Real Life, Real News, Real Crap?

Jim Romenesko's Media Memos has a lengthly memo purportedly from Enquirer Editor Tom Callinan about a new program hitting Gannett newspapers and how it specifically affects the Enquirer. This plan, "Real Life, Real News" amounts to basically human interest market driven news. What we are going to get now is giving readers what they want, or say they want. We therefore can expect to get less of hard news. The marketing study part of this program indicates a gender and age gap. It seems that all that means to the Enquirer Management is that we (the readers) want to make the Metro section in a Tempo part deux. This except sums up what they are going to do to change their age gap:

Real Life source: As we developed a product aimed at 25-34s, we created an e-mail list of several groups of young professionals and creatives and invited them for several get-acquainted discussions over the summer. The discussions reinforced much of what we have talked about - they are interested in local news about neighborhoods and things unique to Cincinnati, places to go and things to do, goods things happening in the community, news from their neighborhoods, restaurants, local music, travel ,careers, health and fitness, arts and culture. They want to see and hear from their own generation, not what they see as our out-of-touch critics. And, they talked about looking forward, not to the past (complaints about the "riots" obsession…and, Pete Rose - many of them were born after the Big Red Machine days).

We are now going to get Dateline NBC and People Magazine in the pages of the Enquirer. If we young professionals care about what our politicians are doing I guess we are just shit out of luck. Charlie Luken, Simon Leis, and Phil Burress can do what ever the hell they want, but since the Enquirer seems to think "we" want to burry our heads in the sand, I guess we get the same crap you can watch on every Local TV station, FLUFF. Callinan tried to say this was not fluff, but it is. It is human interest gone amuck.

A second negative appears to be an abandonment of the City of Cincinnati. The suburbs will now be the focus of the paper. Every example from the memo dealt with suburban issues. The Enquirer seems to be following the ways of WLW.

The only positive thing from this memo is the realization of the importance of the internet and an increase in special content for the internet. What that exactly entails was not detailed. The Enquirer has recently increased the number of times a day they are updating the front page of their website with news stories. This is a positive step. It would be nice to do this on the weekends too, but they would need to hire some new to do it, or just break down and hire me to do a blog (cough, cough).

More from Gannett.

UPDATE: Dr. Andrew Cline at Rhetorica has a very different view on this "new" program.

Feeding Racists

Talk about generous, according to an inside source Cincinnati Tomorrow fed Nate Livingston and Amanda Mayes tonight at a special "After-Five Walk." It appears that Nate and Amanda were using the computers at Media Bridges and after the CincyTomorrow event there ended the word was passed in the building that they had a bunch of food left over and the first people to partake were Nate and Amanda. Doesn't that violate the boycott? Doesn't eating the "white man's" food somehow taint Nate? Is Kabaka Oba going to have to "purify" Nate from the "devil's" food?

ISP Problems

My cable Internet connection is giving me fits, so my posting will be intermittent. I am skipping my VigPol column this week. I apologize to my readers for that, and I promise to be back next week.

Local "Big" Media Blog

WCPO's Dennis Janson is trying his hand at blogging. DJ has in the past done commentary on WCPO's news broadcasts, but now is attempting it with his blog: Spare Change. So far there is only one post from last Friday. The post was purely commentary on the "No-Call List" which is about to take effect, but is being challenged in court.

Some criticism: first Dennis needs to loose the "centering" in his posting, that makes his post look like a poem. It might be poetry to DJ's ears, but it will not be taken that way by most readers. The more troubling problem is that this is written as broadcast copy, right down to his tag line at the end. Blogging is a literary form of journalism. Broadcast journalism conventions come across even more hokey in text form than on air. I hope Dennis revised his method and writes to a reading audience, not to one watching him. I also am disappointed that there is not more than one post. The element of blogging that makes it fun is the timeliness to it. If he is going to hand his copy to the web editor once a day, they might want to not call it a blog. He might want to provide reference links to what he is talking about, that adds depth to a blog post, and is generally part of the "standard" format for blogs. I welcome the addition of a professional outlet's blog, but at this point it needs more in it before I can even blogroll it, which is something he needs. Blogs are built on networking, and DJ's blog lacks any links to other blogs.

In light of the SacBee controversy of newspaper blogs, I wonder what kind of editing Dennis is subject to. So far it sounds like he will be edited to a degree, but until more posts arise, we will have to wait and see.

Midpoint Music Festival

This is what happens when local people put on a local event with the cooperation from nearly all corners of the community, success. 30,000 people!!! I was one of those partake in MMF. I was impressed with both the turnout and the quality of the music I heard. I hope this event returns next year and I hope the national media takes notice. If the city would put the 100K earmarked for John Elkington instead into hiring a PR person to market MMF to the national market, we might double the turnout.

Being Made an Example?

Could Judge Patrick Dinkelacker have picked a worse target than an alleged rape victim to make an example for those who refuse to testify in court after filing complaints against people? His actions have been protested now by presumably rape victims support groups. Dinkelacker could have done a service to society by not picking this person to jail, while dismissing the case against the accused. I am concerned as to why this woman who go this far and now choose not to testify against her alleged attacker. Either she is being threatened or she made up the whole incident. Either way this is just a mess, and Dinkelacker's actions do nothing to help the situation.

The Fallible Peter Bronson

Greg Mann of Notes from Ground Level takes Peter Bronson to task for his column bashing the Ohio Supreme Court's Ruling on Conceal-Carry. Mr. Mann exposes Peter's ignorance of the law and even more his ignorance of the "Conservative" ideological view on interpretation of the law, which is generally how the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in upholding the existing law banning the carrying of concealed firearms. Peter seems to not like to hold true to his conservative values when they conflict with a need to appease a core constituency of the "conservative movement."