Shoot it up
Early in my photojournalism career a Sacramento Union photographer once gave me some simple advice: get a hold of all the film you can and shoot it up. But as I’ve gotten back into photography, even when shooting digital which isn’t constrained by the limits of a 36 exposure roll of film, I’ve found it’s just sometimes easier to say to yourself: nah, I’ll shoot it next time…
You don’t make good pictures that way.
Tonight as the midwest-grade thunder cracked and lightning lit the sky up, I finally remembered those words and decided, no, it was going to be this time and I headed out into the rain.
I’m thinking that’s how you make good pictures.
Media News, late to the party and underdressed too
While I hesitate to pick up on anything with Media News stink on it, if you haven’t seen the memo posted to Romenesko about Media News’ new online “direction” it’s worth a read.
I won’t repost the whole thing here but I will pull out the interesting bits…
We will begin to move away from putting all of our newspaper content online for free. Instead, we will explore a variety of premium offerings that apply real value to our print content….
Charging for content is of course is all in vogue these days and in some cases might be smart but I think that if Media News tries it (or rather when Media News tries it) they’ll succeed only in driving traffic (and revenue) to the local (free) alternative media sites. As they sit in the middle of a very technology savvy area I think their risks are crazy high here.
They go on with:
We will begin differentiating our sites from the newspaper and focus on strategies designed to reach younger audiences and extend our reach. The websites, newspaper.com as we call them now, will become a different product. This new site, which we have been calling news.com, will be a regional news site that is actively managed to present breaking news. It will continue to draw a content from the newspaper (but probably in a more abbreviated form), but will also have user-generated content, community involvement and third party content. News.com will continue to serve our existing audience, which spends a lot of time on our sites, and drive significant traffic. They like and depend on our sites for their national and local news. We must not alienate them as we strive to expand our audience and attract younger people and non newspaper subscribers. Obviously, our sites must draw upon the content of the newspaper, but the presentation of that content will be different. News.com will be an entry page to new content offerings, local retail advertising opportunities and premium offerings.
This is the real nugget. I’ve always felt that the newspaper and the “newspaper.com” were different things and so should be handled as different things. Most newspapers today see their web sites as just electronic versions of their print offerings which is (to me) a big part of why many are struggling. Media News looks like they finally want to differentiate the two and I applaud this. They even go so far as to want to take it a bit further (note the distiction in “newspaper.com” and “news.com”).
This is a win but then further down they stumble headlong into 2002.
“We will build a new local utility site (Local.com), which is an ecosystem of local information, resources, user content, shopping guides, and marketplaces.”
Er, a portal? Seriously? In 2009? Good luck with that.
But if throwing back to 1998 wasn’t enough. Then someone had to really stir it up with a rousing game of buzzword bingo:
In order to execute this vision, we have agreed that these new strategies will be done with a template approach, using a menu of common tools and vendors. We will take advantage of the size of MNG to leverage enterprise solutions and build off a common platform that allows for fast implementation and a companywide rollout.
What this means is that they’re gonna build one site and change out the masthead for each affiliated newspaper. Epic fail.
Users know when you’re “phoning it in” and nothing says “half-assed” like identical sites with the word “San Jose” crossed out and the word “San Francisco” in it’s place. Especially in a tech-savvy area like the Bay Area. No, someone was simply buzzword drunk here and, if they really do try to leverage enterprise solutions and build off a common platform they will in reality only deploy mediocracy when they need to be competing against the best and the brightest.
So Media News gets points for the whole differentiating the newspaper and the “news.com” thing but man, they just can’t seem to wait to get their whole face in front of the shotgun with their other ideas. It’s OK though, I figure that in a few years there will be a wicked liquidation sale where I can pick up all kinds of retro newspaper stuff.
About that Kindle thing…
So I got a Kindle 2 for my birthday this year and now that I’ve taken some time to get a feel for it, I thought I’d share my thoughts a bit.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, the Kindle is the latest “e-book reader” from our friends at Amazon.
The attraction of the Kindle is that one can carry a huge number of books around in a package roughly the size of a DVD case with even more books on demand wirelessly from the online Kindle store. This alone is awesome! Add to it bookmarks, highlights, searching and on-the-fly definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary and you’ve got a powerful tool. Throw in syncing across multiple readers (like the new iPhone app) and it becomes almost insanely great.
But not quite…
The prevailing theory — written about at length on the web — is that the Kindle was primarily designed for book readers and this seems to make a lot of sense as the book metaphor is used heavily throughout the device. But what happens when an avid screen reader, a user — like me — who’s already familiar with the digital world, finally decides to, excuse the phrase, re-kindle his book reading?
Well, the result is decidedly mixed.
Accuracy is a fundamental of Journalism…
It’s no secret these days that newspapers are hurting (well, to be more accurate most newspaper companies are hurting, the newspapers they hold are generally still profitable enterprises) and a lot of people have been wondering what it will be like when the newspapers are all gone.
Well hopefully not like this.
Recently when the Sacramento Bee Newspaper Guild entered into concession negotiations with Bee Management, the local TV stations and “alternative media” jumped all over it and gave us all a glimpse into some ugly dystopian universe where the media eschews accuracy for what, speed? pretty pictures? I’m not sure.
First up was local TV station KXTV News10 with their atrocious handling of the whole story. From their end-of-the-world headline, Sacramento Bee Fights for Survival to their cartoonish editing online:
Advertising assistance Cindi Taylor has worked for the paper for ten years. “It’s pretty grim. It’s hard to watch people lose accounts,” Bee advertising assistance Cindi Taylor, who has worked at the Bee for 10 years.
They got so much wrong in their stories that it was laughable especially when a simple look at the Newspaper Guild blog provided far more information and contradicted a lot of what was being reported on TV.
But the negotiation teams weren’t laughing. The garbage stories (one media outlet at one point suggested the Bee was going to lay off over 500 people in the mistaken belief that the California WARN act was triggered at 500 people and not 50) were causing serious problems with advertisers who suddenly believed the Bee was right on the heels of the Rocky Mountain News which published its last edition last week when clearly it is not.
If TV outlets and other news sources can’t even get a media story right, how can they be expected to get anything else right? Yes the Bee gets things wrong on occasion and of course people think the Bee is as incompetent as the next media outlet, but I know these guys — the reporters and editors — and they really take this stuff seriously. They at least try.
If they don’t, who will?
A vacation needing a vacation…
So this year the wife and I decided to go to San Diego for this year’s family “vacation”. I say “vacation” in quotes because as any parent knows, there’s not a whole lot of vacationing that goes on during family vacations. There’s running after kids, who’s got the snacks, honey where are my socks, STOP HITTING ME, turn left here… NO NOT HERE, where’s your boarding pass, I’M HUNGRY!… eh, you get the picture.
We’d originally planned to just hit Sea World and then spend a few days at Legoland when the idea of checking out the USS Midway Museum came up. Since my father-in-law was stationed on it during Vietnam it seemed like a cool idea. Then since Ryan just did a report on it, we tacked on a trip to the Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala. For any readers not in the 4th grade, that would be the Mission in San Diego (and for non California readers, the Missions are a California thing… look ‘em up).
Anyway, here are some notes on each:
Newspapers could actually try online
In the myriad of — mostly misguided — solutions recently offered to save newspapers I’ve yet to see anyone suggest ways for newspapers to simply take better advantage of the situation they’re in. The reality is, tho they pontificate otherwise, newspapers have not really taken advantage of the web and the new medium that it offers. Even today, most newspapers aren’t putting a real effort into online news and that’s leaving them ill prepared for the “secular changes in the industry” that are helping to destroy them.
So here’s my radical idea: get serious about being in the online news space. Stop thinking some rich guy (or rich government) will save you and save yourself. Stop paying lip service to the web and start playing like you mean it. Here’s how:
25 things that may be utter BS…
Ok so there’s this thing making the rounds, especially on Facebook, this whole “25 Things…” bit, where if you’re “tagged” you’re supposed to divulge 25 things about yourself and then, like some new-age chain letter, tag 25 more people.
But as I’m a curmudgeon (ok, there’s #1) I think it’s kinda dorky, but I still wanna play along so here’s my list:
- I can be curmudgeonly (but I already said that, didn’t I).
- I’m Italian, and swear like it too.
- I want a Shelby Cobra. A 427. With glasspacks. I want the neighbors to fear it.
- I love the smell of cordite… and spray paint for that matter.
- I’m afraid of heights.
- I much prefer guidelines than actual rules. So much so that I see little difference in the two.
- I was once an officer in the US Army.
- I’m quite possibly on the PDD spectrum, probably Aspergers.
- I used to be a news photographer but stopped. Now I shoot avidly but am exclusively amateur.
- Sometimes I wear shoes that don’t match… yes in public.
- I don’t have six fingers on my right hand but I still feel like there’s a Spaniard looking for me.
- I’ve jumped out of airplanes (er, with a parachute of course) on several occasions (kinda assumes a parachute, doesn’t it?).
- Like that guy from “Duran Duran”, I should have had more sex in the ’80s.
- I’m socially liberal, fiscally conservative, politically libertarian. Like the GOP… once.
- I once electrocuted my self on a dog fence. Twice. Just to see if it would hurt that much again.
- When I grow up, I want to be a dirty old man. When I’m old and in a home, I’ll have a nurse with a really short skirt, and I’ll drop things a lot.
- I love cartoons. I like Uncle Iroh from Avatar, the Last Airbender the best. Or Donatello.
- If I could pick an island for an island vacation, I’d pick Easter Island (or Gilligan’s, but only if Mary Ann was there… and she was herself from the show, not her like 80-somethin’-year-old now self).
- I’m not left handed either.
- I’ve hacked into computer systems, and gotten paid for it.
- I once joined the Mile High Club all by myself. Maybe it was more than once.
- I speak two languages: English and Bad English.
- To me the only 4 food groups that matter are cookies, pasta, chocolate and soda. That, of course, makes chocolate-chip cookies a twofer.
- I can do a wicked cool Tasmanian Devil imitation, and a pretty good helicopter, and can nail Popeye’s laugh (of course the kids today have no clue who that is).
- I’m 20 years younger than my oldest brother, 10 years younger than my closest sister. Teasing them about how old they are is becoming less funny to me.
So I’m pretty sure these are true, or it could be the medication…
P.S.: I’ll leave the tagging on Facebook…
Adventures in widescreen TV land
Ok, I’m a technical guy. I write code for a living and up until just recently I had a closet full of development machines and whatnots for various projects. I custom coded all the widgets on my web site and do my own server administration… hell I make my own ethernet cables.
But the purchase of my first widescreen TV almost did me in.
Old year’s resolution
So avid readers (all three of you) may remember my one and only New Year’s Resolution from last year: to shoot 10,000 pictures.
Well, I fell a little short of that mark.
In checking I shot 2,211 images with the D80 until it was replaced with the D300 where I shot 4,239 images. The math astute among you will note that this totals a mere 6,450 images which is a hair less than 2007’s count of 6,545. Huh.
Ah but wait. On several occasions I got to shoot with gear on loan from my employer including a D2Hs and the vaunted D3 and according to my Aperture library, those bodies account for 425 images. By the way the Nikon D3, even for the short time I got to shoot with it, easily earned the title of Best Digital Camera Ever… in my humble opinion.
So if I did the 4-place addition right, that’s a grand total of 6,875 images, which is 330 images more than 2007 but well short of 10,000.
So… it still stands, 10,000 images in 2009.
Commodity websites, a Bad Thing
In the Pixar movie The Incredibles, the bad guy, Syndrome, explains his grand plan to Mr. Incredible, “…I’ll sell my inventions so anyone can be a super hero, and when everyone is super,” he adds menacingly, “no one will be.”
I think Syndrome is now working for the newspaper industry.