal-media matter here. Especially if you’re a lawyer.

photo courtesy WXIA

Top Three Demands For What Websites Should Do. Easily.

I’m at the Atlanta Business of WordPress Conference.  Twitter hashtag is: #thebizofwp. Francine Hardaway, neat lady, is the keynoter. She says the Top Three Things People Want From Their Business Website are these:

1. Content Management. “I want to get into my site easily and change it!”
2. “I want people/customers to get to my site from Facebook.”
3. “I want mobile access for my site.”

There you have it. And WordPress sites can do all the above. Easily. So you can too.

YouTube As A Law Enforcement Tool

In the terrifying, mind-blowing Dark Materials trilogy, the boy Will Parry comes to possess a unique knife that allows him to cut through the universe, through matter and on into parallel worlds all happening, presumably, at the same point in time as Will’s personal reality. Other simultaneous points of existence. Typically, these parallel universes are not all primitive. But they are often brutal and violent.

In Atlanta, of course, we have no literal knife with which to cut our way into the parallel universe of crime and poverty that exists in nearby zip codes. We let the police department or Sam Massell deal with that nastiness, should it bleed over into the other more civilized ATL universe, such as Midtown or Buckhead.

During the June 3, 2010, Thursday night, popular Screen on The Green event, sponsored by Turner, a parallel universe of violence and poverty, chiefly young blacks from, presumably, the universe south and west of the Five Points MARTA station, came to Atlanta’s Midtown area in a melee of violence and wild, maurauding behaviors that some say were targeted at Atlanta’s considerable gay, er, universe. (Careful what you choose to mess with, eh? Some worlds are far, yet more subtly so, stronger than yours. And a hell of a lot richer and well-organized, but that’s not the point of this post.)

Moving towards the point of this post… we DO posses a tool of sorts, primitive as it might be, into the unique parallel world of violence and thuggery simmering so close by us all in metro Atlanta. And we can monitor this universe… should we need to do so. Thus, so can the Atlanta Police Department (APD). The monitoring device is, of course, YouTube.

YouTube is a braggart’s garden of not only virtual, but reality-based delight. If you are surrounded by poverty and disorganization yet happen to have some Internet, a rare and precious thing in some communities no doubt, you can become Master of the Universe with a few uploads of the crappiest video imaginable.

Let’s take the single case of the self-styled “ooowa.” Uploading as ooowa, to something he calls “Bo Tube 1.” His own personal POV of his life, of course. Let’s dissect the factual we can determine solely from YouTube about our boy, ooowa:

1.) For some reason, although there were thousands of people fully equipped no doubt with all the latest video-enabled communication devices at the June 3, 2010 Screen On The Green event at Atlanta’s Piedmont Park, not much video has YET to appear on YouTube. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but perhaps other reality-based video accounts will pop-up there. I expect they will.

2.) However, ooowa was indeed at Piedmont Park that night. He was part of a crowd of people moving, once it was dark, towards a street. We know this because his crappy cell cam video captures those movements. It also captures some grainy vague imagery of people crouching along a sidewalk. As if they are trying to hide from something. There was chatter, and chatter only, surrounding the event  about gunfire during this melee. ooowa may indeed be able to corroborate, or otherwise, that chatter.

3.) ooowa may be able to corroborate a good deal of what went on that night at Piedmont Park… for better or for worse. ooowa is quite the documentarian… if you choose to examine his YouTube channel. Turns out ooowa has uploaded a heft 46 video clips to YouTube. Clips of his life. Where he lives and how he lives his life.  (ooowa loves to BBQ and tape his cronies puking-drunk, for example. ooowa likes to roam around at night where there’s thuggery to be had, taping all the time.) So there’s your own personal subtle knife into a parallel Atlanta universe – in all its, er, glory.

4.) Although unlikely to gain much hard data from ooowa’s two videos of the Screen on the Green fights, APD and subsequent judicial portions and persons, DA’s office, etc., of this post-melee, should there be such and I imagine there will be, will benefit enormously from taking a look at ooowa’s channel. And having a nice long chat with the dude as a follow-up in any judicial proceedings associated with this particular incident. Much to be studied and learned.

5.) Police departments around the country are having a prosecutorial field day within social media environs. Personally, and from a sociological standpoint, I find YouTube to be the juiciest and the most easily-accessed. Vast amounts of social data can be gleaned from even the crappiest, grainiest videos. And like the Gulf oil spill, the content just keeps on coming! Some of it criminal in nature, too.

6.) Of course it requires a great resource of time and effort to cruise through YouTube looking for interesting materials. I haven’t heard that APD has such resources at their disposal. While they may have a cyber division within APD, I’ve not heard much about their efforts one way or the other. Indeed, last time I called APD to report something cyber-related the person I was directed to in the “cyber” division asked me, “What’s a blog?” Then again, that was a couple of years ago.

I hope monitoring of YouTube content at APD has improved since. Because there’s a treasure trove of juicy and dark materials out there with which to do so. Have at it, APD.