KyForward

Has it been a month already? So much has happened.

If you haven’t been reading Jim Newberry’s new media empire then you probably don’t know that there’s a corn maze in the shape of Coach Cal’s face (unless you heard about it on WUKY or in the Herald Leader or most other places) and you may not know that Lee Todd was a great president at UK who deserves a $200,000 office (seriously, all gave some but some gave all.)

You may also not know that one of their brightest young writers departed, hopping off what may or may not be a sinking ship just three months after taking a position as the new venture’s Assistant Executive Producer. She returned to the Courier-Journal where she previously worked. You can keep up with her as she covers Oldham County and other stories at the C-J… which is a linkable news outlet, you just plop in the HTML and away everyone goes. Newberry’s site still hasn’t worked out that kink. Darndest thing.

That was a pretty big loss — like several of their young folks, she was a great writer and hopefully the Courier Journal will offer her the better opportunities she deserves.

Moving on… or shall we say, moving forward… one of you have noticed and mentioned to us that these logos very much like the other:

To be fair, The Streetsweeper pointed this out months ago and more people probably would have noticed, but one of these things is not highly visible so most people are excused for not noting the similarities. [And, speaking of the Streetsweeper, he's got a great roundup of all the business/restaurant moves going on downtown -- and if you're interested in such things, go go go check it out.]

In terms of advertising — many of you ask frequently how they are still afloat, if ad revenue is really transplanting coal funds. Well, we’re not sure how much or how long or even if the King Coal money is still there but looking at the ad revenue, it seems unlikely that’s there either at this point.

WKYT continues to have a prominent link (but did they really pay for it?) as does UK (again, is UK really spending that money?). They’ve added a link to what appears to be something Alltech related but 1) the Alltech logo is almost unreadable and when I clicked on it my pop-up blocker freaked out. So I don’t know what that is. Well, here… let’s give away some Free Advertising:

And here’s another, if you scroll all the way down toward the bottom of their page:

Perhaps the most interesting item to come out of Mayor Newberry’s digital empire actual came from a far-off fiefdom, his personal page on Facebook, where Jim posted a lengthy missive some observers suggest may be his first testing of Higher Office waters.

It came out August 7th with the headline:

The Decline of American Economic Leadership

In it, he describes his disgust at the actions of our elected officials in Washington:

I found the whole thing sickening to watch as everyone involved continued their posturing up until the last possible minute and then passed legislation that did the bare minimum necessary to avoid default.

Then Jim swings for the left field fence:

Construction companies need work, and there will be no better time to get that work done than now.  However, those who argue for reducing spending have concluded that nothing should be done by the federal government to improve infrastructure until deficit spending is reduced to some unspecified level.  Who knows when that will happen?

And then, after making the distinction between spending (salaries, etc) and investing (infrastructure), Newberry goes on to call for expiring the destructive Bush Tax Cuts:

When that distinction is made, a compelling case for investing in our country’s future can be made.  Until then, I fear we will simply continue to squander the remarkable legacy that our parents and grandparents left us.  They understood the overwhelming importance investing in the future and paying the taxes necessary to support that investment. It’s time for our generation to grow up and do the same.  When we do, America will regain its position of economic leadership.

The whole read is refreshing if one thinks back to the Mayor’s time in office and his behavior as a candidate and one must wonder if the three basic thrusts of this letter could be construed as anything other than a poke at our current elected national leaders. Notice he is not second guessing Mayor Gray at any point in this, but those folks we send to Washington.

And whose seat do you think he might have his eye on most squarely?

• Our current leadership is “sickening”
• They don’t understand the importance of infrastructure
• They support the failed Bush Tax Cuts

Well, obviously it’s not John Yarmuth.

Or… did Jim just feel like writing a “Note” on Facebook for 17 people to “Like.”

‘Til next month?

Jim Newberry’s web-based mega media conglomerate that is daily redefining local reporting and how we use the web and understand our world (but how should we understand our world?) has launched to a rockin’ start. Or a rocky one.

First, word leaked out before they’d got around to making an official announcement. Then it became clear the whole operation was facilitated by the folks behind King Coal astrotrufers FACES of Coal. Then everyone under the sun was talking about how the whole shebang was funded by a mega-rich Coal dude who wanted to “redefine” news coverage. And of course the ex-Mayor’s holding a massive grudge against the Herald-Leader for doing actual journalism during his one (inconsequential) term.

And then, finally, they launched. Early. Too early. And badly. The site still looks like a mess and that may be due to displaced priorities — like, ass-covering.

All the coal revelations seem to have made some on staff (like, trained journalists) a little uncomfortable with the mission of Jim Newberry’s internet experiment. Apparently, not everyone was up front with the new hires about what, exactly, they were to be doing.

So, Newberry’s team announced that the site was actually funded by “advertising.”

Most of which three weeks in still appears to be either paid for or gifted to corollary organizations (from the co-founder’s non-profit to the radio network that last week was focus of a prominent, laudatory and lengthy profile).

So, since the advertising is going so badly, and the King Coal money must be hidden from sight, Newberry and Clabes (the Woodward and Bernstein of the Bluegrass?) are pitching a new story… which they told the Herald-Leader (which is a newspaper… and a website… with news).

The site will focus on what its founders, who say they had mulled the idea for years, think are under-served niches in local media.

“We’re not going to do the breaking news that traditional media does,” explained Clabes….

“It’s sort of easier to say what we won’t do.”

….

The organization will be supported by online advertising sales, but is being supported by private dollars for now.

“It’s mostly Jim’s and mine to start,” she said of the source of funding. “We’re putting together legal paperwork to offer shares to people who might be interested.”

The most hilarious part about this story — what really amounts to the Newberry’s official announcement to the people of Kentucky for this new venture — is that the Herald-Leader buried it, giving it second billing to an actual contender for King of All Kentucky Media, Matt Jones.

But the notion that Newberry is self-funding this venture is amusing, too. The cagey answer is obviously meant to deflect the Herald-Leader’s obvious question (“No! Of course it’s not coal money! It’s our money!”) while at the same time explain away the lack of any real advertising on the site.

So it’s all self-funded. Or… mostly. I guess that was the operative word there. Which is a shade away from kinda. Anyway, hide away a few liberty trinkets, and a share of Jim Newberry’s empire could soon be yours.

And finally… for an interesting metric (you know, for fun, or if you’re a potential advertiser) over the past week, Newberry’s site has been twitted about 72 times, but if you exclude Newberry himself and all the twits of his employees, and if you also don’t count tweets by subjects of the articles or their affiliates, only five Twitter users appear to have noticed the site exists (four of them go there for the thorough NCAA and minor league base-ball news… which maybe we’ll get to another time).

Out of kindly regard and neighborly respect, we turn our attention briefly to Jim Newberry’s new media empire. About an hour ago, they bombed Facebook with a shock and awe-like attack of updates.

The internet is difficult to use and takes some time to understand, especially when you’re just getting started.

As such, we’ll refer Jim Newberry’s coal-powered staff to a couple of Facebook Pages “Best Practices” guides… there’s the official Facebook guide (PDF) and there’s also this one on scribd which reads, right up front:

Status Updates Status updates are the bread and butter of Facebook Pages. They are your primary source of communication and through likes and comments the primary source of interaction by your fans. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your updates:

• Update Frequently – But not too frequently – You want to find that happy medium where your fans are engaged but not turned off. Your updates will appear in your fans’ home feeds, so you should provide content that will be of interest to them. You want your page to be active, since it in turn reflects on the activity of your organization, but you don’t want to appear spammy.

We really want you guys to succeed but we fear the community’s patience runs out before the coal money does if you keep that up. So take this as some helpful and constructive criticism.

Also, for those of you who aren’t reading their site (and how can you not be? That’s where everyone’s getting their news now), you missed a stirring defense of Beshear’s Obama Snub, a CentrePointeless essay from Harold Tate, and all of the college baseball news you could ever want (covered no where else, thus fulfilling their mission by filling a void).

There was also a new “lexplained” (about the garbage truck drivers and LFUCG investigating comments made about them) which didn’t quite fulfill their mission as it came a couple days after the Herald-Leader explained basically the same thing.

We hope Jim Newberry’s new media empire continues its exponential growth and that it hones its best practices going forward.

–WRITTEN BY MEDIA CZECH, rescued from the great Blogger rapture of May 12th, 2011.

Jim Newberry’s new Digital Media Empire to Crush the Souls of the Unbelievers is off to a wildly successful start, as it has become the go-to online destination for Lexingtonians to catch up on college baseball and horses that won a race ten years ago.
We mentioned this Monday, but I think KY Forward’s “civility pledge” deserves another look:

The KyForward team is committed to developing a Civil Discourse pledge for ourselves and reader-responders to our website. We recognize the importance of changing the tone of the conversation around public issues and believe that solutions can only be advanced when all voices are respectfully heard so that workable compromises can be forged in a free society. We understand that the compelling issues we face today have no easy fixes, but that a democracy requires “common views of common” people and thoughtful dialogue is the best way to find the common ground.

Here is an example of a pledge developed by the Arizona Humanities Council that we think covers the principles we would want to embrace.

“I pledge to engage in the basic principles of civil discourse: to respect diverse points of view, listen with an open mind and speak with integrity. I call upon all civic leaders to meet the challenge of solving difficult social issues by adhering to these principles, thereby creating a better world for ourselves and future generations.”

— Arizona Humanities Council

What should our Civil Discourse pledge say? How would you write it? What kind of pledge would you like to sign – and would encourage others to sign?

For now, let’s look beyond the odd Arizona reference or the familiar KY Forward call for other people to do their work for them. Civil discourse, changing the tone, respect, thoughtful dialogue… heck yeah that sounds great!

But it kind of reminded me of an email that Jim Newberry sent out to his supporters just before he was unceremoniously fired by the citizens of Lexington in his blowout loss last November. You may remember these excerpts from this oldie but goodie:

Subject: Liar

*****

Let me be clear: Jim Gray is a liar, pure and simple.

*****

Jim Gray is like a spoiled child…

*****

Jim Gray stands alone … a liar … delusional … debasing himself…

*****

Jim Gray is a liar.

Civil discourse, FTW!

I wonder what Ernesto Scorsone thinks about Jim Newberry’s commitment to civil discourse?

Or maybe this is all nothing of any consequence?

Oh, that’s just crazy talk. KY Forward is possibly the most important thing ever, the beginning of a great and powerful empire that will launch Jim Newberry back into relevance and power. No lie. Or delusional debasing, we swear.