Kevin Allman

The Rocky Mountain News liveblogs a toddler's funeral

Proving that they're on the cutting edge of social media, the Rocky Mountain News sent reporter Berny Morson to liveblog the funeral of a 3-year-old who was killed by an out-of-control car while he stood in line at an ice cream parlor...

Samples:

family member says marten is with grandmother who died last year. ' marten we loved you,' he says. People sobbing. about 9 hours ago from txt

video shows marten blowing out candles on birthday cake, marten with dog. last images are of headlines. about 8 hours ago from txt

people again are sobbing. rabbi again asks god to give marten everlasting life. about 8 hours ago from txt

family members shovel earth into grave about 7 hours ago from txt

Did this jackass really sit in the back of a funeral home with his Blackberry, text-messaging this to the Internet?!?!?!?

I figure that's good for, oh, about 1000 cancelled subscriptions by tomorrow night. And nationwide headlines.

Write for free!: Huffington Post's massage oasis at the Dem convention

Arianna Huffington and the Huffington Post can't afford to pay the site's bloggers -- it's not part of the business model, don't you know, darling -- but somehow she can dig up the shekels for this:

[W]e've decided to demonstrate that a balanced life is possible even during the most compulsively hectic days in the political calendar. So during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, HuffPost's Living section will offer harried conventioneers -- including delegates and members of the media -- a chance to unplug and recharge at the HuffPost Oasis.

The Oasis will feature complimentary yoga classes, Thai massages, hand massages, mini-facials, healthy snacks and refreshments, music, and a comfortable seating area for lounging and unwinding.

Well, that's one way to make sure you keep getting hand-massaged press for your online company. Marshall McLuhan was right: the medium is the massage.

Anyone at the convention want to keep tabs on which poor overworked beleaguered members of the media are lining up for a free facial and hand massage from Arianna? And are bloggers eligible for Arianna's ministrations, or is it just "delegates and members of the media"?

Write for free!: Critical raves for the Huffington Post's Chicago début

New York Post, Page Six:

JOHN Cusack learned he should stick to acting with his first piece for the Huffington Post Chicago - which was "riddled with more errors than the 2006 Cubs," according to one blogger. Cusack, who was writing about his childhood as a fan of the Cubs, the White Sox, Michael Jordan and Walter Payton, managed to misspell the names of three Cubs players and of playwright Eugene O'Neill. Cusack also erroneously stated that Sammy Sosa played for the '89 Cubs. Finally, the "High Fidelity" star described taking the "express" train to Wrigley Field. There has never been an express to Wrigley. Cusack - whose last two movies, "Grace Is Gone" and "War, Inc.," were both anti-war bombs - also described how he would "scrape together $2.50" to go to a baseball game. "Cusack grew up in a massive house on Sheridan Road," said another reader of the Beachwood Reporter Web site. "It's slightly disingenuous to say he had to 'scrape' together $2.50. I'm thinking that wasn't an issue."

Gawker, in a piece called "Celebutards: John Cusack's Love Letter To Chicago Sports Is Worst Celebrity Blog Post Ever Written":

Last week the Say Anything actor and Hilary Duff mentor wrote a 732-word celebrity blog post commemorating the launch of Huffington Post Chicago -- hey wait I thought the internet meant the end of 'placeness'!? -- that contained somewhere between eight and infinity errors. Yeah, and it was about his childhood....

If no one at Huffington Post is reading this shit — at least not closely enough to catch a misspelling of the name Michael freaking Jordan — why are we expected to?

Defamer also has more.

Oh, well. At least Cusack didn't plagiarize it!

Write for free!: Froma Harrop on the Huffington Post

I missed this editorial from last December, in which syndicated columnist Froma Harrop takes apart Arianna Huffington's electronic-sweatshop business model:

Paying bloggers is “not our financial model,” The Huffington Post’s co-founder, Ken Lerer, told USAToday. What a profitable business that must be.

The Huffington Post is a popular liberal blog site named for Arianna Huffington, a pundit and power broker in the celebrity-industrial complex. Huffington is also very smart. After all, she has 1,800 contributors typing their little fingers off for no money, while sending the site’s ad revenue and $10 million in funding into other pockets.

The concept is ingenious: Huffington gives her Hollywood pals a stage on which to strut their political opinions. (Few newspapers care what Alec Baldwin thinks about Iran.) The armies of ordinary scriveners are paid in trickle-down glamour. It’s Blogging with the Stars....

Great piece, well worth a read. Go Froma!

Write for free!: Not everyone in Chicago is thrilled with the Huffington Post

Steve Rhodes of The Beachwood Reporter seems as unthrilled with the new Huffington Post Chicago as I am, and his disenchantment made the front page of Romenesko's Medianews this a.m.

Letters...he gets letters:

From a Beachwood reader:

"I submitted a comment to John Cusack's meandering love letter on the Chicago edition of the Huffington Post about eight hours ago. It hasn't posted yet. I'm wondering if one of the conditions of the pro bono agreement is that no negative comments will be brooked. Or perhaps I shone too bright a light on the lazy (or nonexistent) editing over there. I was not nasty. I simply wondered why Cusack neglected to correctly spell Biittner, Jordan, Chelios, and O'Neill (as in Eugene; I have to admit I also pointed out O'Neill was born in the US, not Ireland). Additionally, Cusack mistakenly wrote Eddie Gaedel pinch-hit for the White Sox and Sammy Sosa was on the '89 Cubs.

"It's no big deal, but it makes me wonder what other comments aren't being published (or taking an ungodly amount of time to post). I completely understand spelling and fact-checking make for uninteresting reading for some (okay, maybe most), but it's got to be more compelling than a bunch of 'OMG, I love Chicago, too!'"

Another reader had the same experience:

"Incidentally, I posted an not-positive comment about Cusack's little Chicago jerk-off piece. It didn't make it on the site, interestingly."

Rhodes notes:

As of this morning the post had 34 comments, all of them positive.

Oddly, all of this seems to contradict Arianna's stated comments policy:

We never censor comments based on political or ideological point of view. We only delete those comments that are abusive, off-topic, use excessive foul language, or include ad hominem attacks.

On another page, the HuffPost goes into more detail:

Huffington Post pre-moderates comments on our blog posts and post-moderates comments on news stories. We never censor comments based on political or ideological point of view. We only delete those comments that include the following transgressions:

• are abusive, off-topic, use excessive foul language
• include ad hominem attacks including comments that celebrate the death or illness of any person, public figure or otherwise
• contain racist, sexist, homophobic and other slurs
• are solicitations and/or advertising for personal blogs and websites
• thread spamming (you've posted this same comment elsewhere on the site
• are posted with the explicit intention of provoking other commenters or the staff at Huffington Post.

Hey, rabble: don't provoke the staff! But there's more:

There are two scenarios for which your comment may not appear...

2. Your comment violated the policy above. We pride ourselves in providing a medium for engaging and thought-provoking stories and encourage our users to speak their minds freely, provided comments fall within our commenting policy. We must respect our writers and protect them from vicious and inflammatory comments. They too are entitled to free speech- the right to share their opinions without being subject to scathing and mean-spirited remarks.

Or, it seems, any negative feedback at all.

It doesn't sound to me like the readers of the Beachwood Reporter were provoking or scathing -- they just found errors on the site, or didn't like what they read and wanted to discuss it.

Now I don't just want to ask Arianna about her business model of not paying her writers -- I want to know more about the site's comment policy. I'd love to ask her -- politely, not provokingly or scathingly -- about all this, but her representative, Mario Ruiz, still isn't returning my phone calls.

Write for free!: Huffington Post Chicago débuts

Since I groused about Arianna Huffington's business model over at Romenesko's Medianews (nutshell: writers work for free while Arianna sells ads), Huffington Post Chicago has made its début. It's the first of many localized sites that Ms. Huffington is planning as online Internet newspapers of sorts, featuring a mix of ruminations from her celebrity pals (Chicago already has essays by John Cusack and Saturday Night Live guy Fred Armisen) and local content gathered from other unpaid sources.

Armisen's contribution isn't likely to dim misty cigar-smoky memories of Mike Royko:

Public transportation is really good in Chicago. Travel tip: to get a nice view of the city, take the Brown Line.

And I love the chocolate made by Vosges, which is based in Chicago. They make these really crazy chocolate bars -- and not the dumb kind of crazy. I mean the brilliant kind of crazy. They actually make a chocolate bar with BACON! Is there anything yummier?

Is Armisen kidding? Is Arianna kidding? I read better, more informative stuff on any neighborhood blog in town. Hell, I read better stuff on the bulletin board outside my building's laundry room. As for Cusack's musings, a blogger calling himself "So-Called Austin Mayor" noted:

Unfortunately, in that short piece, Mr. Cusack misspelled the name of former Cub, Larry Biittner. And he misspelled the name of former Blackhawk, Chris Chelios.

And the HuffPoChi's inaugural post repeatedly misspelled the name of a former member of the Chicago Bulls -- a fella named Michael Jordan.

Michael Freakin' Jordan!

I guess if you don't need to pay writers, you don't need to pay copy editors either.

Right now on the front page of HuffPost Chicago, the writing is more professional. Unfortunately, it's also less original: a writeup of Bernie Mac's funeral and a Cubs story (both taken straight from the AP), and a bunch of links from the Chicago Tribune, the Sun-Times, Chicago Business, and other papers.

In other words: professional newsgathering organizations have paid professional writers to do professional work, and then Arianna comes in, creates links to their creations, and sells ads on her own page. How progressive.

That's not right. That's beyond not right. That's just The Drudge Report with an Eva Gabor accent.

Think she can't do it in your city? Well, she can, and she intends to:

We plan to roll out local versions of HuffPost in dozens of cities. So check out HuffPost Chicago and use the comment section to let us know what you think, what you want more of, what you want less of, and what cities you think should be next.

No, I'll do it here:

1. I think it's shabby, Arianna.
2. More pay.
3. Less ripping off writers.
4. Stay the hell out of New Orleans. We've been ripped off enough.

If you're getting the idea this is personal, it is. I've been hired to consult with Gambit, the alt-weekly here in New Orleans, and I'm working on their Web site, Blog of New Orleans (aka Gambit Daily). We're introducing guest bloggers on the site (bloggers, it should be noted, whose work kicks the shit out of Messrs. Cusack and Armisen) and the first rule was: guest bloggers get paid. (Not much, but they get checks, fill out tax forms, the whole W-9 yards.) I wouldn't be asking them to do it otherwise -- I've been agitating for years against the cruel hoax of "writing for exposure," and I believe what writers do is worth money. And respect.

And speaking of respect: peep out what the progressive HuffPost folk did to Marilyn Ferdinand, one of their many "unpaid citizen journalists" or whatever they call them. Marilyn came across my anti-HuffPo letter and had an experience of her own:

As some of you know, our site is affiliated with The Beachwood Reporter. I went to listen to some panel discussions at the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication conference held last week in Chicago, one of which included Steve Rhodes, the founder and general manager of The Beachwood. Afterwards, Steve, another journalist, and I chatted, and one topic that came up was the advance work The Huffington Post was doing to get writers for its Chicago site. I was not approached, but both of them had been and were asked to work "pro bono," in other words, for free. Arianna Huffington is a multimillionaire, yet she is asking professional journalists to work for free. We all thought this was outrageous. If she wants to give space to unqualified celebrities like Deepak Chopra to write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that's her business. They don't need the money, but they like the visibility....

The Huffington Post-Chicago premiered today. The comments thread under the site's introductory post were very positive, thrilled that Ms. Huffington chose our terrific burg to splash down in. That'll teach New York and Los Angeles who The Second City isn't! I thought I'd like to greet HuffPo a little differently by posting Allman's letter with my own comments. I'm still a registered HuffPo blogger from my brief stint with OfftheBus, so it should have gone up unmolested. It didn't. I watched the "Comments Pending" number carefully, seeing it go up and down and eventually reach zero. Strangely, my post didn't appear. I wrote another post that said HuffPo was censoring my comment, and it didn't appear. I tried another approach and responded to another comment with information that HuffPo doesn't pay its writers. It didn't appear either. I sent a final comment announcing my intention to write about this disgraceful disregard for working people and the censorship that seemed to be underway to ensure a lovefest for HuffPo's entry into the Chicago market.

I don't agree with Marilyn that it's "censorship" -- the Huffington Post is privately owned, and the editors can do whatever they like with the comments. But it's damned amusing that a "progressive" site neither pays its writers nor brooks dissent among the unpaid.

When my letter appeared on Medianews, I heard from a couple of professional journos who said the same thing: "Good for you" and "Oooh, you took on Arianna Huffington." Took her on? What's she going to do, not pay me to not write for her?

So I'll close here by throwing down. I have an interview request in for Arianna with Mario Ruiz, her VP of media relations. We'll see if she'll talk to me for free.

In the meantime, if any professional writers want to join in here, feel free to do so in comments. Let's get this party started. Journalism -- and journalists' jobs -- are already on life support.

DO NOT WRITE FOR THE HUFFINGTON POST FOR FREE.

Plagiarism puts a weekly paper out of business

I've been fascinated by Slate.com music critic Jody Rosen's story, "Dude, You Stole My Article." Rosen discovered that a "Mark Williams," a writer for a small alt-weekly in Texas (its website is now down), the Montgomery County Bulletin, had plagiarized a Jimmy Buffett feature that Rosen had written. Intrigued/pissed off, Rosen decided to dig farther:

Since 2005, the Bulletin has published dozens of stories under Williams' byline that appear to be copied, whole or in part, from other periodicals. Compare the Bulletin's Nov. 4, 2005, Franz Ferdinand piece and this NME review, published five weeks prior; the Bulletin's Steely Dan piece (July 14, 2006) and this article from the Web site All About Jazz (July 4, 2006); the Bulletin's Black Rebel Motorcycle Club featureBoston Globe piece (May 25, 2007); the Bulletin's McKay Brothers articleDallas Observer item (Oct. 19, 2006); and the Bulletin's "God and Country: More Popular Artists Are Now Singing a Spiritual Tune" (Sept. 20, 2007) and the Billie Joe Shaver concert review by Washington Post pop critic J. Freedom du Lac (Sept. 13, 2007). The Eagles piece published in the Bulletin on Dec. 13, 2007 is a nearly word-for-word recapitulation of David Fricke's Rolling Stone review (Nov. 1, 2007). Mark Williams sought inspiration from USA Today for his features on Paul Simon (USA Today version; Bulletin version) and Tom Petty (USA Today version; Bulletin version). The Evanston, Ill.-based blog Pop Matters is the apparent source of articles on Dwight Yoakam (Pop Matters version; Bulletin version) and Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs (Pop Matters version; Bulletin version). And then there's "Crazy About 'Crazy' " (March 2, 2007), Williams' deconstruction of the monster 2006 pop hit by Gnarls Barkley—an article that bears a striking resemblance to "Crazy for 'Crazy'," published six months earlier in Slate.

 

Rosen spoke to the paper's editor, Mike Ladyman, but then Ladyman rabbited and went to ground. After Slate ran Rosen's feature, though, the Bulletin abruptly folded and Ladyman and WIlliams (or, as it appears, Ladyman/Williams) went on a pity-party attack, blaming Rosen for taking their/his mendacity public. From the Houston Press interview with Ladyman:

"It is a low-budget publication. Or was. It’s no longer a publication. I’m quitting. After this Slate article and this is the future of journalism in New York City [sic]. I don’t want any part of it.”

But it was "Williams"' open letter to Jody Rosen that iced this cake. It reads, in part:

It must have taken years of seasoned investigative know-how to push me off my lofty perch. It takes a dogged, intrepid journalist to expose the alleged wrongdoings of a 44-year-old college dropout who drifted from one lousy media job to another for 20 years; it takes courage to debase someone with a mouthful of cut-rate dentures who, up until 2007, lived in his parents’ home for seven years due to near-fatal bouts of clinical depression; it takes a journalist of a certain caliber to torpedo a pathetic hack who has barely squeezed out a living for nearly a decade at seven cents a word....

It is easy to make fun of our little rag, Mr. Rosen -- to call attention to the gaffes and human foibles of a couple of faceless rubes a half a nation away; but, despite your grievances with our publication, I feel that we have done some good in our corner of the world. Through our output of articles over the years, we kept a hateful rogue element of the local Republican Party from taking control of our county library system and ripping the Constitution to shreds; we have reported unblinkingly on the troubled plight of illegal aliens living in our area; we have stood face-to-face with members of the Ku Klux Klan to question their ideological inconsistencies; and we touched the heart of a killer who turned himself in after reading an article in our publication on his victim, who, for years, struggled with alcoholism and the estrangement it caused with his family. In short, we have called attention to a great number of injustices in our crappy little town, both great and small.

So there it is, Mr. Rosen -- congratulations on breaking an already fragile soul. In the end, I’m not sure what the point of all of this truly is, other than some sort of small dully colored feather in your journalistic cap. We bow to you, Mr. Rosen -- to your talent, to your humanity, to all that is you.

Hey, Jody Rosen: nice feather, man.

KGW amends its press release passed off as a staff news report

Surely KGW would've taken down that Red Bull press release that the station credited to (and tried to pass off as) a staff news report. It's been more than 24 hours, after all. Or perhaps they rewrote the story honestly and apologized? You remember the one:

Why, yes, indeedy, they have changed it:

Someone went in, left all the press-release info verbatim, and altered the headline and the text to reflect 80,000 attendees rather than 60,000.

What happened, KGW? Did the Red Bull flacks call and bawl you out for improper stenography?

KGW-TV: Where the press releases passed off as the news come first

KGW-TV:

Thirty-one teams were selected to strut, soar and ultimately splash into the Willamette’s waters, including a final wildcard team chosen by a public vote.

Flugtag, which means “flying day” in German, gives everyday Joes (and Janes!) the chance to be heroes for the day when they launch their homemade human-powered flying machines off a 25-foot high flight deck and into Red Bull Flugtag fame.

Red Bull press release:

Thirty-one teams have been selected to strut, soar and ultimately splash into the Willamette's waters, including a final wildcard team that was chosen by a public vote.

Flugtag, which means "flying day" in German, gives everyday Joes (and Janes!) the chance to be heroes for the day when they launch their homemade human-powered flying machines off a 25-foot high flight deck and into Red Bull Flugtag fame.

KGW-TV:

The first Red Bull Flugtag was held in Vienna in 1991. Since then, more than 40 Red Bull Flugtags have been held around the world – from London to San Francisco – attracting up to 300,000 spectators at one event!

The international flight distance record stands at 195 feet set in 2000 at Red Bull Flugtag Austria.  North America’s longest flight took place at Red Bull Flugtag Nashville in 2007 with a distance of 155 feet.

Red Bull press release:

The first Red Bull Flugtag was held in Vienna in 1991. Since then, more than 40 Red Bull Flugtags have been held around the world -- from London to San Francisco -- attracting up to 300,000 spectators at one event!

The international flight distance record stands at 195 feet set in 2000 at Red Bull Flugtag Austria. North America's longest flight took place at Red Bull Flugtag Nashville in 2007 with a distance of 155 feet.

The incredibly coincidental magazine cover

Magazine art directors spend a lot of time entertaining dark suspicions about cover-image plagiarism. Often the suspicious covers just end up being a) a hackneyed concept or b) something that's in the Zeitgeist, floating into heads at the same time.

But sometimes you get this:

On the left is the spring 2007 cover of T Magazine, the New York Times' flossy journal about food, travel, shopping, and people with way too much money. On the right, the current issue of Coast, a periodical out of Newport Beach, Calif. dedicated to food, travel, shopping, and people with way too much money.

Sure, two similar magazines might independently conceive of a cover consisting of a close-up of a beautiful woman (with way too much money) eating a sandwich.

But...

...the cropping on the mouth?

...the panini, complete with napkin, grill marks, lettuce, and tomato?

...the blood-red manicures?

...and the ugly rings, placed exactly on the same finger?

The people at T Magazine think Coast has some explaining to do, but they're taking a good-humored, chiding tone. And who knows if this was the work of an independently hired photographer, an art director, or even a stock photographer.

Meanwhile, what hits me is that the original was actually striking, while the copy is just an average magazine image. I think it has to do with the geometry of the original -- the oval of the face, the triangle of the sandwich, the circle of the tomato, the parallel lines of the fingers. All those elements are present in the other magazine, but they're not as well thought out. Or maybe it's just that the first one is just plain sexier -- the mouth as lubricious as a Rolling Stones album cover, the grill marks pointing inside. The girl in the second shot looks like someone told her "Hold the sandwich next to your face and open your mouth slightly."