When Big Media Met Little Media

In the Why Do They Bother, They'll Never Be Cool category (kinda like Republicans), the Atlanta Press Club will host the anchor of a MSM show called i-Caught. According to their press release...

(Bill) Weir is host of ABC’s new hit show, i-Caught, the newsmagazine for the YouTube generation. It is based on user-generated Internet video and the stories behind them. It airs Tuesday nights, 9-10 p.m."

I-Neverheardofit, but I do plan to be at the APC's newsmaker luncheon to hear more of MSM's outrageous spinning of their gluttonous success-i. Last one I went to though was, giving panel, the hideous Art Harris, of some ultra-hideous, blow-a-celeb show, this blog, and sometimes CNN.

With genuine pride and glory, mixed with this utterly contrived and feigned I'z just doin' the peoples bid-ness self-preservation shuck and jive, Harris was downtown at the Commerce Club showing-off his exclusive interviews with some jail-housed relation, in the utter stinking shit heap that was the Anna Nicole death and re-death coverage. There's turd polishing and then there's Art Harris, who just smears the reeking fecal matter all over himself and wanders around like it's Chanel N°5 he's wearing.

I'm still ashamed and furious at myself that I sat through a reeking video presentation of his glorification of scum-celebrity culture (i.e."exclusives") without standing up and yelling, "Get that disgusting celeb-stink out of my face, you shameless bald-headed Big TV freak."

APC's newsmaker luncheon with Bill i-Somethingcute, and Kate Snow, of ABC News info is here:

WHEN
Thursday, September 20
11:30 a.m. – Registration
Noon – Lunch
12:25 p.m. – Remarks
12:45 p.m. – Question and Answer Session

WHERE
The Commerce Club
34 Broad Street, 16th Floor Dining Room
Atlanta, GA 30303
For directions, please visit www.thecommerceclub.org/location.html. Because of limited parking at TCC, please consider using MARTA, whose Five Points station is across the street, or parking in nearby decks on Marietta Street.

R.S.V.P.
This luncheon is open to the public. APC members may purchase individual tickets for $28 each or tables of 10 for $280, which includes signage. The nonmember prices are $35 for individual tickets and $350 for tables of 10 with signage. Parking is not included in the ticket price. Tickets and tables may be purchased at http://www.atlantapressclub.org/ or by calling
404-577-7377. No tickets will be sold after noon on Wednesday, September 19. Payment must accompany reservations, and there is a 48-hour cancellation policy.

Free Gorilla Ball Ticket!

Here's a perfect time for Atlanta bloggers to ask for, and receive, membership in the Atlanta Press Club 'cause you'll get a free ticket to the annual Gorilla Ball, where embarrassing bloopers and outtakes from local TV stations and CNN are revealed, but for members only. Some of the outtakes are hilarious, and some just take the total piss out of anyone involved.

Attention video bloggers: send the APC your funny outtakes and see if they will include them in the evening's festivities. But warning, you have to be willing, and have the stamina and inner fortitude, to endure peers laughing along WITH you. And yeah, sometimes even AT you. These local news folks have been doing just that, back and forth with one another, for decades. Builds healthy competitive environments and rivalries, all-American stuff like that.

I'm gonna call Andrew Keen right now and see if he'll go as my date. (You got his number Will Hinton?) I feel I need a man I can make goo-goo eyes at all night long, tell him what a strong manly-man writer he is, what an outstanding reputation he holds in the community, and let him know how much I adored his books I'd of course read every bloody boring word of. I'm feel certain that for my efforts he'll no doubt shower me with enduring affection, loads of money, mindblowing sex, and never leave me nor look sideways at another woman. Don't they all?!

Ahhhhhh romance.

Beat The 11 O'Clocks: 10th Cong. TV Debate

To Go Tuesday

Couple of cool things happening in the ATL Tuesday, June 12th.

1.) APC hosts a debate for the 10th Congressional special election candidates at GPB at 2pm. More details here.

2.) Peel, an Austin band named for famed Brit music master John Peel, plays Smith's Olde Bar at like... like 8pm maybe. I have no earthly idea if this band is any good; I just like their choice of name, although their artwork/photography of a box cutter with "Let's Roll" written pretty in Sharpie is vaguely disturbing.

Read the definitive John Peel obit from Atlantan Tom Roche (a friend of the original Peel) here. This obit is marvelous; originally published in Stomp & Stammer.

HT: C&T

Atlanta Press Club New Media Podcast

The podcast is here for last night's Atlanta Press Club event. Many folks enjoyed a lively, very open, un-conference style discussion about all-things-new-media. We barely scratched the surface. Fortunately, APC will be holding a series of discussions on New Media in media.

Free Book At APC Event Thursday!!!!

Come get your free book and jump into the New Media, uh, discussion. Lord knows what this event will end-up looking like. Hopefully nothing like the WSB one last week. I promise to be on my best good girl behavior... for at least the first 10 minutes. Lemme dupe over the APC press release for you:

It's no secret that the way news is gathered, reported and disseminated has changed in recent years. What is not clear is the impact of these changes. Do "new media" trends have staying power? Could they eventually lead to the decline of traditional reporting?

The Atlanta Press Club will hold a series of monthly programs in 2007 that examine the way traditional journalism is changing with the times.Join us for our first program in this series on Thursday, June 7. We'll look at the phenomenon of citizen journalism.

So far confirmed panelists include: Lea Donosky, Atlanta Journal-Consitution; Mark Bauer, WSB; Grayson Daughters, Way South Media, Inc. More panelists will be listed soon.

This is an evening program that is free to APC members and $10 for nonmembers. Networking will be 6-7 p.m. and the program 7-8:30 p.m. The program will be in The Commerce Club building, 18th Floor. Go to http://www.atlantapressclub.org/ to register.

People who attend this program will get a free copy of Manning Selvage & Lee's 2007-2008 Atlanta Media Guide.

Pretend Voices Carry

Couple of magical thinking ops for "the public" coming up...

1.) The DNR is solicitous of your thoughts on our state park system. More info here. My only wish is that they reinstate Sally Bethea to the developer-skewed board. But you likely already know that if you read this blog.

2.) Atlanta Press Club wishes to dismiss, excuse me, discuss new media. I'll be there to help facilitate the stoning of -- myself. Or to mangle a line from Life of Brian: "Crucifixion? Excellent! Just ahead on your right."

3.) Neither here nor there, but it needs to be said to Creative Loafing:

I hope you (CL) are happy with your smug, arrogant, snotty-ass, pompous, over-inflated selves and sense of media importance now. You’ve managed to really
hurt and confuse a lot of hard working, indie bloggers by playing favorites, first time out of the cover story gate, with a piece about the Atlanta blogosphere.

You might as well be 17-year old cheerleaders at Wheeler High for all the maturity you’ve shown towards our new media community. We’ve worked so long and so hard and created such amazing bonds and systems of support, only to have you announce to the world that not only do you not understand social media, you want to trample on it at every given opportunity.

I’m so angry right now, I can hardly see straight. I hope I calm down enough by the time we ever cross paths again. You’re no better than Newt Gingrich with your divisive, derisive ways.

So there. Got that off my chest I suppose. It's not yet noon and I need a drink and a smoke. Plenty of that, and hot air too, all around.

Save The Date - June 7th

To all my ATL blogger peeps... please mark June 7th, two week from tonight, on your calendar. The Atlanta Press Club has... gasp... discovered social media. Weirder things have happened I suppose. Anyways... getting to the point here, I'll be moderating a panel of whomevers for this APC event that night, at the Commerce Club downtown I believe.

And yes, this is something of a Big Deal for me, and I REALLY need all my blogging bretheren there for support. (Besides, if only six people show for the event, I'll get really bummed and have to go get drunk or something.)

More importantly, MSM in the ATL need to not only hear about new media, they need to see it up close and personal. We have got to put an end to the this is a silly, unimportant trend that will surely pass mode of thinking by traditional media while we're at it.

So please plan to be there for this historic event on June 7th. I'll post more details as they become available from APC. Their forums usually start around 6-7pm.

Word.

Let The Great SC Dissing Begin

Trust the NYT's Alessandra Stanley to fire an opening shot at my ye 'olde home state. As if I could possibly have expected otherwise. I've been totally intimidated, dissed too, by seemingly scores of Ivy League women, given my dubious education credentials and pronounced accent.

It's really rather pathetic, in a Bridget Jones way. Those Ivy Leaguers of all genders could be so haughty and dismissive, and just kinda mean-girl when we used to rub shoulders in network news.

Then again, I could always drink their lipflapping, snotty, privileged, toned butts way under the table... in my day of course. And dissing SC is my territory, Alessandra. Not yours. Nobody really can do it better, if I do say so myself.

Least I can still go out drinking here in Georgia with whomever, wearing whatever, whenever I damn well feel like it, wearing only a comforter and a push-up bra maybe! Lord knows what the women of Iran won't be allowed to do next. This is sickening here. Just sickening. It knots my stomach in a billion different ways for the hell it implies. No need to wonder why I have always been an unapologetic feminist.

Bombing back to the stone age to free women from religious, nonsensical oppression? Sounds plausible, initially; but if I was for that, we'd have to start here in Georgia, given our own religion-inspired nonsensical legislation.

One other thing before you run away... congratulations to Mara Shalhoup at Creative Loafing for her Best Journalist in Atlanta award last night at the APC awards gala. She really deserves that recognition for being the hardest working, lowest-paid reporter in this city. I hope the NYT comes a'callin' for her kinda talent soon.

Sigh... I fear a total Bridget Jones kinda afternoon coming-on here for real. Bloggers must have so many self-esteem issues. Sigh... Know what could really pick me up though? Anyone got ANY good gossip from last night's APC soiree? Did anything remotely resembling monkey biz transpire without me there to blog it? Come on. The SGR needs some good 'ole schadenfreude-dirt right about now.

Yawn

APC announces our annual gala's keynoter... drum roll not necessary because it's... Dan Rather. Dan Rather? WTF? Guess Atlanta still isn't ready for the future of journalism, just accolades to the past. Too bad. I have zero interest in purchasing an overpriced ticket now. Hell, if it would have been, say, Michael Rosenblum (see below entry), I'd have bought a whole freakin' table. Just to have a blogger posse drink too much and throw grapes at the podium while they thought no one was looking.