Tip Your Huge Media Market Giant

A team of reporters from WSB-TV Channel 2 television news was there; someone apparently tipped them off to the arrest beforehand. The station has had exclusive access to the court proceedings since then.

Now I can’t speak to the matter of terrorism-related charges brought on anyone, let alone a Clayton County, Georgia woman who wanted to kill all the whities via YouTube. (Although this particular burden never stops Matthew Charles Cardinale, the editor of Atlanta Progressive News. But he’s in law school now, so off he goes. Go Matthew go.)

I can, however, speak to the stinky little underhanded and exploitative way in which virtually all federal and state-related arrest media straight out of Atlanta (that good ‘n juicy perp-walk stuff) gets handed to market-dominating WSB-TV (Cox Enterprises) alone, on a silver platter, by someone at WSB-TV’s brother who happens to work in federal (or state) law enforcement.

So let’s recap: someone who works in government serves up exploitative tidbits to a single, for-profit entity, Cox Enterprises. Over and over and over again.

This sleight-of-media-hand trick has been going on in the Atlanta media market for decades: exclusive access to media/news-gathering opportunities (those folk in big trouble with the law) which no doubt many other players in this same media market would also love to exploit for their organization’s financial gain.

May be legal, but it ain’t right.

The Media Rich Candidate

Let’s get this established right now, since we live in a time of “Biblical” flooding (by petty judgments): I’m not all cynicism and vinegar. I really do tend to watch the world in terms of the media it, preferably organically, produces.

And that’s why South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley makes me look towards those blue media skies ahead. She’s the dream client for a media guide gal like me, as she rounds corner after corner towards her next political incarnation.

Haley, of the novel-worthy backstory, has a political future so bright you need sunglasses and a server farm to store it all in.

Gov. Nikki Haley of SC helps repair a flood-damaged home in the Columbia, SC area, 10-15-15. Photo borrowed from the Post and Courier.

Here she is going about her latest piece of Most Pitiable State’s business. Governor Haley moves effortlessly from winning Volvo USA, crying (genuinely so) for victims of unspeakable crimes, to helping veterans clean-up after “historic” even “Biblical” flooding. And all the Haley-associated media is free, locally-sourced, 100% organic product.

Well, maybe there was a portion of strategic, long game planning associated with the above veteran’s home rebuild photo op. Whatever. It was a smart thing to do. Round-up the usual earned media suspects. Whir those shutters. Bang on those keyboards, people. Squirrel away the media harvest as it comes in.

Oh how I’d love to be along for the media-rich ride on Nikki’s next political adventure. Because that will indeed… print big.

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.

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.

Student Press Law Center Questions Legitimacy of GSU/GPB Agreement To Run WRAS

 

The Student Press Law Center’s executive director, Frank LoMonte, has sent a blistering, scathing really, 5-page letter to Georgia State University president Mark Becker declaring GSU’s agreement (hammered out in great secrecy and urgency by GSU and GPB so GPB could grab GSU’s student-run station, WRAS, and hand it over to the grownups of GPB) essentially wrong on every possible level, and merely the paper result of ragingly arrogant and “tone-deaf,” possibly illegal, behaviors on the part of Becker. And some equally bad lawyerin’ on the part of the GSU attorney, Kerry Heyward.

From the letter:

Your (Becker’s) remarks as quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on May 7 are, quite frankly, contemptuous and tone-deaf. Your assertion that “anything with this level of complexity and this level of benefit really is not the kind of thing you can play out in a public forum” is exactly, 100 percent wrong. Things that are “beneficial” will be understood and welcomed by the people they are intended to benefit, unless you hold those people — your students — in such low regard that you believe they are incapable of being reasoned with.

LoMonte then goes on to urge GSU and GPB to not try to get rid of any of their documents associated with their agreement, as he’s gonna sue to the crap out of them. Possibly.

Take time to read the document in its entirety. The SPLC is making all the right legal moves to shut down not only poorly constructed legal agreements, but also, hopefully, the petite bourgeoisie criminals plaguing state organizations such as GPB and GSU. 

Ugly GPB Media Takeover Continues To Burn Atlanta

Bill Nigut of Georgia Public Broadcasting shows his hand as to why he was so excited about the WRAS Album 88 kids getting kicked to the curb: he gets to expand his own personal talk show, On The Story, to another platform. What a preening douche. ‪#‎SaveWRAS‬ indeed. From that.

The full GPB press release is at the jump.

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.

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.

Crisis Management As Reality Show

District of Columbia Police Chief Cathy Lanier

A crisis nowadays brings out the hardcore working women in positions of leadership. Unfortunately, that’s the only time we really see them in wide media, as they are certainly not pop stars, singers, actors, dancers, and two-bit celebs and such.

Two we met yesterday, via mass media, were District of Columbia Police Chief, Cathy Lanier, and Dr. Janis M. Orlowski, chief operating officer at Washington Hospital Center.

Youths, these are the faces of career women in positions of genuine leadership. Not made-up and styled-up for a TV show or a date-night-out, but caught out doing their jobs. And in a crisis at that.

There’s your reality show.

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.

Holy Media, Batman! Someone Just Made A Perfect Political Ad

Drive-By Georgia Political Journalism

Listen, Georgia media kiddies. No one really cares what Charles Bullock (of UGA) thinks about Georgia politics. Name one person who does. Thus, can we stop with the tired, sad media (print, TV, blogs, etc.) formula of:

a.) Go call-up same ‘ole same ‘ole SOT from Bullock or Merle Black (of Emory).

b.) Bang a keyboard for an hour or so.

c.) Call it journalism and a day.

Those two haven’t said much fresh or insightful since 1988. Jeez.

Reason I like Lori Geary of WSB-TV on Georgia politics is she always goes for something slightly different for her Georgia politics perspectives and insights, rather than merely cooking-up the go-to box of mac ‘n cheese news formula in her kitchen. Not that she wouldn’t go for a Merle or Charles SOT here and there, but only if she felt it was absolutely necessary.

Hell, I used to get shuffled out the door and on over to Emory about 2X a day (during political season) to go sweep-up Merle Black SOTs when I was in my 20’s. And that was a while ago.

So, you’ve got less than a year until the 2014 primaries. Can you, our clearly fearful Georgia media leaders and deciders, take a day or three to think-up just one teensy tiny innovative way to cover politics in Georgia?

I think what I’m wishing for is a “summit” focused on nothing but brainstorming new ideas for media-izing Georgia politics. And before 2014 shows up on our doorstep.

Google Glass — Can I Get A Witness?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skewed Georgia Political Journalism On Most All Georgia Media Farms

There is a good bit of chatter (on Facebook) about Nikema Williams’ excellent decision to open-up the process of electing a new Democratic Party of Georgia (DPG) chair to more than white male-only candidates.

A little background… seems there was something in the DPG’s by-laws about if a white male (or black woman presumably, or whatever was the most matchy-match) was serving as chair of the party and left that post early, then the person to fill the chair/leadership void would have to share not just a similar but also an identical demographic. Such as also being a white male, as was Mike Berlon, of course, who recently and unceremoniously left the chairpersonship of the DPG.

So Ms. Williams has changed the chairpersonship rules up a bit, in her interim, between-chairs-role and duty. And that’s ok, ‘far as I’m concerned.

But what concerns me as a writer/editorialist, and also as a pan-media and prolific content provider (of more than mere text, in other words), much more than the fate of DPG leadership, is the dearth, lack, and scarcity of women or minority writers at the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on issues and matters pertaining to Georgia-based politics. And other media outlets too, but let’s start with the most influencial.

DPG rules can change all they care to, and that’s fine. But there are some other unwritten “rules” around this town that need to change too, if you ask me. Which of course no one did.

Oh, but they should. Ask me.

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.

The Hypocrisy of CNN. Seriously.

Oh this is classic! CNN mocks all-things Occupy Wall Street, as a movement. But with its other hand doesn’t hesitate to solicit the movement’s media – without paying for it! Via iReport.

I hope no one’s stupid enough to give away their media to a corporate hater. At least charge ’em for it. Jeez.

Note the insertion of the iReport ads soliciting free media stuck in here.

Practice safe media, kiddies!

Old Field Producer’s Hurricane Coverage Survival Tips

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Upcoming State of Media Forum In Atlanta

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

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

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

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…

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…