July 2006 Archives
Woody Allen is the newspaper of film directors: His audience is dying off.
-- Jeff Jarvis
It may even fit backwards: Newspapers are the Woody Allen of Media.
Tags: Buzz Machine | Woody Allen | Jeff Jarvis | Newspapers
Katie Kolt, one of the knoxnews online producers, has started a blog on knoxnews called "Linked."
It's described as discussing "her new ties: to Knoxville, to her fiance and to the 'real world.'" She got engaged in the last couple of weeks and it's sort of about starting life as an adult, first job out of college; living in a new city, getting married. Give it a read. Leave her a comment.
Tags: Blog | Bridal | Wedding Planning
Steve Outing and Howard Owens have some engaging thoughts on how far we've come -- or haven't -- that was sparked by revisiting what newspaper online folk were saying more than a decade ago on Outings' once bustling online-news list. (I still subscribe to it, but it's much quieter now than in those heady days.)
Howard came up with an excellent 10-point list of how newspaper are not getting it done.
And Outing's man point is we fret when we should just do:
It doesn't seem to me that we've come far enough along as an industry to make a smooth transition from the old news business models to the new ones that will need to supplant those revenue streams that are beginning to dry up. Today's discussions within the industry have some similarities to those of a decade ago.
They're right. There is an eerie so 1995-96 sound in the air.
Tags: Newspapers | Interactive Media | New Media
We took a visit to Biltmore Estate on Sunday. Our boys had never been. Mark was the official photographer.
Visiting the North Carolina county I mainly grew up in, I was struck by how far-reaching the headlines of about population trends can be.
The signs were everywhere -- in Spanish -- in Asheboro, the county seat of Randolph County. Asheboro is a city south of Greensboro of about 25,000 residents in a large rural county of 138,400 people scattered across 788 square miles. (Census qucik facts)
It's not a "border" town or South Florida, but the Hispanic population is exploding.
Tags: Hispanic | Latino | Kenan-Flagler Business School | Kenan-North Carolina
Howard Owens has some interesting thoughts on local search and self-serve advertising models.
Lots of people see local search as easy money, the last Internet landscape yet to be conquered. But in truth the market is already fragmented online and off-line. And advertisers that have not already embraced Google's self-service ad tools may just be disclined to become advertising DIYers. Instead of conquer, think cultivation.
Tags: Local Search | Howard Owens
Traditional media, newspapers in particular, are struggling mightily to attract younger readers.
Very little has worked to date. The average print newspaper reader is 55 and getting older. Even newspaper on Web sites, where the average age is younger, the average age has become trending up.
Beyond the headlines of a new Pew Internet and American Life Project study released this week are interesting trends that may hold some clues for Big Media. The study suggests news content is extremely important to younger readers, but they are looking beyond traditional media to meet their needs.
Consider a few bullet points from the study:
Tags: newspapers | blogosphere | Pew Research Center | | bloggers
I learned today that a screen grab from KnoxNews was used last night on The Word segment of The Colbert Report. Here's the video from Comedy Center's Web Site.
The segment was about "It's time for management and labor to come together as management to exploit labor."
Don't know how they came to find our version of this state AP story, but, hey,that's OK.
Thanks to Randy Neal at KnoxViews for noticing this!
(You can click the photo to see a larger version of the image above.)
Tags: Colbert Report | Stephen Colbert
Here are a couple photos that Mark took while at his grandparents house in North Carolina.
Photos
MEDIALIFE has a nice, short piece on the "hotbeds of experimentation" in the newspaper industry and some of the interesting things going on. Here's a graph:
"I really think one of the biggest challenges for us in the newspaper industry is to figure out how to aggregate better, and that's really counter-intuitive for us old print guys. You have to make peoples' lives easier and more effective, and the only way to do that is to make web surfing easier and more effective for them. The sites that are most successful on the web are the ones that aggregate."
-- Ken Sands, online publisher, Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash.
And separately, journalism educator Mindy McAdams points to one successful looking experiment in Bakersfield.
Tags: Newspapers | Media | Innovation | New Media
Tennessee shapes up as a key battleground state again this year with control of the Senate in the balance.
A Tennessee seat is in play because Senate Major Leader Bill Frist said he wouldn't seek re-election when he ran for the office (he didn't say at the time he had his eye on running for president, but, hey, nobody thought to ask).
Three "formers" (former House members Van Hilleary and Ed Brysant. and former 'Nooga Mayor Bob Corker) are duking it out to fly the Republican flag while Harold Ford Jr., who has token opposition in the Democratic primary, will have to have the political ring skills of Muhammad Ali to become the first black elected to the Senate from the Old South since Reconstruction.
We've posted podcasts with all four on KnoxNews and if you're trying to get a quick take on the majors, listen up: Ed Bryant, Bob Corker, Van Hilleary, and Harold Ford. If you're don't do Windows Media Player, you can get at them from RSS, Yahoo Podcasts or iTunes.
Tags: Politics | Senate Race | Elections | Campaign
I wrote about the Cottars in February and I got an email today that says they are breaking up in November.
Dang!
Thanks to David Ogilvie for the heads up.
LifeHacker did a very positive post on KeePass. I've been using this password database program for awhile and I really like it as well -- and it's free.
Try it!
I notice there is a slghtly new version available.Think I'll go off and update. Later.
My brother Brent Lail discovers visitors have arrived at his new house in North Asheboro. (Click photo to see larger version.)
Here Brent and his mom are hanging by his pool. He has a pool table as well. (Click photo for larger version.)
Since an Apple store just opened in Knoxville, I guess someone can now write the Great American novel there or at least their resume -- or maybe just look for work like Isobella Jadeco.
Jadeco is a short girl (5'2") trying to make it in a tall girl's game -- modeling. She lives out of a suitcase and since she doesn't have an Internet connection, she's been writing a novel and pitches at a New York Apple store, so says fishbowlNY
You get used to NASCAR drivers mentioning sponsors in interviews, but usually they only dish fellow competitors, not competing products to their sponsors.
But it happened twice last night after the Daytona race. First, No Fear's Boris Said, the pole sitter and who led late, hyped SoBe by saying buy it instead of that "Red Bull stuff" and a line like "drink more cases so we can run more races."
Tags: NASCAR | SoBe | Daytona | Fox | Jeff Gordon | Tony Stewart
