...And Everything Else

There's a lot of news out there these days.

That's why I enjoyed Craig Smith's take on our own local newspaper and it's recent story choices. The recent front page headline, "Pet bird found after incredible journey" triggered some laughs.

We're wondering if the News Press was quoting the bird.

UPDATE 3/27/08: "Lost Macaw Flew From Eagle Rock, Not Carpinteria"

Guess the bird was misquoted. Certain facts were taken out of context...blah blah blah.

* * * *

Has anyone else noted the collapse of some of the world's largest financial institutions? It's probably not important or we would be hearing how it will affect everyone besides Wall Street brokers. I'm sure no one could have seen it coming either. A few months ago, I participated in a heated discussion on Blogabarbara where strenuous writers strenuously asserted that everything was swell in the mortgage biz and that the genius of the free market would solve all the ills we weren't suffering.

That argument died at the instant when our central bank bailed out people who speculated and lost in the free market. That of course is now all that stands between us and a global panic. Hope it works.

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Logical Divide

"The Speech" continues to drive media commentary. The racial divide is deep and wide and Obama hit the truth so squarely that he made people cry.

The logical divide is also deep. The persistent objection voiced very well by the brilliant Susan Estrich (Thanks to Ray McInnis for the link) is the assumption that Senator Obama should have left the church as soon as he heard Reverend Wright say something objectionable. By that logic, Ms. Estrich and I should have left America when Bush argued us into war. The failure of some, mostly in the Hillary Campaign to understand Obama's argument is a passive agressive tactic.

So if Obama didn't make it clear to you why he stayed in his faith community,let me take a stab at it.

I love my country even when my President is wrong.

Why Is Newspaper 2.0 still mostly 0.2?

Time for a recap on the state of Santa Barbara's historically establishment newspaper, its evolving status in the county, the announced demise of local print and the lauded arrival of newspaper 2.0 as the new local news media to replace newspapers.

Some of the words most often used by Santa Barbara bloggers to describe the state of the News Press are "ongoing collapse", "continuing meltdown", News Mess, and etc. The total demise of the paper is repeatedly predicted.

News Press owner Wendy McCaw has stirred up the kind of emotion usually reserved for Darth Vader and so the hyperbole flies in both directions. The News Press editorial page is consistent in it's delusions of persecution and bias as Craig Smith reports. If Wendy McCaw announces that she's Jerry Roberts' mother the analogy will be complete. Read this sample of local opinion from Blogabarbara.

For a nice long read through the whole tangled story try this article on Wikipedia

Don't worry, you've got time. The lawyers will be billing hours on all of the related legal cases for years.

At present the conventional local news journals have actually increased the total amount of local news coverage. The Daily Sound and the Independent, even the Daily Nexus have staffed up at the expense of their rival. Some content is not up to the professional standard of the old News Press, but recognition of professional traditions in their established forms seems to be negotiable on a lot of levels these days and that could be key to the whole trouble at the NP.

The blogs continue to function well in the capacity of local news and opinion forums and edhat continues to develop a diverse audience as an aggregater and manager of online content.

Santa Barbara's Newsroom, an online print type site run by former NP staff and supported by the Teamsters Union, has come and gone.

Now we have the next serious run at online local news and innovation: Noozhawk

New technology often arrives in the form of the thing it replaces. So it's not surprising that Noozhawk not only looks like a newspaper but also like the Santa Barbara Independent online. The Noozhawk staff includes former News Pressers including head man Bill MacFayden, former owner of the now departed South Coast Beacon.

I've noticed that online media is populated by managers from old media. This causes problems. Just ask Allen Wastler of CNBC and formerly CNN who is currently being barbecued by the blogging public for his handling of an online poll. You know the kind I mean, like, "Whose Naughtier? Hillary or Brittany?

Newspaper 2.0 might be coming soon, but we really won't see what it looks like until 2.0 managers include video and audio as well as web design and graphic animation fully integrated on their pages.

Since the entire concept of Newspaper 2.0 is being and has been pioneered in Santa Barbara, to some degree because of the shift in the value of our own conventional media, it will be interesting to see if someone around here will make it a reality that others can see and advance.

Santa Barbara News Press: Stickiest Topic in Town

Talk to anybody in Santa Barbara for more than five minutes these days and you're likely to hear an opinion about the ongoing drama at our venerable old newspaper, The Santa Barbara News Press. I have to say the current story line knocks the stuffing out of anything the writers of the old "Santa Barbara" soap opera ever created.

For the back story visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Barbara_News-Press

For current news, opinion and discussion visit:

http://blogabarbara.blogspot.com/
http://www.west.net/~smith/blog/index.shtml
http://independent.com/
http://edhat.com/

And these are just the most active sites. There are many more.

Maybe you can see where I'm going with this. The blogosphere is on this story like grape jelly on a two year old. If you review just one or two of the sites above, you'll be linked to video, audio, pdf files of letters and related documents, photos, solid news content and a blazing public debate.

Ironically, the struggle at a traditional printed news institution is launching an entirely new and increasingly popular news medium. This fact is actually more important than the story that started the whole thing. Because no matter what happens to the newspaper, local on-line news is being pioneered in Santa Barbara and it's here to stay.

Doc Searls ( http://doc.weblogs.com/ )

hosted a seminar called "Newspaper 2.0" at UCSB last weekend. The seminar featured the discussion of exactly what an on-line local news source could be.

Taymar Pixley was there and filed a review of her experience:

http://www.pixleyflix.com/blogger/

There. Now you are linked to all the news that's fit to print...and then some!