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.

How To Be An Old Media Bully. A Primer.

UPDATE: Seems GPB has abandoned their attempt at a “two way street” and removed all comments and commenting from Bill Nigut’s blog post referenced in this post and associated hyperlinks. Too bad. Loved the “Whatever Saruman” one! 

Bill Nigut is “thrilled” to be back on the airwaves of radio, via WRAS. That makes one person in Georgia. The rest of us? Not so much. (See the comments, coming fast and furious, at his blog post trumpeting his latest broadcasting theft thrill.)

Mr. Nigut’s on-air and in-real-life persona has always been loud, large, and obnoxious. He’s that person who insists on being heard through the din of a crowded networking event or cocktail party. Sucks the wind right out of any space, and takes it all for himself.

It helps that he’s a tall guy, but Nigut can bray and preen with the best of ’em. I once made the mistake of walking past Bill Nigut and Neal Boortz chatting together at some random Atlanta Press Club event. I was hurled three city blocks away by the gasbaggery posturing alone.

Nigut makes claim to being a champion for pretty much everything and everyone he can think of: the helpless, the homeless, the voiceless, the poor, but especially Richie Rich Chamber-types, in his windy GPB blog post declaring his latest radio show intentions with WRAS, awww shucks, ma’am style:

I am thrilled to be back in radio and hope you’ll join me to meet extraordinary people, hear important ideas and explore the rich arts and cultural work being done in Atlanta and Georgia. It should be fun; it should be illuminating, and if I do it right, it should make us all just a little more aware of what a remarkable place we live in.

Beware a wolf in sheep’s clothes. Nigut is merely an old media bully worming his way into a place, space and time where he is not wanted because he believes his own hype, and is still in love with the sound of his own voice, and has sorely missed hearing it bellowing hither and yon from whatever Atlanta microphone he can grab first before anyone else has a chance to get there. Everyone knows this, because they’re watching it happen. In real time, more or less, given the enduring popularity of the #SaveWRAS hashtag.

GPB stole programming out of the mouths, minds and hearts of numerous Georgia State University students, and took it for a very select, very few one old media talking heads. No one’s believing a wisp of spin put on the matter by anyone at GSU or GPB leadership. They’re operating in an echo chamber, as that deafening sound you don’t hear anywhere in Atlanta is anyone other than Bill Nigut and Teya Ryan themselves coming to their own sorry little defense of what they’ve done to raid WRAS.

The best thing Bill Nigut can possibly do for his rapidly fraying Georgia media legacy, and trust me, he surely thinks he’s still got a shot at one, is to give the programming of WRAS back to the kids of GSU. Now.

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.

Local Data Mining: Where No Georgia Press Dare Go

Investigative tech reporting in Georgia is non-existent. Other than cheerleading, Chamber-type stuff from the Atlanta Business Chronicle. There are startups incubated at Georgia Tech in the for-profit business of scraping data from social media sites, and then selling it back to organizations and business people, particularly folk in law enforcement. What’s commonly called “enterprise data mining.”

I know this because one company tried to sell me their lovely dashboard thingee. To which I replied, in a business-like manner of course at the meeting, “No thanks, I roll my own.”

Georgia law enforcement stores (years of) data scraped and mined from the general (presumed innocent) public, via such technology as license tag scanning. Lord knows what they then do with such data, and where (NSA?) they then feed that data, and the associated metadata, on to.

The head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Vernon Keenan, announced that factoid, rather proudly, to a room full of journalists at the Atlanta Press Club this summer. Not a single follow-up story on that matter, at least any I’m aware of. Not one.

Hasn’t the data-mining dilemma revealed by Glenn Greenwald piqued the slightest bit of interest on local angles to the dilemma just a little bit amongst Georgia press leadership? Seems not.

Come on MSM in Georgia. Do better.

Exploitation of Georgia’s Children In Reality TV Programming

After telling the officers in Douglas County, GA that she’s a gangbanger, Deja’neke continues the jail tour in shackles. Photo courtesy of AETV.

Shame on Douglas County, Georgia. Shame on Disney (A&E’s parent company) for supporting and funding (but mostly exploiting Georgia’s children), for profit, the production and broadcasting of the reality show Beyond Scared Straight on A&E.

The episode airing tonight, Thursday July 25, 2013, on A&E’s Beyond Scared Straight at 9pm features a juvenile reform program in Douglas County, Georgia that was created and implemented using tactics and practices of fear, violence and intimidation.

Of such tactics, Leonard Witt of Kennesaw State University’s Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, has this to say in an editorial:

They (academics studying conflict management) can tell you a few things about how violence begets violence and why piling trauma on kids who have suffered trauma their whole lives is not such a smart approach. Ever hear of programs like restorative justice?

Governor Nathan Deal should weigh-in on this media matter, as he has spoken out recently on matters of criminal (and juvenile) justice reform in Georgia, and he, Deal, fully supports reforming Georgia’s juvenile justice system.

However, this exploitative show features a method of “reform” that is not only dangerous, cruel and unusual, but has been demonstrated to be grossly ineffective; thus significantly undermining the effort, and new legislative mandate too, to legitimately and wisely reform our system of juvenile justice here in Georgia.

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.

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.

Georgia Loves Texas

We all love a big, bold, symbolic gesture. Especially if it’s made by someone else’s neck on the line. And how we in media love us some big, bold, symbolic gestures when they “print big.” And make for great memes on Facebook nowadays.

Texas State Senator Wendy Davis certainly made a terrific statement during her recent filibuster on the floor of the Texas state senate. Hell, she was a trifecta of Thing We Love When The Hard Work Is Undertaken By Someone Else: symbolic, bold, prints big, and was indeed effective in altering the path of bad legislation. (OK, so that’s four things. Who’s counting when it’s Wendy Davis?! That woman has passed into stuff of progressive legend by now. And how.)

Senator Wendy Davis was right out of post-modern feminism casting. She was exactly what everyone seems to have been waiting for to kick their own southern progressive asses into gear: Smart, good-looking, nice designer suit, stamina of a workhorse. And those running shoes! Oh do I want me a pair now, or what. Must have.

At a fundraiser for State Senator Nan Orrock at Manuel’s Thursday, June 27, the biggest cheer from the standing room-only space of energized supporters as Sen. Orrock took to the mic was when she, Orrock, mentioned Wendy Davis’ 12-hour filibuster ordeal of the Texas abortion bill vote. (Don’t we wish we’d thought of that media-rich tactic and direct action here, eh ladies?)

And Orrock was quick to remind her gathered supporters and constituents that her symbolic gesture of the 2012 Georgia legislative session, along with her legislative sisters in arms/party in both chambers of the Georgia Legislature, made for its own viral-quality media moments when they too protested a 20-week abortion ban stupid bill supported and sponsored by Republicans, although after the vote on stupid bill had been taken. (See picture to left of Ga. House of Representative women in their post-vote protest gesture of May 2012.)

While it made for great photos and TV it didn’t exactly stop a stupid bill from going forward, as did Wendy Davis’ direct action filibuster. But hey, it did indeed move the media meter. And that’s ok. That’s a great start to shoring-up and clarion-calling upon liberals and progressives in a red state.

And something else that goes with media attention as peanut butter goes with the jelly? Money! Yes money, and boy do we hear a lot, in media, about how little the Democratic Party of Georgia (DPG) has of that stuff. At last count, they say the DPG coiffer was down to a mere $15K. But who’s counting?! Or who’s counting the DPG’s money they clearly do not have?

Since the answer to that is “everyone”, let’s instead turn our attention to where exactly Georgia Dems With Loads of Money are sending it, since they’re certainly not sending it to the state party. Rather, they’re sending it directly to candidates they like a lot. They’re sending it to folk such as the popular, outspoken, and smart ‘n sassy Ga. State Senator Nan Orrock.

That casual, early-in-a-campaign-season, little shindig last night at Manuel’s I mentioned above? That alone took in $25K. So I hear. If last night’s fundraiser was any indication, progs in this new Go Wendy (Davis) Go! political environment are gonna be moving a pen across a check easily, readily and willingly, so it seems.

Memes are great. But real money for a Georgia Dem? Even better.

Cox Media Group Using Mentally Ill To Sell Product

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cox Media Group – Contradiction, Confusion, Clownage

You’ve all heard and seen it by now. (If you’re in Georgia.) Some expensive, marketeer-driven slogan the Cox Media Farms Group is using to pimp their AJC product. Something about being clear, complete, correct. Three Cs. I forget the exact three Cs, so un-inspired I was by the campaign.

The AJC, the flagship Cox Media Farms Group product according to Wikipedia, is under new leadership. The first bit of non-inspiration out of the new AJC editor, Kevin Riley, was to start banning stuff.

But Riley’s got a sturdy ego, allowing himself a burst of uninspired face time with us *audience*, trotting himself at a nice clip through a newsroom in a particularly awkward moving pictures ad spot. Look busy! Nothing like a campaign of more middle-age white guys trying on *leadership* roles to inspire a Cox-only media consumption movement in the metro Atlanta masses.

(And can they ho-out Mike Luckovitch any harder than they are now at the AJC?! Jeez, they’re gonna break him they keep up this pace. But I diverge.)

Overall, the best part of whatever the heck it is they’re trying to do around the Cox Media Farms Group Of Stuff was a recent interview with their new president, Doug Franklin. (Lot of new, new, new fever around that barn, eh?) Whereby Franklin said this:

One of the things I (Franklin) should point out is that our goal is not to homogenize our media businesses.

Well, could have fooled me as a recent Cox internal memo, now in wide digital circulation, about how to “co-brand” Cox properties, but at the same time not let us out here know about this co-branding stuff, said this:

The decision to co-brand will be determined on the front end, in the story conception meetings between the respective properties. The branding will need to be communicated fully to the newsroom production staffs so they’ll know to use the labels.

Labels and everything too! Already in the pipeline, should the non-homogenization process need to be trotted out. (Cute how they’re still beating that dead print horse too.)

Yes, but us simple, passive, media consumers out here in the A are still not supposed to know there’s a Cox Media Farm Group Of Stuff homogenization effort under way. Again from the internal meme:

As a rule of thumb, most collaboration efforts will NOT be made known to readers/viewers/listeners.

That’s ok, because in the interview with TVNewsCheck Franklin goes on to tell us he will tell us this:

I will tell you that we have recently moved 30-50 journalists from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and they are now housed at the WSB building. We are moving more content people in with the television and radio newsrooms and I think you will see continued increased shared work there. So, yes, we are going down that path, but prudently to make sure we protect the outstanding brands we have in Atlanta.

But who needs to know what they heck it is they’re doing with their various media products, in the name of journalism, when we consumers out here have full access to whatever it is they’re trying to do up there in the C-suite!

You know how to get in touch.

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.

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…

Under The APS Investigation Atlanta Media Circus Tent

As I’ve died and gone to Atlanta media circus heaven lately it’s been hard to break away to play ringmaster by providing the necessary, critical blog posts. Facebooking and Twitter alone are about to do me in.

Honestly, I’ve been having too much fun sitting back with my peanuts and cotton candy watching from here in the cheap seats. But someone’s gotta play local TV news farm media critic in this town, other than @RichardsDoug; and there is, of course, no one better qualified to do so than me.

Thus, let me take a moment to pry open the laptop and reflect on just last night’s Atlanta local TV media hightlights and lowlights before I go back in for more. (Thank goodness for that new, 4-5pm block from Channel 2, eh?)

Last night WSB-TV, or WizBee or Death Star Two as it’s called in the biz around here, was on disjointed fire! When they open a 6pm with longtime, hysterical crime reporter Mark Winne (his Facebook fan page is here) rest assured we’re going to be served drama.

The local TV news station that can’t do ’em some news drama, in a city as ragingly dysfunctional as Atlanta, is just dead to me. Otherwise, why bother to exist? Anyway… getting to the point.

Winne led-off with pretty good shrieking over the hilariously mule-headed refusals by a few implicated (now kinda sorta fired) APS school administrators to… go down without a public fight. I think they were bellowing for a publicized *hearing*, whatever the heck that is. Good luck with that tall order.

The best part was a replay of Winne grilling, weeks ago, one of the most mule-headed APS admins fingered in the whole royal cheating mess, Tamara Cotman.

Low and behold, Cotman was, once again, right up in our living rooms. Still looking slouched down and bloated from all the investigatory stress and educator cake she’s been consuming over the years, defensive and sliding down a slippery conference room leather chair slope of no-where-else-to-go prayer.

Cotman was posed in the classic ATL local TV media perp tableau – lawyer on one side, Mark Winne leaning in with a question on the other. Talk about media places you never want to be seen in this town.

Bless her tired, stressed, cake-laden heart. I almost felt sorry for her, as, so far, Jesus has yet to come to her emotional or otherwise rescue. Maybe next year. Keep those prayers and cards and letter coming, Atlanta!

I Spy Scandals In ATL Media

There are two lovely, slaphappy, public office-related messes playing-out right now in Atlanta you won’t want to miss a moment of: the APS cheating scandal and Governor Deal’s trail of dubious dealings.

Thing is, the media attentions applied to both situations are so random and all-over-the-place it’s like Dick Cheney on a quail hunt; you never know where the shots are coming from, nor what they’re going to hit.

There is no clearinghouse of information, so you’re bound to miss something… if you’re not paying close attention.

Investigative journalism is an odd bird. Although news farms like to say they get their content from some pristine well of hard work, that’s not really the case.

Most get their news from the other news farm down the street. And most scandals erupt because people are gossipy tattletales and can’t keep a secret.

And sometimes people will even tell a journalist if they’re a hardcore whistleblower with stuff like paperwork to flaunt, and not just your common trash-talker over at Manuel’s.

But ultimately, it’s up to a near-solo, working journalist to keep the fires of an investigative situation burning… with loads of  seasoned skepticism and doubt mixed-in with better-than-yours sources.

Says longtime, Atlanta investigative reporter, Jim Walls of Atlanta Unfiltered and the AJC :

The trick is to know your topic thoroughly, keep asking questions when things don’t add up, and sometimes even when they seem to. Focus on what people have done, not what they say they’ve done. And do not assume that the most likely explanation is correct, or at least 100% correct. There are nuances to everything.

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!

Should Media Work For Law Enforcement?

This one is still confounding me… should media, old or new, be whoring for the FBI? For example, broadcasting the demands of a cop killer jonesin’ to get on TV, as much of Georgia media did recently?

Doug Richards of WXIA and blogger at Live Apartment Fire has the post-mort boast-review of how it all went down here. Please read that first for critical background before answering the ‘ho question. Excerpt:

This guy won’t turn himself in unless he does it live on TV, because he’s afraid our guys will shoot him when he comes out of the house.  I need a TV crew to set up in front of the house, and feed a live picture to the other stations.

Immediately and emphatically, I said:   We’ll do it, Vernon.

I woke-up today with a firm no they should not on the matter. That could change by afternoon though. I know if I’d have been chosen to broadcast a cop killer… well, I’m a total weanie, and I wouldn’t have been anywhere near a scene like that to begin with, having had the thrill-crap scared out of me long long ago when working in TV journalism. So there. But…

What do you think?

Calling Bullshit On Violence In Georgia

It was refreshing and surprising, sadly, to hear Dick Williams call-out a questioneer during a U.S. Representative Paul Broun gathering at the end of today’s Georgia Gang show as an example of negativity in Georgia news and politics.

Williams was refering to a deeply misguided person who asked *Who’s going to shoot Obama?* to Rep. Paul Broun at a Tuesday, February 22, 2011 townhall meeting at the Oglethorpe County Commission chamber.

Whether in public or within family gatherings and conversation, violence-laced claptrap and rhetoric should not be tolerated, especially here in a state where it’s been allowed to flourish, without pushback, for far too long. Let’s hope the Secret Service is making that jackass squirm now.

Rep. Paul Broun is so deeply out of it that the offensive question did not register as deeply wrong, immediately, within him. Or else he, Broun, would have called it out right then and there, live as it happened, at the town hall meeting. He did not do that. He said merely, *Next question.* To laughs. Pitiful.

It took Blake Aued going back and clarifying a question he could barely hear (and a follow-up one too), and writing about it on his blog. Aued’s name, for doing so, has gone nationwide over the weekend. See Twitter for a quick example of the power of Aued’s blog post on the matter.

And these are just the folk who could manage to spell his name right.

Georgia’s Jobs Creation Project Thwarted By Tea Party Binge Drinking

Georgia’s in a bit of a sticky-wicket, eh? The Georgia GOP has been railroaded by the Tea Party Kool-Aid their teenagers were passing around in a patriot-drag party earlier this year. And, like bummer, the reality police have since raided the place.

Well, this rhetorical hangover is sure gonna be a bitch now! Because Savannah area congressional Rep. Jack Kingston got swept back to where he always was (Georgia Congressional District 1) in a I Hate Pork! frenzy, yet is somehow entirely dependent on congressional pork scraps from Obama’s table (otherwise known as earmarks) to fund the Army Corps of Engineers’ ga-zillion dollar project to dredge (deeper) the Savannah harbor.

Remember kiddies, the Army Corps is the bumbling group of engineers who will oversea the Savannah dredging op; the Army Corps’ bumbling engineering projects are funded entirely by earmarks. And talk about another real bummer, Kingston didn’t get appointed head of House Appropriations either. From Politico:

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a tea party favorite who lost out on his bid to chair the House Appropriations Committee, thinks his party may have overreached.

“Let’s look at transportation,” he said Wednesday. “How do you handle that without earmarks, since that’s a heavily earmarked bill? How do you handle a Corps of Engineers project? I think, right now, we go through a period where we have gone one step further than we meant to go, and there are some unintended consequences.”

Among some members — including Kingston and Simpson, both appropriators — there’s a feeling of giving Congress some tough love until it realizes what it’s thrown away.

The suits, especially the ones at the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA), love ’em some federal pork so much that, let’s be honest here folks, they can’t really exist without it. They sure can’t come up with the billions needed to dredge the Savannah harbor all on their own, with just our pittance of state-of-Georgia taxpayers’ money.

But who will they need to call-on and make nice-nice with (soon) to get the pork they indeed DO need to fund lots of stuff the Big Business suits in Georgia, such as Frank Blake of Home Depot, want? Why that Muslim Kenyan in the White House! The kid they’ve kicked around the playground for a couple of years now. Kinda like that gubernatorial candidate, pathetic as he was, that the Georgia bloggers kicked around for a year or so who now has sued their flamer-butts for slander and libel. *gulp* But let’s not diverge under the rock of the Georgia political blogosphere…

So, in this laughable manuever they think the Georgia press won’t tell on ’em about (and knowing the Georgia press they very well may not) the GPA and GOP suits and Frank Blake and his lobbying minions are going to send Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed to pow-wow with, you know, the brother. The one in the White House. Save face with the holy and righteous constituents back home, because it’s not like the white folk GOP leadership in Georgia’s can be seen asking Obama, of all people, for a handout.

I mean, they’d have to stand there, cap in hand, and look the dude they’ve been calling names all this time straight in in the eye and say, *Yes Sir, Mr. President. Whatever YOU say, Mr. President. We know we owe you BIG TIME if you give us Savannah Port earmarks now.*

Hell, if I was Obama I’d make ’em crawl in to the Oval Office on their knees. While wearing those silly hats and breeches the Tea Party drag queens love so much. But I’m sure POTUS is a lot more forgiving than I am.

Don’t the white folk who need Big Federal Money back home in the woods just crack you up? It’s *jobs for Georgia* now though, so it’s all good. Right?