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Arkansas Business is now on Facebook. So if you'd like to be a fan, search for "Arkansas Business" on Facebook or click or go directly to the Arkansas Business on Facebook page. We'll be sharing news headlines and, soon, hosting discussions and seeking more interaction from readers.
The central Arkansas marketing and banking communities mourn the loss of Tom Steves, who was killed in a motorcycle accident in northern Pulaski County Tuesday afternoon.
Steves was the executive vice-president and marketing director at Twin City Bank. He had also been the executive vice-president and chief operating officer at Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods until 1999.
Roller-Owens Funeral Home in North Little Rock will be handling the funeral arrangements, which were incomplete Wednesday morning. We invite you to leave your condolences and rememberances of Tom Steves in the comment box below.
People are still writing about Kim Hendren, the possible candidate for U.S. Senate (no papers yet!) who stuck his foot in his mouth recently re: Chuck Schumer.
There's been all kinds of political commentary on that, including some discussion of the matter between Little Rock blogger Blake Rutherford and I. Barry Goldberg, an executive coach who writes a column for Arkansas Business. That discussion noted here.
If you are going to apologize, apologize. Justification, reframing and excuses are not an apology.
When he was taken-to-task about the statement by an Arkansas blogger, Hendren endeavored to apologize. Unfortunately, his attempt only made matters worse. An apology made with conditions, explanations, justification and reserve is not an apology. Hendren’s effort managed to include them all. The press, the blogsphere (conservative and liberal alike) and the public fed on this further communication snafu like a steak dinner. The comments that drew the most fire had to do with his justification that there are Jews he admires, especially Jesus; and, that he was just “…attempting to explain that unlike Senator Schumer, I believe in traditional values, like we used to see on The Andy Griffith Show.”
And if you are going to apologize, apologize for the right thing. In another comment, Hendren says “I made the mistake of referring to Sen. Schumer as ‘that Jew’ and I should not have put it that way, as this took away from what I was trying to say.” So, the problem, in Hendren’s view, is not that he should not have brought Schumer’s faith into the argument, but that he distracted listeners from his actual point.
Goldberg has more practical lessons we can all learn. And in the end, he notes, it was Schumer who provided the best example of how to conduct one's self in an unfortunate matter such as this, with his succint statement, "Apology accepted."
On "Today's THV This Morning," Alyson Courtney and I gave a quick, broad overview of Twitter and some businesses and organizations in Arkansas are using it. Click here to see the video.*
Like I said in the video, it's easy to get "social media fatigue" trying to keep up with all that's out there. The key for anyone thinking about using Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, whatever, is to think about your goals, the way you work, and your possible audience, then experiment to see what service best fits you based on that criteria.
You don't have to do it all. But you should be aware of what's out there.
Now an annual tradition, the Sales and Marketing Executives International - Arkansas held their big Super Bowl advertisement watch party Sunday night at the Holiday Inn Presidential Conference Center. There, they watched all the big game's $3 million spots and rated their favorites.
As we've noted earlier, we're big fans of Twitter when it comes to sharing news and information. And for a while, I've been using my LT account to tip followers to breaking business and sports news.
Now, though, we've gone and created Twitter feeds for ArkansasBusiness.com daily news and ArkansasSports360.com daily news.
Both feeds update with links to the latest news headlines every half-hour. But we're also able to pop any breaking news or other tidbits in between.
And remember, if you set up your Twitter account to work with your cell phone, you can get news headlines throughout the day from ArkansasBusiness.com and ArkansasSports360.com sent directly to your phone via text message.
Also: Feel free to shoot us direct messages and other comments via both feeds. We're always looking for news tips and feedback.
Twitter is an addictive little service that allows you to post "tweets," or short, 140-character updates in a blog-like format. You can see my Twitter page here at http://Twitter.com/LT.
Twitter asks you to answer the question, "What are you doing now?" Some people take this literally, providing short updates on every aspect of their day ("Washing clothes," "Watching 'Mad Men,'" "Going through e-mails").
But others have adapted the service to their own needs. Many news services have Twitter streams. The New York Times, CNN, Marketwatch and many others (including local news outlets like KTHV, KATV, KLRT and the Log Cabin Democrat) provide news headlines and links to fresh stories. Others use Twitter to live blog events, including the presidential debates, public meetings, whatever.
To me, this is where Twitter really sings. It allows me to post quick links to breaking news stories, new blog postings/news articles on ABPG Web sites, and off-site stories I find interesting. And that's how I've been using it the last several months. Live Twittering On Your Desktop
Count me as a Twitter devotee - after a long period of testing. I initially abandoned the curious microblogging service for months after signing in March 2007. I just didn't get what the site offered.
It wasn't until I downloaded and started using a free third-party desktop app for Twitter, called Twhirl, that I really got some use out of it. Twhirl opens up Twitter as a real-time chat -- except it's with a lot more people. Tweets pop up on your desktop in real time, so you don't have to go to your Twitter page to see the latest updates.
(You can more Twitter desktop apps here.) Breaking News Text Messages
Twitter also has the power to reach folks beyond the Web browser. When you set up an account and begin "following" others, you'll get their tweets delivered straight to your Twitter homepage and live to your desktop app. If you give Twitter your cell phone number, you'll also be able to get people's tweets delivered to your cell phone as a text message.
That means that if you follow my Twitter stream, and I post a link to breaking news on ArkansasBusiness.com, you'll get that message and link sent directly to your cell phone the instant I post it. Often, I post these links several minutes before a full story is posted. With Twitter, you can be on the cutting edge of breaking news.
I'll continue doing a lot with Twitter, particularly during our election coverage over the next week. So sign up and follow me. You might be surprised at how addictive -- and informative -- this curious little Web service is.
Others on Twitter in Arkansas
The list of Twitter users in Arkansas is growing quickly. Here's a very short list, including some people following me on Twitter. Some are companies, some are news organizations, some are people who just like to share their lives on Twitter. Still others augment their blogs with these brief updates.
Want me to add you to the list? E-mail me or message me on Twitter here.
Mourners left flowers, stuffed animals and other mementos outside the home where a TV anchorwoman was found brutally beaten, as tributes poured into the Web site of the Little Rock station where her colleagues mourned her death.
...
In front of Pressly's house, still wrapped with yellow crime scene tape, mourners passed by throughout the day Sunday, some leaving bouquets of flowers or other tokens to express their unity with Pressly's grieving family, friends and co-workers.
Hundreds of comments flooded the station's Web site from across the United States, including messages from loyal viewers accustomed to seeing Pressly on TV to those who said they'd never heard of her before the attack.
I didn't know Anne personally, but I know many of her friends. They've all been shocked by the attack, and hopeful that she would recover. Little Rock Police have no new information in the investigation.
Arkansas Business Outtakes media writer Mark Hengel this week talks to Al Thompson of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla., about speculation that Pressly's celebrity as a television personality could have led to the attack:
Tompkins ... said it is fairly common for TV personalities to experience fans who are a little too fanatical. Most are harmless, but a few have taken their interest to the point of obsession, he said.
Tompkins has 25 years of experience working as a television reporter and news director in various markets. During that time he's had several nuisances, he said, but none whom he felt might harm him. Being known and threatened by viewers is an unfortunate part of the business, he said.
"Journalists can't lead a sheltered life and still be a journalist," Tompkins said. Well-known people in any walk of life – "athletes, teachers, politicians," he said – sometimes have fans who go too far.
[KATV] also will remain cautious about covering the story. Another local TV station, KARK-TV, Channel 4, and the Arkansas Blog, published by the Arkansas Times, publicized a break in the case upon learning that Pressly's credit card was used at a Little Rock gas station. Both news outlets pulled the reports from their Web site after the LRPD contacted them.
A complicated story, indeed. And one that this weekend became even more heartbreaking.
With all that content out there, it can difficult to keep up. Web Worker Daily even wonders whether we've already outgrown the RSS reader.
So how do we efficiently and productivity keep up with all the information flowing online? Two new products pose a solution.
First, there's Friendfeed, which aims to aggregate all your pals' various Internet content across various platforms. In one place, you can see your buddy's latest Flickr photos, videos, Twitter tweets, Del.icio.us links, Wordpress blog entries and more.
Next is Alltop, which Shifting Careers is trying out as a way to stay on top of various blogs in specific categories. Blogs on Alltop are organized by categories, so you can theoretically scan the "journalism" page and get all the latest news and notes on the field from the various blog feeds that include on that page.
How Alltop selects what blogs go in what category is an interesting question. To me, it smacks of Yahoo!'s early attempt at search, by manually categorizing thousands of Web sites one at a time. How scalable will Alltop be?
Both Arkansas Business Editor Gwen Moritz and Managing Editor Jan Cottingham felt moved to talk about missing CDI Contractors executive John Glasgow and the glaring omission of that story in the state's largest newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
We and othernews organizations have looked for insight to the Democrat-Gazette's position on this story before. And we and other news organizations have received vague answers from the newspaper.
This week, Mortiz takes the Democrat-Gazette's position, which has something to do with the "elements of news," head on:
[Democrat-Gazette Deputy Editor Frank Fellone] refers repeatedly to the "elements of news," as if anyone who understood those elements would naturally come to the same conclusion as the Democrat-Gazette, which was to virtually ignore the story for at least six weeks.
...
With all due respect to Frank Fellone, citing the elements of news as an explanation for virtually ignoring the Glasgow story is a non sequitur. It's akin to citing the law to explain why a masked man who pulled a gun on a store clerk and cleaned out the cash register wasn't charged with a crime.
Also: Was Democrat-Gazette columnist Phillip Martin's March 9 column about John Glasgow? We might never know.
But I think I have the perspective to say: John Glasgow's disappearance is a tragedy and his family deserves to be treated with respect. To say: John Glasgow's disappearance is news, and decency and any concept of service journalism, of just plain journalism, require that it be treated as such.
Jonesboro Sun Editor Roy Ockert this week considers the case of missing CDI Contractors executive John Glasgow and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's apparent disinterest in the story.
Missing adults cases simply don’t get attention like those involving missing children, probably for good reason. Sometimes adults leave home and don’t come back.
That may be why the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the state’s biggest newspaper, has offered little coverage of the Glasgow case, first running a story only on its Web site and then a couple of short stories later.
Ockert tells the story of his sister, who went missing in 1976. While his sister wasn't a prominent figure, the local papers made her case front-page news for some time.
Although we’d just as soon never had the notoriety, I remain convinced that the extensive and continuing press coverage, especially by the newspapers, kept her case alive during the six months in which there was no crime, just a missing adult. Those stories made sure the authorities didn’t file her case away as unsolved, and indeed they brought out information that was helpful, just not helpful enough.
Her story was interesting and important; so is John Glasgow's.
Tip 1: Create a division between work and home. It’s helpful to have a designated work space — ideally, an office or studio space outside of your home. If this isn’t possible, a home office with a door you can close is your next best option. Don’t have a room to set aside for an office? Go to your local Pier 1, buy a Chinese screen and section off a corner of a room. Voilà: instant office.
Tip 2: Take off your pajamas. No, I’m not saying you should work naked, but dress like you’re going to the office. Because, guess what? You are. Even if your “office” is your kitchen table, putting on regular work clothes gets you into the right mind-set. It also makes it less embarrassing when the UPS man shows up in the middle of the afternoon.
Tip 3: Get to work on time. You’ve cut out the commute, which means you’ve bought yourself a little time. So go ahead and have that extra cup of coffee; but it’s nice for your family, friends, clients and personal sanity if you keep at least relatively normal business hours.
Tip 4: Don’t watch TV in the middle of the day. Or go to the movies or do your laundry. You’re working, so work. However, occasional naps are perfectly acceptable and a great way to remind yourself that while you might not have technical support or a supply closet, your life is still pretty awesome.
Tip 5: But do go out to lunch. The writing life, especially the freelance writing life, can be isolating. And isolation leads to one thing: insanity. So set times for human contact helps, like lunch dates with clients or your fellow independently employed cohorts. For extra points — and probably extra business, too — join a business networking group.
The Super Bowl is not only the main event for U.S. sports, it's the advertising industry's big night. This year, 30-second spots during the Fox broadcast sold for more than $2 million.
While everyone else Monday-morning quarterbacks Tom Brady's performance last night, the ad industry is going over last night's spots, critiquing the winners and losers and dissecting what it all means.
Whether you're a Machead or not, you gotta admire Apple CEO Steve Jobs' presentation skills. Now BusinessWeek passes along tips on how you can make presentations like his Steveness.
It begins with setting a theme:
1. Set the theme. "There is something in the air today." With those words, Jobs opened Macworld. By doing so, he set the theme for his presentation (BusinessWeek.com, 1/15/08) and hinted at the key product announcement—the ultrathin MacBook Air laptop. Every presentation needs a theme, but you don't have to deliver it at the start. Last year, Jobs delivered the theme about 20 minutes into his presentation: "Today Apple reinvents the phone." Once you identify your theme, make sure you deliver it several times throughout your presentation.
Here's an interesting approach to dealing with bloggers: Don't deal with them!
It's an approach that Target is trying, according to a piece in the New York Times. All this came about after a blogger called the company complaining about a Target advertising campaign showing a woman splayed across a big target pattern — the Target logo — with the bull’s-eye at her crotch:
Target offered an e-mail response:
“Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets,” a public relations person wrote to ShapingYouth.
“This practice,” the public relations person added, “is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest,” as Target refers to its shoppers.
It's been strange for bloggers to accept this from Target, which has been seen by many as more hip, more savvy, more clued-in than rival Wal-Mart.
Target defends itself in the Times, saying it concentrates more on big media outlets that reach larger groups of people. The PR team is small, the company says.
“We do not work with bloggers currently,” said a company spokeswoman, Amy von Walter, who agreed to speak with this traditional media outlet.
“But we have made exceptions,” Ms. von Walter said. “And we are reviewing the policy and may adjust it.”
Our long-time marketing columnist in Arkansas Business, Jim Karrh, takes a look at how you can point your company's limited resources toward achieving a solid marketing strategy for the new year:
Hundreds of consultants, professors and executives have written thousands of tomes on the subject of strategy. But I'm not convinced that anyone needs to fill pounds of paper with long words to craft a sound and winning strategy. My training and experience have led me to believe that an informed, honest set of answers to only six (admittedly tough) questions should do the trick.
Slaving all day blogging and posting Web videos to pursue your dream of becoming "Internet famous"? The Wall Street Journal asked many of your favorite Internet stars about their secrets of success.
The most important thing is to understand the dynamics of the medium and the nature of your audience. "The Internet moves very fast," says Gary "Numa Numa" Brolsma. "Your video has to be funny, or get to the point, very quickly. People are clicking all the time. If you don't hook people in the first 15 seconds, they'll move on."
Mr. Brolsma certainly knows what he's talking about. He was voted "Greatest Internet Superstar" by VH1. You may not have heard of him, or for that matter, any of the other megasuperstars mentioned in this column. Well, you can read about them on Wikipedia. Or, ask the guy in your office who seems always glued to his computer, "working on PowerPoint."
Also: valuable tips from the "Evolution of Dance" guy and the Mentos-Diet Coke dudes. Seriously.
Heard about that writers' strike in Hollywood? While we support the writers in their efforts to get a better deal in the new world of online and digital distribution, we're sad that some of our shows are suffering. The biggest casualty (in our opinion) so far: NBC's "The Office."
From the AP:
Bad day at 'The Office': Filming stops as star Steve Carell refuses to cross picket lines By GARY GENTILE AP Business Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Filming has stopped on the popular NBC sitcom "The Office" because star Steve Carell has refused to cross the picket lines of striking writers, a producer said Wednesday.
Greg Daniels, executive producer of the show, says the last new episode of the show will air next week. It is among at least eight prime-time shows to stop shooting as of Wednesday because of the strike.
A publicist for Carell did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press.
You can read more coverage on the strike at Nikki Finkke's excellent Deadline Hollywood Daily blog here. Meanwhile, some "Office" regulars, who are also writers and producers on the show, say hello from the picket line here:
A new poll out yesterday by Harris Interactive says 80 percent of U.S. adults go online. That's up from 9 percent in 1995:
The survey, which polled 2,062 adults in July and October, found that 79 percent of adults -- about 178 million -- go online, spending an average 11 hours a week on the Internet.
"We're up to almost 80 of adults who now are online, or are somehow gaining access to the Internet. That's a pretty impressive figure," said Regina Corso, director of the Harris Poll.
The results reflect a steady rise since 2000, when 57 percent of adults polled said they went online. In 2006, the number was 77 percent.
When Harris Interactive, a market research firm, first began tracking online use among adults in 1995, the group found that only nine percent of the population -- or 17.5 million -- said they went online.
We're honestly not the biggest fan of Halloween, scary movies and leftover candy notwithstanding. But we always enjoy this time of year because, invariably, someone notes that it was Oct. 30 many years ago that future filmmaker Orson Welles caused a panic with his "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast:
It began with a fake bulletin that interrupted some dance music, announcing that "incandescent gas" explosions had been observed on Mars. Another bulletin followed shortly, reporting that a "huge, flaming object" had just crashed on a farm outside Grovers Mill, New Jersey.
Further bulletins followed with Welles mobilizing his cast of "radio reporters" and "government officials" to paint the ghastly, unfolding picture of a Martian invasion. The drama climaxed with a reporter's breathless description of one of the alien invaders emerging from its spacecraft ...
It was never Welles' intention to throw a genuine scare into anyone. A disclaimer at the top of the show explained that what followed was a dramatization, but if the listener missed the announcement it would be another 40 minutes before another one was issued. By then a lot of people had been taken in.
The resulting hysteria -- people fleeing in their cars, barricading themselves inside their homes -- led to calls for stricter regulation of radio broadcasting to prevent this sort of thing from occurring again.
You can hear the complete show via MP3 here. And more about Welles' broadcast is available here. Happy Halloween!
Some housekeeping news you might be interested in:
This week we've added content from The Associated Press to ArkansasBusiness.com and ArkansasSports360.com. That means we have access to the latest breaking state, business and sports news from the world's top news provider, 24/7. We plan to use AP content in our news feeds and e-newsletters to deliver a more complete picture of the day's news throughout the week, as it happens.
On ArkansasBusiness.com, we've started including some stories in our flagship Daily Report e-newsletter (which you can get free here) and our daily news RSS feed here.
And on ArkansasSports360.com, we've added state and national sports news, much of which will also appear in that site's daily e-newsletter, the free Arkansas Daily Sports Report (which you can get here). That includes a host of previews, predictions, practice reports, features and more.
Of course, we'll add and update stories all day throughout the day so you won't have to wait long for the latest headlines.
Right now, there will be lots of tweaking and experimenting until we get the right content mix. We're aiming for just the right balance of breaking AP news, local news generated by our excellent staff, sharp commentary from our editors and, of course, comments and feedback from readers.
It's an exciting time to be a news provider and, hopefully, a reader and subscriber to ArkansasBusiness.com and ArkansasSports360.com.
Instead, there's some good general tips on how you can use the site to help you build a personal online brand. Basically, don't be shy, complete your entire profile and try to make friends. More detail here.
As you might have heard, Arkansas Business is now part of KTHV-TV, Channel 11's new noon newscast.
Monday was the debut of "Today's THV at Noon," which features our live 90-second business news report near the end of the first segment. Jeff Hankins and I will take turns at bat, delivering the latest Arkansas business news headlines and Wall Street updates.
We'll be appearing at KTHV's studios for the first week or so, until we get our own Arkansas Business studios up and running here at the headquarters at 2nd and Scott. When that happens, we'll simply walk down the hall, flip a switch and be live to central Arkansas. That's what the techies tell us, anyway.
Of course you can watch the show on TV. But those at work in front of computer - you're in luck. THV is streaming the show live at noon here, so you won't miss a minute of news.
Our new THV newscast, plus our Daily Report e-newsletter, and our regular segment on THV's 6 p.m. Monday news should keep you covered on business headlines during the day. And be sure to let us know how we're doing; send us your news tips and feedback here and here.
Wal-Mart is once again dipping its toes in the choppy waters of the social Web, creating a Facebook group aimed at high school and college students, according to The Morning News:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recently launched its "Roommate Style Match" page -- or membership group, as it is called -- on Facebook, the social networking Web site reportedly used by millions of high school and college students. Wal-Mart's group allows the students to design their rooms by tapping links to the company's online catalog and also answer questions about their roommates' styles.
So far, Wal-Mart's group has signed up more than 800 members, although the marketing ploy could turn into a public relations nightmare since it's already attracted several anti-Wal-Mart comments from bloggers.
One poster wrote Tuesday that "Wal-Mart is bad business for this country," while several others urged students not to shop at Wal-Mart and instead organize a protest against the company in their community. But Wal-Mart also had its supporters, with several bloggers saying they admired the world's largest retailer.
Wal-Mart's past experiment with online networking, The Hub, failed miserably. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. A glance at the page this morning shows the group as 920 members. And the comments, like the story notes, are a mixed bag, but they appear to lean critical of the world's largest retailer.
Some examples:
Wal-Mart is a great American company that has been extremely successful at what they do. Sam Walton rose from a cashier to one of the richest men in the world, if that isn't the American Dream, I don't know what is. ...
Facebook should take the number of negative comments on this page as a note that we don't support this company of it's use of a space for social networking to further horrendous business practices.
and
If you haven't seen "The High Cost of Low Prices" you need to...its a great documentary of how WalMart is the armpit of society and treats its employees that way.
and
I see a lot of you hate Wal-Mart, but I bet you cannot deny a trip to shop there. I think Wal-Mart is an evil empire, yes, but things are so cheap and it is a great place to kill time. Cheap and procrastination are two perfect qualities for a student. Until you all have your degrees and can overpower the corporate giant, suck it up and leave it be. If you hate it, boycott it. Some towns still have small shops where you can find what you need. The cost will be higher, but if it's what you want so be it.
So will Wal-Mart be able to tolerate a conversation like this on its Facebook page? This, of course, is company that's been known to quietly edit its own Wikipedia page. We might send a friend request over, and see just how friendly they can be.
Edelman analyst Steve Rubel looks at the growing cut-and-paste nature of the Web -- widgets, RSS, mobile Web and pages like Netvibes and Pageflakes -- and it what it means for online content. Includes tips on how to optimize yourself for the Web.
The Wall Street Journal looks at blogging and small businesses. Some are actually turning blog traffic into sales, almost justifying the time and expense it all takes.
Wal-Mart has a series of relatively small changes in 2005 that that burnish the company's image on its own entry while often leaving criticism in, changing a line that its wages are less than other retail stores to a note that it pays nearly double the minimum wage, for example. Another leaves activist criticism on community impact intact, while citing a "definitive" study showing Wal-Mart raised the total number of jobs in a community.
Wal-Mart's edits don't appear as blatant as, say, Diebold's, whose employees edited the company's entry to omit entire paragraphs on the security industry's concerns about the integrity of Diebold voting machines, as well as information about the company's CEO's fund-raising for President George Bush.
All this comes from a Wired report on a new piece of software that tracks who edits what on Wikipedia, the "edited-by-community" online encyclopedia:
Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of CalTech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.
Companies better watch what and how they edit now, it seems.
This might give new meaning to the word "linkbait."
The above video is right now the hottest thing on YouTube. It's been viewed more than 12 million times. The 8-minute video shot by a U.S. tourist, Dave Budzinski, at South Africa's Kruger National Park shows a battle between a lion pride, a herd of buffalo, and two crocodiles at a watering hole. It has to be seen to be believed.
The BBC has more on the video and its popularity here.
A new study confirms what many might have expected:
U.S. consumers this year will spend more of their day surfing the Internet than reading newspapers or going to the movies or listening to recorded music, according a study released on Tuesday.
The findings are part of a new report from private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson that shows advertisers are paying close attention to the shift in consumer behavior and putting more money into areas like digital marketing.
Last year, the top two advertising mediums were newspapers, at $55.7 billion, and broadcast television, at $48.7 billion, according to VSS.
But it estimates that by 2011, overall Internet advertising will become the largest advertising medium, at nearly $63 billion, describing the shift as "a watershed moment" in the media business.
New media is great at responding to breaking news. Case in point: yesterday's awful bridge collapse in Minneapolis.
Flickr users have already posted numerous photos from the scene. You can check out some of them here. Expect more video, besides all these snippets of news coverage, to show up on YouTube soon.
ArkansasSports360.com, our new daily sports Web site, is up and running today, after a long weekend of last-minute tweaks, programming and development.
Our work on this project is largely to blame for the dearth of blog entries around here lately. We've simply been swamped. There aren't enough hours in the day, it seems.
We're proud of our new product, and hope you will be too. As good as it might look now, we plan for it to be even better, as we continue to add new functionality and features during this week and the weeks to come.
And of course, as with any new site launch, there will be bugs. Oh yes, there will be bugs. So if you have any trouble getting things to work, please let me know here. And feel free leave your first impressions in comments. We'd love to hear what you think!
Anyone in the news business (or anyone who loves democracy) should find this troubling.
A report released last week by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard says most teenagers and adults 30 and younger are not following the news. They don't have an ingrained news habit, they don't watch TV, they certainly don't read newspapers and, somewhat surprisingly, don't even check out news on the Internet.
On the newspaper front, the numbers aren't good:
Only 16 percent of the young adults surveyed aged 18 to 30 said that they read a newspaper every day and 9 percent of teenagers said that they did. That compared with 35 percent of adults over 30. Furthermore, despite the popular belief that young people are flocking to the Internet, the survey found that teenagers and young adults were twice as likely to get daily news from television than from the Web.
What's more, if survey respondents said they were interested in the news, it was only on a very superficial level. "Young people seemed to think that just listening to the radio in the background was listening to the news,"Alex S. Jones, the director of the Shorenstein Center, told the Times.
The story points out that newspapers are working to retain young readers by creating publications targeted specifically at younger readers, such as RedEye in Chicago and, to some extent, Sync, the new weekly from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette here in Little Rock.
But the bottom line, researchers say, the future of news is on the electronic front, and newspapers will have a hard time getting back that young audience on paper:
“My sense is that newspapers in their traditional form are not going to be able to recapture this audience,” said Professor Patterson. “What’s happened over time is that we have become more of a viewing nation than a reading nation, and the Internet is a little of both. My sense is that, like it or not, the future of news is going to be in the electronic media, but we don’t really know what that form is going to look like.”
Time magazine has released its annual list of the Web 50 best sites. Alas, The Ladder was nowhere to found.
But there's tons of other worthwhile sites there, organized among several categories, including "news and information," "arts and leisure," "social networks" and, of course, "audio and video." Knock yourself out.
Just a note to let you know that'll be a panelist on "Arkansas Week" at 8 p.m. tonight and 10:30 a.m. Sunday, talking about this week in business and political news.
Among our topics: the death of the immigration bill; a host of state legislative races shaping up on Conway and northwest Arkansas; Marion and the quest for another Hino/Toyota operation; Dillard's and its activist shareholder; and Wal-Mart.
More on the weekly show here. There's even a podcast your can subscribe to here.
If John Travolta can do up drag for "Hairspray," we guess anything's possible in terms of musicals. And this one we heard about this week is no exception.
It's called "Walmartopia," and it's playing this August at the Minetta Lane Theatre off-Broadway. The skinny:
It's MOM vs. MART! Walmartopia tells the hilarious and timely tale of Vicki Latrell, a single mom and Wal-Mart employee who speaks out against her company's working conditions and finds herself and her young daughter jettisoned to 2036, into a future where Wal-Mart dominates the entire world. Yes, the musical features the singing head of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.
Sounds like a hoot and, chillingly, all too real. Here's hoping Wal-Mart's Smiley face gets a Tony nod once this show hits the big time.
So can any dude growing up in the 80s really resist the power that is Michael Bay's "Transformers" movie? Yes, we know it's Michael Bay, the hackerrific director who served up numbskull epics like "Pearl Harbor" and "Armageddon." Yes, it's based on a cheap cartoon toy commercial. Yes, it's produced "in association with Hasbro" (good lord).
But it's Optimus Prime! And Bumblebee! And cars and jets that turn into giant robots!
Really, resistance is futile.
So who's going?
Note: The Arkansas Young Professional Network is holding a sneak preview of the film at 5:30 p.m. Monday at the Riverdale 10 on Cantrell. Only 200 seats available, so give your local AYPN rep a shout if you wanna see things blow up before your friends get to.
A Ladder reader has asked for some pointers on professional blogging. And while we think he might have been half-way kidding, and we don't claim to be in any way professional, we do have some thoughts to share.
In fact, this week marketing blogger BL Ochman got to thinking along similar lines, asking, "What makes a blog popular?" And several of the attributes she lists are musts for folks who aspire to blog professionally.
Among them:
- are written by a blogger with high credibility in his/her field - are well written - are written for the readers, not just for the digerati - acknowledge that the blogger doesn't have all the answers - asks readers for their opinions and input - reflect the personality and style of the blogger so people know with whom they are having the pleasure - has a sense of humor and doesn't take itself too seriously - has a high level of original content - links to other interesting blogs and websites
Those are all great ideas, and Ochman lists more here.
As for our tips, we'd have to say we've learned a lot from our niche publishing business here at ABPG. That is to say, good, professional blogs aim themselves at a particular niche and cover that niche like no other. They follow the Gawker mantra, "Scarily Obsessed." They deliver detailed information that you can get nowhere else about a specific topic. And they deliver that information in a way that is distinct, entertaining and respectful of the audience.
They also seek ways to interact with the audience by soliciting ideas and comments and engaging readers in some kind of dialog.
Those are some quick thoughts. We hope to share more in future. And of course, if you have some of your own, please let us know in comments.
Uh-oh. The NCAA kicks a journalist out of a baseball game for live-blogging the event. Its policy: blogging during the game is a "live representation" of the event, which ain't allowed.
We need someone who can quickly write business news, sports news and blog entries; help copy edit sloppy prose (mostly mine); as well as perform some of the more mundane site maintenance tasks we have. We need someone bright, energetic and able to handle an array of tasks with aplomb. (That's right, we said "aplomb.")
You can check out the full job posting here. No phone calls please, but e-mails are certainly welcome. We'll need to see a resume and at least three samples of your best writing.
Meanwhile, we happily wish former Assistant Internet Editor Nicole Boddington the best of luck over at the Arkansas Times, where's she's working on the entertainment desk, which she's sure to love.
Forbes looks at YouTube, the influential video-sharing site that sparked a revolution in online video, and the 10 Web clips that made it famous:
It has been credited with helping facilitate the downfall of George Allen, the former Republican U.S. senator from Virginia, whose videotaped "macaca" slur gained nationwide attention through YouTube; the clip torpedoed his bid for re-election and contributed to the 2006 Democratic takeover of the U.S. Congress. It has forced network television executives to rethink their copyright maintenance tactics and to think of new ways to use the "viral video" capacity of YouTube to their financial advantage. It has been banned in countries including Iran, Turkey and Thailand. It is a powerful promotional tool for new and obscure bands such as OK Go. And it is no less powerful a promotional tool for the major record labels, for whom YouTube is like "Total Request Live" on steroids.
From "Lazy Sunday" to Lonelygirl, click here to see the 10 videos that made YouTube the video giant it is today.
More evidence that Little Rockers Evanescence might be better as a soap opera than a rock band:
The guitarist and drummer with Evanescence have left the top-selling rock act for undisclosed reasons.
Guitarist John LeCompt claimed on his MySpace.com blog that he was fired during a cell phone conversation with singer Amy Lee, while drummer Rocky Gray said he was asked by band management not to discuss the situation.
Don't you love the modern rock band feud, dueling MySpace blog entries and all?
Of course, this isn't the first time a band member as left the mall-goth act: founding guitarist Ben Moody took his toys and went home in 2003, launching a successful solo career as a Kelly Clarkson producer and amateur prankster.
The band, including LeCompt and Gray, was recently back in its home town for a show at Alltel Arena (you can see band-leader-in-chief Amy Lee's interview with KTHV's Liz Massey here).
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's new entertainment weekly newspaper, Sync, hit the streets today. And despite a note at Syncweekly.com that says the site launches tomorrow, you can scope the whole thing now at Sync.arkansasonline.com.
If you haven't heard, Sync is the Democrat-Gazette's attempt to reach "nontraditional" (re: young) newspaper readers. It's also got the Arkansas Times up in arms and hurling invective at Democrat-Gazette Publisher Walter Hussman.
The Times, Little Rock's long-running liberal alternative weekly newspaper, says Hussman and company are targeting them with a "faux" alt weekly because the Times regularly criticizes Hussman and the state's largest -- and right-leaning -- daily. The Democrat-Gazette denies this.
Media insiders in the Little Rock market have speculated for months as to what Sync would look like and how it might compete with the Arkansas Times.
Some notes on Sync, after a quick lunch-time scan:
- Features are short, snappy and to the point. Subjects include the two pianists who rock Willy D's Piano Bar, the sport of paintball, how to "style" your office, Little Rock's 1st Friday Party and how to do Little Rock on $30. A few stories include the Sync staff as central subjects: the Sync staff on $30 per day, the Sync staff goes paintballin', the Sync staff talks about their silliest fears, etc.
- Original staff stories are shored up by pieces from the Associated Press' asap news service (which also targets younger readers) and include movie and music reviews. A contributing writer reviews "Crackdown," a video game for the Xbox 360.
- Party pics are prominently featured, a la Littlerockblog.com. And, there's a weekly column on the best cheese dip in town, shades of the now-defunct city mag, Little Rock Monthly.
- Dining and nightlife listing in the back of the paper are well organized by day of the week. The 52-page paper also includes its own classified section.
- The newspapers can found, among other places, in distinct, neon-green boxes in the River Market (one near Nu and another near Flying Saucer).
- The newsprint tabloid is edited by Christy Smith, a 36-year-old former Times of North Little Rock and Arkansas Business Publishing Group writer. Also on staff: designer Paula Guajardo, a former Arkansas Times staffer, who, with lead designer Brandon Scott, have done a nice job crafting a good-looking, easy-to-scan paper.
So have you seen Sync? What are your first impressions?
Harris, as you might know, has spent the last year on the entertainment beat at the Arkansas Times. He blogs here, and his columns are here.
Before that, he spent several year at Arkansas Business. In fact, when I came aboard in 1999, I took over the Outtakes column from Jim, who (along with the dearly departed Pat Walsh) tried to teach me everything I needed to know about Nielsen ratings and Arbitron numbers. Whether I made good use of that knowledge is a whole other question.
Jim, with his near-encyclopedic knowledge of all things "Arkansas sports," will be heading up our new sports initiative over here, which includes a Web site. So as Internet Editor, I look forward to hanging with Jim quite bit over the next few months and beyond.
Anyway, in case you missed it, Publisher Jeff Hankins talked a little more about Jim and Arkansas sports today on The Buzz. You can hear the entire segment below:
Native Arkansan Lucinda Williams talks to the Wall Street Journal about her new album, "West," which she considers a fitting follow-up to the classic "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," despite a couple of records in between:
The songs on "West" reflect a drama-charged period in Ms. Williams's life -- tracking a particularly florid relationship breakup, some hard rocking, frisky sexual taunting of the man in question ("Come On") and, touchingly, her response to her mother's death. As the record proceeds, right in line with the synthesizing sonics, there's a coming to terms with those losses, and then a new tone sets in related to Ms. Williams's happy engagement to record executive Tom Overby -- hopeful, something closer to contented.
One thing the new record is not, by design, is a return to the complex narrative storytelling and imagery-loaded language of 1998's "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," her most celebrated record until now, recently reissued in extended form.
"'West' is the album that I've always wanted to make," Ms. Williams says. "This is the one that I was trying to get to after 'Car Wheels,' but I think I had to go through the 'Essence' (2001) and 'World Without Tears' (2003) to get to it."
The latter record in particular, not universally understood, had sometimes toyed with words as minimalist sounds -- and, she agrees, helped pave the way for the relative simplicity of the language on "West."
First, he makes a speech at a spinning class. Then he spills the beans on his favorite television show (Grey's Anatomy) and what he really thinks of Britney. Sometimes the best political moves are the ones that aren't political at all. It helps remind us that these people aren't cyborgs.
Bill Clinton and Elton John, gossip rags and Jack Bauer, here.
So NBC Universal and News Corp. (home of Fox News and MySpace) think they have a YouTube killer: a plan to distribute video content from both networks, including movies and TV, according several online distribution points, allowing users to embed content (and the ads that go with it) on their own sites. Oh, some of the content will cost ya.
Credit Jon Stewart. The next wave in Internet video, according to the Wall Street Journal: fake news. A flood of it is on the horizon, including a sure-to-be home run from the folks at The Onion, American's Finest News Source:
On Tuesday, the satirical newspaper The Onion plans to launch a video Web site, a move that will put the closely held company in more direct competition with such media giants as Viacom Inc., Time Warner Inc. and Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp. Called Onion News Network, the site will parody the visual style and breathless reporting of 24-hour cable news networks like CNN. In a promotional video currently available on the site, ONN promises TV news that's "faster," "harder," "scarier" and "all-knowing."
Having trouble convincing the CEO to spend money on marketing? MarketingProfs.com offers these tips, taking a page out of super-investor Warrent Buffett's book and those hilarious sitcom-bound GEICO cavemen:
1. Marketing must have a visible financial impact. 2. Marketing must have a visible impact on the CEO. 3. Marketing must be memorable.
Much much more on getting the CEO to open his wallet here.
I'd like to know how many radio DJs today hung their entire morning drive shows on last night's Super Bowl ads. I'm sure the number is staggering. And I'm willing to bet that most of them tackled the subject like it was the first anyone was crazy enough to spend more time talking about the commercials then the actual game.
Anyway, we'll bite. Below are several Super Bowl and Super Bowl commercial links to get you started.
First, Blogger's Blog rounds up all sorts of trivia and info from last night's big game, from mechanics of the actual game to questions as to how Prince relieves himself. (BTW: That halftime show? Rockin'.)
Gadget freaks at Gizmodo dish their best commercial picks. The, advertising guru Bob Garfield reviews the ads, including that "Brokeback Snickers" spot that he thinks was a total miss. And Ad Age's complete coverage is available here.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette relaunches its Web site today, redeploying its features in what the paper's editors call a "user friendly" format. We gotta say, we love the RSS feeds (for each section!), and the video looks nice. The tabbed browsing of newspaper sections is also a great improvement.
As for content, not much has changed. You're still reminded, at every turn, that stories from the paper are locked down and require paid subscriptions. And if I'm a blogger and want to link to a Democrat-Gazette story -- maybe drive some traffic their way -- I'm outta luck, because there's no blog-friendly link available to use. Readers I send their way will have to buy a subscription or pay to see the single article. Nuts.
(I suppose I could try to back-door the system, use the "e-mail story to a friend" feature to e-mail myself a link and use that link to refer my readers to the story. But, incredibly, that link, too, requires I be subscriber to the paper to access the story. Hopefully, you're e-mailing DG stories to fellow DG subscribers. Otherwise, they can't read it.)
Online-only subscriptions are $50 -- unless, of course, you view the paper via its northwest Arkansas site, where everything is free. But hey, there's a newspaper war up there, right?
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