802 Online

Yay! Darren Allen has resumed posting, after a three-week hiatus. 

Well, we finally did it. This week, we've launched our new online personals. It's a change that's been a long time coming.

There are actually two sites. Two 2 Tango is for I-Spys, relationships, dates, flirts, etc. Hot 2 Trot is for "full-on kink." Whatever that is.

I haven't test-driven the site yet, and I probably won't use it, seeing as how I've already started my little fam. But here are some features users can expect:

• fast and easy photo downloads — you can post up to 5
• online and in-print personals
• the ability to search I Spys by gender, location and date
• creative, quirky Vermont-specific profile questions, like "American Flatbread or Dominos?" "Casket or cremation?" "Savoy or Netflix?" "Starbucks or Capitol Grounds?" And on the Hot 2 Trot site... "Feathers or hot wax?"

You can see the site and post profiles or I Spys for free, but if you want to respond, you'll need to buy a membership. That means ponying up $15 a week, $30 for 30 days or $60 for 90 days. Jess, our Business Development Director, says we'll still be using theold classifieds system for awhile, but it seems like this new onlinething is a lot more fun and functional.

Questions? Feedback? Comment here, or email [email protected].

So Gannett, the parent company of the Burlington Free Press, is pushing a new distribution system in Mississippi. The free alt. weekly Jackson Free Press reports on it, specifically on how their new system is geared toward stifling the competition.

JFP writer publisher Todd Stauffer outlines the problem:

Called The Distribution Network of Central Mississippi (TDN), TheClarion-Ledger’s service offers merchants in the area a special12-cubby plastic box to put in front of their stores, thus eliminatingthe “clutter” of individual boxes and racks—weekly papers, monthlymagazines, real estate guides, classifieds shoppers—that we findoutside a lot of gas stations and retailers around town. There’s asolution for grocery stores and other retailers in town who have aproliferation of racks inside their stores, too.

Of course, there’s a catch. In order to get the rack, the retailersigns a one-year contract giving The Clarion-Ledger/Gannett Co. theexclusive right to control the display of free-distributionpublications. Once you become a TDN stop, no one—including the JacksonFree Press—is allowed to put their own rack or box on the premises,even if it’s already one of our popular drops. We’re evicted.

That is, we’re evicted unless we pay for the “right” to place ourselvesin their rack—to distribute in places where we used to distributesimply with the permission of the manager or owner.

I understand that the Mafia in New York City has a similar system.

JFP Editor Donna Ladd speaks up in the comments thread:

This is actually worse than "typical," mrtha. This is a bald attemptto evict us from our distribution spots. It's truly amazing howdesperate they are. I would suggest doing real reporting if they're worried about dropping circulation. Be a good newspaper. It's not brain surgery.

However, this is a very serious threat for locally owned media. Goliathdoesn't have any moral center as far as I can tell, and will stomp outanyone they can. I urge you all to take this very seriously and speakup if you value local media. We'll be back in touch shortly withspecific ways you can help, but the main thing now is to Spread. The.Word. The people of Jackson need to know just how far thismega-corporation is willing to go to squelch competition.

Wonder if the BFP has something like this in mind?

Clark Hoyt thinks so. From a story in the Stanford Daily:

Clark Hoyt, the Washington, D.C. Bureau chief for the Knight Riddernewspaper chain, painted a dim picture of the state of Americanjournalism during his talk last night, asserting that the mainstreammedia must be vigilant to remain relevant in the increasinglycompetitive industry of information.

“Twenty-first century American journalism is at a crisis,” said Hoyt,the keynote speaker for the annual John S. Knight lecture, held atKresge Auditorium. “We’ve got to be that defined voice of reason thatpeople can use.”

Or, put another way, people need a defined voice of reason, and newspapers and traditional media want to be that voice. Whether or not they can retain that position is basically up to them and how fast and how well they can adapt.

I got an email today, subject head GOOD DAY MY FRIEND:

I am NZE DUDU a top management staff in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and I head a seven-mantender's board in charge of Contract Awards and Payments Approvals. I came to know of you in my search for a reliable and reputable person to handle a very confidential transaction that involves the transfer of a huge sum of money to a foreign account.

Obviously this is a big fat scam. But apparently there are people who fall for these things, including John Worley, a Christian pyschotherapist from Groton, Mass. If you wonder how the hell anybody could take this kind of bait, read Mitchell Zuckoff's article on Worley from last week's New Yorker. It's fantastic.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms!  Here's a link to my essay this week about how our family is celebrating Ann-Elise (Mom) today, and me (Aimo) on Aimo Day.

When's Aimo Day? you ask. Not sure yet. I'm thinking about having it on the first Sunday after Labor Day. My other choice is March 4th, the only day of the year that's a command. Not that I'm trying to command anybody. I just like the idea of marching forth.

And yes, Graham made that sign all by himself. He's very advanced for a 3-month-old.

Have you been hearing this term bandied about by all the bandiers lately and you don't know what it means? Why not ask a ninja? (Thanks, Bill).

This Colorado "paper" strives to be the primary newssource for a community of 360,000 people. The twist? There's no print edition. It's entirely online.

Amy Gahran writes about conversational media at the Poynter Institute, and I've been following a discussion she's prompted about newspaper blogs — i.e. why have them? It's a question I thought a lot about as I was bringing 802 Online to Seven Days last year, and it's something I return to often as I think about how to expand our online content here.

Gahran solicits comments from journos. One of the most interesting was from Laura Fries, web editor of Atlanta-based alt. weekly Creative Loafing. Laura writes, "I think it goes without saying that sometimes the excitement over a newblog comes before the work of figuring out what exactly the blog shouldbe. I created this set of bullet point guidelines to help guide editors and writers through the process of setting up a focused new blog."

If you're thinking about starting a blog, read Fries' guidelines. She makes some excellent points.

I bring this up because I know Vermont newspapers are interested in blogs. In fact, all of the media folks on the  traditional media panel I attended for Leadership Champlain on Tuesday talked about how excited they are about the Internet, and the possibilities it offers for journalists to experiment.

I'm a big fan of online experimentation, but I'm also interested in honest feedback about how those experiements are going. We've gotta learn something, after all.

I just scrolled through my blogroll to take a look at the various newspaper blogs around the state, and I'm wondering how people think these experiments are going?

Hall Monitor, for example. Darren Allen's much-balleyhooed blog about the statehouse. Well the legistlature ended the session yesterday. With all those last-minute deals, you'd think he would have written something, but he hasn't posted since April 26. What gives, Darren? We miss you.

49 School Street, the Stowe Reporter's news blog, hasn't been updated since April 28. Are readers not responding?

Rutland Herald Readers' Roundtable lists 5 contributors, but only 3 of them have posted in 06, one of them only once. And nobody since May 3. Is anybody reading this?

Times Argus Reader Roundtable lists four bloggers, one of whom is the TA editor, but it's almost entirely made up of posts by Rama Schneider.

Montreal Now, Jim Lowe's Montreal blog, has always been updated infrequently, but it also looks amateurish. What's with the weird paragraph breaks? I mean, if you're going to spend the time and money to have a blog, you ought to at least make the effort to learn how blogs should look and work.

Compare it, for example, with TA writer Heather Aja's Get Real. Now that's a blog. I don't read it often — it's about reality TV, and I don't have a TV — but when I click on her site, I immediately see that she gets blogging.

Much of this is about the RH/TA, I know. I don't mean to pick on them, but they launched all this stuff, and I think it's time for a conversation about how it's going.

One traditional media personality who's launched a fairly successful blog is VPR commentator Philip Baruth, who publishes Vermont Daily Briefing. Philip's site looks like a blog. It works like a blog (albeit without comments). He reads other blogs, links to them, and comments on them, thereby inserting himself into the blogosphere.

Of course, Philip is doing that on his own, independent of any media organization. Maybe that's why it works? Or maybe not. Feel free to share your thoughts, and to comment on our 7 Days blogs, too. Like Shot in the Dark — I like the photos, but does anybody use that? 

...for anonymous web postings. This one was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.