Newscoma

You have made me smile this week. As a true fan of anything like aliens, Bigfoot sightings, chupacabra rumors and cheese, CNN is giving me a case of the happies.

And the fact that you unapologetically reported yesterday that you have personally seen a UFO just makes me giddy.

Alas, I’ve never seen an alien. I would actually love to see one but not the kind that inhabit your body and eat their way out of your stomach. That would give me the wiggums.

The idea, however, that you are having fun with this story this week. I know, there are a lot of journalists out there rolling their eyes. Not me. I did a Gingersnaps Squee when you interviewed Milton Torres.

You are living my dream job right now. I admit I’m jealous but also swooning from the joy of it all.

So, if you need an assistant, I’m your girl. Call me Brenda Starr. As Weekly World News isn’t hiring me, I feel that CNN is the next logical step. You can be the Space and Technology dude and I can be the Odd News/Bigfoot/Aliens/X-Files Correspondent.

I have references.

Love,

Newscoma

CNN has a cool tool for the election where you can customize the races and follow the polls.

Mine is here.

What makes this neat is that you can compare what you are seeing locally to what CNN is reporting from MSM. There are more features here as well.

I like this. CNN is still not the most attractive Website out there, but the Political Ticker has been very effective during this campaign.

As I was horribly busy yesterday, I didn’t have a chance to post this.

Watch the video and then you decide?

Did CNN pull the wool over our eyes during the Gulf War?

I can’t quit watching it.

Mark directs us to a new policy at CNN.

Basically, employees of the network cannot use Facebook, Twitter, Blog or even comment in forums and chat rooms without permission from the CNN higher ups according to Chez Pazienza, who was famously fired from CNN for blogging at Deus Ex Malcontent. His story is here.

You can head to their blogs to get the vibe of what’s going on.

I agree with Mark who says this:

Did I give up my right to protest or vote when I started working for a newspaper? I hope not.
Many newspapers are actively encouraging reporters to take up blogging.  Newspapers invite reporters to express opinion in the print editions. Newspapers have long held that as long as the opinion expressed is marked clearly as that of the reporter, it is acceptable.

I talk about evolving trends in the news business a lot. I don’t understand why more media folks don’t blog or use Twitter. I’ve seen more breaking news on Twitter that it still boggles my mind.

Ryan Sholin points us to a post written by an outgoing newsman of the LA Times, who is getting out of the dead tree business.

1. Technology has run laps around the print media — giving readers instant news, open-source journalism, no barriers to become publishers, and an infinite news hole.
2. The idea that your daily news is collected, written, edited, paginated, printed on dead trees, put in a series trucks and cars and delivered on your driveway — at least 12 hours stale — is anachronistic in 2008.

I think these things are connected. The writer talks about his 18 years with the Times. I’ve worked in news off and on for nearly 20 years. The way I started out has vastly changed in those two decades.

And the blogosphere has changed in the nearly three years I’ve been blogging. Some media outlets get it and have actively worked toward changing their model to accommodate changes that will happen in the future, which is smart. Even some rural outlets do although there are a great deal of folks who do not and angrily (yes, I said angrily) hold on to that the old ways are the only way to do news.

There is chasm that exists between old and new.

And CNN is treating online communication like a dinosaur. When you edit free thought, then what do you have?

Zombies in a newsroom.

What next? We going to ban flatulence?

What the $%*&*? This community on the edge of Los Angeles has become a cuss-free zone.

So if you’re headed to South Pasadena this week, be sure to turn down the volume on that Snoop Dogg CD, and, if the little old lady from Pasadena cuts you off in traffic, don’t even think about flipping her the bird.

Not that police will slap cuffs on you and haul your sorry, er, butt off to jail in light of the proclamation passed Wednesday by the City Council. But you could be shamed into better behavior by the unsettling glares of residents who take their reputation for civility seriously.

“That’s one of the purposes of this,” Mayor Michael Cacciotti said of his city’s proclamation designating the first week of March as No Cussing Week. “It provides us a reminder to be more civil, to elevate the level of discourse.“

Here’s the rest of the story on CNN.

I have to tell you, I’d have to move.

I’m sure most of you have heard about the curious case of former CNN producer Chez Pazienza. He had a blog, he was critical on his blog and CNN canned him last week.

CNN fired me, and did it without even a thought to the power that I might wield as an average person with a brain, a computer, and an audience. The mainstream media doesn’t believe that new media can embarrass them, hurt them or generally hold them accountable in any way, and they’ve never been more wrong.

I was going to write about this yesterday but I had to think about it. There is a lot of bravado in Pazienza’s post at his blog Deus Ex Malcontent about his dismissal as well at the Huffington Post where he also posts, but there is also a conversation to be had about all of this. In effect, Pazienza’s has been dooced. On the other hand, I had never really heard of these guy until he was canned.

The one thing he has done has effectively given a look behind the mindset of traditional, large-scale media. The post he wrote Monday is pretty long, but this stood out for me.

I say this with the knowledge of implied complicity: I continued to draw a salary from stations at the local level and national networks long after I had noticed an unsettling trend in which real news was being regularly abandoned in favor of, well, crap. I may not have drank the Kool-aid, but I did take the money. I may have been uncomfortable with a lot of what I was putting on the air, but I was comfortable in the life that it provided me. I just figured, screw it, most people don’t like their jobs; shut up and do what you’re told, or at least try to. Besides, I told myself, what the hell else do you know how to do?

That’s pretty candid.

Pazienza has done two things. First of all, he is spotlighting the impact that blogs are having on the big boys. The other thing that he has done has given a little light on what goes behind the scenes of a cable news network and how news is changing.

Pazienza will be fine and probably will have a new job pretty quickly.

At a recent event I attended with other journalists, the issue of blogging was discussed more than ever. We live in a time where anyone can have an online platform where they can discuss whatever they want. From knitting blogs to right-or-left politics, the enormity of the blogging world is changing the rules. All of us know that.

Because things are changing.

And with that change comes growing pains because the rules have been collectively thrown out the window. The debate will continue, but it’s not going to stop this moving locomotive of a new information age that includes traditional media and Joe Citizen.

Joe Citizen’s voice usually trumps media.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, campers. We will see what happens next.

They (Cable News) are calling the presidential democrat’s race and there is 3 percent of the polls in citing that Barack Obama has won South Carolina and that Hillary Clinton placed 2nd with John Edwards coming in at third place.

Amazing.