Citizen Mom

Write hard, read FREE

Just in time for your Labor Day beach reading, here's an offer you can't refuse: Today and tomorrow on Amazon, you can get Howard Weaver's "Write Hard, Die Free" book FREE for your Kindle or Kindle app! Not only will it be well worth the price (har har), but it's a rollicking good read, full of colorful characters, vivid accounts of the "good old days" of newspaper journalism, and unflinching examinations of the times the good old days kind of sucked.

Who should read this? News nerds and newspaper folk, of course, but I'd also highly recommend this to my journalism students -- it's the kind of book to stoke that fire in your belly and get you in the right frame of mind for going out and afflicting the comfortable. 

I think what I liked most about "Write Hard, Die Free" is that it doesn't smack of that particular kind of hubris too many old-school newspaper guys have, that is, the notion that "real" journalism as THEY knew it is dead and things will never be that good again.

Howard Weaver just isn't wired that way -- yeah, he won a couple of Pulitzers, led a newsroom in a fight-to-the-death finish with a competitor, and got into the whole online news thing back when other newspapers were still debating whether to run color photos on Page One. But the sense I get is that he did those things not just to preserve newspapering as it was, but to sustain journalism for the future.

And there are lessons in the book for today's journalists too -- what it's like to run a startup publication and why it's good to fail, why professional disappointment is as instructive and valuable as success, and what kind of car not to drive when you're doing surveillance.

So get on that -- download it free for Kindle today and tomorrow here.  

Tell 'em Citizen Mom sent ya.

 

Now Ain't That Some Shit?

via www.youtube.com

Official video for what is already officially the unofficial song of the year, Cee-Lo Green's "F**k You." It's truly cathartic.

NSFW, but you knew that.

We Could Be Heroes, Just For One Day

HOLD ON NOW: Jenny the Whiteboard Chick might be a publicity stunt. Wouldn't be surprising.

On the one hand, you have the JetBlue flight attendant who made the kind of spectacular exit everyone  fantasizes about when he told off the cabin, popped the emergency slide and peaced a 28-year career. Frankly, my favorite part of this isn't that he grabbed a few beer from the beverage cart on his way out the door, but that when the cops showed up to arrest him he was in flagrante delicto:

Slater was later arrested at his home in Belle Harbor by Port Authority officials.  Police sources said that when authorities found Slater he seemed to be in the midst having sexual relations. (via NBC New York)

You gotta figure he knew he'd be going away for a little while, at least, and wanted to get his ya-yas out one last time. Dammit, that shows just the kind of clear-thinking you want during an in-flight emergency!

On the other hand, you have Jenny the Whiteboard Girl, who exposed a creepy boss's Farmville addiction in a series of photos she emailed to the whole office and whoops! it got on the Internets.

Already, some who know the fed up flight attendant are describing him as just the kind of short-tempered jerk who would eventually snap. Give the guy points for doing the least violent thing, I guess?

As for Jenny, that's the best use of company office supplies since people start stealing rolls of toilet paper to take home. I hope the Expo Marker people are on the phone offering her a job right now. The kid's got moxie.

Famous Frank Unplugs From Comcast

I'm happy to be among the people in the Philly area who got to know Frank Eliason a little bit while he was doing the whole @comcastcares thing, and am thrilled to wish him well as he leaves for a new job at Citigroup.

Here are some notes I made about Frank not long after we met for a long lunch interview in Comcast's great lunchroom in the clouds. (They were part of a story pitch which, sadly, didn't sell. Probably would have been better on the blog in the first place, but anyway):

 * @Comcastcares: About 5,700 followers in January ['09] to more than 32,000 right now [Oct. '09] [to 44,700 today]
    * Went from one guy and a Tweet to a team of a dozen staffers who field customer service issues, @comcastcares is fast becoming the go-to case study on good social media business practice;
    * Most recently, Brian Roberts' praise of Eliason as "Famous Frank," the man who "changed the culture of our company," is about to make him a big star. He won't be around here too much longer. He's going national, taping interviews, flying out to preach the @comcastcares model at conferences etc.

* There's a compelling personal backstory: Eliason's first encounters with social media came in 2000, when a joyful proud-Dad blog he started for the birth of his first child became a place of shared public grief when the child was born premature and later died of cancer. http://www.sitedreamer.com/gia/ and http://www.eliasonfamily.info/Eliason_Family/Welcome.html

* He and his wife have since welcomed two daughters, and Eliason says he learned through the blogging about the individual-communal experience the internet allows.

* Eliason is accessible and chatty in his Tweets and more importantly, the actual customer-service follow-through is there. Like, it's not just cutesy: There's a whole team of folks from Comcast (Bonnie, etc.) on Twitter not only responding to complaints directed at them, but using search tools to seek out the people who are bitching into the Twitter wind, and try to get their problems fixed. 

As for Frank, he's just a cool and interesting guy, a young working Dad without a fancypants degree who seems to have stepped right onto the pulse point of something big. In conversation with me he called his own story a "Social Media Fairytale," and it really is. 

Nearly a year later, you can't swing a dead cat on Twitter without hitting a job listing for a "social media manager" from a company that essentially wants someone to do what @comcastcares did, even if they can't exactly explain what that is.

I'm coming up on three years on Twitter, and from what I can see of the Philly-area Twitterverse, folks describing themselves as social media experts, mavens, rock stars etc. are a dime a dozen. Guys who have actually used social media to do something quantifiable? Precious few.

Frank Eliason is one.

(Annie Heckenberger is another, but that's a post for another day.)

There's a farewell video from Comcast folks here, worth watching to the end to see Ralph Roberts' undoubtedly hand-tied bowtie. Adorbs!

'I would bang him like a screendoor in a tornado.'

via www.youtube.com

Jayson Werth + Exercise ball + Porn-tastic soundtrack

Thank you, Internets.

Phils-Dodgers, 8 p.m.
Enjoy the game, ladies.

Patrick Swayze Caps Summer Of Celeb Death

Before he was ever Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing, or whatever his name was in Ghost, Patrick Swayze was Darrell, big brother to Ponyboy and Sodapop in The Outsiders. He died Monday at age 57.

BAD NEWS: It's Like Magic!

Somebody owes the Inquirer's Bob Moran an apology.
No, not somebody: Steve Keeley owes Bob Moran an apology.

For nearly a half-hour, as the verdicts in the Vince Fumo corruption trial rolled in earlier, the Fox29 reporter stood on the street in front of the courthouse reading Moran's liveblog from inside the courtroom, which was streaming on philly.com. Without ever actually attributing his "source," Keeley repeatedly leaned over for a closer look at his laptop, which was perched on the hood of a car to his left, reading details word-for-word on the air. The words popped up on screen, then *poof*! popped right out of Keeley's mouth, just like magic.

Twice, anchor Sheinelle Jones -- possibly hearing me screeching straight across the Twitterverse about the plagiarism-in-progress that was happening -- did try to clarify that the station was getting information from Philly.com. But only once once did Keeley haltingly point out he was reading from philly.com and he couldn't be bothered to say it was Moran's work, despite the fact that every update on the liveblog started with the words "Robert Moran:" That kind of obfuscation takes work, people.

Now that we're all finished debating whether Jon Stewart's a journalist, how about we start asking whether our journalists are journalists. It shouldn't be for me to defend the Inquirer's honor, but the paper pays my husband's salary so one could say it's out of sheer self-interest that I'm picking this bone. Then again, you could say it's because I'm a blogger who's frankly sick of hearing how bloggers are ripping off the newspapers. At least bloggers give the courtesy of a link. Or if you like, say I'm angry as someone who's trying to teach journalism students that they're committing their lives to a worthy profession, one with, y'know, rules and ethics and whatnot.

Does belated, half-assed attribution excuse Fox29 from ripping off the newspaper's reporting even as it was happening? And why have an anchor then keep going back to Keeley asking for more info when she could have been checking the liveblog herself right from the desk?

I know, I know, you're wondering why I'm getting all bothered by the quality of local TV news -- what am I expecting, right? Simple: I actually like Fox29's news operation and appreciate especially how they've embraced Twitter and used it to connect with their audience. They asked for feedback, and to their credit, they paid attention. Well, Sheinelle did, anyway.

Tell Nickelodeon and Viacom: Chris Brown Is Not Welcome At Kids' Choice Awards

I'm on deadline today so am going to keep this one short and sweet: Despite being charged with two serious felonies in connection with the beating of his girlfriend, singer Rihanna, Chris Brown remains nominated for two Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. And he's using his MySpace page to beg for votes.

In response to questions by TMZ, which has been ahead of this story at every turn, the network is falling back on its kids-rule ethos:

A Nick exec tells TMZ Brown "was nominated by kids several months ago, and the kids who vote  will ultimately decide who wins in the category."

This may come as a shock to Nickelodeon and Viacom, but while the kids may pick the winners, the parents still pick what shows the kids watch, at least in this house. And I can say right now that if Chris Brown remains nominated for an award, I will not let my son watch the show and will encourage other parents to boycott the network.
It's pretty sad when TMZ is setting the moral standard on an issue, but there you go. Ironically, Brown is nominated for the song "Kiss, Kiss" with T-Pain, who went to jail in '07 -- for driving with a suspended license.
Some will rightly point out that when Jamie Lynn Spears, then the star of a top-rated Nickelodeon show, became pregnant a few years back, the network didn't ostracize her. True, though it's apples-to-oranges unless you hold getting knocked up in the same regard as beating your girlfriend up.
Which I do not.
I also do not ever recall seeing video of Jamie Lynn Spears leaving a nightclub at 3 a.m., the way we watched the underage Brown do in Miami last week. We already know about the bad judgment Brown showed by putting his hands on a woman, and the potentially worse judgment Rihanna has shown by taking him back. But those are their bad choices to make.

Nick has a chance here to make a better, more responsible choice. And if it can't see fit to, parents will.

UPDATE: As of Wednesday morning, this online petition has nearly 9,000 signatures and other media are picking up the story.

FACEBOOK: Page with Nickelodeon/Viacom info for parents

Ka-ching! Gold, Two Ways

* In the literal sense: Bring your old baubles to Verde Salon on Saturday night and cash in on this  week's trendiest revenue-enhancer! Myya Pavone from Aurum Strategies will be at the Collingswood salon to buy your unwanted gold, silver and platinum. The event runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Your pieces will be weighed against that day's prices, and if you accept the offer you'll get a check on the spot. Call 856-858-0911 for more information and say goodbye to that razor-blade name pendant you got back in middle school.

Aurum Strategies says they're the Original Gold Party People and have been doing this for 25 years.  There are a lot of companies out there offering gold buyback programs right now, so be sure to check out the outfit you're selling to before you take an offer. And do I need to remind you not to send your stuff through the mail?

Verde on Facebook

*  And in the figurative sense: Variety reports today that Dave Kinney, Haddonfield writer, Dad, husband of Monica, Pulitzer Prize winner and all-around quality dude, signed a big-dollar deal with DreamWorks to make a movie of his not-yet-published book The Big One: An Island, an Obsession, and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish.

The book chronicles the annual Striped Bass and Bluefish Tournament Derby. Held on Martha's Vineyard, it's the most celebrated fishing tournament on the East Coast and pays a $30,000 grand prize. Kinney observed overly competitive 9-year-olds, cheating scandals and heated rivalries between neighbors.

I've known dude since we were both kid reporters at the Inquirer back in the day, and say enthusiastically that this great thing couldn't happen to a more decent guy.
The next brunch is totally on him, though.

MANSCAPE: The Goob, The Bad and The Fabulous

* It wasn't even a year ago we first met the boyishly handsome Republican leader of Louisiana, Gov. RickyBobby Jindal. For about five minutes last April, before anybody knew from Sarah Palin, Jindal was talked about as being a potential VP choice for John McCain. For about five minutes before he delivered the Most Goobtastic Republican Response Evar, Jindal was supposed to be the next Barack Obama. More like the next Erkel.

PREVIOUSLY: America, Say Hello To Gov. Ricky Bobby

* Back in our cheeky coed days, Tina and I had this thing called Dick of the Week, where we'd pick a guy in the news who was guilty of a particular Crime of Man-ity that week and post his picture and a few choice words about him on the door of our dorm room. (Editrix's Note: This was before the blogs, poopies.) Aaaanyway, this week's winner surely would have been Dave Schultheis, a Republican state senator from Colorado.

This credit to his gender cast the lone vote against a measure that would require HIV testing for pregnant women, arguing not that it would be too expensive, or an unfunded health care mandate. No, this exemplar of masculinity believes HIV is exclusively consequence of promiscuity, and the women -- and their babies -- who are infected deserve not only the death sentence the virus can carry but the shame that goes along with. (via Jezebel)

* One of the nicer consequences of the whole Facebook feeding frenzy is that occasionally, amid the blizzard of mind-numbing memes, you reconnect with folks you've known forever but haven't really "known" in a long time. Add to my list Kevin Gatto, a way old-school pal who, like me, fled the brown-and-peach Catholic school uniforms of our youth for a more, shall we say, aesthetically pleasing way of life here in South Jersey. 

Kevin is now artistic director and co-founder of Verde, the Collingswood salon that has been getting a lot of buzz for its focus on environmentally-friendly salon products, practices, even decor.
Check it:

True to form, our care for the environment goes beyond the salon itself. As a part of our guest loyalty program, Verde Salon will be planting trees in the names of our VIP guests as well as offering cash incentives to employees purchasing hybrid or flex-fuel vehicles. Our message will also travel with you as your retail purchases leave in re-usable, organic cotton totes.

Kevin just returned from working at New York Fashion Week, where he styled runway models as part of a team for celebrity stylist David Evangelista. He'll be seeing my mop of hair in his chair soon as well.