Gravity Medium

Whenever my wife and I are out and about, we always either cringe or laugh at the ridiculous signs people put out in public. Especially signs for businesses, where the ostensibly make their living from not looking too stupid all the time. I mean, if you want my money, I gotta have some kind of trust in your ability to deliver your goods or services, so get that sign, menu, flyer, newsletter, web site right.

For those that experience similar spelling and punctation double-takes out there, I highly recommend the new blog Wordsplosion!

Fun stuff.

Alaska’s governor — my governor — Sarah Palin got picked up as the Republican VP nod on Friday and it make a complete mess of my day. I didn’t have any meetings, it was the day before Labor Day weekend — I was looking to wrap some things up and take a breather, but I guess not. We pulled together a ton of coverage and such in just a few hours. Be sure to check out APRN.org for all the goodies — from an Alaskan perspective, not from the beltway insiders and pundits that really don’t know anything about Palin.

Thankfully, both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were there for me, at the end of a long day, with their coverage, too. As of this writing, only Stewart’s show has been posted to hulu.com — by the time you read this I suspect Colbert will be there, too.

I know I’m way late for an update on the changes at work and how they fit into a larger strategic approach to the future, but I have an excuse! It’s the week before the Alaska Primary and we’re doing a big meet-the-candidates thing on our TV and radio stations for three nights this week and it’s sucking all the time out of my days and nights.

In the mean time, here’s a little extra treat.

In a tiny state (by population) like Alaska, the barrier to entering statewide politics is fairly low. Or at least the barrier to entering a political race is low — you still generally can’t win unless you’re at least somewhat credible. Still, in a state of less than 700,000 people total, the odds of any particular citizen winning a statewide office are pretty good — much better than most states. Of course, when the odds are good, the goods are often odd.

Case in point… Perennial candidate Daniel DeNardo, currently up for Alaska State House district 31. He appeared on our election coverage show on Tuesday night and explained to the world, well… he explained a lot of things. It’s best if I just let him talk. Enjoy!

Download Audio (MP3)

P.S. Best line from the moderator: “And how do you work on that in the legislature? They seem to be bogged down in the school budget.”

Only took me a couple days, but photos from the C-130 trip to Barrow (August 7, 2008) are now posted on Flickr. It’s amazing just how long it takes to select, title and caption 91 photos, but it’s done.

I won’t bother you with the blow-by-blow story here. The goodies, including explanations, are over on Flickr.

Okay, this isn’t new media, but it’s too cool to not mention…

Later today I’m hopping a Coast Guard C-130 in Anchorage and flying, pretty much all day, to Barrow, Alaska and back. As part of the flight we’ll also spend some time over the Arctic Ocean, surveying the tremendous retreat of the sea ice this year (last year was a record-setter).

The Coast Guard is doing some PR with Alaskan journalists to demonstrate how they’re getting situated up north to handle the added responsibility of patrolling Earth’s newest (navigable) ocean.

I’m not officially a journalist, but I work with them, I do some of their new media, I write their headlines and, well… they’re busy this week. Suckers!

There are probably about 15 journalists going on the 9-hour roundtrip flight. They come from all media — print, video, web and audio outlets are all represented.

I’ll be sure to share some photos and maybe a little video later.

Thanks to Lost Remote for sharing this one.

If there were a CNN mailbox in my neighborhood, I’d totally smash it, too.

Okay, this has nothing to do with public media, but it just caught me off-guard today. The NY Times reports Olympics officials in China are prepared to do gender testing on athletes to ensure females competing in female events are actually female.

Well, this was predicted several years ago by the short-lived (though still alive) animated series Futurama. Good news for the Olympics — they’re still around in the year 3000…

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Hat tip to Steve Elvington for this hilarious find from Current.tv.

Too bad they don’t mention Twitter, Pownce, AIM, GTalk, Skype, Tumblr and all the rest. Twitter alone is worth an entire episode.

Hat tip to Erno Hannink for the posting at the wonderful new media blog from Stowe Boyd: /Message.

Forgive me. I just had to share this.

YouTube Link

Tech writer David Pogue has a great little piece up today explaining why using Web 2.0 (interactive) technologies and methods are important for any company. Public media is no different, of course, and if we are supposedly community-focused, then it means even more sense that we open the doors to the public. (It’s always surprised me how little the “public” appears in public media.)

He has a particularly funny example from an internal — yet open-to-the-public — disussion at Microsoft regarding whether the game Minesweeper should be included with Windows.

Bottom line?

Yes, you’ll have to moderate this stuff. Yes, it means spending money with no immediately visible return on investment. Yes, it’s more work for everyone.

But you’ll gain trust, goodwill and positive attention. You’ll put a human face on your company. And you’ll learn stuff about your customers that you wouldn’t have discovered any other way.

Funny how trust comes up first in his list of benefits. Sound familiar?

Good reading.

Found via Lost Remote, this Idaho Radio News post includes one of the funniest (and saddest) send-ups of local news promotions in commercial media.

• Sweeps Can KILL You (MP3, about 2 minutes)

Can you imagine a public radio or public television station doing a promo like this? Of course not — it’s the polar opposite of the public media ethos.

Perhaps one of the ways to define public service media going forward is to declare what we are not.