Stupid, stupid Oregonian

by Steve, May 17th, 2012

You know I’ve repeatedly dinged The Oregonian for failing to “get it” with new media. Like that time back in 2009 when they were experimenting with Reddit (right about the time the rest of the world was big time on Twitter and Facebook) and everybody got excited because they could get their links on the front page of the local daily’s Web site.

All the SEO morons were loving it, because they could drive a ridiculous amount of traffic to their clients’ sites really fast. Many people clicking through links on the Oregonian Web site didn’t even realize they were going to third-party content, as evidenced by this comment on a post I wrote about buying a new car (for another crappy outfit that didn’t really get new media).

Sure, it was juvenile, but when I punked The Oregonian (and their hack reporter Bryan Denson), there was a point to it. We also had fun putting other links on the Oregonian’s front page under the heading “Today’s hottest links,” like “No Arguing With Assclowns On The Internet Day” (Nancy’s brainchild) and “Oregonian: a Day Late and a Dollar Short”.

(Reddit, by the way, is owned by Advance Publications, which also owns The Oregonian and its ugly Web step-sibbling, OregonLive. No wonder it sucks so hard.)

Some time in the past few years (I don’t know, I don’t bother with their clunky Web site much), they got hip with the Twitter program. I noticed this yesterday when checking election results.

Take a closer look at that Twitter feed:

Heh heh heh. Ohhh…. You fracture me, Oregonian.

The years just fly by

by Steve, February 8th, 2012

The wife and I have been at this Internet publishing thing for quite a while. Fourteen years, to be exact, since we experimented with a Web-based literary arts magazine called the LuLu Revue in 1998.

More Hockey Less War, which turned six-years-young this month, is one of our more recent endeavors. Wacky Mommy was the first fully-featured blog hosted on our own servers, going live seven years ago this month. We also ran an experiment in citizen journalism with PPS Equity from 2008-2010.

I started ranting from the left with our first “Wacky” domain, Wacky Monkey, in 1999. I also developed (for hire) a Web-only vintage clothing store in 1999, and developed and hosted various political and public service Web sites throughout the aughts.

As we enter the twenty-teens, we’ve counter-intuitively stepped into the realm of book publishing, both e-book and paperback. Yes, despite our mad tech skills, we’re bibliophiles at heart, and we’re working on tools to take advantage of (and help define the direction of) this disruptive phase of publishing.

We’ve consolidated all of our publishing endeavors — Web, books and soon music — under the imprint of New Deal Media. We’ve got other things we’re dealing with (family life, working for a paycheck), so this publishing thing is (so far) a side project (or, more accurately, a series of side projects). I can’t wait to see what the next 14 years bring!