Ways Newspapers Can Turn Red Into Black ...

I'm sitting here late at night thinking not about the historic election that took place last night ....

Ok, I am thinking about that. I've spent the past two hours scanning various media to find the latest on close races, stats from states, poll numbers ... I've looked at a huge variety of data that obviously news organizations and other groups have spent tons of money to acquire! Someone's gotta be out there beating feet to interview folks about who they are voting for, why, what their background is, etc etc etc.

After carousing the NY Times - for free, the Irish Times - for free, the BBC - for free, The Oregonian - for free, CNN - for free, Pollster.com - for free, ABC - for free, CBS - for free ... I finally ended up at my hometown newspaper the Port Townsend Leader and realized I was reading news about my hometown that someone spent hours gathering, writing, and posting on the internet - and all this took place for the outlandish price of FREE!!!

It is no wonder Reuters is outsourcing some of their work to India. Should we be worried that creative jobs are being outsourced? Isn't the promise of outsourcing that only ridiculous manual labor jobs that Americans don't want to do will be outsourced? Should we be worried the Seattle Times has cut their staff by 20% ...

Well, that's a topic for another blog.

Ok, here is the meat.

Last night I went to an election party at the Grand Central Bowl in Portland, OR. Sponsors included the Bus Project, AM 970, and the Willamette Week among others. While checking out my hometown paper I had the idea:

Newspapers should fight the lack of funds induced by the advent of electronic media by getting into the event planning business!!! Who else has awesome contacts better than the editors and reporters of print media! They review books, they review bands, they review actors, politicians ... all sorts of interesting people!

Who do you want to party with??? INTERESTING PEOPLE!!!

So, while newspapers are busy slashing jobs wondering how to keep up with electronic media and the collaborative world of Web 2.0 AND losing TONS of advertising revenue, perhaps they should look outside of the box for their revenue streams.

Use the community they have built to promote concerts and artists and comedians and various other interesting people. THAT, is how people are starting to look at Web 2.0. Why not turn the mirror back upon real life ... is it time for REAL LIFE 2.0? Or wait ... that is what Second Life is for ...

Worried about objectivity?

Create some serious and rigorous standards and regulations.

Write them on paper.

Put them on your door so you have to look at them every time you go outside.

And for God Sake Man - Stop Sending Creative Jobs Overseas.

I hate being a delivery driver.

My brain is mush.

I can't throw ideas off my co-workers.

The majority of my conversations consists of "Thanks" or "hi" or "Seeya to-mar-ah."

I can't talk about anything creative ...

... just sports, video games, porn, and a bunch of other stuff I haven't cared about since I was 16 years old.

Last social media/web 2.0 blog ... until i write one again

I need to stop writing about social media and web 2.0 because:

#1 - I'm a bystander with nothing new to say
#2 - Our Fenbi pals would rather have us talk about music and cultural things
#3 - It's more exciting to talk about scandalous things

But that said, let me give you my top three experiences that exemplify why I embrace social media and follow it through blogs and magazines.

#1 - Hot for Sarah - When I performed with the band The Young Immortals I created a scheme to write to all the Sarah's I could find on myspace to say:

"Hey Sarah! How are you! I just wanted to let you know we wrote a sweet little song juuuust for you! I hope you like it, cheers, TYI"

You'd be surprised how many Sarah's thought we were awesome for taking the time to write to them and how many loyal fans we created. It was verified when we toured across the country and met tons of Sarah's who said "Someone from your band emailed us and said ..... "

By pure coincidence I contacted the producer from Portland's AM 970 "The Rick Emerson Show" producer Sarah X Dylan. She humored us enough to bring us on the show, thereby my scheme earning us FREE MEDIA. Boo ya! When are they gonna bring the new band on? We are much more entertaining and exciting if I may say so ...

#2 - Writing blogs - Our current band - The Fenbi International Superstars has absolutely no music recorded or displayed on our myspace page (www.myspace.com/fenbi) aside from this 'Sheep Shearing' track that is really just Orion and myself goofing around to the backdrop of some hot Pogues tune.

In order to compensate for our lack of tunes I have been writing several blogs per day resulting in over 200 profile views per week on our myspace page. It is hard enough getting that when you HAVE music ... but we don't ... so we have to compensate somehow. And IT'S WORKING!!!

#3 - Confronting someone trash talking Tony Greene - We tried out for the Pizzazz talent show and lost miserably to some rad and talented kids - one of them being Tony Greene. When I checked out the blog of the sponsor I saw someone had written a comment degrading Tony's victory and since the kid was a genius 10 year old I rose to his defense - basically calling out the criticizer on her gross over-generalizations. How is this a beautiful example of the wonders of social media??? Because the person retracted all of their venom and retreated into their cold lonely dark cave ...

... annnnnd I got off a great zinger about them maybe checking out "Season 4 of the OC if they can't find better ways to entertain themselves." Or something like that. It was great, trust me.

It's a wondrous thing this social media ... it offers so many tricks for community building and image control ... and now I am going to shut up and hopefully start writing blogs about gypsies or tinkers or crazy arts scenes in Portland, OR starting with THURSDAY NIGHTS AT 9 MUSES ACOUSTIC TAVERN ON SE 28TH AND BELMONT, $1 PABST BLUE RIBBON, FOOLS,

Employed ... almost REALLY employed ...

So ... I am not always the best decision maker.

Today I went to my third interview for a position that will include scanning and reading blogs for a PR company. That would be my job. I would be entry-level and the people above me would be the experts that I would be learning from.

I have been excited about this job for some time because I am very interested in social media and all the debates over metrics and how to measure your reach and the effectiveness of social media campaigns ... I really think my enthusiasm came across in the interview today and I will find out whether or not I got the job in a day or so.

Until I hear back from them I get to continue my wonderful delivery driving job. I have been back at work for less than two weeks and already I am training someone. That means I spent the entire day riding shotgun looking at the same scenery on the same route that I have had on and off for over two years. Being a passenger for five hours whilst driving in circles gives one time to think.

I pondered my interview performance and wondered what I might have said better ... what I may have forgotten to bring up ... what they might have thought of me dressed up in my fanciest outfit. I've never made more than $8,500 in a year and this job has the potential to triple or even quadruple that - doing something I clearly enjoy. I find that fascinating.

Anyway - as I cruised around crashing from my coffee buzz and thinking about my future I realized I had one skeleton in my closet ... THIS BLOG!!!!! And my myspace blog!!!!!!

Perhaps I shouldn't have told them about my band ... or perhaps I shouldn't have spelled out my band's name. Chances are ... since they are influential monitors and experts in searching through social media - they may have looked up my blogs. And they may not have appreciated what they found.

Up until about 20 minutes ago this blog was filled with entries saying crass things ... using the F word ... using all kinds of language as if I were some street punk from the inner city.

Potential employer ... please forgive me ... and please ignore what you may or may not have read earlier today ...