Jon Lowder

Esbee the Muckraker

I was sitting on the deck reading the morning paper while slurping my cuppajoe when I stumbled upon an article in the Local section titled Salem Promo Attracts Notice with an accompanying picture of Oprah Winfrey in standard graduation ceremony dress.  It sounded hauntingly familiar and I knew why when I read this:

What kind of women go to Salem College?

Let's hear it from someone who experienced it firsthand …

Oprah Winfrey?

The indomitable talk-show host attended Tennessee State University, but the above lines from a promotional video for Salem College are generating a lot of buzz online.

The video aired last fall as part of a showcase of Piedmont colleges done by WFMY-TV.

Lucy Cash recently posted it on her blog, "Life in Forsyth," spurring a wave of reaction.

"Everyone seems to be reading that blog," said Jacqueline McBride, the director of communications at Salem College.

I knew it!  Esbee, aka Lucy Cash, wrote a post about the rather misleading Salem College promotional video featuring Ms. Winfrey.  It's misleading in the sense that it makes the average person think that Ms. Winfrey has a deeper relationship with Salem College than her appearance as a commencement speaker in 2000.  Esbee really is a muckraker isn't she?

But let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture and see the news cycle for this particular story. First there's the fact that this video was produced by a local television station, WFMY, for a feature on local colleges.  So a local station, with its own news operation, didn't see anything untoward about the school's allusions to Winfrey's ties to the college.  Next, the school so likes the video that they buy it and post it on their website and their own YouTube channel.  So far, so good.  Over six months later Esbee finds the video and posts about it. **Correction received via email from Esbee: "Small correction: Salem didn't put the video up until last week. It aired six months ago, but i didn't see it until they posted it on YouTube." ** Then, almost two weeks after that the Winston-Salem Journal picks up the story and runs with it.

This leads me to ask the same question I've been asking for at least two years: why in the world doesn't someone at the Journal figure out a way to get Esbee under their umbrella?  I suspect they get plenty of story leads from her that she never gets cited on, which I understand is the way the game is played since her blog is a public domain and Journal staffers have as much right to read it as we do, but they don't get any of her traffic.  Instead they've floundered about with their own blog efforts, trying to get their already stretched staff to blog in addition to their reporting, but not realizing that just because you can write a news piece doesn't mean you can be a good blogger.

Folks like Esbee, entrenched in their community, gifted with a "voice" that attracts local readers like honey to pollen, are gold.  You can't fake what she does and you can't snap your fingers and say to your metro reporter, "Hey, I want you to invent something as creative as 'And I mean exact'."  I'm not even saying they should have tried to hire her.  They could have simply approached her with some sort of offer that would have allowed her to retain her independence and yet benefit them with traffic and ad revenue.

But who knows.  I'm sure there's some perfectly logical reason, and who's to say Esbee would have gone for it.  Maybe they did try to woo her, but somehow I doubt it.  This is the same organization that is trying to survive by making the tactical decision to cut head count, which in my humble view is a strategic error that could sink the business.  I've written many times that the one advantage that newspapers have always had is their "feet on the street" and depth of coverage of local events.  Sadly, that 'tis no more.

Oh, BTW, Esbee's next "And I Mean Exact" is being posted at 1 p.m. today.  Be there or be square.

Vacation in Waziristan

So I came across a post at Ed Cone's blog that links to an opinion piece in the Carrboro Citizen that references my blog posts about the road blocks I encountered in Alamance County a couple of weeks ago.  Ed also linked to my posts which of course caught my attention (hey, I have an ego too) so when I saw that there were comments on the post I decided to check them out lest someone call me names without me calling him names back.  That's when I read the following comment spam:

Interview Request

Hello Dear and Respected,
I hope you are fine and carrying on the great work you have been doing for the Internet surfers. I am Ghazala Khan from The Pakistani Spectator (TPS), We at TPS throw a candid look on everything happening in and for Pakistan in the world. We are trying to contribute our humble share in the webosphere. Our aim is to foster peace, progress and harmony with passion.

We at TPS are carrying out a new series of interviews with the notable passionate bloggers, writers, and webmasters. In that regard, we would like to interview you, if you don't mind. Please send us your approval for your interview at my email address "ghazala.khi at gmail.com", so that I could send you the Interview questions. We would be extremely grateful.

regards.

Ghazala Khan
The Pakistani Spectator
http://www.pakspectator.com

That was followed by a fantastic follow up from scharrison:

Dear Ghazala,

I've been thinking about taking the family on a trip to Waziristan. Can you recommend any good bed & breakfasts?

I love these internet tubes

 

 

Simply Yummy Coffee with Esbee

Celeste and I had coffee with Esbee this morning at SimplYummy off of Reynolda.  Celeste found Esbee as beguiling as I did and we managed not to get kicked out of the joint, what with all our fun had at the expense of various institutions-that-shall-remain-anonymous.  Made for a great morning.

Media General Not Getting It

One of my favorite blogs over the last couple of years has been bookofjoe.com.  It's a compendium of interesting items, not the least of which are articles that the blogs owner/author has read in the New York Times or other newspapers and has reproduced on his site with full links and attributions to the source.  The fact that he doesn't excerpt but instead provides the article in full has caused some consternation with some of the ink-stained wretches lawyers.

Case in point is the Charlottesville Daily Progress's (Joe lives in Charlottesville, VA) lawyer Andrew Carington.  He sent a lengthly cease and desist letter to Joe who promptly posted it on his blog for all to see.  Joe points out that he's pretty sure that the authors of the articles probably wouldn't agree with the lawyer's move since getting a placement on his site vastly expands their audience.  I'd have to agree, and I'd go so far as to say that Media General is making a business mistake by going after him (I'm not going to argue the legality of Joe's practice since I'm no copyright expert).

Here's my thinking.  The Daily Progress is a local paper owned by the same company that owns my hometown paper The Winston-Salem Journal.  I'd say it's safe to assume that both newspapers get the majority of their traffic from folks within their region. On the other hand Joe gets a lot of his traffic from all over the internet tubes so by getting a link from his site the newspaper is getting exposure to a much broader audience than they do on their own.  And guess what?  We're talking major traffic.

I went to Compete.com and ran a quick comparison between bookofjoe.com and dailyprogress.com. If you look at the screenshot on the left (click on it to see it at full size) you'll see that while the Daily Progress does have a bit more traffic than Joe it ain't by much (63,341 visitors vs. 55,262) and you'll also see that Joe's traffic is trending up much more quickly than the Daily Progress.  You'd think they'd love the opportunity to get their name and a link to their site out there to such a growing audience.  Heck, Joe's offering them free syndication.

But I'm sure the honchos at Media General are thinking that Joe's getting rich off their work...oh wait, he doesn't take advertising.  So maybe he's not getting rich off of their work, so maybe it's the principle of the thing. But I'm a cynic so I'm thinking they're just ticked because one guy writing in his bathrobe in his condo is pulling almost as much traffic as their newspaper with dozens of employees and they think they can push him around.  Whatever their motivation it's a dumb move.

Eelymosynary?

Ed Cone channeled George Will in the comments on one of his own blog posts.  The post yesterday was about John Edwards withdrawing from the Democratic presidential campaign and it attracted Ed's usual crowd of commentors, a few of whom began questioning Edwards' championing of the poor (i.e. he's a rich hypocrite) and others who defended him.  Anyway, here's an excerpt from Ed's comment that had me running to my dictionary (okay, looking it up on Dictionary.com):

Poverty itself demands structural approaches, beyond any eelymosynary remedies applied to individuals or small groups. (Emphasis mine)

I don't know what John Edwards gives to charity. I don't think he has to give most of his money away, certainly at this point in his life and his children's lives, to be considered charitable or to show genuine concern.

But his message as a politician is more about addressing poverty and its structural causes than proclaiming himself the charity champion.

I tried looking up eelymosynary but I think Ed misspelled it because Dictionary.com didn't find it but did suggest eleemosynary, an adjective which is defined as "of or pertaining to alms, charity, or charitable donations; charitable."  I can't hold this one against Ed though since I can't pronounce the word, much less spell it.

Anyone who's read George Will more than once will recognize the phenomenon of having to keep a dictionary handy in order to wade through the article/editorial.  I always felt this was a weakness of his since the point in his line of work (columnist) is to effectively argue an issue, not show off his vocabulary.  If you require your readers to consult a dictionary you aren't really communicating are you?  In other words whenever I read the guy I feel like writing him and telling him "We all know you're that kid who was always the smartest in the class, or at least sounded like the smartest kid in the class, so quit showing off and tell us what you think in terms that more than 2% of the population understands."

Anyway, Ed rarely whips out the Willian phrasing so he's actually a very effective communicator.  This was a classic though.

Should I Now Be Considered a 'Professional' Writer?

A while back I signed up to be included in Pluck's Blogburst network and then forgot all about it.  Well it ends up that Reuters ran some of my posts that they found on Blogburst.  Now even though I don't get one red cent for this I'm wondering if this makes me a "professional" writer or just another kind of "letter to the editor" writer.

BTW, here's the stories on Reuters with the number of readers Blogburst says each one had:

It Might Be 39 Cents, Give or Take Three Dollars (90)
Upgraded Time Warner (4)
I've Been Living in a Cave; Check Out Nickel Creek (2)
And You Thought the Traffic Rap Was Rough (1)
Debbie's Blog (1)
US State Departments Official Blog (1)
Was Easley's Plea More Effective Than Praying? (1)

Spelunking with Lenslinger

Greensboro-based blogger Lenslinger, he that is a photojournalist for Fox 8, or as he calls it el Ocho, was snapping some pics of co-workers from his station when he lost control of his camera and it plunged into the depths of a Greensboro storm cavern.  One of his co-workers, a fellow photog, shot some video of 'Slinger diving for his lost treasure which you can view below.  Amazingly the 'Slinger's camera still works.

Avocado Green Oven and The Good Fork

I got a great comment on yesterday's post about North Carolina's water conservation measures over the last couple of months.  The commenter, Laura Giovanelli, points out why Winston-Salem residents may not be slackers even though our water conservation measures didn't match up to Greensboro's.  In a nutshell we have more water available to us thanks to having a better watershed and thanks to some prudent governmental decisions in the past.  Definitely read the whole comment to get the full measure of the information.

As a result of her comment I checked out Laura's blog Avocado Green Oven and I'm wondering why I didn't visit it before, and if I did why I didn't get it into my feed reader.  It's great, especially if you're looking for some good recipes and it's now a part of my daily feeds (bad pun alert).

While reading Laura's blog I discovered that she recently launched a personal chef business called The Good Fork.  Considering the Christmas holiday's are fast approaching and time is getting crunchier by the day, I'd think that a gift of a personal chef's service would be quite nice.  Think about it: home cooked meals that you simply have to slip in the oven when you get home.  No muss, no fuss.

The past couple of weeks Celeste and I have been experimenting with DreamDinners.  Well, I should say that Celeste has been experimenting since my involvement hasn't extended past heating the food.  From what Celeste told me the way it works is you show up at the store, pick your menus and then package all the food items you need for your meals.  Then you package them (usually in plastic baggies) and you're provided with labels that contain the instructions for preparation.  After that you bring them home and store them in the freezer or fridge until you're ready to prepare them.

We've been happy with the meals but it still takes Celeste quite a bit of time to do the preparation at the store and you definitely spend more than you would if you bought everything at the grocery store.  The upside is that all the items are laid out for you and you don't have to create the menu yourself.  Like I said, we've been happy with the meals so far but I don't know how often we'll use the service since I'm not sure the convenience gain is large enough that we (Celeste) will be continually motivated to return.

After checking out Laura's site I can see a greater convenience gain, and since she prefers fine foods, a taste gain as well.  Of course that comes at greater expense than something like DreamDinners, but once you have your consultation with Laura and let her know what you want your job is pretty much just turning on the oven and eating.  Like I said before, it's probably a great gift idea for anyone with a jam-packed life who doesn't want to face another take-out or microwave meal but doesn't have the energy at the end of the day to cook.

Blurkey Day 2007

As we do almost every year Celeste, the kids and I spent Thanksgiving with my in-laws just outside Charleston, SC in Isle of Palms.  Various in-laws own condos down there so they stay in theirs and those of us who don't own our own condos rent some others.  Every year we end up with 40-50 people there.

On Turkey Day we reserve the conference room on the first floor of one of the condo buildings.  It has a kitchen attached to it and at about 8:30 in the morning Celeste's Uncle Johnny fires up the stove and starts fixing pancakes and bacon.  That's also the time that two exterminated turkeys are shoved in the oven to begin cooking so that we can kick off the big meal at mid-afternoon.  After the pancakes are wolfed down all of us retire to our respective condos to fix the side dish we've been assigned.  The past couple of years Celeste and I have been assigned the sweet potatoes while her brother and sister-in-law have been tasked with the macaroni and cheese using their Grandmother's heart-clogging recipe that includes prodigious amounts of both American and Velveeta cheeses.  Of course others bring the stuffing, some others bring a corn casserole and there's the ever-present can-shaped cranberry sauce.

I mention all of this only because I want to fit in with my fellow Piedmont Triad bloggers who shared their Turkey Day culinary escapades. Esbee, recovering from a bout of pneumonia, convinced her husband to grill out on Thanksgiving.  Ed Cone writes about his contribution of wine to the fried turkey dinner his family enjoyed.  He's questioned about his choice of wines in the comments and rightly ponders if there's really a proper wine to pair with fried turkey.  Personally, I wonder how so many people actually know what a Meursault-Genevrières and a Margaux actually are.  Of course despite taking a couple of wine tasting classes at Salem College I still base my wine purchase decisions on whether I think the labels are cool and by utilizing my fine grasp of economic theory which states that any wine under $5 a bottle is probably gross and any over $10 is likely overpriced.  And then there's swine-o-phile Fec who's ideal woman would have a head made of ham.  As a group I think we had a splendid Blurkey Day.

Our kids were so busy traipsing around the beach and playing the Wii in one of Celeste's cousin's condo that I don't think they gained a pound, but we adults certainly packed a few unneeded pounds on our waistlines.  Time for the guilt-trip to the Y.

Debbie's Blog

If you want to do some good reading right about now forget this lowly blog and head on over to Moonbaby's Meanderings.  Full disclosure: Moonbaby is my Aunt Debbie and now that she's married off her oldest son and moved out to the farm she has a little time to share her thoughts.  It's good reading so get yourself on over there. 

Good Use of the Internet Tubes

Lex points to a video featuring teenagers poking holes in the Army Corps of Engineers' Katrina-levy investigation (video is posted below).  I can definitely see my kids getting in on a project like this.  They don't suffer fools gladly.

If You're in Junior High You'll Love My Blog

This will not surprise my wife.  According to the Readability Index my blog is readable for anyone with a Junior High level education.  Thankfully the readers of my business blog are getting Genius Level stuff, or does that mean that I'm talking over their heads?  Out of curiosity I looked at some of the other blogs that I follow and here are the results:

• Ed Cone's was Elementary School 
• Fecund Stench's was Genius
• Life in Forsyth's was College, Undergrad
• Boing Boing's was High School
• Freakonomics' was High School
• Troublemaker was High School
• WXII's was High School
• Fox 8's was High School
• WFMY DigTriad's was Junior High
• News & Record's was High School
• Winston-Salem Journal's was College, Undergrad
• John Robinson, News & Record Editor's was High School
• Ken Otterbourg, Winston-Salem Journal Editor's was Junior High School

Hat tip to Lex Alexander, a fellow Junior High level blogger, who pointed me to the index.

Wait, how do the websites for some of our Presidential candidates fare?

The Democrats, in their current place in the polls (11/5/07), followed by the % of votes they would get:

• Hillary Clinton's was Elementary School (44%)
• Barack Obama's was Elementary School (25%)
• John Edwards' was Elementary School  (14%)
• Bill Richardson's was Genius (4%)
• Joe Biden's was Genius (3%)
• Chris Dodd's was Genius (2%)
• Dennis Kucinich's was Genius (2%)
• Mike Gravel's was Elementary School (1%)

The Republicans, in their current place in the polls (11/5/07), followed by the % of votes they would get:

• Rudy Giuliani's was Genius (28%)
• Fred Thompson's was Elementary School  (19%)
• John McCain's was Junior High School (16%)
• Mitt Romney's was Elementary School (11%)
• Mike Huckabee's was College Undergrad (10%)
• Ron Paul's was Junior High School (5%)
• Duncan Hunter's was High School (4%)
• Tom Tancredo's was unreadable (the site barfed on this one) (3%)

Obviously if you're a Democrat you want to speak to your base as if they're a bunch of fourth graders.  Republicans seem not to be put off by candidates using words with multiple syllables, but given Thompson's late entry in the race and subsequent rocketing up the charts we might see that members of both political bases need to be fed their pablum in monosyllabic addresses.  In case you haven't guessed this last paragraph is my attempt to move this blog up to the relatively austere heights of high school discourse.  What-e-v-e-r.

Not Converging

The annual ConvergeSouth to-do is kicking off tomorrow in Greensboro and once again I won't be able to make it.  My problem is that they continually schedule these things when I have other work-related things I can't get out of which leads me to ask, "Have they no consideration?"  Do they continually have to schedule this thing when it's convenient for them and not for me?  Sheesh.

Anyway, I wish I could be there but I'll be helping run the 2007 Competitive Intelligence European Summit in Germany so I won't be able to do the Converge thing.  (Yeah, I know it sounds cool running a show in Germany, but when you consider that I don't speak a lick of German, that I'll be confined to a conference hall for seven days, AND I'll miss my daughter's birthday it gets considerably less cool sounding).  I'm sure ConvergeSouth will be great and I'm fairly certain I'll get over my disappointment by this time next year at which point I'll probably be disappointed again.  So if you're anywhere near NC A&T tomorrow you should definitely check it out.  They want people to pre-register so they can feed them, but if you're willing to not eat I'm sure they'll let you in.  And tell 'em I said "hi."

US State Department's Official Blog

The US State Department has an official blog that they've named DipNote.  I'm assuming that the "Dip" is short for "Diplomat" but given that to at least one generation of Americans the term "dip" is slang for a stupid person it's an interesting name choice. 

Anyhow, as Erin Teeling at the Bivings Report points out the folks at State have opted to allow comments on the blog that appear to be un-moderated.  From Bivings:

What I found incredibly surprising was that the blog actually allows comments. And they don't appear to be censored.  After a quick scan of the comments on several blog posts, I realized that both positive comments and comments critical of the State Department or US Government are freely flowing.  Here's an example–a comment that appeared on a post about Burma.

Roy in Oregon writes:
"Thou hypocrite, cast first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull the mote that is in thy brother's eye." Luke 6:42

Let me see — You are a political appointee in the most secretive administration in U.S. history… How is that helping "create a free flow of information crucial to democratic development?"

— You are the member of an administration which quite improperly and illegally harvested telephone information without appropriate judicial warrants…. That doesn't discourage "free flow of information?"

— Your President authorized pressuring Internet Service Providers to release information about legal (but private) citizen use of the internet… Who can trust this administration to protect the principles of "freedom of expression?"

Brother, how about first removing the beam (and the blinders) from your own eye and working to end the murderous cabal which employs you?  Posted on Mon Oct 08,  2007

Pretty bold.  And the comments are loaded with others very similar to this one.  It seems like DipNote is actually a legitimate forum for discussion rather than just a false front.  In an era where so many media outlets, organizations, and political campaigns are concerned about "inappropriate citizen content" appearing on their websites, I am finding the openness of DipNote pretty refreshing.  I have to say, I'm even impressed.  Why is it that so many newspapers remain unwilling to open their sites to various types of user commentary, but the US government appears willing to reduce barriers to two-way communication?

I would love to see all branches of government, at every level from local to federal, engage in this kind of communication.  I think it would go a long way toward bringing more transparency to government and greater participation from the citizenry.

Greensboro's Anarchist Mom

Stephen Dubner writes on the Freakonomics blog about a longtime friend named Liz Seymour who is the mother of an anarchist, Isabel, who in turn converted her mother into an anarchist.  Liz lives in Greensboro and runs a kind of anarchist enclave and Dubner writes of spending a week with her living the off-the-grid lifestyle, including dumpster diving.  Here's what Dubner writes about his experience:

I never fell completely out of touch with her — it’s a long story, for another time perhaps — but it wasn’t until her daughter Isabel came to New York as a Columbia student that I really got reconnected. That’s because Isabel had made an interesting lifestyle choice: she had become an anarchist. I first became aware of this when Isabel was arrested for her role in “disrupting” the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. Isabel was about 19 or 20 at the time. She wrote her family a heartfelt essay, her version of “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” explaining why she had come to dislike and/or distrust government and capitalism in particular. It was a very compelling letter, eschewing anger for explanation, wide-eyed but hardly naive. It was so compelling, in fact, that Isabel won an unlikely convert to her anarchist cause: her own mom, Liz.

At the time, I was researching a book on the psychology of money. I interviewed Isabel extensively about her life and philosophy, and realized she’d make a good chapter. When I learned that her mom had also been won over, I knew that the chapter would be even better. So when Isabel graduated from Columbia, I volunteered to drive her and all her stuff back to Greensboro and spend a few days in Liz Seymour’s house in Greensboro, which by that time she had turned into an anarchist collective.

It was a very interesting few days, to say the least. I went dumpster diving for food with mom and daughter; hung out as they cooked up dinner for their Food Not Bombs charity; interviewed the roaming cast of characters that came through Liz’s home, most of them young and punky and pissed off at someone or other. All of them tried to live as far off the grid of capitalism as they could. Sometimes this meant shoplifting or bartering or hitchhiking. A few of them participated in medical trials down in Research Triangle Park that paid a lot of money for a few days of swallowing pills and powders that they were assured wouldn’t do them much damage.

He also writes that Liz has started a blog which he recommends.  Now I don't know if Ms. Seymour is attempting to live "off the grid" or if that simply describes the average young person who filtered through her collective, but if she is trying to live off the grid it seems to me that having a blog is more than a little ironic.  Unless of course you consider the internet off the grid.

Personally I have no problem with people wanting to minimize their participation in capitalism with a capital "C" but I often wonder what how well they think their preferred system would work without capitalism.  From my viewpoint capitalism with appropriate societal controls has offered the best way to control mankind's inherent opportunism, and the societies that have attempted "collectivism" have left themselves vulnerable to being raped by the opportunists.

The fact that our society can not only allow collectivists to live as they wish while simultaneously providing a place for the middle class masses, the captains of industry and the feckless trust fund dunderheads stalked by the paparazzi is what truly makes this country a great place to live.  Could it be better?  Always.  Could it be worse?  Much.  But it's people like Liz Seymour who make it a very entertaining place to live.

My Kids Let Me Down

I've toiled for years on this blog and quite honestly my kids NEVER read it.  While some might argue that's a good thing considering how I write and what I often write about, it's still a bummer when the only time they ackowledge my blog is when they tell their friends in derisive tones that "my dad's probably going to blog about this" and utter the word blog as if they're trying to violently expel a loogie.

Little do they know that their future might hang on this darn thing.  You see the grand plan is to work on this tribute to trivianalia (I think I've just coined a new word) until some publisher or producer notices it and offers me a mega-signing bonus to produce something gloriously stupid for them.  Said signing bonus will keep us out of the poor house as we swim against the rising tide of costs related to orthodonture, healthcare and wardrobe accessories.

The problem with my plan is exposure, or lack there of.  We need people to see this thing in order for me to get my big break and wouldn't you know it there's a PR bonanza to be had if only the kids would pay attention.  The Bloggers Choice Awards is soliciting nominations and votes for blogs in an amazing number of categories and while this blog really doesn't qualify for any of them my kids could have at least gotten me in the door for "Hottest Daddy Blogger".  I know what you're thinking: doesn't "hottest daddy" imply that one has to be, well, hot?  My reply is that "hot" is subjective and if you look at some of the leading vote getters in the category you'll have to agree.

Anyway, I'm thinking that the kids should have nominated me and then recruited their friends to stuff the ballot box.  I mean if they truly want a future with straight teeth and clothes manufactured in the 21st century they need to get on the ball, right?  I'm not thinking I'll get a call from GQ or anything, but I figure it's only a short amount of time before they come up with a reality show called "Extreme Makeover: Homely Middle Aged Guy Edition" and when they do I'll be a lock.  I'll use the exposure from my appearance on that inevitable TV crap to springboard me to worthless celebrity and unearned lucre.

If the kids do nominate me I'll put up a gallery of pictures displaying my "hotness".  I'm thinking I could corner the market on sympathy votes based on the following samples:

Turd Man Likes Poop Culture

As long time readers of this blog probably remember I am the Turd Man of Alcatraz.  Luckily I haven't had to wrangle any floaters recently and our septic system has performed admirably since we had it sucked dry a while back.  My extensive experience dealing with my household's bowel remnants has engendered an affinity with folks who are all about the dookey, so I was intrigued when I was scanning my Boing Boing feed and saw this item about Poop Culture.

My heart be still: an entire book and a blog about poop and its accoutrements!  And I have to say that www.poopthebook.com is the greatest domain name I've come across.  It's descriptive, yet action oriented. As for the blog, check out these recent posts:

• How Toilet Water Can Live Again (if NYC Makes It Happen)
• The European Aversion to Poop Culture
• In Praise of Less Wallowing in Filth

and my favorite:

• Free Speech vs. Turd Terrorism: When is Poop Not Constitutionally Protected?

I might never get any work done.

What's My Responsibility? What's My Role?

There's an ongoing issue at Lewisville Elementary that I've written about a couple of times (most recent here).  I could be wrong but I think the comments on those posts are the only real ongoing public dialog about the situation, and the evolution of those comments have caused me to question my role or, more accurately, the role of my blog in the community.  Let me explain. 

So far I think the commenters on the posts have been polite, and the comments not particularly confrontational.  I honestly think that the commenters have the best intentions and even if they may come from different sides of the issue they also want the same things: better communication from the school and the conclusion of the investigation of the teacher who has been suspended.  That said, here are my concerns:

• This blog is a personal endeavor of mine, something I do for fun and to feed my writing jones.  Normally most of the stuff I write about is inconsequential and goofy, but when issues like this arise I feel compelled to write about it.  Is that something better left to "mainstream media"? 
• So far I think the comments on the posts have been good and in some ways helpful in revealing the viewpoints of some folks within the Lewisville School community.  But I worry that the comments could turn cruel or vindictive and that I'd be facilitating more harm being done.  Do I have that right?   I would certainly delete any bad comments as soon as I saw them, but the cat would be out of the bag for the few people who might see them before I do so.  I could also change my blog's setup so that I moderate all comments before they're published, but somehow that just doesn't feel right.  I've never had cause to worry about it before, so this is new territory for me.  And here's the key question: if someone does write something really negative am I responsible, are they responsible or is it a shared responsibility?  I'm not talking in the legal sense, but in the moral sense.
• As a member of the community I've heard lots of rumors and different sides of the story.  All of this information comes from sources I trust and in a private conversation I'd feel fine in sharing it, but I wouldn't feel right sharing here.  Am I being overly cautious or is this the right approach?
• I've been thanked on more than one occasion for providing this outlet for people to write about the issue.  I'm glad some see it that way, but I worry that others might think I'm doing a disservice to those involved in the issue.  The last thing I want is to add fuel to the fire and I hope that's not what I'm doing, rather I hope that by having a forum to look at this situation we are illuminating it.

The funny thing to me is that when I started this blog I figured maybe some friends and family would read it occasionally. I never dreamed it would be read by others or that it would be used in this way.  On the one hand I'm glad that it is, but on the other hand I'm humbled by the prospects.

Fec Obviously Married Above Himself

I've met Fec and his wife so I can attest that he did indeed marry above himself, as have I.  From his blog:

The Wife and I ran outside this morning in response to cries for help and screams from a dog. We arrived in the street beside our house to find an elderly neighbor walking his small dogs. A large tan pit bull was attacking a small white terrier. The Wife pulled the pit bull off the terrier. I got between the pit bull and the neighbor as he and his pets returned home.

The Wife dialed 911 and a GPD officer arrived momentarily. He called in an Animal Control Officer. These two brave souls armed with a shotgun entered the yard and had the owner barricade the pit bull in a fenced patio behind the home...

BTW, heroic behavior from the Wife is nothing unusual. I approached at a trot as the Wife sprinted past me. I was wondering which forearm to sacrifice for the terrier. Apparently, no such thoughts plagued her, as clad only in a kimono, she was on that Pit Bull and it was over before I arrived.

The Wife once rescued a swimmer caught in a riptide and has successfully performed the Heimlich maneuver several times. God only knows how often she’s saved me from injury or death without my knowledge.

So You Want to Put Your Google My Maps on Your Blog

So you're a geek like me and you've started using Google's My Maps function and you think, "Gosh darnit I want to put one of my maps on my blog" but you don't see one of those convenient "embed" buttons like they have on YouTube and other Web 2.0 sites.  What to do?

Well, you can visit My Maps Plus, sign up for a free account and before you know it you have your embed code.  One caveat: when you update your Google Map you need to go back to My Maps Plus and update it there too, but until Google adds the embed feature themselves I think this is the best you'll be able to do.

Here's an example on Triad Eats, a new blog we're developing to subsidize our rather ludicrous eating out habits.  FYI, if you'd like to be a correspondent for Triad Eats just shoot me an email at jon.lowder AT gmail.com.  We don't pay but if you feel like sharing your opinion on area restaurants we'd love to hear from you.

Is it a Blog if You Call it a Blog?

The Winston-Salem Journal just launched a new Harry Potter "blog" called the Muggle Report.  I put quotes around the word blog because I really don't know if I'd call this thing a blog.  I'd lean more towards calling it a micro-site rather than a blog for two simple reasons:

1. It doesn't have an interactive feel to it.  No comments enabled, at least that I could find, although they do have entries from a contest they ran asking kids to write an article predicting how the book series would end.  That's pretty cool but not really a function of the "blog".
2. To me a blog is something more than a static information site.  It usually reflects the personality of the folks posting information and has a dialog (see above) within its walls.  This site feels like a one-off tied to a big event (the release of the last Potter book and the release of the latest Potter movie).  I suspect that it will have a short life and will then be archived, which to me says its more of a special interest site.  A real world analogy would be the difference between a magazine that is run in every Sunday paper and a special insert like the Pro Football preview that is inserted in the Sunday paper at the beginning of the football season.

Now is it that big a deal what they call it?  Probably not, but just like I wouldn't call Time magazine a book I wouldn't call this site a blog.  Of course if it grows legs and keeps going, with the writers and readers engaging in a constant dialog about all things Potter (think of it as a Potter Book Club debate) then it could definitely be termed a blog. 

Blog or no blog, I'm still left wondering why no comments?  I'm willing to bet they'd get a bunch of traffic from that younger audience that every paper in America is pursuing.  They might even get their average reader age south of the AARP line.

Measure Your Personal Brand

Want to know what your personal brand ranking is online?  Check out this calculator at Career Distinction and see how you do.  Like most online calculators this one really takes something complex and simplifies it, but it's still a nice way to get a general idea of how extensive your personal brand is online.

If you have a low ranking and want to raise it I have a couple of suggestions that might help:

• Start a blog and stick to it.  Success will not happen overnight, but over time you'll find yourself being referenced more and more often.  I know, most people don't like to write and don't feel they have time to do it.  Here's the dirty little secret about blogs: you don't have to write much if you don't want to.  Simply share links to resources, stories, columns, data, etc. that you find interesting. You're sharing your knowledge and people respect that.  And don't be intimidated by the technology because services like Typepad are as easy to use as Microsoft Word and cost next to nothing to use.
   
• Comment on blogs that are relevant to your industry/career. Comments are indexed by search engines so you will be riding the coattails of others within your industry.  Obviously you'll also get the attention of anyone reading that blog and so your expertise will be on display to your core audience.

Cross posted on LowderEnterprises.com

If You Don't Believe Me Then Believe Smitty's Readers

A little while back I wrote that Esbee's Life in Forsyth is the best blog in Winston-Salem or about Winston-Salem.  It seems that the readers of Smitty's Notes, THE online resource for all things related to having fun in Camel City, agree with me.  They voted Life in Forsyth the best blog and a blog I'd not yet heard of, alphabitch.org, came in second.  Yours truly pulled in an honorable mention along with Otterblog, UrbanPlanet (The NC Triad) and JoeJon.

Since I didn't even know that Smitty was running the contest I'll have to thank whoever voted for me since it wasn't me.  If I'd known about it I'd have had every living or dead being I know stuff the ballot box, but alas my chance to behave like a Chicago mayor has come and gone.

NIMBY, Local Government & Real Estate: The Best of Blogging

A lot of times, okay most of the time, comments on blog posts are more entertaining than edifying.  People call each other names, make fun of each others politics and generally act like third graders.  However, every once in a while an intelligent conversation breaks out and seems to justify the existence of these things.  For a perfect example of what I'm talking about check out this post at a Little Urbanity. 

The original post is a reaction of David Wharton, the author of the blog, to an article in Yes!Weekly in which the reporter draws a correlation between campaign contributions from real estate developers and the approval of suburban "sprawl" projects in Geensboro.  In the comments a very well informed discussion breaks out about urban planning and the effects that federal transportation subsidies and other factors have on development.  They also discuss if people really want to live in the suburbs and if there's really a market for walkable, mixed-use communities.  It's a really good read and I highly recommend you check it out.  Here's the link again.

Member Blogs Create New Issues for Non-Profit Managers

Cara Michele Forrest is a member of the Homeless Prevention Coalition of Guilford County and also happens to be a blogger whose blog, Chosen Fast, deals mostly with her advocacy for the homeless.  A link to her blog was included in her profile on the HPCGC's member page, but now that someone has complained to the president of the coalition about her blog they've decided to remove the link.  Cara Michele shares the email exchange between herself and the Coalition's president Karen Bridges here, but I'm pasting most of it below for convenience:

—– Original Message —–

From: Cara Michele
To: Karen Bridges
Cc: Mike Weaver ; Travis Compton ; Nancy McLean ; Craig Thomas ; Elizabeth Hedgecock ; Shanna Reece
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 4:57 PM
Subject: Re:

Karen,

The only place that my blog is linked on the HPCGC web site is on the member list. My blog is my web site for the homeless advocacy that I’m involved in. Other members have their web sites listed, as well. Is my web site the only one that is a problem? What was the nature of the complaint? If you want my web site removed from the member list, then you can remove it and provide an explanation for why you’ve chosen to do so.

Please be advised the all correspondence will be blogged.

Michele Forrest
ChosenFast.com

—– Original Message —–

From: Karen Bridges
To: Cara Michele
Cc: Mike Weaver ; Travis Compton ; Nancy McLean ; Craig Thomas ; Elizabeth Hedgecock ; Shanna Reece
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 5:27 PM
Subject: Re:

You are the only individual member who has a personal link on the HPCGC website, all others are service providers. And yes, your website is the only one that is causing problems. The HPCGC website is not the place to share your personal opinions and thoughts, particularly ones that are contrary to the success of the Coalition. No one’s trying to stop your advocacy, Michele, but you need to use the proper channels.

kb

—– Original Message —–
From: Cara Michele
To: Karen Bridges
Cc: Mike Weaver ; Travis Compton ; Nancy McLean ; Craig Thomas ; Elizabeth Hedgecock ; Shanna Reece
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 5:56 PM
Subject: Re:

Karen,

I may be the only individual member who has a web site.  There shouldn’t be a penalty for that.

I am an advocate for the homeless in Greensboro. If telling their stories and telling the truth about homelessness is “contrary to the success of the Coalition,” then you have a much bigger problem than my blog.

Has it occurred to any of you that I’m not the enemy? If you’ve actually read my blog, then you know that I haven’t written about the most damaging things that I know. I’m not your enemy. Perhaps you should stop acting as though I am. I thought that the goal here was to serve homeless people. Why don’t we stop the pointless posturing and backside-covering and shananigans? I’m weary of it.

Michele

This case points up an interesting new conundrum for non-profits: what to do when a member or volunteer has a blog, links to it and then other constituents find it offensive?  There will always be disagreement between the various constituencies within a non-profit's community but until recently there wasn't really a platform that individuals could use to easily get their viewpoint out there in the public domain for all to see.  Now you have blogs (and wikis and Facebook profiles, etc.) that individual members can include as part of their contact info.  What kind of policy, if any, should a non-profit have to deal with this?

Ed Cone, another Greensboro blogger, posted about Cara Michele's dust-up and in his post and in the comments to his post there are some interesting points made about the appropriateness of Cara's blog in this case in particular, but those same points also highlight the considerations that should be made when thinking about whether or not a member should be allowed to link to her individual blog.  From Ed's post:

Bridges is correct that the Coalition site is not the place for Michele's personal opinions and thoughts, and if Michele was using the Coalition site thusly the HPCGC would have a legitimate complaint.

But such is not the case -- Michele merely links to her own site as part of her personal identification, much as member organizations include links to their sites.

Ed's absolutely right.  While the coalition owns its own site and should police it, if one of their members chooses to link to her blog as her form of identification then they should honor that.  In his comments, Ed continues:

It seems to me that there are two issues in play here.

One involves politics within the community dedicated to helping the homeless and fighting homelessness.

The second involves reasonable standards and expectations for links and other details of online publishing.

The second issue is one where common ground might more easily be found, and one that applies in a far broader context than the HPCGC and its members.

The politics drove the second subject into public view, but perhaps the issue of linking can be resolved independently of the political particulars -- and any such resolution can provide a context for addressing some of the politics as well.

Again, Ed's correct.  Invariably non-profit's will have members, board members, volunteers who don't see eye to eye and in some cases literally dislike each other.  The key for those running the non-profit is to create a level playing field and to treat all constituents fairly and equitably.  Along those lines the proper approach for the Coalition would have been to inform the complaining parties that Cara was allowed to link to her blog because that is part of her contact information and they are welcome to do the same.

This case is fairly straightforward in that Cara Michele's blog is applicable to her role on the Coalition.  It may not have been as straightforward if her blog had been about her pets, her travel plans, etc.  Still, as a policy it would probably be best to just say that blogs are the same as a person's email address or a company's website: it's a point of contact and if that person wants her blog to be her point of contact, no matter how inane that blog may be, then that's her choice.

Cross posted at Lowder Enterprises, LLC

Comment on a Blog and Help Type a Book

There's an initiative afoot to kill two birds with one stone: secure websites and get a book written in the process.  Here are the details from CNN:

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have discovered a way to enlist people across the globe to help digitize books every time they solve the simple distorted word puzzles commonly used to register at Web sites or buy things online.

The word puzzles are known as CAPTCHAs, short for "completely automated public Turing tests to tell computers and humans apart." Computers can't decipher the twisted letters and numbers, ensuring that real people and not automated programs are using the Web sites...

Instead of wasting time typing in random letters and numbers, Carnegie Mellon researchers have come up with a way for people to type in snippets of books to put their time to good use, confirm they're not machines and help speed up the process of getting searchable texts online...

Many large projects are under way now to digitize books and put them online, and that's mostly being done by scanning pages of books so that people can "page through" the books online. In some cases, optical character recognition, or OCR, is being used to digitize books to make the texts searchable.

But von Ahn said OCR doesn't always work on text that is older, faded or distorted. In those cases, often the only way to digitize the works is to manually type them into a computer.

Von Ahn is working with the Internet Archive, which runs several book-scanning projects, to use CAPTCHAs for this instead. Internet Archive scans 12,000 books a month and sends von Ahn hundreds of thousands of files that are images that the computer doesn't recognize. Those files are downloaded onto von Ahn's server and split up into single words that can be used as CAPTCHAs at sites all over the Internet.

If enough users decipher the CAPTCHAs in the same way, the computer will recognize that as the correct answer...

Von Ahn approached the Internet Archive to get help in developing the new system, but it has not been put into use yet. Theoretically, von Ahn said the new book-based CAPTCHAs could be used in place of any CAPTCHA currently on the Web.

A Tale of Two (Allegedly) Drunk Local TV Guys

Several weeks ago a local TV morning anchor, Tolly Carr, was arrested and charged with drunk driving and allegedly hitting and killing a pedestrian in Winston-Salem.  Carr is employed by Winston-Salem based WXII 12 and the day after the accident the station released a video statement from GM Hank Price and covered it as a straight news item.  This past weekend an entertainment reporter for WKRN in Nashville, TN was pulled over and arrested for drunk driving and WKRN's GM, Mike Sechrist, announced it on his blog.

To me these two cases offer an interesting juxtaposition of two local news outlets that are using online media in fairly different ways.  The video statement from WXII is old school, one way information flow.  WKRN's blog allows for comments which means that you have the new school "dialogue" happening.  If you read the comments on the WKRN post, and there are lots of them, you see a pretty strong debate break out about drunk driving in general, and even accusations that the station is giving their man special treatment by not putting his mugshot on the air.  Because that debate is happening on his site Sechrist can address those comments directly.  Even though WXII did put Carr's mugshot on the air they (and the rest of the local media) were accused of favoritism in their handling of Carr's story, but since it was on local blogs and not on their site and WXII was absent from the debate.

In a strange twist to the Carr story a rumor started floating around that he had commited suicide.  The managing editor of the Winston-Salem Journal wrote about it on his blog from the perspective of a newsroom that was inundated with calls asking if the rumors were true.  Again, nary a word from WXII to be found.  I have the feeling that if similar rumors were to crop up in Nashville you'd hear about it directly from the GM on his blog.

WXII is putting its toe in the water by hosting three or four blogs, but some of them don't allow comments and with the exception of the sports blog they aren't updated very often.  More importantly the blogs are merely an extension of their on-air personalities (anchor, weather, sports) and don't give the audience a look behind the camera at the station.  I personally think that the power of blogs and of most new media lies in the ability to draw an audience in and make its members feel like part of the "family."  While GMs, managing editors, and publishers traditionally view themselves as behind the scenes bosses they are in fact the true representative of the organization.  They represent the entire organization and are in the best position to articulate the goals, concerns and direction of the station, paper, magazine, etc.  By communicating consistently with their audience they draw them into their world, make them feel like they have a stake in the station/newspaper/magazine's future and ultimately keep them as a viewer/reader.  And when bad things happen they have a line of communication directly with the audience, which means they can deal with the fallout without having to go through intermediaries and they can nip rumors in the bud.

The bottom line is that all media organizations are businesses, and the GM is kind of like a CEO.  That's why a recent article in Wired titled "The See Through CEO" is applicable to them.  In the article the author cites cases where companies have benefited from their leaders communicating directly with their customers, writing openly about all things related to the company including the good, the bad and the ugly.  In each of those cases the companies have grown and prospered and the CEOs attribute that growth to their openness. 

Because media companies are already so visible, and because local TV news folks are uniquely intimate to their audience (more than a few people think of local news anchors as a part of their extended family), then it stands to reason that more openness could be particularly effective for them.  They put food on the table by selling advertising.  Advertisers are interested in audience size and demographics, and if by embracing online tools that encourage dialogue they also increase loyalty, then GMs are doing what they're paid to do: increasing their bottom line.

In defense of Mr. Price at WXII there aren't many media types who are doing this yet. If he needs a first hand account of a blog's utility he need only walk down the street to talk to Ken Otterbourg at the Winston-Salem Journal or pick of the phone and call John Robinson over at the Greensboro News & Record.  While I doubt they would be able to give him quantifiable numbers showing that their blogs have contributed directly to the bottom line, I'm fairly certain they would tell him that their guts tell them they're doing the right thing and that their efforts will pay off in the near future.  And of course that's the other thing GMs are paid for: their gut instincts. 

The People, Yes. Yes!

A friend of mine in Greensboro, Sean C