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Click Here ~ Appeal-Democrat Interactive Reporter Robert LaHue on news and the Internet

Jonesing for Joe on Facebook

January 13th, 2010, 6:06 pm by Robert

There is a local movement afoot on Facebook.

The mission? To get a Trader Joe’s to come to Yuba-Sutter.

What, the 99-Cent Only store coming to town in a couple of months isn’t doing it for y’all?

For those of you who don’t know what Trader Joe’s is, welcome out from underneath your rocky abode. Trader Joe’s (from here on out referred to as TJ’s) is a grocery store specializing in gourmet, organic, vegetarian and unusual food items. In other words, 99 percent of the stuff sold in TJ’s is not affordable on a reporter’s salary.

Ok, maybe I’m being overly snarky when I say 99 percent. You can likely afford Trader Joe’s if you’re shopping at say, Bel-Air or Raley’s. And TJ’s also has, of course, the legendary Two-Buck Chuck: Charles Shaw wine, of which many varieties are available for $1.99 a bottle in California.

Currently, the nearest TJ’s to Yuba-Sutter can be found in Sacramento, Fair Oaks, Roseville and Chico (which probably could survive strictly on Two-Buck Chuck sales. I went to Chico State, I know.)

But why drive to Roseville when you can “Shop Local” or “Think Yuba-Sutter First”? So, why not organize your wishes for TJ’s to come to town by taking it Facebook?

As of this writing, 632 people had joined the Facebook page for “Yuba-Sutter wants a Trader Joe’s Store” in roughly a week and a half. That’s more than the 615 people that have fanned the Appeal-Democrat on Facebook. Yes, I’m a little peeved about that.

It’ll be interesting to see how much the suits at TJ’s (would the suits at TJ’s actually wear suits?) pay attention to this.

Also, here’s how the Y-S effort is doing compared to other city demands for TJ’s:

2,719 Facebookers think a TJ’s in Asheville, N.C. would be a great idea.
535 would like a store in East Nashville.
Fayetteville, Ark., anyone? 462 think so.
920 users wouldn’t mind having one in Las Cruces, N.M. (on the other hand, there’s another Facebook group that says 30 people DON’T want a TJ’s in Las Cruces)

If you missed the link at the top of this post (or the middle), you can join the Yuba-Sutter TJ’s movement by clicking here.

The bulk of news production hasn’t changed yet.

January 11th, 2010, 12:12 pm by Robert

There are still some things about the news business that haven’t changed, despite the Internet Revolution(TM). But there are new opportunities that can work — if everybody can play nice together.

The evidence I’m using for this is a study done by the Project for Excellence in Journalism that put a microscope on a week of news coverage in Balitmore back in July.

The study looked at pretty much everything happening news-wise in the Charm City: Traiditonal media like the Baltimore Sun and airwaves, independent news Web sites, random bloggers, even Twitter.

You can read a deeper report on the study here at Poynter. But here’s a rundown:

*96 percent of all original reporting was done by “legacy media” (that would be your newspapers, television, radio, magazines). This original reporting was first broken in both “legacy platforms” (ink of paper, boob tube, etc.) or digital platforms (Web sites, mobile services, social media, etc.)

*In fact, here’s the detailed breakdown on original reporting: 48 percent general interest newspapers, 28 percent local TV stations, 13 percent specialty newspapers, 7 percent radio station Web sites, 4 percent new media.

*12 of 53 news outlets the study followed produced nothing during the one-week period.

*The traditional media had an excessive reliance on official versions of events and is not doing the amount of enterprise work that it did in the past.

What does all of that really mean? Basically, here’s my interpretation of it: First, the bulk of new media journalism isn’t so much reporting as it is people giving their thoughts on other’s reporting. The 4 percent shows that, in fact, originally reporting is as possible in new media as in any other form, just the practicioners aren’t interested in doing so thus far. This is due in part to just the number of bodies. From the Poynter piece:

“There is very limited capacity to do original reporting, let alone enterprise reporting,” PEJ director Tom Rosenstiel said in a telephone interview Friday. “The new outlets just don’t have a lot of staffing, and the old media — which had been set up with a lot of reporters — are now much smaller.”

But there is potential for great stuff if everybody can come together. There’s an example given towards the end of the piece that I’ll let you read on your own that shows how good things can be if there isn’t an “us vs. them” mentality between new and old media.

The question remains though: Is there enough money out there for enough to survive to foster that environment?

Ch-ch-changes?

January 7th, 2010, 12:58 pm by Robert

I’ve been thinking about changing the focus of my blogging here at appeal-democrat.com.

Reason being, you’ve probably noticed there hasn’t been a lot going on here as far as updating lately. That’s on me, because it’s turned out there hasn’t really been as much to blog about with news and Internet as I thought there would be. As of late, discussion on the news/Internet crossing point has really been on either a) paywalling news sites and b) story commenting. It gets repetitive. Any other topics tends to veer toward “inside baseball” stuff that I don’t believe readers would find interesting.

Plus, I really believe anything I talk about in this blog’s format could easily be done by Kyle Buis in his blog.

So I’m leaning toward going back to something more locally-focused, like I did back when I did the Sutter Notebook blog. Just as to what to do in that regard, I’m not quite sure yet.

Thoughts?

Talking Comments #1: Selective Blocking?

December 20th, 2009, 12:18 am by Robert

First question on reader comments is coming from Raj, who asks:

Why can’t you just block the offending users from posting comments instead of shutting down comments for the entire article?

Short answer: It’s a software limitation. And a time limitation.

In more detail: Being we’re a small company, we don’t have the staff necessary to develop all our site applications in-house. So the Web site features you enjoy operates on software developed by third-party vendors. In the case of the comments, the software used is created by a company called Pluck.

Pluck is a fairly powerful package, but it can’t quite yet do everything. It’s basically an “all or nothing” when it comes to blocking a user’s comments. Either all their comments are allowed to post, or all of their comments on all stories are blocked.

Could we just monitor the thread and block a certain person’s comments as soon as they post? In theory, yes. In practice, not realistic. That would make comment moderation essentially a 24-7 job. Those of us who moderate comments here do so as one of many daily work duties, and we’d also like to have weekends and time with family and friends.

Even being able to keep the story up while disabling comments is a recent add for us, due to the issue of making Pluck cohesive with a seperate software, OnSet, which is used for uploading story content.

It used to be, until recently, that if a story thread got to the point where we felt it was out of control and hadn’t come back until control after repeated warnings, our only option was to disable the entire story in OnSet. That meant that not only could you not comment, you couldn’t read the comments. And trying to read the story would result in a Type 404 error. Not good.

But a recent upgrade in OnSet now allows us to disable reader comments. Yes, you can’t comment anymore, but at least now you’re still able to read the story and comments that were posted prior to the thread getting shut down.

I’ll agree with you, a feature like the one you want would be useful. The down part is we’re entirely at the mercy of Pluck deciding to add such a feature when they develop and release an updated version of the software they provide us and the other properties in Freedom Interactive.

Hope this provides some insight– and shows that we feel the same pain you do sometimes when it comes to this sort of thing.

Have a question on how the reader comments work? Post it here or e-mail Robert at rlahue@appealdemocrat.com.

Talking comments

December 19th, 2009, 4:37 pm by Robert

It seems like once every couple of months, we have a blow-up on the site over user comments and their moderation.

It comes down into one of two arguments every time. It’s either A) We don’t moderate the comments enough or B) We moderate the comments too much.

Of course, it’s usually the folks getting their comments blocked that are the loudest complainers, but…OK, I won’t go there.

But, after our latest blow-up, I’m making an offer. If people e-mail me their questions (or leave a question here) about how comment moderation is handled, I’ll work out lengthy, explanitory answers. Answering the same questions month after month in stories gets tiring and drives the stories off-topic.

So fire away.

What do Dave Barry and Carl Kassel have in common?

December 16th, 2009, 12:37 pm by Robert

Well, if Dave Barry still worked at the Miami Herald full-time, you could donate to keep him employed.

The Herald has gone the way of NPR and PBS and is now accepting donations on its Web site.

The donation business model has been discussed for online journalism alongside the pay wall concept. Start-ups have tried it, but the Herald is by far the largest print product to give the concept of voluntarily giving money online a shot.

So let’s throw it out there: Would you donate money to keep a local newspaper going online?

‘Tis the season for databases

November 30th, 2009, 1:19 pm by Robert

The holiday season is upon us. Ready or not.

As part of my job here at the paper, I help develop the databases you can pour through in the Info Center section of the Web site.

Sometimes those databases are seasonal or holiday-based. One example was back in the spring, when I built a map of local Easter egg hunts.

I’ve been thinking about similar ideas for the Christmas season. But the issues are that I’m kind of mired on the information front.

Here’s the ideas I’ve been batting about, how I’d envision them working, and the problems I’m having getting them to work:

Tree lot map

There’s quite a few of these lots popping up in the Mid-Valley. Heck, I pass by two just driving from my apartment in west Yuba City to the grocery store. I’ve always thought it might be of help to folks to have a map of the various tree lots. In essence, it would be similar to the Easter egg hunt map I linked to above. The Sacramento Bee has done a map of Christmas tree farms, but we don’t have those kind of farms in Yuba-Sutter. Just seasonal lots.

The problems: Finding information on tree lots in incorporated cities would be fairly easy. They have to obtain business licenses, from which I can get at minimum a name and location for the lots. However, there’s no such requirements if the lots are set up in the unincorporated parts of local counties. There’s no readily available source to glean this information quickly.

Options: 1) Set up a map with just the tree lots in cities. 2) Give a time frame before the map goes live to request tree lot operators contact me and give me info on where they’re set up. 3) Drive every corner of three counties and jot down info every time I come across a lot.

Donations database

Despite ridiculously long lines at ungodly hours of the morning on Black Friday, there is a lot of giving that goes on during the holiday season. But what if somebody wanted a full list of options for what to do with the items they want to donate.

That’s my idea. I can build a database of local charities, the items they are taking in for donations, and information on how to donate. A person could go to the database, find the item they’re wanting to donate (i.e. used clothing, canned goods) and get a full list of charitable organizations that are accepting those items.

The problem: Once again, there’s no central resource for obtaining this information. We’re dependent on people coming to us to let us know what they’re taking and how to get it to them. I’m leery about starting a database with limited information, because we’re liable to receive complaints from organizations that didn’t have their info put in.

The option: Realistically, the only thing I can think would be to build a database with whatever information we have, and hope people get in touch with us to continuously update the information, despite my concerns.

Does anybody out there have other ideas as to how I could go about working on these databases, or maybe ideas for other seasonal databases I haven’t thought of yet?

Is it our job to tell your employer on you?

November 18th, 2009, 4:11 pm by Robert

Continuing on the subject of reader comments of newspaper Web sites and anonymity, here’s an interesting story concerning that particular aspect of that issue concerning one of the 50 largest papers in the nation, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Here’s a involved-party communication on the matter from the paper’s social media editor.

The basics: A user posted a vulgar comment. The site moderators delete it. Dumb user doesn’t get the non-verbal message, reposts the same vulgar comment. The site moderators delete it.

OK, so far nothing abnormal. Every site that allows commenting deals with that type of idiocy on a regular basis, including.

Here’s where things deviate from the norm. The St. Louis paper staff notes the IP address (this particular comment is on WordPress, which does mark down IPs) is from a particular school. The paper then calls the school, who decided to check into it. Their IT staff eventually tracks down the staffers, who supposedly resigns “on the spot” when confronted.

In what should be the biggest non-surprise of the century, the comments on the blog, and the spread of the story to other blogs such as Ars Technica is pretty strongly leaning toward “What in the blue hell were you thinking?”

And that’s the direction I lean toward.

Let’s be brutally honest, in this line of work, you do come across some people in the community who will use the anonymity of this Web site to be complete jackasses.

But it’s my job to just maintain and control order on this Web site, not enforce a personal moral code across two counties. It’s not my job to make sure employers know what their employees are doing at work. That’s up to the employer to decide how to best deal with those issues.

Are there temptations to “bust” somebody? Yeah, I’ve had them. I’ve seen user accounts traceable to political candidates try and rip on their opponents in story comments. I’ve seen people be jerks online, then raise their hands acting all holy in the same sanctuary I’m in on Sundays.

But, it’s my personal belief that I should fight for the privacy and protection of all our users, not just the ones I like.

And whether the challenge to that comes from the government, the courts or my own temper shouldn’t matter.

That’s just me.

The old anonymous comment argument resurfaces in Redding.

November 17th, 2009, 5:17 pm by Robert

Right now, the Record Searchlight, the paper up in Redding, has a poll question on its home page asking if allowing anonymous comments on its Web site is a good thing or not.

As the votes are showing, it’s pretty much a dead heat. At least at the time of this post.

You see this issue flare up at various points around the nation from time to time. The catalyst for the current discussion going on in Redding is that a spokesperson for the building industry up in that neck of the woods has said he will no longer give comments to the local paper because it allows users to comment using online handles other than their real name.

Comments, like virtually everything that comes with journalism on the Web, is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you get the raw, emotional dialogue that newspapers should be generating. On the other hand, people use anonymity to abdicate any sense of decency or putting thought into what they type.

Of course, a story like this also gives me an easy opportunity to use this old line: What you think about this? Let me know.

First!

November 16th, 2009, 3:11 pm by Robert

OK, I said no local elected officials had fanned the A-D on Facebook.

But, since I made that post, Live Oak Vice Mayor Rob Klotz fanned us.

Oh, and we’re up to 413. Join up, all the cool kids are.

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