Let's Pick On The AJC! Installment #853

I've heard, time and time again at various press-related functions, the good folk from Cox Media Plantations say news coverage is all going hyper-local, so thus they are too. So let's take a look at just where they've not bothered to "go local" -- on a day when the AJC.com's top, above-the-fold story is about Paula Abdul's makeup. (It was there early this morning, trust me.) Or when they do go hyper-local, it's semi-pointless. Hell, they can't even do "southern."

1.) The NYT had a cover story yesterday about a very dangerous home improvement product that lingered on the shelves of Atlanta-based Home Depot. Not only was the product, Stand 'N Seal, sold in Home Depot stores long after the product was recalled, the company that manufactures the hyper-dubious ingredient in the bathroom sealer product is based in... you got it... Georgia. But we get... Paula Abdul's pimple coverage instead.

2.) When churches throughout Atlanta had their annual pet blessing services to mark the Feast of St. Francis Assisi (historic pet-lover), and a delightful, heartwarming photo-op any 'ole time and place, the AJC runs a wire-service picture of a Golden Retriever in a church in San Francisco. Who needs to get out of the house and down the road a piece for a dog sitting in any church pew along Peachtree Road? Especially when Buckhead has more Golden Retrievers per household than any other place on the planet.

3.) Possibly the most head-scratching omission though is the failure of the AJC, a paper that helped shaped American history by its coverage of all-things-civil-rights, to send one of their own to Jena, LA to cover the civil rights march that happened there on September 20, not here. Rather, they relied on wire service reports the day of the march, choosing original reporting only for... the hyper-local perspective! Too bad that in this case the hyper-local was never where the heart of that story lay. How much can a Motel 6 in Louisisana possibly impact the bottom line?

Local v-blogger Amani Channel did bother to cover Jena, LA though. On assignment for HDNews. Twice. Here's just one of his many fascinating, personal, indie packages from the scene for his blog, MyUrbanReport, proving once again that blogs are now the best place to get your local, in-depth news coverage and analysis. Need more on the Grady crisis? Forget Cox Plantations; try Grift's crib.

NOTE: Once again I find that the best way to work your way through a social media-induced funk is to blog your way out. Confounding medium, eh?

Writers Lost Jobs To Save This One?

This just defies every last snippet of reason and logic: the AJC loses journalists and writers the likes of Tom Baxter, Teresa Weaver, and Eleanor Ringel, but keeps on staff a jaw-dropping hack this stunningly hideous? What the bloody hell are they smoking over there on Marietta Street? Least they buried this one on the Obit Desk. Hell, she's worse than Caren West and Lisa Baron. If that's even possible.

h/t to Tania.

OnLineAthens The Coolest Kids In Georgia Media

OnLineAthens dot com, the online version of the Athens Banner-Herald (note how they brand print and online separately), is seriously head-and-shoulders above the rest of Georgia "traditional" media outlets in offering good, locally-grown multimedia on their pages. Scroll down on their AthFest page to click-on a video featuring the AthFest awards ceremony... still viable and good to watch even after the festival is over.

Not only is OnlineAthens wielding excellent, localized reporting, they're toting some nice DV cams while they're out and about. Too bad the AJC can't tap into a blazing Atlanta music scene right now to offer jack shit. Who even clicks on their one-dimensional site anymore, for that matter? I just go directly to The Blogs... or to Athens.

Heck, OnlineAthens even links you to a site called AthensMusic.com. Talk about your one-stop shopping. Wishful thinking to feel that Atlanta musicians and artists could hope for but a crumb from Atlanta media/Cox Plantation table.

Chances are, when their paper version flutters away one day, and it will, as all papers are in the process of doing, the Athens Banner-Herald won't miss a beat; they "got it" long ago that it's all about the sharing.

Lady Reporter

That’s what they used to call women in journalism: Lady Reporters. Cute, huh? And they stuck ‘em on the society desk to write about Margaret Mitchell’s little book, charity events and the Junior League. Well, Atlantan Katie Johnson wasn’t having any of that! Instead, she made the Civil Rights beat in the South during the sixties her own while working for the AP.

Johnson has had plenty of opportunities to tell her stories lately. The retired reporter, who covered the civil rights movement for the Atlanta bureau of The Associated Press, figures prominently in a new history of the wire service, “Breaking News” (Princeton Architectural Press). The book, which traces the world’s largest news organization from the Civil War to the war in Iraq, devotes a chapter to the rights struggle of the 1950s and ’60s. Johnson practically jumps off the pages.

Though she hasn’t worked for the AP in 30 years, it has given her quite a few assignments recently. She was summoned to New York for an oral history session. She appeared on a National Press Club panel that was broadcast on C-SPAN’s Book TV. She was invited to be on the program at the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock desegregation crisis next month, even though she had nothing to do with that story.

“They’re treating me like a celebrity,” she says, laughing. “They sure didn’t treat me like that when I worked for them.”

Full story here. What’s baffling and shameful is that Ms. Johnson isn’t given so much as a footnote in the “The Race Beat,” the 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning book about reporting the Civil Rights movement by Hank Klibanoff, a managing editor at the AJC. What a glaring omission.

Diane Glass

Diane Glass was the girl of her own dreams, and pretty much everything I always wanted to be but always seem to fall short: fabulous, razor-sharp, educated, stylish, beautiful, helpful, friendly, unapologetic, emphatic, dynamic, bold, supportive, uncompromising, forward-thinking, techno-savvy-cool, engaging, quick-witted, a writer.

She embodied the sentiments of living life the way you envision it, not how others mandate how your life should be on more dull, unimaginative, limited, plebeian terms. She really was an inspiration. She graduated Harvard Divinity School, for chrissake.

It's hard to believe she took sick and died, yes, died, all in a three week span. This is shocking. I'm still reeling from the news. I can't imagine what her close friends and family are going through right now. This is one of those times when the cliches about being taken from us too soon really fit. She should still be here. I should still be able to pick up the Sunday AJC and turn to her column first. I feel cheated. Robbed of something. Missing something.

I'd write more about Diane, but I simply can't right now. The only way to stop the tears that just well-up when I start is by walking away from the keyboard. I met her once. I read her work and followed her career like a true fan. And that I will be.

Her obit is here.

Here's a Tres Chicas song for Diane from me:

Seen That (former) Cox Plantation Pundit Somewhere Before

I don't know why I bother to respond to things like this anymore, because doing so just makes me tired and mad and sad, and just plain kinda weary in the long run. But Jesus H... this CL picture of Tom Baxter (above) is the same imagery I shot and used in a video about a political event in Atlanta -- weeks and weeks ago.

You can re-view that package here if you must. TB at 02:00 minutes in.

As I said in their pretty little comments place, while Rome burns, or writes up tedious, longwinded pieces about the death throes of traditional media (now there's a topic not heard much about 'round the Internets), new media rage on through the night, acknowledged or otherwise.

Things Change

Let me recount a little story a dear friend of mine told me about when she was a reporter for the AJC and used to cover technology, back when they actually cared about technology...

Friend said she had "sent herself", late nineties I assume, to a biggy music industry conference, just as the music industry was starting to have some serious shifts in their tectonic plates. Napster was running loose through the industry, and the industry was fighting back hard... in all the wrong places. At some point in the Biggy Conference, the head of the RIAA stated that the industry would go digital and drive themselves totally off the industry farm via the MP3, and I paraphrase here, over her dead body.

At that point, a young indie music techno type stood up and yelled towards the titans at the front of the room, "You're a fucking dinosaur, lady." Others took up the chant. All hell broke loose, and my friend, always the intrepid reporter, ran off to call the AJC desk in excitement to say things were just completely in chaos in, gee, of all things... the little 'ole recording industry, and that she needed a LOT of room, like maybe the front page even, to tell this kind of story the way it should be told.

The utterly disinterested (editor) voice on the other end of the phone told her, "You can have 10 inches."

I recount this tale only to warn of times here in a town long run by Cox Plantation Enterprises, and one other alt publication, that the music industry fought and raged against the new, digital machine, and they lost. Their entire industry is in turmoil. And as we move towards what the APC so quaintly calls "New Media" here in the news biz, don't be surprised if we too experience a few You're a fucking dinosaur moments of our own. It's not so much "New Media" as it is an industry-smashing tsunami.

As I mention over at Radical Georgia Moderate, it is a sorry day in hell when journalists like Doug Monroe, who at this point in a fine career should be running papers, are run out of town, and the papers are left to be run into the ground by the likes of Ken Edelstein and Julia Wallace.

Then again, with arrogant, clueless jerks in charge of papers, we have nothing to fear. They’ll only help steer an entire industry right into the ground… just like a lot of aging dinos did with the music industry. As if all the people watching ‘em crash and burn, here on the ground going digital, could care less.

I hope they don’t ask us to come and haul their derisive, dismissive, divisive, arrogant butts out of the wreckage either… we’ve got new media product to keep on cranking.

"A Divorce On Paper Only"

(This post cross-posted at Peach Pundit too)

Rest assured, some folks' worlds are getting ready to get severely rocked. And when Alan Judd's through with this story, a lot of people who thought they might have slipped quietly out under the radar, Kai Franklin for instance, may just be headed to the pokey instead.

Judd's extremely effective investigative work just overturned, thankfully, the inept, lethal anthill that was our state mental health system. (A shame Dr. Andrea Bradford there was allowed to resign; she should be prosecuted for murder, same as the legislators who have continually slashed funding to the state system of mental health care. But that's another story I suppose.)

Expect the same treatment with the Graham case, as Judd picks up where CL left off. From today's AJC cover story:

Franklin and Graham remained in regular contact, according to evidence presented during his sentencing hearing. Graham's co-defendants testified that while he was a fugitive, he sent drug money to Franklin: one bag of cash holding $25,000, another with $20,000. She also got portions of $150,000 that Graham invested in her father's business, King testified. David Franklin said last week that the investment never occurred.

In California, King said, Graham bought a pre-paid cellular telephone to call only his wife, thinking it would be difficult to trace. King referred to the device as "the Kai phone." "They would talk about different things," King said, "but sometimes about paying bills."He said Franklin regularly sent bills to Graham at the house where he was hiding in suburban Los Angeles.

King said Graham told him "he still had responsibilities to take care of for Kai."Graham used postal money orders to pay Franklin's bills, an Internal Revenue Service agent said. They apparently took pains to make the transactions difficult to track.

Franklin, agent Wayne Wright testified, bought the money orders in a "structured fashion" to avoid scrutiny. She had each money order issued for less than $3,000, the amount that triggers reporting requirements designed to detect illicit transactions. And she allegedly bought multiple money orders at multiple post offices on the same day, or in different lines in the same post office.

Wright said authorities have obtained about 60 such money orders. Other alleged discussions between Franklin and Graham during his time as a fugitive were of amore personal nature. When Graham wanted to see his child from a previous relationship, Rivera testified, Franklin picked up the boy from his mother and dropped him off for a flight out of DeKalb Peachtree Airport on a chartered jet. Rivera said he ferried drug money back to Graham in California on the same flight.

The visit troubled King."I just told Tremayne that he has to tighten up," King testified, "because he can't let something like that let the authorities track him through his son." Rivera said he accompanied the boy back to Atlanta several days later. He left the child with Franklin, he said, in her Cobb County home.

About The J-J Dinner Last Night

The Georgia Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson party last night was a blast, especially with Presidential hopeful, pretty boy John Edwards offering rock star, red carpet glitz to the evening. (And yes, he is adorable in person, but Jon Flack is right, the hair is overrated.)

Heck, Edwards’ had TWO drum lines to give him that big ‘ole ATL welcome. And 1,700 gushing fans crushing on him, quite literally, to get the money shot with their camera phones. Working the crowds, Edwards’ charming, tanned face would reveal a flicker of tiredness, then in the blink of an eye, it was gone. You wondered if you’d just imagined such a thing.

Edwards worked the crowd like the champion show-jumper of a lawyer he is. He’s no Bill Clinton; he’s just “too white” to get on that one-of-a-kind wavelength, but Edwards is quite charismatic in his own right, and a beautiful, engaging orator.

Besides Edwards, the entire evening was a Georgia politico and media Who’s Who. I was at the dinner table alongside Jim Galloway of AJC’s Political Insider; bless their hearts, they were live blogging! (Guess I can’t call ‘em old farts now.) Galloway was a seasoned journalist on a mission… to unearth just WHO produced that anti-Whitehead YouTube offering! Blogger Jon Flack of the new Tondee’s Tavern blog sat next to Galloway and fed him tantalizing tidbits, but no names, all night long.

I shot loads of great video myself, asked a question at Edwards’ presser alongside the Big Broadcasting TV guys, and hope to package some of the DV goodies over the weekend for you folks.

My personal highlight? Interviewing Vernon Jones about blogging! Heck, Vernon had more signage there than Edwards. All in all, a fabulous time was had by many Georgia Dems, despite the icky, remora fish lobbyista swarmin’ over the place too. Lordy, do they EVER go away?

Look for good things to come all around with GDP, especially with Martin Matheny running some new communications operations and strategies for them. Their website is really heating-up under his guidance, with blogging too!

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.

Our Problem Child/Troll Boortz

I'm still convinced NRB is the real deal troll over there haunting John Sugg and co. This video popped-up in Daily Kos, so I'm sure more than a few will be clicking-on now. Can't say he doesn't have it coming, not that it bothers him in the least. As Boortz told the SGR, "So what's the worst that can happen? I'll have to retire?"



I actually overheard Boortz apologizing on-air for his personally unique level of, uh, de-sensitivity shown just after the VT murders. Like anyone's listening at this point, dude. Talk about crying wolf.

NOTE: Isn't it kinda sad that the AJC pays people to blog, but then won't allow them to post videos into their entries. Not even the YouTube videos that are a critical part of the story they're trying to tell. And they turn commenting on and off like it was a freakin' dishwasher. They don't even know how to operate their appliances. Pity.

One dude who does know how to operate a few power items is Rusty. Check out what he and Amber made together. Now that's how you satisfied a lady... more closets!

What Is Going On At The AJC?

So we have a woman, Prissy Mary, who claimed to simply adore diversity, went looking for it at the Inman Park parade this past weekend, found some, and then whined and complained about too much diversity, to the AJC, when she actually stumbled across some.

So naturally the Atlanta blogosphere, many who had also been at the parade, responded immediately, articulately, visually, strongly and loudly. Yet the AJC's response to the response was to run a lame retort from... "Dancing Flowers For Peace?"

I don't think I've been that patronized since, well... dealing with divorce attorneys! Thanks to Sara at Going Through the Motions for the HT to this utter Big Media bullshit.

Shame AJC shame. This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no foolin' around.

And someone please, just please lock Prissy Mary in a gated community and throw away the key. And toss Laura Mallory in there with her while you're at it.

Help Save Our Books... And Teresa Weaver

The AJC seems to think that as people migrate to the Internet, they won't be needing books. And thus they won't need a mighty fine literary pages editor, Teresa Weaver, either. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First off... I just started yet another new book, The Glass Castle (mavelous) just this afternoon. Imagine that. I read almost as much as I'm on the Internets, which is a hell of a lot. There's NEVER been a time in my life when I wasn't reading at least 2-3 books at a time. But bully for me.

What really, really pains me good about the AJC's decision to give-up on books is their decision to let go of the book editor, Teresa Weaver. Now that just makes me madder than a hornet. I want to personally go slap that She Who Must Not Be Named (Jule-ee-duh Wallace) silly for this one clueless-decision alone.

Here's where it gets personal... the first editorial I ever published was green-lighted by Teresa when she was on the op/ed pages at the AJC. (Since the AJC's archives were not cached on the Internet back then, I can't link you to it, although if I wasn't so lazy I guess I could create a PDF... maybe later.)

It was an essay really, not so much an editorial; one not unlike the latest memoir-of-a-really-wacked childhood work I'm reading today. At the time I wrote that first essay, I was organizing my (first and only) rather tres she-she wedding... all by myself as I had "the only mother in America" completely and utterly disinterested in a daughter's wedding details.

I wrote about how I once tried to engage my loopy mother in some girly-girl chit chat about dress styles and champagne cocktails, and she (Mom) merely sang opera to me over her end of the phone line, while screeching periodically at her numerous "damn cats" while she shooed them off her porch with her broom, way far away, so it seemed, out in the pine woods of South Carolina. Mom had never organized a damn thing in her life, and she wasn't going to, poof, suddenly morph into Martha Stewart just for her only daughter's Big City wedding. The thought of even driving to Atlanta scared the bejeezus out of her anyway.

I gave-up on trying to interest Mom in wedding planning, and merely let her attend the event au natural where she entertained the guests marvelously with her unique, loopy freestyle babble about growing organic eggplants and teaching illiterate country folk's kids South Carolina history, which she knows like the back of her long, elegant, aristocratic hands, even though she ignores her thoroughly blue-blood upbringing too, and is far more comfortable in her life as a peasant.

Come to think about it, Mom was never at all interested in my wedding or my lame attempt at marriage, and she hasn't really said much to me ever since the marriage failed, although I know it (the failure) hurt her more than it hurt me. She might pretend that divorce doesn't exist, but at least she never once lectured me about my gross shortcomings as a wife. For that alone I am immensely grateful for her MO of total disengagement.

To this day, writing that first essay helped me begin to work through a lifetime of confusion about my mother's, uh, detachment from the minutia of my life, and to come to terms with it and begin to learn to accept my mother for... well, for whatever she is! And "normal" she never was -- and never will be.

Teresa Weaver green-lighting that essay gave me the encouragement and the impetuous to begin to be whatever I was really meant to be; to start exploring, seriously, my own artistic inclinations, should I ever stumble across any. I started a blog about my life because Teresa Weaver once used to publish my essays. She thought they were interesting enough to print, and thus she gave me that desperately needed stamp of, yes, mainstream approval I required to move forward with non-fiction writing, no matter the platform.

Today, I can't stop reading, and that too is often because of a book Teresa reviewed at the AJC. But more importantly, on a deeply personal, visceral level... because of Teresa Weaver, I will never stop writing.

And now I've got to stop because I'm trying really hard not to cry in front of my kid... but others are able to do more than shed sentimental tears; there's a petition to Help Protect Atlanta's Book Review circulating online. Please sign when you can.


HT: PS

Old Media Recreates

Saw Jay Bookman playing pinball at Manuel's last night... begging the question: Do you get a Pulitzer if you get to Level IV?

AJC Brings Home Pulitzer Gold

Congratulations to the AJC's Pulitzer Prize winners! Will they lead and inspire us then be booted out the door for their efforts? Hard to say. But rest assured, we'll be tuned to all the drama still to come.

I began writing essays and commentary about ten years ago, because the work of several women commentator-journalists, editorialists, authors and broadcasters led me to have a go at it. I'd read and watched their work for years, then had me one of those Well hell, I could do that too moments.

The Top Five for me was always, in no particular order: Bailey White, Susan Stamberg, Cokie Roberts, Eleanor Cliff and Cynthia Tucker. Right now I'm so proud of Miss Cindy Tee I'm about to burst. She'd no doubt cringe at the thought, but I don't care.

The blogosphere wasn't created in a vacuum, so HTs all around to the women journalists who have blazed a true path for the rest of us.

Welcome To The Blogosphere!

Oh dear. If I wasn't such a bitter, shrivel-hearted, cynical, little hate-monkey, I'd about start crying right now. There are times when booze is sent directly from God to sooth the savage in writers, although of course we know it mostly inflames it to ludicrous proportions, but whatever... I just hope there can be some comfort found somewhere, bottom of a bottle, EAYC, friend's really nice beach house, that sorta thing, for these good folk. Whatever it takes.

I might have to drink some for you, AJC. You deserve to see me toasted for all the pain you're being put through right now. Damn. Damn. Damn. This is truly ugly.

If it'll help some, just contact the SGR and I'll write-up really nasty, particularly vile and whiny entries about Jule-ee-uggghhh, or She Who Must Not Be Named, or heck, whoever you guys want! And you can just leave all the ugly comments you want here too, if you feel you need to just vent a little.

The blogged word is powerful... you too will see. In time of course. Right now, just have another round. Let it out.

Bless their hearts...

Meet The New Boss

Nothing like the old boss, either. I'm convinced we'll all be working for Amani one day, especially if he was to get together with Amber and Rusty. Shoot, as a company they'd have that James Cox Kennedy dude and all the rest of those Cox nespots sellin'-off their PJs right and left!

Amani just gets it. He's so good, heck he's Web 3.0. Not only does he manage to beat Cox Enterprises to the turn-around-the-product punch, he slips in handy video production tips at just the right places. (Unless you're Mark Winne, never go barging into any place of business with "cameras blazing," as Amani mentions. That's a very basic video etiquette tip to live and work by, for you citizen journalism newbies and wannabees.)

Thank me later and enjoy.

Click To Play

Funny, those AJC reporters and editors seem to be popping-up on indie Atlanta blogs everywhere. Are we scheduled for a total indie media convergence here in Cox Country?! My my my...

NOTE: A feature about Amani and MyUrbanReport is due out in the old school (AJC) Thursday. Will link to that when it happens.

Let's Conversation! With The AJC

Big Media Stops To Assist Stranded Blogger

In what could very well be another shot in the media revolution, I just had an AJC reporter email me to correct a glaring error on my blog. You eagle-eye fellow bloggers, that would be me too, never caught that I'd written "Bob Woodward" all over a blog post instead of "Bob Woodruff." (And yeah, I had to go in and re-order some posts, so if things look weird upon your return to the SGR, it's because I had to delete the original "Bob Woodward" post and replace it with "Woodruff." Screwed up the timeline for the day.)

Boy, do I feel like a total chump. So much for our editorial system of checks and balances here in the blogosphere. Gotta get bailed out by MSM. Hummmpppphhh.

Oh well. You get what you pay for around here. Or maybe they just read Leonard's open letter and decided to "open source" their copy editing skills! Whatever, I'm grateful that someone on the AJC payroll even took 30 seconds to e-mail a blogger. Of course, I'd prefer that he'd posted a comment, but I'll take what I can get.

One email at a time... (Email -- so last century.)

Open Letter To AJC from PJNet

Leonard Witt at PJNet has a strong, open letter for the AJC. Like they'll ever see it on a blog, Leonard. Get real. They're too busy sprinkling fairy dust, crafting the fantasy that they themselves, again, are the only source of news and information in this state, to deign to read a blog.

Here's an excerpt from the open letter. Full post here.

In the future, as advertising and news diverge, the audiences will have to pay more of the costs. Giving them great journalism will not be enough--that's a sad reality. However, if all of Picard's stakeholders -- advertisers, investors, journalists, consumers and society in general -- feel they have ownership in the paper, and are part of its decision making process, and if the paper and the community are indistinguishable, one adding to the strength of the other, then journalism, the AJC and all of Georgia will profit.

Getting there will require innovative thinking and trust in the power of collective thought, but the lesson of Linus Torvalds says that it can happen -- and as Microsoft learned -- if you stay too closed and don't trust your audience--then that audience will find someone else who will trust it and who understands the worth of community involvement and collective thought. Still it is not too late. Ask us all how we can help preserve a great news organization and improve journalism in this digital age, ask us all how we might get involved. You might be surprised at the answers we can collectively produce.

This post put together by R.E.M.'s Losing My Religion: "I think I thought I saw you try. That was just a dream."