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 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.

Get On Board The GPB Programming Theft Train!

 

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Deal?

Loose DeKalb Lips Make Waves (Of Oppression) For AJC

Ahoy! Botched metaphor. I know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

… a last name that bespeaks Georgia centrism.

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

Facebook – Cox Media Farm Slayer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cox Media Group Using Mentally Ill To Sell Product

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All words to make the cloud were pulled from AJC.com’s above-the-fold headlines at 1:01pm on Saturday, September 18, 2010. Click image to enlarge.

Note For Those Seeking AJC Related Dirt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote du Jour. Possibly of Year.

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

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

Full story is here. Read it and weep.

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

Cox Media Plantation Assaults Audience With Garbage

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

AM News: Man assaults girlfriend with cheeseburger

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

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

Atlanta Gas Availability Info – Use Twitter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HERE’S AN AD:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loyalty Leaking Out Of AJC As Well As Staff

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

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

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

UPDATE to this little number here.

When Even A Bad Cell Phone Snap Would Do

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

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

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

BS-1 and BS-2

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome To The Blogosphere Day For AJC Staff

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

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

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