What to Blog when there's nothing to Blog about?

Twelve years ago I could always find something on which to write a blog post. Back then I was very keyed into politics, especially the local variety, and there seemingly was always something I found interesting.

Fast Forward to today.

Don't give two shits about politics, don't vote, pretty much dislike every politician and political candidate out there, and except for a few close friends, I'm not particularly interested in debating any of the political bloggers still standing. Here's the rub though, there aren't many.  And the ones that are still standing are partisan and boring.

Mind numbingly boring.

Nor do I miss the days when a humorous blog post (usually making fun of a really bad political ad involving a motorcycle or some such) got me labeled as a "thinly veiled misogynist" or *shudder* a Teabagger. Granted, the fist insult probably involved deep research by the poster who had to determine whether they were using the words right (all three of them probably) and the 2nd was just a word thrown around to try and disparage anyone the poor second writer didn't like.  They had no clue what it meant, they just knew their political friends were using it and the Jr. High level humor made them feel wise.

From circular reasoning to begging the question the old political blogoshpere was a minefield of logical fallacies wrapped in a 5th grade writing level package. In short: It was bad. It was a little ironic that I won my one award, but shuttered my blog prior to the Houston Press releasing their issue naming me "Political blogger of the year" or something along those lines. (This was right at the tail end of their "Best of Houston" actually meaning something. In fact, it might have been the end of it meaning something.) [On another note: I miss the old Houston Press]

Political blogging became boring. Politics became boring. The Left disagreed with the Right who disagreed with others on the Right who disagreed with pretty much everyone. When it came down to it though, both sides were the same, it was just different courtiers hanging on to each side, seeking their pile of the public largesse. When it comes right down to it, the only philosophical difference between Team Red and Team Blue is who they want the government to write the checks to.

So, I bugged out, and I never looked back.

At this point you might be thinking "He's saying all of this to announce that he's dipping his toes back into the pool, that he's going to paint himself and some wonderful centrist, smarter than everyone else with a reasoned take on everything that the two parties are lacking."

Nope.

I'm not. For one, I'm not smart enough to try and solve all of the world's problems, shit, I'm not smart enough to solve my neighborhood's problems. Nor am I especially driven to try all that hard. And I'm sure as Hell not interested in talking to politicians again, or talking to political bloggers again for that matter, I'm quite content to leave them to their joyless corner of the World. Have fun kids.

The fact is that I just felt the need to write something today, and I've found that blogs are usually pretty good when there's a little bit of navel gazing going on.  I'm not sure what I'm going to write about on this thing going forward, but it will be something. I've always said that writing like this fills a creative void in my life that my job just cannot (nothing wrong with my job, but the nature of it is not creative).

I've tried to write a book, but I've neither the skill, nor the attention span to keep with it. I think I've written about one tenth of one chapter, then life gets back in the way.

So the accountant in me will continue to work at my job, and earn the money, and the failed, bad, writer in me will continue to pound away on this blog. I might touch on some current events, some sports and sports betty things, and I might just touch on the things I find absurd in this world. Trust me, there are a LOT of those things.

That's the fun stuff that I have been missing from my early days of blogging, just writing about whatever the Hell I want.  I've been meaning to get back to that, so here we go. I cannot promise a post per day or something silly like that, but I should be able to turn out at least one per every week or two. It just depends on what I find that interests me.

Your mileage and entertainment value may vary. At least you'll get out of it what you paid for it.

Today I left Twitter (or, X or whatever)

 I finally did it.

Today I decided to deactivate my account on Twitter (x, whatever) and I'm not going back. What was once a fun, social media website that was actually, sort of, social, has devolved into a morass of porn and bitcoin bots, trolls, and just REALLY bad actors.

I have considered this for a while now, and had almost pulled the trigger on it several time but today, after blocking my 20th bot account, I had decided that I've had enough.

No, I'm not paying $168 per year for what is basically, for me, a news aggregate, and I'm not willing to keep on operating day to day having to block someone telling me that "Lisa wait you". (If you've been on there, you know what I'm referring to.

I'm also tired of writing in 180 characters. I've noticed my writing skills slipping so I'm looking forward to writing some more long-form items here and I'm going to consider actually making good on my promise and doing some YouTube videos.  I'm going to move my cooking and beer pictures to Instagram, where there are less bots, or I'm just going to get rid of them altogether, I'm not sure yet. Maybe I'll add some posts to this blog highlighting my smoking, grilling and outdoor cooking adventures.  Who knows?

But I do know that I'm done with Twitter (X, whatever) unless it makes huge changes or something else emerges to take it's place.

Until then, I'm going to enjoy being a little less social for a while.

Blog and InterNet open comments: Time to cut the cord.

When user comments were rolled out on several media sites they were heralded as the next logical evolution of user/news interaction.  Not only could the average citizen now read a news story, but they could weigh in and rationally discuss things with other citizens which would, it was theorized, lead to a more personal, interactive experience with the news.

Now that we've seen the experiment, it's time to say that it's failed and just move on. 

The sad fact is, the average Internet commenter, posting behind a shield of anonymity, has devolved into a low-rent shock jock or semi-literate partisan ram-rod who's inability to avoid a logical fallacy is rivaled only by their ability to bungle the English language.  If you don't believe me then take a look at the comment strings from these stories:

Al Sharpton's long bill of goods, from Tawana Brawley to Prime Time, Stuart Stevens, The Daily Beast

Wal-Mart to speed it's delivery of produce to stores. Nancy Sarnoff, Chron.com

Commentary: Queen Michelle is dead, long live Ted Cruz, King of the Tea Party. Jason Stanford, Chron.com

Granted, the third link is a little hard because what Jason Stanford managed to do there was take one long, rambling essay on the intellectual level of an Internet anonymous comment and convince the Chron's staff it was worthy as running as news.  Given content of that quality it's not fair to expect the readers to respond any other way but in kind.  In the race to the bottom, Chron.com has not only taken the lead, their editors are pulling a Ronnie Turcotte and turning around in deep stretch to see just how far back the competition has fallen.

It's time to end this experiment in citizen commentary, to shutter comments and re-hire serious reader reps who will do a better job answering reader questions.  There's news that the Chron is already moving this way, stopping the practice of paying certain free-lancers for content on "reader" blogs.  And this is a good thing.

An even better thing would be ridding the world of these comments sections.  Until they do however I'm just going to stop reading them.

Note to Houston newsies: Look inward for your fix.

You can't write about this: Between Oscars and Yahoo! a bad week for women, Kyrie O'Connor, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

and then expect us to take you seriously when the "features" department you oversaw (and built) from 2003 - 2012 produces this on a regular basis:

Additionally...

You can't write about this: 5 reasons we must keep BangWithFriends.com alive. Casey Michel, Houston Press

and then expect us to take seriously your writings with (intentionally?) inflammatory headlines like this:
HISD to offer free dinners to anyone under 18, whether illegal or not. Casey Michel, Houston Press

And therein lies the problem with Houston's present day media.

The Press, is a mess.  I'd argue that they're no longer a news gathering organization and are just a loose collection of freelance bloggers publishing anything they can find in the name of page hits.  Occasionally they might turn out something worthwhile, but very rarely.  Then, when they do, you look back at all of the stuff the author's written and you say "bah, they don't know what they're talking about anyway." 

Both the Chron and the Press lose all credibility on women's issues because of (shocker!) how they portray women.

While figuring the Press was fairly straight forward, the Chron is slightly more nuanced.  It took me a while to figure out exactly where they were trying to go.

At first, I thought they were trying to be a low-rent London Times. Of course, without the good news content and meaningful analysis.  First, they put some stuff behind a paywall, like the Times, and then, they made the pay site rather bland (again, like the Times), what was missing behind the Chron's paywall was meaningful content, whereas the Times has put pretty much everything behind the shield.  In contrast, the Chron has hidden AP wire reports, a few public interest stories, two c-list local political columnists, The Apple Dumpling Gang and Lisa Falkenberg from public view.  For this we should thank them.

It was only recently that I figured out what they were really going for, ChronBlog wants desperately to become The Daily Mail.

More breathy than newsy, the Daily Mail is the perfect mixture of supermarket tabloid magazine and splashy, sensationalist newsy reporting more designed to tug at the heart strings than present the facts in any case.  In many ways the Chron is trolling right down that same path choosing to frame stories designed to enrage (and bring on page views) rather than inform.  Oh, and then there's the whole We're all gonna DIE!!!! hysteria that's been coming from the Apple Dumpling Gang of late.  They wave the flag and cheer about one Billion page hits and 50 thousand twitter followers while ignoring Billions of dollars in local, public entity spending and thousands of stories that should be told.

The people want news, the Chron gives them Requiem for a make-out bar.  The problem is that this story bemoaning the demise of Houston's former Pantheon of public sex will be followed up with an eventual tut-tutting about where Texas ranks on some listing of children born out of wed-lock.  I'm not suggesting that Marfreless added to the population, but I am suggesting that glorifying casual sex does.  It's OK to write a story about a local institution closing, but an entire editorial, which glorifies the bar's "sleazy secret?" Forgive us if we don't get all worked up the next time you decide to lecture us on how we're failing as a society.

The problem is that we still need news, there still needs to be an outlet to provide news and as a society we still haven't figured out what's going to come after.  What's the next big thing?  Even the Texas Legislature is trying to figure that out as they debate where polling locations should be published now that no one is looking for them in the dead-tree editions of their former newspapers of record.  It's a real problem. A problem whose only answer, to date, seems to be to rely on Newsish non-profits and the websites of the newspapers that let us down in the first place.  Either that, or TV news, which is worse for numerous reasons.

Nope, the answer is for today's media organizations to understand what's wrong internally, either that or just give it up and leave the news game altogether.  This middle ground approach is failing miserably.

Hou and cry

Maybe it's just me. 

What passes for clever these days when trying to give something a "hip, marketable nickname" is nothing more than shortening the thing and leaving it at that.  Creativity, especially in Houston, seems to be on a severe downswing especially where professional word-smiths are concerned.  Take the recent editorial by the Apple Dumpling Gang as an example: Embraceable 'Hou'

'Hou'?

Why not Bayou City, or H-town?  Why not the increasingly inaccurate Space City?  Or why not, in keeping with what most Houstonians call it: Houston?

I realize that, in Houston especially, there's a thought that copying New York gives the place a metropolitan feel, that somehow calling the East End "EaDo" puts us on equal footing with SoHo and everyone will be impressed with how modern and urban we are.  We're not some back-water, slack-jawed hick town with bad roads and no public transportation to speak of, we're urban dammit, just look at our nicknames. I also understand that this is a take on a song by George Gershwin, so just leave it there.  What I'm referring to is a trend larger than one editorial.

I saw, over the weekend, on Twitter where Austin's aging relic of a music industry festival, South by Southwest, is now being called "South by" by all of the 'in-the-know' Caucasian hipsters.  Given that the festival is almost solely attended by Caucasian hipsters I'm not surprised.  These are people who's greatest contribution to modern society is drinking a terrible beer and referring to it as PBR so the idea of culture and creative linguistics is lost on them.  If you have any doubt, try to make it through some of the stories in The Texas Tribune. Not only is Evan Smith and John Thornton's little excellence in journalism shop banging the "we need a full time legislature" drum loudly, but they're doing in ways that are increasingly unreadable. Give a try at reading today's primer on Medicare Expansion by Becca Aaronson without having to go back and re-read frequently to keep up with the narrative.  It's damn-near impossible.

Now, granted, judging by her Twitter stream Aaronson spent most of the weekend attending various South by Southwest workshops on removing beer stains from natural fibers or something along those lines, but the fact is what she produced in her paying job is dodgy and difficult to read, much less comprehend and walk away feeling you're got a better grasp on the issue. (And really, isn't that what good journalism should do?)

I'm not trying to pick on Ms. Aaronson here.  That's just one example of many that you can point to.  If you're not visiting the Pinboard account of PubliusTX (referred to here via hattip quite often) then you're missing one of the best run-downs of journalistic malpractice in TX there is.  It's not just the Trib or ChronBlog either.  Kevin found an apostrophe error the other day in the New York Times.  These types of things used to never happen.

It's for these reasons that I blame our current lack of creative linguistics on Texas Lock Step Political Media.  The decline has been with us for a while, I'm thinking back to the late Molly Ivins who started by calling Republicans evil, advanced to calling former Texas Governor and United States President George W. Bush "Shrub" (because, you know, it was kinda, sorta like bush spelled backwards) and left it at that.  What followed was the inevitable decline into George Bushitler and Dumbocrats and Repuglicants and even worse.  The reign of the wordsmith in public discourse has come to an end.  We're seemingly stuck in a land where adding "-gate" to the end of every scandal is enough to get you elected to the least-common denominator hall of fame and in the running for a Pulitzer.

Furthermore there doesn't seem to be much, if any, hope for escaping the downward cycle.  As text speak starts to infiltrate real writing it's going to get much worse before it gets better.  What this means is that, pretty soon, we're going to find ourselves living in a Hou where EaDo is perpetually on the cusp of being the next big thing while Disco Green tries to figure out what to do about the problem of dog bombs.

Can someone at South by..... please do a workshop on this?

Adventures in identification (the I don't think that word means what you think it does edition)

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." -Inigo Montoya

There are two truisms you must keep in mind when speaking about Texas' Lock Step Political Media (TLSPM).

1. They've never met a government program they didn't like.
2. Any new Democratic Party advocacy group will be met with open arms and no questions.

This is why an overwhelming majority of the TLSPM news coverage coming out of the current Lege session is in favor of spending all available money, draining the rainy day fund and increasing Texas taxes to spend more.  It's also why the new Democratic "Turn Texas Blue" group Battleground Texas is being described as "grass-roots" by former Austin bureau chief (and current lefty political columnist) Richard Dunham of the Hearst Austin Bureau.  Even the National media is buying the line, choosing to ignore (along with Dunham) the organizational structure and funding behind Battleground Texas.

At heart, these are members of Obama's (successful) campaign team that are being dispatched to Texas by the DNC to make another attempt to wrest it from GOP control.  That's all well and good, but calling the group "grass-roots" gives it an authenticity that it doesn't deserve.

Another argument, and one I'm in agreement with, is that the term grassroots doesn't have any real meaning in politics any longer.  So calling a group such as Battleground Texas a grass-roots organization is meaningless.  However, that's from a political perspective.  With the low-information voter the term 'grass-roots' still has real meaning.  Why else do you think the Democrats worked so hard to get the various Tea Party organizations classified as "Astroturf" and were dead-set against letting the grass-roots moniker stick. Why else do you choose a vulgarity used by homophobes as a means of derision?

Here's where everybody is getting it wrong.

At the beginning, the Tea Party was a grass-roots movement that got co-opted by moneyed interests and players within the GOP.  In it's current iteration it's nothing more than a GOP advocacy group that veered from it's low-spending, waste-cutting message toward a no taxes at no time no matter what the cost, eat-your own pressure group designed to 'keep the Republicans in line" by advancing the interests of some small-government conservatives.  Again, this is OK, but calling the current Tea Party grass-roots isn't really right, neither is it correct to deride them as Astroturf.  What they have grown into is the fiscal equivalent of the Religious Right.  With the same ability to make or break a primary candidate.  They are a force within the GOP which has had moderate success placing candidates in several levels of government.

Which brings us back to Battleground Texas.

I don't believe, for a second, Rick Perry's assertion that Texas will "always" remain a red state.  Nor did I believe Karl Rove's declaration of a "permanent majority".  I view politics as a large pendulum that swings back and forth between Democrats and Republicans and anyone predicting the "end" of either party is either raising money through scare tactics or is revealing a political agenda.  In short: I think there's a chance Battleground Texas is going to be successful, but it's ultimately going to boil down to how successful they are identifying the right candidates, moderating their rhetoric toward the average Texas voter and bringing in cash sufficient enough to challenge Republican candidates on TV.  In order to do this, they're going to have to NOT be "grass-roots" but are going to need professional organization and financing.  Given the early evidence and the media coverage, they appear to have both already. 

I'm not sure what you call it, but it's certainly NOT "grass-roots".  It would be nice if TLSPM could get that kind of thing correct from time to time.  It's easy to understand while your gut feeling might be the old "media bias" saw, and that might play a role. But I get the impression that most of TLSPM just doesn't care about word choice or accuracy much any more.  Just get it out there seems to be the thinking, without much actual thought placed into the opinion. It's the same thing that's going on with a lot of political blogging these days.  Regurgitate, regurgitate, regurgitate.  Pimp the party line and don't worry about the details.  And, for whatever little it's worth, I'm not just singling out one party here, especially in Texas where the state of political discourse is dire.

On a related note, you have to give Battleground Texas credit, they succeeded in generating a lot of media coverage for their gambit, which will have to help for fund-raising and legitimacy.

Bringing in 2013 with a whimper

Happy New Year!

I think.  As I write this it's lunchtime on the 31st and there are no signs that a deal to keep America from hurling over the fiscal cliff is going to be made. Maybe it's an unhappy new year for you so far, but it shouldn't be.  Even if our elected officials can't come to terms on a bill designed to ensure their re-election these tax increases you'll see are sure to be transitory at best.  Why?  Because once the rates roll up any change will then be re-cast as "middle class tax cuts" which are far more palatable for Tea Party Republicans than are "tax increases for the wealthy". This is politics, and what is done can quickly be undone and it will be undone right before it's time to start campaigning for the mid-term elections.

All of that really leads us to the point of this post: How the media are continually making a mess out of their reporting of the news of the day.  We're constantly being reminded how tough the sledding is for traditional media outlets.  From the collapse of old-school print media to America's tuning out of network news times are hard for those who used to inform us in regards to the news of the day.  For the ordinary news consumer however, things are looking up.

The fact is there are more news outlets providing live, up-to-the-minute updates on the goings-on in the world than ever before. On a promising note, many of them are not for-profit corporations seeking to make money off of that car that crashed into Buffalo Bayou killing 2 while stunned on-lookers ogled the comely female news reader as she applied her make-up.  Yes, unfortunately, many of these news outlets are of a Newsish, partisan lean and many are just plain awful but there are some pearls hidden among the swine. As a consumer of news it falls to you to find the good ones and stop visiting the bad.

If, after much searching, you're still a little confused about the difference between good, solid news content let's take a look at today's Chron.com entry page and hopefully we can provide a little direction.

Judge to decide on Women's Health Care Program order.  - Good topic, but lazy.  The piece offers no detail and one very large piece of editorializing by the writer.  I'll just say this:  It may be that shutting down Planned Parenthood in Texas is one of the side-effects of their exclusion from the WHC, but it's not the Republicans primary goal here.  The primary goal is to prevent abortions, whether the writer thinks that or not.

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian expecting first child. First off: This is not "news".  That this is running alongside a story about a search for a missing woman and a statement from the UT-Austin football player allegedly involved in a sexual assault case is embarrassing.  ChronBlog is increasingly featuring more and more stories like this on their home page, making the real news harder and harder to find.

Hayes Carlls Burlesque Circus - If there's anything more mind-numbing than the 29.95 "scenesters" pictorials we've yet to find them.  On another note: dead-tree media seems fascinated with burlesque.  Well, burlesque and roller derby.

New Year's resolutions you can actually keep - Continuing with the pictorial theme, this time in the form of a listicle as well.  Not only is the technology they use slow and buggy, but the lists are often just the personal likes and proclivities of the compiler thrown at you with no editing or sense filter. 

Montgomery County businessman held in wife's shooting death. - This is the big 'newsmaker' story of the day for Chronblog, and it's given front page, center real estate complete with a very large picture of the businessman in question.  The story itself is pretty bare bones, and was probably cribbed off of the police wires while the reporter was sitting at his desk.

There are a lot more stories from which I could choose but I think you get the idea where I'm heading here. From one of Houston's leading news outlets, there's very little actual "news" that a person couldn't receive more rapidly from other sources, with just about the same level of detail. Even worse, what is good is often co-mingled with stories that really aren't.  These stories are a desperate cry for page-hits I get that, but that's also part of the problem with news outlets now.

2013 has the potential to be a critical year in regards to the future of not only Texas, but America and the world as well.  How we deal with a laundry list of issues is going to determine a lot about our future direction, whether or not the Republic will still resemble itself going forward, and who will be the last person to turn out the lights in France & California.  All of these important issues are coming, and that Kim Kardashian is expecting is taking up prime website real estate that could be used laughing at both Team Granola and the Frogs.

This is not just a Houston-centric problem.  The guy that everyone points to as Texas' top political reporter is pre-occupied with chastising Dewhurst for moving conservative and predicting the end of a group he never understood in the first place.  Texas leading source for left-leaning news-ish content is fixated on the speaker's race to the point of distraction at times while their political "reporting" is nothing more than a liberal opinion piece masquerading as hard news.  Part of the problem is that the news reporters get too chummy with those who they cover, so an inside baseball game gets more coverage than its effect on Texans warrants.  The speaker's race is very important to politicians who are aiming for choice committee chairs, but it's nowhere near as important as it's made out to be.  In reality it's the session's opening monologue, with all of the important bits to follow.  As it's currently reported the outcome is the climax, and everything else is falling action. 

We've gotten to the point that news is becoming increasingly hard to find, while news-ish and fluff are taking over the Internet.  If we, as news consumers, don't demand change soon we might soon find that we've fallen over the fiscal cliff and have landed in a field of artificial fluff.  The real fluff causing the sheep distress when they're sheared and all.

Let's come together and make 2013 a better year for news.  Even if the news is bad we can all take satisfaction in demanding that it's well-reported.

Compare & Contrast: (Texas Politics Edition)

Exhibit A: Those mean, evil payday loan companies with loads of cash to throw at politicians.

Exhibit B: Those plucky, underdog pro-gambling folks who are overcoming long odds to achieve their goal.

Both of these stories ran today on the Chron's pay-site, both describe groups facing large opposition, and both are considered (by many) to have a detrimental effect on the community as a whole.

So why then is one characterized as Satan incarnate while one is considered the Rocky of political groups?


You tell me.

Beware! It's year in review time

As if it's not bad enough that pretty much every "traditional" media outlet has devolved into either opinion outlets masked as "fact checking" public-services or inane providers of "lists" that (for the most part) are nothing more than the writers personal feelings in journo form we've now hit that time of year where year in review pieces are going to become all the rage.

Already the Texas Tribune has assaulted us with four (4) examples of the genre (which, amazingly, are nothing more than silly lists with a healthy dash of the writer's opinion thrown in for good measure) focusing on education, energy, the environment & transportation, news apps, interactive and something called "visualizations" and a handy-dandy video mix-tape where, presumably, the Trib is trying to burnish their hipster cred by seamlessly integrating the mix-cassette-tape trend of the 80's with their Trib Talk (or whatever it's called) video interviews.  You just know that the idea for this was dreamed up over a meeting in which everyone was sipping on Starbucks and admiring their trendy eye-wear.

Soon the national media will step into the void and provide us with "The Top Stories of 2012" based on.....

Exactly. Based on nothing more than some group's opinion of what the top stories were, with a few laughers thrown in for good measure. The idea that they want to put in your mind is a group of dedicated reporters huddled in a conference room pouring over the big news makers for the previous year providing you with a time-capsule-like retrospective of the year that was.  The reality is a group of interns going back and looking at page-hits and facebook likes working over the holiday while the big-hitters sip egg-nog.  Not in all cases, sure. I'm sure that the reporters at the Tribune either did the page-hit counting or selected the stories themselves,  but do you really think David Gregory and Diane Sawyer do?

Even worse is the disturbing trend of "best of" blog posts compiled by amateur bloggers where they self-select their "best" posts and regurgitate them in list form. My advice, avoid these at all costs.  Choose instead to read substantive stories involving hard-hitting investigative journalism.  Yes, this probably means that your media soak time is going to be greatly reduced but at least you'll have more time to spend with real people, in real life.

The important lesson here is one we often forget:  The media is a for profit enterprise that's ultimately reliant on the customer, just as any other going concern.  We tend to let the media tell us that they're performing a public service and should be treated differently than other companies from which we buy goods and services.  That could not be further from the truth.  In order to survive the media needs to provide content that's accurate, meaningful and presented in a professional manner.  By choosing to click on listicles (h/t Kevin for the name) and recycled end-of-year round-ups we're letting them off the hook.

By way of end-of-year Holiday tip then I advise you to limit your news media reading only to that news which is real news.  What this means is that you should have a lot more time to spend out in the real world, with real people doing real things.  The alternative is that you look up in February and wondering what that dead tree with all of the baubles hanging off of it is doing in your living room.

I Call Shenanigans (Local Media Edition)

For those of you interested in the inside baseball of Harris County politics today's story by Mike Morris on the Chron's paysite discussing the lack of cooperation two County incumbents are providing to their future successors is an amusing look at the proclivities of a pair of local politicians with anger management issues over being unelected last November

For ChronBlog this is low-hanging fruit. One right-leaning District Attorney and a Tax Assessor-Collector who ran on the slogan "I was Tea Party before Tea Party was cool" are easy targets upon whom to heap scorn with little to no danger of political ramifications (read: future lack of access to the office).

My issue here is not with out-going DA Lykos or T-AC Sumner. The election is over, they lost and will soon be back where they belong, out of the public eye. And while I'm happy to see our local media shining some light on these types of actions I'm more than a little concerned with whatever it is we don't see, and why we possibly don't see it.

Probably the worst-kept secret in Houston media/politics has been the Wednesday evening Houston Media Roundtable. There's no official date when this tradition was started but best guesses place it Somewhere around 1995, when Tim Fleck (the founder) returned to the Houston Press. For years, the roundtable was akin to fight club, and rule number one is that you don't mention roundtable. Recently, however with the rise of blogging, that rule has softened and you hear about this little politico/scribe chat sessions with more and more frequency. With declining budgets in the media and increasingly desk-bound reporters, the rumor is that many of the "best" stories are pitched and framed by politicians over drinks shared with a willing audience. Sadly, this little blog's readership has always been too low to garner an invitation. As a note of full disclosure I have attended several publicly announced blog/media meet-ups organized by BlogHouston and Texas Watchdog. I've found those to be fun and enlightening, as I've had the chance to discuss local, state and federal politics with fellow bloggers, members of the media, and (yes) elected officials from both parties. To continue to hammer in this nail: These meetings can be very beneficial if carried out under the right circumstances. (public, open to everyone, and fully disclosed).

However, it gets to a point where the media and the officials they cover start to get a little too chummy, a little too friendly and I think this causes a problem.

Last night, on Twitter, two members of Houston media, both who cover City Hall, sent out tweets about how much fun it was to attend Mayor Parker's holiday party, about how nice the tree was, and how stimulating conversations were had. I'm not suggesting that the two reporters in question are bad people for attending, but I do question their professional judgement in the matter. Miya Shay used to write KTRK's political blog when it was active and is still posting reports on City Hall happenings in Houston for channel 13. While Mary Benton is not assigned to the "City Hall" beat for KPRC Channel 2, she is a "general assignments" reporter and her coverage is sometimes focused on the goings on there. In several cases these two reporters coverage could be focused on an elected official whom they spent time celebrating the Holiday season and partaking in Parker's dairy-free, soy-based, sustainable, vegan, alcohol-free eggnog.

I'm not suggesting that neither of these ladies should not have a social life, far from it. Shay is married to District 137 State Representative Elect Gene Wu and I think that is grand. Her employer also did the right thing by promising to keep her off of any stories related to Wu which is also appropriate. By all accounts both reporters are professional and do good work. But you have to question just how willing they would be to do the same quality of work on a negative story involving people with whom they share yuletide cheer?

The journalism mantra is "trust us, we're professionals". It's used to deflect any criticism, no matter how valid, of potential conflicts of interest and, in reality, to make them go away. We've been led to believe from the crib that all journalists are dedicated professionals capable of putting aside human nature and reporting a story as-is, without the possible hint of bias. As the Internet has opened up internal communication and shed the light on faulty reporting we know now that they are humans just as the rest of us. Personal biases matter. They have to or we wouldn't be human.

Believe it or not, I do understand the tight-rope journalists walk in a city where the media tradition is friendly. In my day job, as an oil and gas regulatory accountant, I spend most of my time dealing with State auditors and, in many cases, some of them have been working with people in the department (and myself) for years now. We're on a first name basis with some. There are many with whom I know that I share the same likes, interest in travel etc. But we're always sure that we keep it civil and friendly without actually being friends. We may go to lunch during on-site visits, but the payment plan is Dutch. We may discuss other issues, but it's in that superficial way that co-workers do. You will not find me out with them sharing drinks and we don't exchange Christmas gifts, although I might receive a Holiday card from one or two as a matter of course. So I get the fact that it's hard to cover someone and not be friends with them, but as a journalist you have to try.

Let me put it another way:  Since she was first elected to office, we have been inundated with a slew of negative stories surrounding the actions of Houston Councilwoman Helena Brown. In most cases these stories have been of some merit, in many cases however they've been silly exercises in minutia.

Do you think the City Hall reporters attended her Christmas party? I'm saying the safe guess is no, and there's the potential problem.

There's bad travel writing everywhere....

...And this piece by "seasoned travel writer" James Marshall Crotty regarding his recent stay at the Aria in Las Vegas is proof of case for that argument.  (h/t: uggboy from MilePoint for the link)

As one commenter on MilePoint stated. "I stopped reading his rant when the "seasoned travel writer" seem surprised about the $20 resort fee."  And it was the resort fee that has Mr. Crotty all hot and bothered, a resort fee that he says was "never disclosed" to him until after his stay.  However, running through the Aria booking site one finds the resort fee prominently displayed before the reservation process is complete.

Aria screenshot w/booking fee

So IF Mr. Crotty is telling the truth and he DID, in fact, book the room on-site as he claims then it was not a case of the Aria omitting the booking fee, but it was a case of this "seasoned" travel writer not paying attention to what he was booking.  FWIW, the yellow highlight on the above screen shot is mine, the bolding is as/is on the website, so the fee was prominently displayed.

Here's Mr. Crotty's words on the resort fee:

First, there's the Aria front desk. It's modern and colorful in a 1990s Spago way. However, as with any deceptively labeled 5-star loser hotel front desk, once there, you learn that there all sorts of hidden fees you were never overtly, let alone covertly, told about when you booked a room online. For example, there's the $25 "Aria resort fee."

As an aside, I stayed at the Mandalay Bay hotel during the same time as Mr. Crotty stayed at the Aria. The main difference was I was an invited casino guest and, as such, received a lot lower rate than did this "seasoned travel writer".  However, even though I booked by phone the resort fee was still clearly disclosed as a part of our phone conversation, and in the confirmation e-mail that I received. 

I don't mean this post as some defense of the Aria, or any other MGM property.  I've never stayed at the Aria but I have walked through there, it's modern Vegas, bold, flashy and it gives the appearance and feeling of luxury to those who never get to experience it without all of the true costs associated with such.  Like most of Vegas, it's Louis Vuitton.  Faux luxury for the masses.  The thing is, that's OK.  Because people come to Vegas to experience and do things they otherwise wouldn't.  That the bed is actually wholesale, that the pillows are polyfil and not down feathers humanely harvested from pygmy swans, that the sheets aren't 10,000 count Eqyptian Cotton, or that the flatware isn't gold is of no consequence.  The important thing is that it looks nice.  Vegas understands that better than any other city. Why do you think 90% of the gaming areas are filled with penny and quarter slots?  That's where the demand is.

The larger issue, to my way of thinking, is the reduction of standards in travel reporting in today's media.

We've gotten to a point where anyone with a MacBook and a camera can spool up a blog or any reporter can be assigned to a "transportation" beat.  In Mr. Crotty's own HuffPo account he says that he's an education and politics writer. I've no doubt that he travels quite often, or that he might understand a thing or three about how to be from locale A to locale B.  But that doesn't make him a travel writer.  He obviously is lacking a certain eye for detail, nor does he seem to have much of an understanding how the travel industry works.

He's also hampered by the fact that he cannot remain impartial toward the little people around him.  His bile toward the citizenry in Las Vegas that weekend is telling.  Mr. Crotty finds himself unable to pen a decent critique of a place because he was embarrassed by his inability to read terms and conditions, and he didn't like the people that surround him when he was there.  I don't claim to be a "seasoned travel expert" but I do have, on many cases, the ability to at least keep my personal feelings toward the populace out of a review.

In Mr. Crotty's defense there are a LOT of people out there who don't like Las Vegas, who find it tacky and gauche and who don't get the attraction that so many people have to the city.  I get that, and I understand that it's not a city for all people.  But I also understand that you don't have to bet big money to have fun there, and that (unlike Mr. Crotty) MOST travelers don't want a spa day.  I also understand that, for those who do, the choice as to whether spa prices are 'exorbinant' or not is a personal decision, not one that I am going to make for them.

In essence, Mr. Crotty's article is everything that is wrong with travel (and much food) writing in today's media.  You have inexperienced writers with a very narrow world view criticizing anything and everything that doesn't shoe-horn into their limited reality without doing much research in the interim.  When confronted with fact, or a difference of opinion, they just scream louder.

Making sure you know which side is "right"

CBS does some interesting framing on the (sadly, already started) gun-debate following the Colorado tragedy:

Gun Control Debate Returns After Colorado Shooting. Brian Montopoli, CBSNews.com

In the story CBS takes quotes from several pro-gun control advocates, all made out to be sensible people just wanting to have a conversation to stop people from dying.  Here's an example:

"The shooter should be brought to justice and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York, a Democrat whose husband was killed in a mass shooting on a train, said Friday morning. "But we as a nation should also not continue to ignore avenues to prevent tragedies like this from happening in the future."

So reasonable, so concerned that justice be done.  The one person who CBS chooses to quote that's anti-gun control?  Different story:

Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, a Republican, said the story made him wonder, "With all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying a gun that could have stopped this guy more quickly?" (Gohmert also tied the tragedy to the "ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs.")

Yeah, crazy, wild-eyed.  Of all the people CBS could be bothered to find (or, more realistically, be bothered to Google search given the quote was lifted (with poor attribution) from the far left-leaning Huffington Post) you'd think they could have found someone who's possibly with the NRA, or perhaps even Dudley Brown, a gun-rights advocate based in Colorado.  At least ABC had the decency to mention him.

Not CBS though, they choose to go for the crazy.  On the side that, to them, is the 'wrong' side.

See, it's not too hard to make sure that you're issue is on the 'right side of history'.  You just have to make sure you only tell 1/2 the story.  Gold star to CBS for following the playbook to a T here.

Adventures in bad newspapering

Just wow.

This headline writer should be fired.

USDA releases figures on what it really costs to raise a child. Francisca Ortega, Chron.com

As someone who doesn't have children I'm not pretending to speak for parents here, but I'm going to be surprised if this doesn't generate some outrage, although not an apology from ChronBlog.  Increasingly it seems that ChronBlog's business model is to do whatever it takes online to generate page-views. In a way, they're copy-catting the route taken by Village Voice Houston.

The problem here is that you have what used to be a legitimate news outlet dumbing themselves down to alt-news level.  It's gossip-rag level "reporting" with sensationalized headlines only designed to garner a response.

It's also another reason newspapers are failing.  Unserious organizations pretending to do a serious job do not get treated seriously by the buying public.


ADDED: I forgot to mention.  This ran on their "MomHouston" blog which touts itself as offering "news, tips and fun stuff for savvy Houston parents."  Think about that for a minute.

Examining the media/public disconnect

The news-ish site Texas Tribune and liberal political scientist Dr. Jim Henson have inadvertently ran into something.

Inside out: Insiders and voters don't see eye-to-eye. Dr. Jim Henson, Texas Tribune

Most insiders are political professionals working in the halls of government. In The Texas Tribune's latest Inside Intelligence, they seem concerned with the kinds of problems that have been the province of government: above all, public education, but also infrastructure issues, like the water supply and transportation.
Texas voters, on the other hand, have recently demonstrated both in elections and polls that they are at best skeptical of and at worst downright hostile to what happens in those hallways. The problems that most worry voters lie outside areas of proactive government initiatives. They appear more focused on broad policy areas that are either outside such initiatives or point to perceived failure: the economy, jobs, immigration, border security. Public education is growing as a concern, but only among a small group.

My apologies to the Tribune for the larg-ish block quote. However, I believe the two paragraphs above to be telling.

If you ever wonder where news (and news-ish) organizations receive their story ideas you need look no further than political 'insiders' from various parties.  This is not the fault of a liberal (or conservative) media. Instead it's the result of familiarity.

Political reporters and political insiders spend a lot of time associating with one another.  At government hearings, functions, press conferences, super-secret Wednesday evening confabs at local watering holes etc.  The fact is a political reporter for almost any media outlet is going to spend more time with politicians and insiders than the general public, by a long shot.  The same effect can be seen with new-ish agencies, news agencies, party-affiliated political bloggers, and political bloggers who put a lot of stock into Netroots Nation or Right Online.  It doesn't matter your political leanings, or (to be honest) how good/influential you are as a writer.  I'm not sure if it's genetic or what, but political writers seem to be drawn to groups like moths to a flame.

Maybe it's because political writers don't actually produce anything of value?  (And yes, I'm including all of the writing on this blog -and any of my past blogs- in that category)

Where this becomes a problem is in story selection, and the importance of issues in hard news stories.  This is why Perry's "oops" became a bigger issue than did the fact that he was actually laying out a specific plan to cut the size and scope of government.  It's why Romney's dog on top of the car, and Obama's dog in the belly, overshadowed the fact that the economy is struggling along and people really want jobs.  It also explains why the bulk of Texas political coverage is education-centric while a majority of Texans are more concerned about work, the oil & gas industry and other things that might help them feed their children.

If you want to know where the stories are going, look to what the political insiders are fretting over.

The thing is, as the newspaper business model continues to implode and more and more political writing is ceded to bloggers and partisan online sites this trend is only going to get worse.  The idea of a citizen blogger banging out "I'm mad too Eddie" copy from their home offices, leading a political revolution from their living rooms and becoming the "Netroots" of the political parties have gone the way of the dial-up modem.

Today's political blogger is more likely to get their talking points from either major party than they are to flesh out a fully developed independent opinion, and those who do manage to stay apart from the fray are so lightly regarded as to not matter.  Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats are funding groups to ensure that their bloggy messages are portrayed in the approved manner and won't come back to bite their candidates in their political behinds.  The fact is, bloggers who want the attention are likely going to get the attention, provided they play the game by the rules.

On the other end of the spectrum, the 'professional' newspaper reporters and opinion-makers are currently viewed as so out of touch by the general populace it is probable that their reputation cannot be restored.  It does not help them that the editorial direction was decided for them at an Austin cocktail party by editors in suits and hip-eyewear hob-knobbing with staffers and analysts who, for the most part, rely on government for their income.  You think the sand-lizard is endangered in Texas? How about the main-stream media POV that the government is not the solution to almost every problem?

Looking at all of this it's not surprising that cities such as New Orleans have made the market decision that a daily newspaper is not in their best interest.  Old scandals like the Houston Chron rail memo are leading Houston down the same path.  Sadly, given the editorial content of their stories, it won't be the public that misses out on anything meaningful. The real effect will be felt by campaign ad designers and think-tank marketing departments who won't be able to use newspaper "copy" in their campaign ads and sales pitches.  This brings about the sad reality that campaigns will start to tell naive, desperate for acceptance political bloggers what to say and then use those clippings in their campaign ads, pitches to make more ads etc.

That's hardly the premise on which citizen journalism was founded.  It's high time we bring it back, before it's all we're left with that is.  The alternative is a media that returns to it's roots of advocating for the people instead of shilling for its government paid friends and insiders. What the world needs now is a good, old-fashioned return to public-interest, watchdog and advocacy reporting.  I'm afraid it is probably too late however.  FutureMedia is not shaping up to be a pretty sight.

How to game a bad editorial board.....

Step one: have interns and staffers show up to a local event wearing t-shirts advocating policy the ed-board is on record approving of.  This works especially well when one Lisa Gray is in attendance.

Summer Fest feels like a local love letter, The Apple Dumpling Gang, ChronBlog.

And among the crowd's wide-brimmed hats and sunglasses was a smattering of T-shirts from HoustonTomorrow, advocating that transit taxes actually be used for mass transit.

Gray (she wrote this, it's pretty obvious) goes on to equate a few Houston Tomorrow staffers in t-shirts to a call for huge mass-transit expenditures by the so-called "creative class." That mythical group of hipsters that is, for one reason or another, now deemed mandatory for a community to appease to if they ever desire to be "world class".  And, as we all know, the Apple Dumpling Gang is dead-set on turning Houston into a hive of World-classiness, even if it means ensuring that the public coffers are emptied in the process.

Yes, Gray's reaching here.  In fact, while I believe that the noise ordinance had an interested audience at a rock concert, "using transit money for mass transit" (at least she got the language right) is probably not very high up on the "oh my gawd I gotta have it" list of concert attendees.  It probably ranks well below a can of PBR, and probably below a tofu salad with seaweed dressing.

The problem is that The Gang (and their friends) WANT Houston to have a fully developed light rail system, built at-grade and at the expense of a robust bus system if necessary.  They want this because they think it will somehow cause the PBR swilling, subway riding, high-cost-of-living possessed New Yorkers that they so admire to stop treating them like second-class citizens.  Let's face it, this is nothing more than a gigantic journalism crush on the Old Gray Lady.

What they don't understand is that New Yorkers treat EVERYONE like a second class citizen. In some cases even other New York residents.  While those in Houston with a perpetual inferiority complex think they're impressing our neighbors up North with our shiny 7-mile train track and plans to build 30 something more miles into the system they're actually accomplishing the opposite.

At the end of it all, New York is going to be laughing it's head off at our broke immobile asses because we've built a toy-train that doesn't move anyone anywhere of importance. What we're currently letting the Houston Tomorrow set talk us into is the transit equivalent of the guy in the engineer's cap and blue overalls sitting on the mini-train blowing the toy whistle as all the kids go "ooooooh".  It's a big kid's toy.  All it's missing are snotty noses and seats sticky with cotton candy residue.  In the meantime we will have allowed our "regional" transit authority to ignore 80% of the region.

None of this matters to the Gang however.  Gray was at the Free Press Summer Fest, and she saw some Houston Tomorrow staffers in T-shirts. Because of that this Houston treasure has now been elevated to Lover status by the same group that doesn't like you anymore for who you are.  If Houston could just go under the knife a little bit:  A nip here, a tuck there, maybe carve off that ugly bit? Yeah, that's it. If we can just copy those other places then maybe you'd be more like the Houston we want you to be.   *sigh*

Can we please shutter the ed board and redeploy the resources to local reporting?  And, for gawd's sake, how 'bout we ignore New York for a while, especially the (increasingly meaningless) Old Gray Lady?

Houston's a great city with or without her approval.

Adventures in identification

State Leaders tell agencies to ask for no more money. Robert T. Garrett, Dallas Morning News

“This isn’t that different from what they were told two years ago, and it ended up being pretty devastating,” said Eva DeLuna Castro, budget analyst for the center-left Center for Public Policy Priorities.

"Center Left"?

You'll struggle to find a policy think-tank further to the left of the CPPP. It's a Colorado Model Progressive think-tank with strongly stated leftist goals.

I say this not as a policy judgement, but as a counterbalance to some dodgy identification by a MSM outlet.  I wonder if Garrett and the DMN would consider the Heritage Foundation to be "center-right"?  Because CPPP is at least as far to the left as HF is to the right, if not slightly more so.

Still more bad KHAS analysis

This time courtesy of the Houston Press:

White Houston's Love Affair with the Suburbs Officially Over, Richard Connelly, Houston Press

But what about all those minorities white people have to live with in the city? "Houston is now the most ethnically and culturally diverse metropolitan area in the nation," Klineberg said. "The surveys indicate a growing acceptance of this remarkable new reality.

The key word here is region As noted in this story:

Houston region is now the most diverse in the U.S. Jeannie Kever, Chron.com

Two suburbs - Missouri City and Pearland - have become even more diverse than the city of Houston.

The reality is that upwardly mobile, traditional minority groups are looking outside the Beltway and into the suburbs as their historic neighborhoods are becoming more and more gentrified. You are more likely to find multi-ethnic neighborhoods in the suburbs than you are inside Loop 610. Those same suburbs that have been wrongly stereotyped (by Connelly and his ilk) as lily-white havens of sameness. At one time that might have held true but anyone living in today's suburbs will tell you that it's certainly not the case.


Not that anything was excepted of Village Voice Houston, but still, it's worth pointing out that the shoddy analysis isn't limited solely to ChronBlog.  As a matter of fact, it's spreading everywhere:

Study: Houston supports mass transit, ethnic relations. Molly Ryan, Houston Business Journal

Houston is in the midst of an idealistic shift. Significantly more Houstonians support improvements in mass transit and are optimistic about diversity levels than in the past, according to a new study from the Kinder Houston Area Survey conducted by Rice University

As my friend Kevin pointed out, the lede of this story overstates what's happening within the numbers. If anything Houston is about where it's always been, with people still liking things, and wanting other things that they don't have to pay for.  No idealistic shift there.

I would argue that, if a shift is occurring, this survey would not be the place to identify it.

Wrong on so many levels.

That this story by Richard Connelly even made it to the website should cause the on-line "editor" over at the Press to be reprimanded....

Tax Day: The 5 best things about it, Richard Connelly, Houston Press

I'm just going to point out a few things:

Today is deadline day for filing your federal income taxes.

No it's not. Tomorrow (April 17th) is the deadline for filing your federal income taxes. Today (April 16th) is Emancipation Day in D.C. so there's a one day extension. This has only been all over the news for the past month.

We've never actually heard of anyone who's been penalized for filing one day late, but the media coverage of Tax Day leads us to the only logical conclusion: Being even one minute late must result in terrible, sadistic results. We imagine waterboarding is the least of it. So enjoy a little shadenfreude today because you won't be facing all that.

Actually, you'd be subject to a non-filing penalty. Again, all over the news. You can avoid this (on the filing, not on the payment) by filing an extension.

In which case some CPA-wannabe will take joy in pointing out that if you'd filed earlier, you'd be getting interest on that cash instead of letting it sit in Uncle Sam's vault.

Real CPA's (the toughest professional certification out there) would advise you to estimate your taxes so you get the smallest refund possible. A refund is nothing but a 0% loan to the Government after all.

GE and Verizon are people too, Mitt Romney says, so we should all be happy for them that they manage to pay no federal taxes on their billions in income

No, the Supreme Court of the United States said so in the "Citizens United" decision (most recent example) but Corporations have long been held as personal entities by law in the US. Oh, and GE is a HUGE Obama supporter and benefited from many of his green tax "loopholes". So not only is Connelly wrong here, his bias slip is showing.

I understand this is just the blog of the Houston Press and that typical editing standards don't apply. Were this just a personal blog I'll admit that I'd have no problem with it and let it go. Coming from a fully staffed alt-news organization however readers have a right to expect better. This is just the latest example of sloppy journalism/writing for Connelly, who might want to think about hanging it up if his heart's not in it any longer.

Sloppy. And inexcusable from a professional organization. (Of course, by the time you read this the post might be taken down*** so don't be surprised. I did cache it on Diigo however.)

I've stated before that political blogging is a dead medium. Posts like this are prime evidence of that. Basic fact-checking (instead of fact-check journalism) would've gone a long way here.



UPDATED: Living up to media blog tradition the Press made changes with no mention of said changes. Unfortunately there's a glitch in the system that keeps me from seeing their comments, so I'm going to have to assume one of their three commenters brought it to their attention.

What's left of Houston's former news daily

isn't really news at all....


1. Look! 1/2 naked Brazilian women! (Please increase our click-count)

2. Look! Models falling! (Please increase our click count) **At least they didn't have an upskirt shot like they did they ran this photo series***

3. McDonalds being the "new" walk of shame. (Ummm....no. Unless you're an urban elitist that is.)

This is what happens when a news organization loses sight of their mission.

Another scalp for Dolcefino's wall

This time, It's the CEO of the Port of Houston.

According to the story, Mr. Dreyer is saying that he's "had enough" and is resigning. Enough of what is anyone's guess?

My guess is he's had enough of the public demanding to see what's going on over there. For years Chron.com has given organizations like the Port and Metro a free pass, choosing to forgo their watchdog responsibilities in favor of rah! rah! cheerleader reporting.

What this news hole (journalism desert?) has created is an opportunity for television news to improve ratings on a monthly basis with slickly-produced, high-tech journalism segments that (in Wayne's case anyway) typically get results.