Zobar's Journal

07/16/2006 11:12 #37358

bloggers unplug for an offline picnic
Category: news

'Buffalo's bloggers took a break Saturday from criticizing Joel Giambra, Wal-Mart and the Buffalo Sabres' proposed new logo to eat some barbecue and meet their cyber peers.'

'only about a dozen bloggers ... attended'

'Saturday's event is the fourth BloggerCon meeting for members of the area blogging community.'

'The social-networking aspect of blogging just comes with the territory," said Derek Punaro'

WTF?! WNY Media has a get-together once a year and, out of their less than 20 members, half show up. What's the deal, call a roast pig a 'conference,' and it'll make B1 in the local paper? We've done more get-togethers in the last four months than they've done in the last four years, usually on less than two days' notice, and there's usually at least a dozen people there each time. And furthermore, we have no offline picnics because when we unplug ... we're still online.

(e:strip) - The Jimmy Olsen of the Buffalo Blogging community.

Who's the new PR director? You need to send the News an angry letter to the editor. I have it on good authority that they'll print anything.

- Z

ajay - 07/16/06 15:39
Actually, I think it is a _good_ thing that newspapers contradict themselves. This means there's no single voice dictating things; a plurality of voices has an outlet. Their job is to report news.

I would be scared of a news source which spoke with one voice (like Faux 'News').

boxerboi - 07/16/06 14:38
The Buffalo News, like the NY Times, will print anything. Even if it contradicts what they said less than 24 hours earlier. When I was a senior in high school, my journalism teacher pointed this out and I started looking for the inconsistencies. Pretty soon I had a huge pile of highlighted articles.

If it wasn't for the Bon-Ton coupons and the crappy "around WNY" thumbnail at the bottom of the front page, I'm not sure anyone would bother picking it up.

paul - 07/16/06 13:14
I started writing a response to this and it ended up being an article instead so I posted it over on the news journal (e:news,897)

07/14/2006 17:01 #37357

how to deal with disgruntled employees
Category: management

The air conditioner for the back office is busted and it ain't getting fixed.

I feel kind of bad about it, partially because I'm in the back office but mostly because I'm on the outs with management w.r.t. the air conditioning situation (e:zobar,68) [woops].

So today I went out and got a 6-pack of icy-cold Sam Adams for the back office. [It is important to know that the back office and the front office are separate enough that we may as well be in separate buildings.] Later on, the assistant music editor came back to chat about our upcoming citywide battle-of-the-bands thing (e:zobar,79) . Of course I offered him a bottle, and of course he accepted. I did not expect that, after the meeting, he would come back with two 6-packs of icy cold beer of his own for the office. Now Video and Editorial are in on it, and nothing is getting done.

Now we've got AirTunes

set up in the back office and one of the front office people is djing for us. I got a link to Bar Stool Racing

and we got videos of dudes taking on four other dudes and winning

and the whole place has just gone to hell. This is kind of a crappy company to work for, but where else could you get away with this much fucking around?

Wally

is my hero. Perhaps that's a bad thing.

- Z

chico - 07/14/06 17:22
One lousy six pack of Sam started all that Friday goodness?! That may be the best $7.99 + deposit that you ever spent, my friend.

07/13/2006 13:00 #37356

what happens in stralsund stays there
Category: diplomacy

On the one hand, what a weirdo.
On the other hand, can you blame him?

- Z

07/12/2006 19:05 #37355

honky tonks dairy queens and 7-elevens
Category: work

First things first: (e:libertad,79) got me thinking about the environment, sort of - so my new user sound is '(Nothing But) Flowers' by the Talking Heads gather:0052634001152745342

I'm a little cheesed off about work- I got the last three articles dumped on my desk at 5:30 this evening, a half hour after I was supposed to have already been at my mom's house to tend to her dog. One of them

was supposed to be a web exclusive that we were going to promote on the cover, but it's in the paper this week. Is it just me, or does something cease to be a web exclusive once you run it through the press? Ohhh.... just the video is exclusive to the web, because that's a special thing. Wouldn't it be more impressive if we did run the video in the paper? Pick the most important 54 frames and print them in the corner of every page so you can flip through them real fast?

The moral of the story is: the dog pooped all over the floor.

- Z

_______________
ps. The video is kind of blah, but it's worth it just to see Antoine Thompson try to say that he supports gay marriage without actually saying that he supports gay marriage. Also, props to Sam Hoyt for showing up and going on-record, though his argument that gay marriage would be good for Buffalo's economy is, like, really weird.

chico - 07/12/06 19:34
Not to obscure some really good larger points that Metalpeter makes in his comment, but dammit Mp, you're absolutely right! He did steal the idea from a Simpsons episode. I knew it sounded familiar!

metalpeter - 07/12/06 19:30
I will admit that I didn't read or see his argument that economicly Gay Mariage would be good for buffalo isn't really a weird Idea. It is the Same Idea that Vegas and Atlantic City use for Gambleing. Since it is legal there it draws a lot of people to that area and brings in lots of money. The same could be said for Gay Mariages (yes he stole his idea from a simpsons episode maybe but that is ok) People from other states would travel to NY State to get legally Married. Since the marriages really wouldn't be recognised many places in the country there is a good chance that it would get people to move here and population groth is good. One good thing about presenting something as a monatary benifit is that it dosn't raise any questions about weather it is moral or not, you arn't really saying you are for it or agansit you are saying it would be good for the state. I think Buffalo would be a much better place to get married and live then say NYC (no disrespect) or rochester or albany so I think it could help Buffalo a lot. Moraly I have no problems with gay marriage. I think everyone should have the same rights and civil unions do give those same rights but I don't think that is enough. I know there are people who hate the idea of civil unions and are verry opposed to gay mariage. I wonder if someday gay marriage will be known as Same Sex Marriage. It takes out some of the connotations of the word gay. I've allready said more then I meant to but I'm interested in learning more about how differant politicans feal on this matter.

07/11/2006 16:19 #37354

gloat gloat gloat gloat gloat gloat
Category: gloat

Dear sir or madam:

My name is [Eric]. I'm the features editor at City Newspaper in Rochester. We're currently preparing to completely overhaul our website, giving it both a redesign and massive content upgrade. I was looking at [your] website and was impressed by some of the features. I was wondering, does your paper create the site in-house, or do you contract with a web provider/designer?

If you could back to me on this at your earliest convenience I would greatly appreciate it.

Sincerely,
[Eric]

- Z

jason - 07/12/06 13:49
Cheers, mate!

joshua - 07/11/06 21:28
Oh, also -

The best part about this was that you were talking shit about showing how its done... and you did!! Amazing.

joshua - 07/11/06 21:28
Congrats -

City paper is a wannabe, but I suppose its better than nothing.

libertad - 07/11/06 17:17
I haven't read City in quite sometime, but I have to say ARTVOICE is better. I'll have to give it another chance next time I'm in Rochester though.