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.
Below is the news alert found my InBox today from the increasingly hideous Cox Media Plantation product, AJC.com:
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.
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.
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!
Wanna know JUST how lost in space Cox Media Plantation really is? They spend good money to send a whiny brat, spoiled-rotten, ungrateful Neal Boortz out to Denver to bring his listening audience completely down with his complaining and humorless whining and bitching and griping about having to be there!
Only Boortz could go to an exciting, once-in-a-lifetime event such as the DNC in 2008 and make everyone around him miserable because he had to actually show-up and blow. Why on earth is Boortz there in the first place?
Hell, I could take Elmo and Cheerios and a nap away from an already-fussy 2-year old, stick the kid into a cart at the grocery store, push it around each aisle slowly for an hour or so, refuse to buy it (the 2-year old) some candy and still have tons more more fun than I would listening to Boortz do the Democratic National Convention.
Cox suits – I understand it’s hard for you to get your tight butts around this concept, but I hear there are a few other media choices out there nowadays for political convention coverage. And I’m gonna go find me one right about now. I can’t take another minute of your “flagship” radio station gripe-fest. (And if I was an advertiser, with my pricey ad running today, I’d be Elizabeth Edwards-level “furious” too.)
Unbelievable.
The things that appear in the Mostly Media tip jar. My, my, my. These are indeed hard times for many. Today, a memo(s) from upper management to staff at the AJC:
Folks,
You may have heard today that one of our sister papers in Cox, The Palm Beach Post, announced a voluntary separation program that will reduce its workforce significantly. Because a move like this is sure to raise questions here, I wanted to communicate directly to you and to pass along a note that Sandy Schwartz, president of Cox Newspapers, sent to all Cox publishers today.
First, let me say this: All Cox newspapers are carefully assessing their own markets and business models and will be taking the actions necessary to remain financially sound. We have been doing this work for the past two years and will continue. As we have said, we have three primary objectives this year:
Stabilize our print business
Grow our digital business
Reduce costs overall
Work on all three of these fronts is progressing. Our AJC 2.0 efforts are in final prototyping stages. Our digital traffic continues to climb, and this week, we begin overarching digital strategy work. We have made significant cost reductions, but as I said in a recent General Management Meeting, we have more to do this year.
The economic factors affecting our business have worsened. The recession, the housing market downturn, as well as soaring newsprint and fuel costs have increased the urgency to reduce expenses. We will do so aggressively and in ways that make most sense for our market, our readers and our advertisers.
Let me also assure you that we will continue to innovate, inform and engage — and we will remain the leading source of news and information for metro Atlanta.
Read the rest of this entry
Another bountiful harvest for the Cox Plantation Used Car Lot. From a Dopey Press Release of the Day:
Channel 2 Action News won every newscast time period in head to head competition in the April Sweeps which ran March 27-April 23, 2008.
More patting of one’s own back from self-congratulatory, WSB-generated press release here.
The AJC is now doing original, online, AJC-branded video packages for their website, such as the one you can’t see here about grits. I like grits. A lot. I like most-things-southern. I like videos. Like to make ’em. Like to watch ’em. Like to embed ’em. Especially on my blogs – and that other wildly popular blog with the thousands of (mostly southern) uniques a day I write for too.
Naturally enough, I’d like to embed the AJC grits video on my blog. Or link to it on TrueGritz. Or put it on the SGR. Or Peach Pundit, but only if it turned-out (through superior reporting of course) that grits were political. In other words… any number of places this one blogger alone could distribute that one video – for them. For free! Just because I like, uh, grits so darn much.
But AJC productions/videos are not embeddable. Oh well. Too bad. Their loss. And lost opportunity. It really does make you want to go bash your head into a wall for the level of frustration they can crank for the blogosphere over there at our hometown news shoppe. For every chance the AJC gets/buys to build their GEORGIA-based community, they take two steps back from it. Hell, it’s like they’re running away at times.
AJC management folk (and you know who you are, and I know you’ll see this because you are Googling your name on the hour or have had your secretary set-up those Google name alerts) lemme give you a piece of unsolicited advice: the people you need to support your online endeavors are no doubt many, including the passive group formerly known as “the reader.” But don’cha think you’d want to be enlisting the assistance and the support of the sort of folk who are operating as online content creators and distributors — in GEORGIA?!
How loud can I yell it? AJC: YOU ARE A GEORGIA BIG MEDIA OUTLET. WHY ARE YOU NOT BUILDING YOUR GEORGIA ONLINE COMMUNITY AMONGST THE VERY PEOPLE WHO ARE OPERATING WITHIN THE GEORGIA ONLINE COMMUNUITY? WE ARE HERE! BUT WHERE ARE YOU?
Sigh… I’m going to go Friend on Facebook that Used Car Guy who’s in charge of Cox newspapers now. Sandy Schwartz, I think he goes by. Give ‘ole Julia Wallace a DM Tweet. Or comment on the AJC’s Director of Culture & Change’s personal blog. See what she’s posted today about that good ‘ole culture ‘n change thang she’s workin’. Heck, for all I know she could have made a rap video by now!
Since these folk running OUR hometown news shoppe are, of course, so connected to the online community (as “online” is where all this “change” is coming from, right?) then of course they personally have been out there online, mucking it up in the blogosphere or wherever. For years now I’d imagine. Surely by now they should be not only using all the cool online toys and tools, new media and news mediums such as personal & indie blogs, Google Groups, Newsvine, YouTube, uStream.tv, Blip.tv, one of those nifty Nokia 95s, Mahalo, Facebook, Twitter, etc., they should be veritable experts.
Oh wait. Silly me. Reality check needed. On second thought, think I’ll just pour another cup of coffee and mosey on over to CNN dot com.
No need to travel to Communist China to meet a gen-u-ine Director of Culture and Change. You can meet the AJC’s personal whatever guru right here next week! Thursday, April 24th breakfast event info here.
Journalism just not fueling the corporate mission? Try the dude who runs your used car division! They’re lucky on the Plantatation to have such amazing, uh, spare parts lying around.
Here’s the genuine, hardly-driven, internal Cox memo announcing the ousting of Jay Smith from Cox Newspapers in favor of Sandy Schwartz from their AutoTrader division. Vroom on, Cox, vroom on:
Mostly Media 