CNN fail

Ooops!

Huck goes camping

Hi,

My name is Huck...

as in Huckleberry "Huck" Finn. I live in a people house with a nice smelling cat, a tender man and an affectionate woman who have been real nice to me since I went to live with them.

The tender man and I like to go for walks every afternoon. We like Country Park, the Battleground and the trails around the lakes, but even just around the neighborhood is good exercise for both of us.

Last week, we went camping—three of us (I'm not sure where the nice smelling cat was). We all slept in a tent together at night, and during the day I took nice naps in the shade...

and the sun.

We went for long walks.

to great places.

Late one night, the tender man and I were walking back from the bathhouse. There was no moon and the man's flashlight was dimming. He walked right into a ditch on the side of the road and tumbled onto his face. He nearly split his head on a culvert -- probably would have been the end of him. He made out okay and remained in good spirits.

He got some rest and the next day we hiked to a water fall!

I had a great time!

Greensboro Guardian goes off half cocked, cuts off commentary in defense

Greensboro Guardian editor Charles Davenport, Jr. went off half cocked in condemning the Southern Poverty Law Center has having no credibility for, as he put it, "branding as 'hate speech' any language that questions the wisdom of progressive public policy."

But does the SPLC do that? I asked Davenport for examples. He offered some including blogger/author Roosh V who writes books and posts on how to "bang" women including:

A travel guide designed to help you sleep with Colombian women in Colombia without paying for it.

Interesting. How does Davenport's example of this blogger explain the SPLC's lack of credibility? He isn't saying. Davenport has cut off the conversation. Without explanation and without any indication to his readers that he is doing so, Davenport has taken to censoring comments on this topic. Very underhanded, but, fortunately, not undocumented.

Here is a screen shot of two of my comments that Davenport declined to publish without comment.

This is what the Southern Poverty Law Center said about Roosh V. I'd still like to know how Davenport thinks it destroys the SPLC's credibility:

Roosh Vörek is a Maryland-raised PUA (“pick up artist”) whose specialty is sex with foreign women; his blog is a sales vehicle for his books like Bang: The Pick Up Bible and Bang Iceland: How to Sleep With Icelandic Women in Iceland, which one Icelandic feminist group described as a “rape guide.” Vörek likes to talk about his many “notches” (seductions) and such things as “American cunts who I want to hate fuck.” He adds: “I’ll be the first to admit that many of my bangs in the United States were hate fucks. The masculine attitude and lack of care these women put into their style or hair irritated me, so I made it a point to fuck them and never call again.”

Pyscho Relations

What kind of sociopaths occupy jobs in marketing nowadays? I have to wonder because of the brutal contempt for the consumer and disregard for truthfulness these numbnuts are making hallmarks of modern public relations. This is from Enterprise car rental:

MILEAGE IS UNLIMITED WITHIN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES WITH A MAXIMUM OF 3,000 MILES PER MONTH

I wonder if I can inform them that I'll be paying their $250 per week to rent a car up to $20 per day.

Preach it, brother

Lex Alxander on why people might be a little less trusting of people in leadership positions than New York Times columnist David Brooks thinks we ought to be:

"[W] hat really gets our goats is that if you have enough money and/or profess to believe certain things, you can commit the most calamitous misfeasances, utterly without consequence — indeed, you can make a career out of failing upward – while those who were right are marginalized and ridiculed."

Target breaks its website for the sake of spying

I use an add-on to my Firefox web browser called Ghostery, it allows me to block third parties from tracking my web usage. It does this by prohibiting them from installing tracking cookies on my computer.

My computer will allow websites to install cookies from their domain, it does not allow cross domain tracking (WebMD cannot tell Walgreens what I've been looking at there). That's unacceptable to Target.

Unless I accept cookies from consumer monitoring companies ForeSee, Gomez, Omniture, Google Adsense, DoubleClick and RichRelevance, I'm not welcome to use Target's website:

I have no interest in uninvited third parties collecting information about my "purchase histories and browsing behavior" (as RichRelevance brags is its purpose).

Target insists.

No big deal, I'll check Dick's Sporting Goods, Gander Mountain, Walmart, the Sports Authority and K-mart, all of whom offer what I'm looking for and none of whom break their websites for those of us who don't want to be monitored.

Mom & Dad celebrate 50 years

Congratulations to my mom and dad on their 50th wedding anniversary—a remarkable milestone, but ancillary to the loving family they created and nurture to this day.

JavaScript love

If necessity is the mother of invention, desire is the father of learning.

JavaScript is a scripting language that manipulates the interface between a user and information on the web. I've previously learned what I desired and left it there. I'm doing the same again now in pursuit of better local online, but this time my aspirations demand that I more deeply explore and learn JavaScript's beautifully complicated abilities—complicated on the code side for the purpose of making interaction with voluminous information easy, smooth and satisfying for the user. 

It demands deep concentration and an unforgiving attention to detail. I find it quite satisfying. I hope you'll like the results.

Marketing gobbledygook

I'm looking into Clear wireless internet and this is how they describe their internet speeds:

Average speeds up to 3-6Mbps

Why do corporations, specifically their marketing dweebs, think they cannot just be straight with people?

I couldn't get away with paying them an average of up to $40-$50, so why lay this B.S. on potential customers? Why not just tell us what the average is; or what the range is; or what the limit is instead of this meaningless gobbledygook?

Interactive precinct map of Guilford County voters on Amendment One

Inspired by Richard Gingras' ideas on the future of journalism, which include the importance of computational journalism (the use of computers in the service of journalism) I've posted to Greensboro 101 a map of precinct-by-precinct support and opposition to the amendment to the North Carolina constitution approved by voter referendum this month that prohibits legal recognition of any domestic union other than a marriage between a man and a woman.

Guilford County precinct votes on amendment one

Fun with maps

(You know who are great? The folks at the Guilford County Board of Elections. Any time, and there have been many, I've requested information from them, I've received it promptly, politely, completely and without any friction. They are consummate public service professionals.)

With their cooperation, I endeavored to pursue my first attempt at working with Google's new Fusion tables mentioned by Richard Gingras as a new tool for computational journalism.

I've never been able to find a map with sufficient detail and interactivity representing voting precincts in Guilford county. Here is mine, not quite ready for prime time, but a proof of concept. Pan, zoom and click to identify the precinct.

Locate precinct --Select-- G50 G51 G52 G53 SUM2 G54 SUM1 G55 SUM4 G56 SUM3 G57 G58 G59 H17 CG1 H18 H15 NDRI H16 G40A2 CG2 H13 G40A1 H14 H11 H12 H10 NCLAY1 NCLAY2 G43 G44 G47 G48 G45 G46 H09 H08 G49 H04 H05 NWASH H06 PG2 H07 PG1 H01 H02 H03 G74 G75 G70 G71 G72 G73 SMAD G40B CG3B G65 CG3A G66 G63 G64 G61 G62 G60 G69 G67 G68 H20B H20A GR SWASH H29A H29B JEF1 JEF2 RC1 RC2 JEF3 JEF4 H19B H19A G15 G14 G13 G12 NCGR2 G19 FR5-A G18 G17 NCGR1 G16 FR5-B NMAD MON2A G11 MON2B G10 SF1 G09 SF2 GIB SCLAY G02 G01 STOK G04 G03 G06 G05 G08 G07 JAM1 JAM2 JAM3 JAM4 JAM5 SDRI H27-B H27-A SF4 SF3 G39 G38 G37 G36 G35 G34 FR4 G33 FR3 G32 FR2 G31 FR1 G30 FEN1 FEN2 G41-A G41-B MON1 MON3 G28 G27 OR2 OR1 G29 G24 G42-B G23 H21 G26 G42-A G25 H23 G20 H22 H25 G22 H24 G21 H26 H28

The most important hour of the year for local newspaper folks

Where is local news going? What are the dead ends and distractions tempting newspapers to their demise? What does the future hold?

Richard Gingras, head of Google news products, dispenses a million dollars worth of advice in this one hour talk (here is Matt Stempeck's live blogged synopsis; but watch the whole thing if you are in the industry, you lazy toad), it is a must for anyone who works at a newspaper, from ad people to editors; from reporters to publishers.

One sage nugget:

Richard argues strongly for evergreen story pages. It is not the brand, not the site, but the story itself that is the lifeblood online. Publishers should not think about editions, or even ephemeral streams of articles, but rather living story pages. Story pages are the most valuable real estate.

If I were running a local newspaper, I would make the ideas espoused in this talk a blueprint; if fireworks aren't going off in your brain after listening, rinse and repeat until you get it; or email me and I'll try to help; or retire.

Spitanya? Spidanya? Zpidonya?

When I was little and wouldn't listen to my Grandfather's advice (hold the hammer this way, stop teasing your brother, try some kielbasa), he'd dismiss me with a wave of his hand and what sounded like, "Spitanya."

In context, I always assumed it meant something like, "Forget it," or "Have it your way." I thought it was from his Polish heritage or my Grandmother's Italian.

But I cannot find the word or any possible alternate spellings in any language (thank you Google). The closest I've come is the Italian "speranza," but that means "hope," and that doesn't fit.

Does the Internet even matter to the N&R?

On his voice mail message, News & Record editor Jeff Gauger identifies himself as the executive editor of "news record dot com." From last night:




Although that domain name, newsrecord.com, is also on some News & Record newspaper racks (and has been for over two years now), it is not the domain for the News & Record website and never has been.

Newsrecord.com is a parked domain that features links to other sites like the Triad Business Journal, but it is not the News & Record website—it doesn't even link to them. Promoting that domain as theirs is like giving out a phone number that is close to theirs but not theirs. "Call us at 363-3700, approximately."

With the significant errors that go uncorrected at the N&R involving their website—errors that remain uncorrected for weeks, months, years at a time—I'm getting the impression that the Internet really doesn't matter to them; either that or they don't appreciate precision and accuracy.* Maybe the "executive editor of newsrecord.com" doesn't know how to actually edit the website of which he is the executive editor, but surely an error on his own voice mail is something he can control and would be eager to fix once it was brought to his attention...

if it mattered.



* There are other possibilities, I suppose: that the staff at the N&R would rather let an error stand than respond to a correction from a—gasp!—blogger; or that they don't follow local blogs to begin with, but those seem awfully far-fetched to me.

Map of support for marriage discrimination amendment

Here is a map of North Carolina showing the county by county support for the marriage discrimination amendment recently passed by North Carolina voters. The darker the color, the greater the opposition to the amendment.

Oh, wait. That is a map of showing the percentage of people in a county with a college degree. The darker, the more educated.

Sorry about that. Here is the map showing the counties for and against the amendment. Purple counties were opposed. (A few hundred votes kept Guilford county from being purple.)

N&R circulation down slightly

GREENSBORO, NC -- After two periods of minor gains, the News & Record's Sunday print circulation declined slightly in the six months ended March 31, 2012. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Sunday circulation declined by 698 from the previous six months and by 231 from the same period one year ago.

Weekday circulation continued to decline, down by 215 in six months and 3,719 in one year.

Sunday: 86,234
6 month change: -0.8% (-698)
12 month change: -0.3% (-231)

Weekday: 57,274
6 month change:  -0.4% (-215)
12 month change:  -6.1% (-3,719)




Related to recent discussion of the performance of the News & Record under publisher Robin Saul, since Saul took the helm:

Sunday circulation: Down 23% (-25,923)
Weekday circulation: Down 40% (-37,845)

N&R false advertising

Four days ago, on Monday, I wrote about the decline of the News & Record under the leadership of publisher Robins Saul and criticism of his job performance by some local heavy hitters. Some of my comments were about a broken organizational structure that keeps even the simplest of problems on their website from being corrected.

I offered as examples the "2009" in the site's current election news feed, which remains unchanged, and the main page of the opinion section of the website promoting three columnists who have long since stopped writing for the N&R as being available in the "e-edition" (or as Ed Cone rightly calls it, "the Google-proof vault"), which also remains uncorrected and thus pretty much amounts to false advertising, I'd say.

N&R publisher defends false allegations as "standard operating procedure"

GREENSBORO, NC -- I thought I'd let this one go. I had for weeks, but in light of the recent attention being paid to the bad practices at the News & Record and the publisher's incompetence, I think the community should be aware of this.

It begins: The News & Record prints a false allegation of criminal activity against me by a government authority

On February 28th, the News & Record published a story by Mark Binker in which he reported Guilford County Commissioner Billy Yow accusing me of being an "extortionist." Yow's comments were in response to me posting online a picture of a racially tinged derogatory t-shirt inspired and endorsed by Billy Yow that I posted at billyyow.com, a domain I own. The shirt quoted Yow as saying, "Piss on the N.A.A.C.P." with a cartoon of a little boy, flanked by a confederate flag, doing just that.*

I never asked for anything from Yow. I never implied to him, his associates or anybody else that I wanted anything from Yow. It never even occurred to me that I might extract some recompense from Yow. It just did not happen.


A completely unfounded and utterly false accusation

Yet, there it was in print: "Extortionist," without any context or check against the facts: A false accusation of criminal behavior made by a government official against me.

It wasn't as if Yow was saying how little he thought of me or how loathsome he found me, he was making a specific charge of criminal conduct. An extortionist, like a murderer or a thief, is one who commits specific acts that are against the law. I had done no such thing.

For that falsehood to make it into print, one of two things had to happen, reporter Binker and his editors either tried to corroborate Yow's accusation and, not being able to, printed something they knew to be false or they did not bother to check it out and printed an accusation with no regard for its truthfulness. Either is a deplorable violation of the ethical standards of journalism.


I was not given a chance to respond

To make matters worse, I was not even given a chance to respond to the accusations. Isn't that the professional thing, the ethical thing? If someone accuses someone of something to a reporter, does the reporter not only have an obligation to see if it's true but to also give the target of the accusation a chance to defend himself?

I was not asked to respond. Had I been, I would have told the reporter the accusation is false and asked him not to print something he could not substantiate. Maybe that's why I wasn't asked to comment on the accusation, so there would be no obstacles to printing a false allegation.


The editors stonewall

I tried to discuss the matter with the reporter Mark Binker by email. He would not reply. After leaving the News & Record, Mark informed me:

I had been given an instruction by my direct supervisor, Margaret Banks, not to respond to your e-mail. That instruction was later reinforced by Teresa Prout, our city editor. 

Banks would not respond herself. Prout responded by saying that the Yow quote was "accurate."

That's not the point, of course. It is the veracity of the quote that was the matter—whether or not it was true—not whether or not Yow said it. Prout's response was evasive.


The publisher defends the reporting as "standard operating procedure."

So how did an unfounded allegation of criminality by a government official against a private citizen, to which I was not even given the opportunity to respond, make its way into print? I attempted to find out and called the publisher Robin Saul to request a meeting.

Saul said he would not meet with me, so we ended up having a conversation over the phone.

I tried to impress upon Saul the serious lapse in journalistic ethics of printing a false accusation of criminality.  I tried to get him to explain how that happened. He did not want to provide me with any answers, saying "I know where you are going with this, you are going to put it on your blog."

I was caught off guard. I expressed my astonishment that Saul would not discuss the merits of my complaint. He said he was following, "Standard operating procedure." He said I could write a letter to the editor if I wanted and they might publish it.


An appeal to the new editor

Although it hadn't happened on his watch, I thought newly hired editor Jeff Gauger might recognize the seriousness of the matter and do something about it. I wrote him a letter, the old fashion in-the-mail kind, explained to him what happened, why it was wrong and asked that he print an apology.

Although Gauger had written in his first blog post (in the comments) that "Our best approach is to practice transparency, explain our decisions and acknowledge our occasional stumbles" he did not explain or acknowledge. He ignored. I got no reply at all.


A fish rots from the head

So there you have it. I don't think I need to sum it up for you, but I will. The News & Record printed a quotation of an authority figure making a false claim that I am a criminal, with no substantiation, with no opportunity for me to reply and they refused at every level from reporter to editors to publisher to discuss it with me or even acknowledge the lapse in professional judgement.

At some point, there has to be somebody in the chain of command who can face these kinds of problems with "This a violation of journalism ethics that we will not tolerate" and formulate a proper response. It is the only way the N&R will ever restore its shattered reputation. One might expect that to be the role of an editor, but when he or she is incapable or unwilling, then the ultimate responsibility lies with the publisher. If the publisher is incapable of acknowledging, much less rectifying ethical transgressions, then he should go. It's time. Greensboro deserves better.

* I designed and maintain the campaign website for the incumbent Yow was challenging. As confirmed by the N&R, I posted the picture on my own as a voter in the district in which Yow was running without the consent or knowledge of the any other persons.

Tony Wlikins for Greensboro city council

I think I have this right. I think that when a Greensboro city council person is elected away from her seat to another office, it is the remaining council members who nominate and approve her replacement.

Council person Trudy Wade has won the Republican primary for state senate district 27, odds are good she will defeat her unknown democratic challenger. Should that happen, let me be the first to say that Tony Wilkins would be a stellar replacement for her.

Maybe there is hope yet

I pulled my vote against the constitutional amendment sign from my yard this morning and went and held it at the entrance to my polling place, Lawndale Baptist Church. When it comes to voting, the neighborhood leans slightly conservative, but it usually doesn't go in a majority for extremes in either direction.

So I was pleasantly surprised at the reaction I got. Those who openly shared their opposition to the amendment significantly outnumbered those who said nothing or who made it clear they disagreed with me. What surprised me was the number of elderly people, those who one might suspect to be bound to old ways, who said they were voting against the amendment.

It's just anecdotal, I know, and a minute sample at that, but maybe there is a chance the amendment will be defeated. If it is, it will be by the slimmest of margins, so if you oppose it and haven't voted out of despair or resignation, don't give up yet.

Vote.

[If it passes by one vote, I'll hate myself for assisting the lady who pulled up to park, waived me over, told me she believed marriage is "between a man and a woman," then asked me if I would mind going inside to get a poll worker so she could vote from her car on account of her bad legs. Which I did, of course.]