A newly elected US Representative out of Colorado has given himself and hometown bloggers credit for killing local newspaper Rocky Mountain News, which stopped its presses last Friday.
Rep. Jared Polis (CO-D) likely stunned the Netroots Nation in Your Neighborhood event with this quip:
I have to say, that when we say, 'Who killed the Rocky Mountain News,' we're all part of it, for better or worse, and I argue it's mostly for the better… The media is dead, and long live the new media, which is all of us.”
Rocky Mountain News, owned by E.W. Scripps, didn’t take kindly to those remarks and said Polis’ words reflected his poor judgment. Likely they viewed it as salt in the wounds as well. The paper asserted itself as a pioneer in citizen journalism and noted it was an award winning Internet newspaper as well.
The congressman issued an apology.
Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic doubts many agree the death of a newspaper is a good thing, and offers this succinct response: "All of us" are the new media? I'd like to read the investigations of government corruption produced by "all of us."
Rocky Mountain News Dead
Chrysler Shows How Not To Do PR
Chrysler didn’t want to appear ungrateful to the American taxpayers, so CEO Bob Nardelli took out full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today to thank them for putting up their money instead of well-heeled Cerberus putting up its own. Reposting the expensive thank-you note on the company blog showed, however, America hates huge wastes of money more than it hates ingratitude.
Some reports say a full-page WSJ print ad runs about $200,000, a veritable pittance compared to the billions chucked Chrysler’s way. The blog post attracted a swarm of angry responses to the thank-you ad, which is presumably why one can no longer access it.
The Consumerist credits the Digg crowd for the backlash, and guesses this is what prompted deletion. If Google doesn’t think you’re a bot, you can access the cached version of the post.
Here are a few of choice comments:
Way to blow hundreds of thousands of dollars on a useless ad campaign that will surely only worsen your public image. We weren't buying your cars before because they are all gas guzzling, unreliable, uninteresting cars that look like they were styled by the coleman plastic cooler division, inside and out. So then you steal our money through the government so you can waste more of it on useless ads, and you have the audacity to remind us all about it. Go to hell Chrysler.
Clearly the move this advertising campaign was dreamed up and approved by individuals who has no contact with the average American. The problem with your company and that of many American companies is the ridiculous financial separation of upper management from that of the average middle income American. Your outrageous income and ability to choose to isolate yourselves mentally, financially, and emotionally from the consumer you serve has lead to the financial ruin of your company.
I'm boycotting you. My whole family is boycotting you. My mother and my father, my brothers and sisters, my sons and daughters. Just thought I'd let you know.
If it comes down to Chrysler or walking.......we'll walk. I'll put my kids on a mule before I'll put them in a Chysler. Suck it, you parasites.
This will probably earn a page or two in forthcoming editions of PR textbooks. If the public is angry with you, it’s best not to remind them of why they are angry. It was probably a bad idea to enable comments on that blog post in the first place, but it just piles on the bad PR when you try to remove negativity from the record after the fact.
Fake Steve Jobs Rips Apple’s Media ‘Lapdogs’
First Ann Coulter, now Newsweek’s Dan Lyons, otherwise known as Fake Steve Jobs. The former cried banishment from NBC before clawing her way back onto the Today show. The latter confirmed to WebProNews he was banned from CNBC after a fiery tirade against Silicon Valley Bureau Chief Jim Goldman for getting “bullied,” “played and punked” by Apple about CEO Steve Jobs’ health.
“It’s true I’m banned,” Lyons said via email.
Nobody Killed the Blogosphere
The Blogosphere’s different, that’s for sure. But dead? Wounded? A ghost town of aging hipsters, unmotivated slackers, and sellouts? Look, if the Blogosphere’s dead then so’s every college campus in America.
Most Political Blog Visitors Conservative
If news consumers are indeed upset with the “liberal elite media” and the “liberal regular media,” as Tina Fey, portraying Sarah Palin, put it last week, then the Internet has provided a robust alternative. In fact, as network television ratings slump, comScore says visits to “standalone” political and news websites and blogs are booming, and it looks like the conservatives are winning.
At least in September. A lot can change in a few weeks.
Bloggers Eat Up Questionable Obama Interview
The right side of the blogosphere is in a snit over a phone interview of Michelle Obama posted by African Press International. Only thing is, the Obama campaign says it’s a complete fabrication.
Technorati Releases State of the Blogosphere
It’s kind of astonishing how swiftly society can shift these days. In 2005, when I started covering this industry, the guys at the local pub would look over the tops of their sports sections with blank or puzzled faces if you uttered the word “blog.”
BlogWorld: Dave Taylor Explains How We Got Here
The answer to the question “Where are we going?” has never been so uncertain. That’s probably not true, what I just said—likely every generation walks that line of dread. Our generation, if we were to follow Dave Taylor, would end up where he did eventually—at some future crossroads equally uncertain—but we’d surely arrive there by different roads.
Blog Comment Ownership Question Resurrected
This is a topic destined for a courtroom one day, bitter enemies formed along the way: Can a blog publisher collect blog comments and publish them in a book? We addressed this topic weeks ago, with no definitive answer. The question arises again today as a result of simultaneous, otherwise minor, occurrences.
Kentucky Blog Blacklist Case Settled
A federal lawsuit filed by a Kentucky blogger against former Governor Ernie Fletcher and the Commonwealth of Kentucky has been settled. Under the terms of the settlement, the Commonwealth agrees to apply a "viewpoint-neutral" policy to blogs and websites accessed by state-owned computers.