NBCChicago.com even sadder now

Internet, Media, , ,

Michael Miner of the Chicago Reader discusses NBCChicago.com’s new redesign in a larger story about what happens when errors are introduced as you “collate and synthesize the news.”** (Those are the words of NBCChicago.com’s managing editor, not Miner.)

On the redesign, which incorporates a poll on each story that asks users how they feel, Miner says:

“Stunts like this pander to the public in order to attract the elusive online advertiser…That’s the voice of a utility, not a news medium. When every news medium sounds like this, who will we count on for serious journalism?”

I don’t know if Miner realizes it, but every one of NBC’s local news sites “sounds” like this thanks to rolling out this redesign across all their local sites. The better question is, “When every online news medium looks like this, how does your local news coverage differentiate itself?” Certainly not by treating them like network affiliates. (The “Rock Stars on the Rampage” photo gallery is a “lead story” on three of NBC Chicago’s sites right now and don’t get me started on its “Local Beat” section.)

More on the NBCChicago.com redesign from me last month.

** I don’t mean to say this happens every time someone blogs about a story. There are plenty of talented people who do this and manage to get the details right.

Why are so many journo/media panels full of white guys

Media, , ,

The Windy Citizen is hosting an interesting discussion about the diversity – or lack thereof – in “future of media” panels. To some it’s simply a case of organizers only seeking out white men. To others – myself included – it’s more complicated than that. Even those who seek to put women and persons of color on their panels – again, myself included – find themselves challenged.

Read more here (my expanded thoughts on this topic specifically as it relates to the CMFC here and here).

Mayor Daley apologizes for something he didn’t do

Politics, , , ,

“Even if privatizing the parking meters was the best alternative, the key issue would be whether the administration, starting with Mayor Daley, followed a process to ensure that the most qualified people available conducted the most sophisticated analysis possible to come up with the best agreement for taxpayers.

Mayor Daley has yet to tell his constituents that this happened. And it’s going to be hard for him to do so, because all evidence available suggests that it didn’t.”

– Mick Dumke “Mayor Daley is sorry that we don’t like the parking meter deal“, chicagoreader.com

What’s always struck me about the Mayor is that even people who don’t like his policies say they come away with positive feelings about him after they have a personal encounter with him. (I’m one of those people.) I think that’s why so many folks roll over for the guy, particularly reporters. Glad Dumke is more clear-eyed than the rest of us.

Fratulent

Media, , , , ,

“The moral implications aside, the better reason to stop using “fratty” is that it stands for so many things that it ends up standing for nothing. Which means that if you use “fratty” when you really mean “homoerotic,” you’re either lazy, stupid, or hungry for vengeance against the guy who kicked you out of that smoker party your freshman year.” – “If Everything is Fratty, Then Nothing Is“; Mike Riggs, Village Voice

All prejudices aside, Riggs is arguing here for better writing and that’s reason enough.

Reading and writing, no arithmetic

Uncategorized, , ,

Two important – to me, at least – announcements:

* I have been promoted to Editor and Director of Content at Playboy.com. It’s a tremendous opportunity and I’m really proud to be a part of an organization with both a storied legacy and a future that has the potential for tremendous growth.

* I’m doing a reading this Monday at the Hungry Brain, a bar in my neighborhood. I’ll be reading an original piece about how I’m getting old and loving it what it’s like to work at Playboy. I promise it will be funny. Details are as follows:

You, Me, Them, Everybody
Date: Monday, August 17, 2009
Time: 8:00pm – 11:55pm
Location: Hungry Brain (2319 W Belmont); Chicago
Price: Free

Readings from:
Aaron Cynic
Lindsay Hunter
Andrew Mall
Scott Smith

Hosted by Brandon Wetherbee

Hope to see you there.

UPDATE:For whatever reason, the “getting old” piece didn’t pan out, so I’m going with a collection of some amusing anecdotes from work.

NBC Chicago is making me sad

Internet, Media,

NBCChicago.com – along with several other local NBC affiliates – rolled out a re-design at the end of July, less than a year after a previous re-design, which emphasized its local news coverage. Though the new site is more attractive than the old, and provides more ways for people to interact with the site’s content, it now seems less interested in delivering news than delivering the moods of its readers.

I wasn’t blown away by the design of the old site, but I admired how they seemed to be paying attention to what other sites were reporting. Many of the local news stories had outbound links, and even mentioned other sites by name. Like all good blogs, they combined original reporting with some analysis and related information. The tagline on the old site was “Locals Only” and while sometimes that meant silly contests like “Which is better: Lollapalooza or Pitchfork?” it also meant they snagged good local writers, like Steve Rhodes of the Beachwood Reporter, to cover politics.

The new site, however, seems to be more interested in proving it knows what Facebook is.

I don’t see the value or newsworthiness in asking people which of six feelings/actions they have/take after reading a story. Sure, it makes for an eye-catching interactive element on the homepage…


…but the forest is lost in the trees. The idea here (I assume) is that “NBC Chicago” (or “Peacock-Logo 70s-Font” as the case may be) is not some unseen group of editors and reporters. “NBC Chicago” is the readers of the site. And those readers are “furious about shady Olympics real estate deals” and you can read more about it by clicking that tagline. In a way, it’s an expression of what Brad Flora said in a post on the Chicago Media Future Conference site.

But it took me about 10-15 minutes of poking around the site to figure all this out. For those of you who spend time looking at metrics like “time spent on site” you know most of your readers don’t spend that kind of time on your site. Nor are they huge geeks like me who will take the time to figure out what’s behind all this. Instead, they’ll just see taglines like this…


…and – in an incredibly unfortunate juxtaposition – this…


Now, the first tagline suggests an ideological bent to NBC that I doubt is intended. But the second…well, if you were a professional news organization, would you want something on the main page of your site that essentially said “We think it’s funny that a hockey player beat the hell out of a cab driver over a matter of 20 cents?”

This erosion of NBC Chicago’s identity in favor of lulz wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the site could settle on a voice. Some stories are written as straight-ahead reportage, like this coverage of a death at Lollapalooza (although some copy editing on that dek would clear up what the story makes clear: This was the fire department’s only call to Grant Park, not its only call all day). But others, like this story on the Mayor denying that a developer will profit from the Olympics, play it cheeky with the Mayor identified on first reference as “Big Swinging D.” There’s nothing wrong with that per se – there’s plenty to be said for a tongue-in-cheek take on the news – but the context of both stories is identical, which is confusing.

Moreover, it wouldn’t matter that NBC Chicago offers cutesy features like voting on how a story makes you feel or contains comparisons of Mayor Daley to a large schwanz, if the site also made it easy to find breaking news quickly and easily. Yet I didn’t realize the new site offers up-to-the-minute traffic info in the right hand corner of the site until a few minutes ago. And this is after I spent a good half hour poking around.

To be fair to my local NBC affiliate, most of the above isn’t its fault. This new design is now in use by all NBC Local sites so it’s obvious this was a corporate dictum made from on high, whether NBC Chicago liked it or not. And there are some aspects of the new design that I like, like this “So Chicago” section. But with news execs constantly fretting about people “stealing” their content, it seems like the solution NBC decided on is one that makes it harder to find that content the first place.

John Hughes in five paragraphs

Media, , , ,

“Few filmmakers define an era, a genre and a place like John Hughes did with his ’80s comedies often set on Chicago’s North Shore.

He may not have been a critic’s darling, but his name became synonymous with a brand of comedy in which young, rebellious, yet good-at-heart characters battle an establishment that seemed to rankle the filmmaker as well. Films such as “The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Home Alone” took on an iconic status, all while his productions revitalized the local film industry and launched scores of careers.”– Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune

That about says it all. But one more thing:

John Hughes created adventure. Joss Whedon was left only with metaphorical vampires and monsters to explain high school, as Hughes had already had his way with the setting several times over. He created fantasy adventures where a young man could fool an entire town, then cut a broad swath through one of the largest cities in America, leading a literal parade. He created romantic adventures born in 50’s mythic Americana where the boy from the wrong side of the tracks gets the most popular girl in school to fall for him, just before he realizes he’s in love with his best friend. And he created wartime adventures, where a ragtag group of soldiers with few common bonds unite against more than a few common enemies to escape a prison of society’s making. I could go on but…

In short, John Hughes created superheroes. For someone like me who spent his childhood idolizing comic book heroes, the heroes of Hughes’s films were there to hand me the baton as I entered the second leg of life’s race, better known as adolescence. And they made it that much easier to sprint my way through adulthood, where reuniting with your family at the end of the day can be as heroic as leaping a tall building in a single bound.

Chicago ≠ The Cubs

Uncategorized, , , ,

Really digging Mark Caro here:

Presenting sumptuous visions of Wrigley Field and Chicago itself, “We Believe” equates the team and city while tracing their parallel histories. But is that really how Chicago sees itself?

I don’t generally blow four-run leads. I try not to fall to pieces when the spotlight is brightest. 

I’d rather view us as the Michael Jordan-era Bulls: playing smart, working as a team, outhustling the other guys and hitting the clutch shot.

[snip]

I might even flirt with treason and suggest that we seek our collective reflection in the White Sox, who are scrappy, constantly rebuilding and perpetually overlooked. But most of us like to score on occasion.

Ooh, had me until the end. Because I’m pretty sure winning the World Series is like scoring with the hottest girl in school.

By the way, anyone know what the statute of limitations is on bragging about your most recent World Series win? Is it five years? That seems about right.

This and that

Internet

There’s been lots going on. Here’s a summary:

* I’m getting to a point where I’m bored with using this blog for purely professional discussions “on media: social, local and otherwise” as the tagline above says. I’m thinking it ought to be more like “On media, local, and otherwise.” Then again, I’ve been here before so who knows. But…

* My friend Matt Wood shut down his Tumblr account. Frankly, the only reason I started a Tumblr account was because Matt did and if he thought it was worth trying then it must have been. But we both, independently, seem to have come to the same conclusion: We’d prefer to have one place for all our thoughts, be they long or short. For my part, I’d be much happier with this blog – and blog more – if OMIC was a combo of what’s been here and what’s been on my Tumblr account.

* My wife and I are house-hunting. It’s alternately fun and terrible. But also terribly exciting to be taking this step.

* Work’s been crazy. More on that and the next step in the Chicago Media Future Conference soon.

Apparently, I am the reason why Lady Gaga is blonde now

Music, , ,

Over the weekend, my sister called me and said that E! Online was reporting that Lady Gaga said she changed her look from brunette to blonde because she was once mistaken for Amy Winehouse. I found the same story in The UK Sun this week.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But this is what Lady GaGa used to look like:

I think it would be easy to mistake her for Amy Winehouse, especially if she was sporting a makeup job similar to Winehouse. In fact, I know it would be…

Because I did.

Here’s what happened, excerpted from my original post about a 2007 Lollapalooza afterparty:

“Standing next to me was a short, dark-haired, woman with heavy eye makeup who was being fawned over by someone else. “Ah ha,” I thought. “Amy Winehouse, my first sighting.” Despite the “no-that’s-not-her” protestations of my fellow partygoers, I decided to open with a question that would get me an easy “yes” and go from there. “Excuse me,” I said, “are you still touring with the Dap Kings?” She looked me dead in the eye, smiled – with suddenly worrying perfect teeth – and said:

Amy Winehouse: “I’ve never toured with the Dap Kings.”
Me: “…”
Totally Not Amy Winehouse: “I’m Lady GaGa.”
Me: “Ohhh. Um, hi. I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.”
Lady GaGa: “Who did you think I was?”
Me: “You know, I….it doesn’t matter. Say, you’re from New York, right?”
Lady GaGa: “Yes, I’m from Man-haht-tan.” (in the thickest New Yawk accent ever)
Me: (determined to salvage this opportunity) “And you’re playing the MySpace stage tomorrow, right?”
Lady GaGa: “BMI.”
Me: “Oh-KAY! Well, it was nice meeting you, have a nice night.”

I turn back to Whitney and her friend, who are looking at me as if they’ve just witnessed someone willingly throw themselves through a plate-glass window. “So, that wasn’t her,” I said, confirming the obvious.

So…yeah. It’s entirely possible I’m not the sole person responsible for her dive into a bottle of peroxide. But at the very least, I’m a contributing factor.