Rhodri Morgan says thanks to Welsh Labour for supporting him

Those of you who have been following my tweets will know that along with Politics Cymru, my colleague Adam Bearne and I broke the story of the winner of the Welsh Labour Leadership contest on twitter.

We were fortunate enough to sit in the press pack for the announcement along with ITV, BBC, PA, Media Wales and other big hitters in the world of journalism.

The Western Mail correctly predicted the result in their morning edition. But we were able to break the story on twitter before most other broadcasters.

Using a mobile to cover the story
Both Adam and myself were using our mobile phones: the iphone and the HTC hero respectively to do produce our coverage of the story through audio boos and tweeting.

Unfortunately my HTC hero failed to update the blog because WordPress could not cope with the android operating system.

How can a news organisation compete?

The ability of us to cover this news story with limited mobile phone technology highlights in a very clear way the main problem facing the supporters of paid content.

This week we had a lecture by Rob Andrews from Paid Content Uk, in which he argued that is was really important of having a clear concise business model for online content.

The Seattle Times had 10 staff members twittering the manhunt for the guy who shot 4 police officers. They also had a google wave running with over 500 wavers to create a variety of content.

They fund their online journalism through online advertising which Rob Andrew’s argues has a limited time scale.

This week has really highlighted how the real-time nature of Twitter and Google Wave can add an extra pressure on online content, and therefore the future of financing  journalism.

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Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News magazines sold

Credit: Fred Cavazza's Flickr page

The Seattle Times drew record traffic to its site yesterday as it covered the manhunt for the suspect in the Lakewood police killings—and the Times is largely crediting Twitter with hauling in so many page views. Throughout the day yesterday, the Times ran a Twitter widget on their home page (no image available), Tweeted from multiple accounts—even Executive Editor David Boardman, previously Tweet-shy, started using his account—opened up a Wave and didn’t miss a beat in posting timely updates to their site.

When it’s used right, social media works. Laugh at it or ignore it if you want, but know that you do so at your own peril.

Writing off social media is like writing off bars: “Ah, this bar thing is just a fad.” Well, going to a particular bar may be a fad, but bars in general are still good places to find information.

Citing social media’s shortcomings is like citing the shortcomings of society and it’s a stupid reason not to participate. “People lie and circulate bad information and then it gets repeated.” Isn’t this why journalism became a profession in the first place? People on the Internet are just like any other source you’ve had as a reporter: some are good, some are bad and some will lie. Your job is to filter all that for your audience. It’s no different on the Web.

I can understand non-participation; people aren’t comfortable putting themselves on the Internet, or they’re not good with computers or whatever. What I don’t get is the hostility—the “this isn’t journalism” crowd that puts everything that’s been invented in the last five years in quotes. You’re mad because, what, some community blog is getting more traffic than you? Then make a better site. Deliver faster updates. Offer a better experience. And if you don’t have the ingenuity to even try any of that, if all you’re willing to do is say, “Our product is what it is and you should come to it instead because it’s institutionalized,” then you lose.

BREAKING NEWS- The AP is reporting that four police officers were shot and killed Sunday morning in what authorities called a targeted ambush at a coffee-house in Washington state, a sheriff’s official said.

A gunman burst into a Washington state coffeehouse Sunday and opened fire on four police officers as they sat working on their laptops, killing the three men and one woman in what an official described as a targeted ambush.

Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said officers were looking for one male suspect who fled on foot, but haven’t ruled out an accomplice.

Troyer said the four officers killed — all from the Lakewood Police Department — were catching up on paperwork at the beginning of their shifts when they were attacked at 8:15 a.m. Sunday.

Troyer said the attack was clearly targeted at the officers, not a robbery gone bad.

“There were marked patrol cars outside and they were all in uniform,” Troyer said.

“This was more of an execution. Walk in with the specific mindset to shoot police officers,” Troyer said.

A Pierce County manhunt is now under way, Sgt. Ed Troyer, Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman, said all available officers are combing several potential crime scenes, including one on Pacific Highway where a suspect’s pickup truck reportedly was abandoned.

Families of the officers have been notified, Troyer said. All of the officers — three males and a female — were in uniform, wearing vests and had marked patrol cars parked outside, he said.

A $10,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest, Troyer said.

Police are looking for one man in connection with the attack, which happened at about 8 a.m., Troyer said. The suspect is described as an African-American man, between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 10 inches tall, wearing a black coat and blue jeans, with a “scruffy” appearance, he said. The man is believed to have fled the coffee shop on foot, he said.

Authorities are not ruling out the possibility that a second person was involved in the attack, Troyer said.

There were no known threats lodged against any of the officers murdered, nor any against the police department at large.

“We don’t have any threat, we don’t have any targeted people,” Troyer told reporters, having no answer to the question of why the officers were singled out.”Chances are there is not going to be a good answer. There is not an answer that makes any sense.”

A tip line has been set up at 1-866-977-2362.

Follow updates on this story here…

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h6HGmTEc_kIALqJfG0r_WSGGFGZgD9C9D0G80

http://www.examiner.com/x-25653-FBI-Examiner~y2009m11d29-FBI-joins-effort-to-find-killers-of-four-police-officers-in-Parkland-Wash

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/29/washington.police.shooting/

It’s Apple Cup week, and you know what that means — rounding up the records, rolling down the windows and throwing said records out said windows, writes Bob Condotta in his Seattle Times Husky Football blog.

Though the way the Cougars and Huskies are going these days, they’d probably earn a fine for littering in the process.

For the third straight year, neither Washington nor Washington State has a winning record entering their annual rivalry game at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Husky Stadium — UW at 3-7, WSU at 1-10.

In fact, only once since 2003 has either team come into the game better than .500 — WSU at 6-5, falling to 6-6 when the Huskies won 35-32 in 2006.

It doesn’t help soothe the pain to know that just to the south, Oregon and Oregon State are gearing up for one of the biggest Civil Wars ever Dec. 3, the winner assured a spot in the Rose Bowl.

Read more: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/huskies/2010333429_apple23.html

Another recent blog entry in the Vancouver Sun:

According to an ongoing Olympic series in the Seattle Times, the Olympic tickets black market are just another part of life when it comes to high demand sporting events. Scalpers selling tickets for eight times the face value sold by VANOC have an unusual source for the tickets themselves: the Olympic insiders involved in actually organizing the event.

Many, if not most, of the tickets being sold by scalpers for the Olympics actually come from the “Olympic Family” of sponsors, Olympic officials, and others who can get a jump on the public. Although such a thing is forbidden, there is little that can be done to stop the practice, according to the Times article.

Continue reading…

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Every week, Pacific Northwest Magazine is included with the Sunday edition of The Seattle Times.  Today’s issue features a fun little snippet about us at Mashiko Restaurant.  Thanks for the nod, Nancy!

Mike Siegel takes a tantalizing photo, no?

SEATTLE (FNS)–Longtime activist Geov Parrish unexpectedly revealed to the crowd gathered to celebrate his 50th birthday Friday evening his impending plans to end his decades-long career as a public issues advocate in exchange for new opportunities in the field of corporate communications management and image development.

The announcement appeared to be even more shocking to the glitterati gathered for Parrish’s 50th birthday extravaganza at Seattle’s tony Rainier Club than the fact that the event was sponsored by longtime Parrish nemesis Frank Blethen, publisher of the “Seattle Times” and a frequent target of Parrish’s acerbic criticism regarding the state of corporatocracy and its negative impact upon the state of the Nation.

A new commercial venture and three new business relationships were unveiled: a corporate communications consultancy, tentatively to be named “I Am The State!”, is to be opened in the next few weeks, after suitable office space is located, with the United States Chamber of Commerce and The Seattle Times Company as the first two business associates; additionally, Parrish will be joining the Board of Directors of the Strangelove Foundation, an organization devoted to maintaining the purity and essence of our precious bodily fluids.

A book deal was also announced.

Parrish, who among his other work was a founder of Seattle’s alternative newspaper “Eat The State!“, was in an ebullient mood as he explained the thought process behind his decision:

“After spending so many years fighting for affordable, high-quality health care for all Americans—all to no avail—I’ve decided to focus my efforts on getting myself high-quality health care, no matter what the cost…and considering, on the one hand, that my projected income next year from just the US Chamber of Commerce and Seattle Times operations are going to be somewhere in the range of $2.5 million dollars, and, on the other hand, that when my company pays for my new gold-plated executive health insurance plan it’s fully tax-deductible, I’m thinking the cost of health care is probably not going to be a problem for me going forward.

And then I thought: what better day to make the announcement…than Friday the 13th?”

Apparently channeling Dave Chappell, Parrish then offered the crowd a certain single-fingered gesture before shouting:

“I’m rich, bitchaaas!”

In an exclusive interview, Frank Blethen explained to me the rationale behind the surprising new relationship:

“There was a time when we could afford to ignore publications like “Eat the State!”, but as conditions for traditional publishers continued to deteriorate we found ourselves having to face the uncomfortable reality that last year Parrish’s paper was actually more profitable than “The Seattle Times”, and it was at that point that the Board and I decided to approach Parrish with an offer of employment.”

Parrish declined the offer, citing his unwillingness to be anyone’s employee. Blethen, however, would not be dissuaded:

“…we were determined to have him, in whatever capacity we could, and finally we hit upon the idea of hiring him as a consultant. We still couldn’t come up with enough of an annual retainer for Parrish to be fully persuaded, so I made a quick call to Tom Donohue at the Chamber, which is how we came up with the proposal to have him advise not just The Seattle Times Company on media outreach and branding strategies, but, through the auspices of the Chamber, to provide those same services to other companies that could use ‘the Parrish Touch’.”

As the Obama Administration’s plans for a new energy policy begin to become more certain Parrish’s I Am The State! is also expected to provide services to companies outside the media community.

I was able to confirm this with a quick call to Exxon/Mobil spokesman Harry Paratestes, who told me that:

“…we are one of several companies that are seeking to reinvigorate our corporate image ahead of any new energy legislation that might be forthcoming from this and future Administrations.

Parrish’s ability to successfully position his own media property while simultaneously destroying three competing papers—first, the “Seattle Weekly”, then, Hearst’s “Seattle Post-Intelligencer”, and finally, the “Seattle Times”—gives us the confidence we need to invest in his ideas and every expectation of a profitable and mutually satisfying outcome.”

Based on a recommendation from Tom Donohue, Center Street Publishers is rumored to have offered a $3.5 million advance for the rights to Parrish’s new book documenting his change of circumstances, “The State Can Eat Me!”; it is anticipated that distribution will be not only through traditional retail channels, but also through Conservative websites such as Human Events, which is currently offering books by Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin at deep discounts to entice new website subscribers.

A number of times during the evening I attempted to obtain a comment directly from Mr. Parrish regarding these developments, but due to my inability to penetrate either the cordon of sunglass-wearing security personnel or the ever-present entourage that now surrounds him that effort proved to be impossible.

In a written statement, Parrish’s people informed us that his next move will be to visit the Columbia Tower, Carillon Point, and the South Lake Union area to identify a suite of offices that can be redesigned to meet his specific requirements (which, I’m told, include an indoor shooting range, a cafeteria operated by the local “Popeye’s” chicken franchisee, and the largest organ in the State of Washington); during the period of construction, we were informed, he will be in residence in either the other Washington, at the Hay-Adams Hotel, or Atlanta, Georgia, at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center, where, despite the fact that he was initially recruited by the “Times’” Blethen, he will be doing his first consulting work for other members of the Chamber.

According to two New Zealand researchers, dogs have greater eco-footprints than SUVs.

Yes, you read that correctly. Little Fluffy over there is apparently doing more damage to the Earth than a gas guzzler.

Does that mean you can get rid of the dog and go out and get that SUV you want? Not quite.

The study, called Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living, claims it takes slightly more than 2 acres of land to produce the amount of food consumed by a medium sized dog each year.

On the other hand, less than half that amount of land would be required to produce the energy it takes to power an SUV driven 10,000 miles a year.

Of course this does not mean its okay to go out and purchase a SUV. They’re still gas guzzlers that do incredible harm to the Earth.

According to the researchers, the findings mean people have to start putting their animals on less resource-intensive diets.

There’s the secret to the environmental crisis, animal diets.

If you’re thinking this sounds fishy, you aren’t the only one. Clark Williams – Derry, chief researcher at the Sightline Institute, has spoken out against the research to the Seattle Times.

Williams – Derry says if one were to do the math, for the findings to be true a dog would have to eat twice as much food as an average person. Considering the fact people are generally heavier than dogs this means the research makes no sense.

However, Williams – Derry does go on to say just because the statistics are questionable does not mean dogs do not have a big impact.

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