Thursday, May 17, 2007

Your Podcasts Are As Icky As Aspic


Aaaaaggghhhhhhhhhh. In the ongoing theme song of the AJC, When Will They Every Learn, the online "thing" they're attempting is now offering hideous, voice recognition, robotic-sounding podcasts alongside their op/eds.

This one is mauled almost beyond recognition, which is a shame, because the editorial (in text only) is a good one. Click-2-listen only at your own peril.

As for the content of that editorial... my comments, duped over from Peachtree Screed's comments, since of course there is no commenting available (aaaggghhhhhhagain) on that op/ed, go something like this:

Episcopalianism is rampant in my family, for the ones who aren't agnostic at least, and that would be most of 'em. And while I am deeply fond of and grateful for the the liturgical and historical comforts of the Episcopal Church, I've been drawn to more, uh, down to earth modes of worship too, particularly the Baptist Church, being mostly a southerner when it comes down to it.

However, I've never been able to ever seriously consider making a break and worshipping at a Baptist Church because of, well, a lot of things, particularly their inability to separate church from partisan politics. If they could begin to do that, I'd begin to think of Southern Baptist as a viable option to (too Church of England-y) Anglicanism, which is undergoing its own severe identity crisis... but that's another topic altogether.

Besides, I've always preferred the more Baptist-like Jello congealed salads with marshmallows to those hideous tomato aspics Episcopalian church ladies are so fond of.

8 comments:

rusty said...

LOL!

Robots really are going to take all us lowly humans' jobs.

Amber Rhea said...

Ha! They were talking about that crap when I was at Cox. I sat in meetings about it. I tried to talk them out of it, but of course, they didn't listen to little ol' me, a lowly developer. They are veterans of the newsroom! They know best!

Grayson: Atlanta, GA said...

Yeah, and I bet not once did it cross their mind that the blogosphere would compare their podcasts to tomato aspic. So there!

karyrogers said...

As a "born-and-reared" Southern Baptist, I can attest to the tasty Jell-o desserts and salads. Also, the homemade ice cream socials (fellowships) are outstanding.

MelGX said...

Sorry to be a fly in the aspic, but isn't this function for the hearing impaired? In which case, the automation makes perfect sense.

Amber Rhea said...

You mean the vision impaired?

There are already screen readers out there - and have been for over a decade - that work better than that robotic thing.

MelGX said...

Oh duh. I meant to write sight impaired.

Grayson: Atlanta, GA said...

I assumed that since they were available for downloads and were a new feature of the op/ed section that they were the AJC's idea of a new gizmo/podcast. After all, they are going to be our "online leader," so that's what I'm seeing there, vision-impaired or otherwise - leadership, right?