Thoughts & Experiences from the Mile High City
So a school student newspaper publishes a story that is embarrassing to the principal and school district leadership. The school then pulls the story and threatens to fire the advisor despite a state law that protects student publications.
Got to love today’s education system.
— Read on www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/amberjamieson/harber-high-arkansas-student-newspaper-suspended-football
DIA de-icers get faulty training : Airlines & Aerospace : The Rocky Mountain News
This is a report that aired this evening on CBS 4 News and was put together by Brian Maass.
This is appalling to me. I fly a lot, including in the winter, and rely on de-icers to make sure that my flight is safe. I also rely on the airlines and Federal Air Administration to ensure that my flight is safe.
Because they were not checking up on their contractor, Servisair, they passed everyone by giving them the answers. That is not acceptable. It shouldn’t take an investigative report from the CBS affiliate in Denver to uncover this.
The company should be checking up on their instructors, including planting people in the class, to make sure they are following the rules. In addition, the FAA and the airlines (who hired Servisair to de-ice planes) should do independent checks to ensure that make sure Servisair is doing their job.
I must let you know Servisair was appalled by what they saw on the tape and suspended and eventually fired the person who administered the tests and called everyone back to take a refresher course and re-take the tests. But to me, it is a little late.
Let’s just hope that there are no problems this year with de-icing planes.
The Rocky Mountain News has revamped their website and I must say I don’t quite like the look.
It is clean and the information is easily accessible, but it is beginning to look like too many other sites. The home page photo used to be quite prominent and really differentiated the website from others, but now it is just small and hard to see. The photographers of the Rocky are some of the best out there and their work needs to be seen, not hidden.
The other opportunity that the Rocky Mountain News missed was in showing links to blogs that discuss a story. This is a great tool and creates for more discussion and traffic to news stories. It would be nice if they would add this feature.
Overall, it is clean, bright, and easy to find the information. It would be nice to see the other features that I discussed.
In figures released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, of the top 25 papers in circulation, only four saw gains.
In the story, First FAS-FAX Numbers: Many Top Papers Take Big Hits, “… for 538 daily U.S. newspapers, circulation declined 2.5% to 40,689,617. For 609 papers that filed on Sunday, overall circulation dropped 3.5% to 46,771,486.”
The newspaper circulations have been declining for a long time. People are beginning to get their news in other mediums and in a more timely fashion. People are not relying on getting their news in their morning or afternoon papers anymore.
Examples of the figures for the last six-month period.
Locally, the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News were down over 10%. The combined Sunday paper was down 13.52% over the last six months. The daily numbers at the Rocky Mountain News were down 11.9% according to another article, ‘Rocky’ Road: Denver Paper’s Circ Plunges — Now Points to Total Audience. Continue reading “Newspaper Circulation Continues Decline”
EPIC (Evolving Personalised Information Construct) is an interesting video looking at the future of media. I am not sure when it was first developed, but I think that it has been several years.
There are two versions. One is set in 2014 and the updated version is set in 2015.
It is amazing how close some of the predictions have and are coming true. The merging of media, search, and data; the fight over copyright; and how we will be getting our news and information in the future. Continue reading “EPIC, Evolving Personalised Information Construct”
MSNBC Interactive News Acquires Newsvine – washingtonpost.com
I wonder how this will continue to work for Newsvine. They are a good company that is doing something intriguing and allowing people to comment on the news stories. With MSNBC acquiring them, what does it mean for Newsvine?
It appears that they are not making any big changes and even incorporating some of Newsvine’s technology into their own website. According to Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media Blog, feels that this is a good thing, “…pulling Newsvine under its wing make perfect sense.”
We, as bloggers and the net community, need to make sure that this is a good thing for Newsvine and MSNBC does not diminish the impact that Newsvine has on the net.
I am watching the TBS coverage of the Rockies-Phillies game tonight and listening to them, it appears that they do not know anything about the Rockies or Coors Field.
They keep calling it a home run ballpark, it is not. It does not even fall into the top 5. Citizen’s Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia is number 2 giving up almost three home runs per game.
Also the keep talking about the humidor effect. Well the humidor is keeping the ball legal. What they were finding in the dry climate of Colorado, the ball was shrinking out of specifications. So they put the humidor in the ball is heavier, not as heavy, and within specifications set by Major League Baseball.
So when is the national media and east coast media going to give up the home run hitters ball park shadow that Coors Field has and finally give the Colorado Rockies the credit that they deserve. Probably never.
Mile High Soapbox 