Heads and tales: New media, old tricks

pneumatic tube

The latest in a series of tubes: The Birmingham News is awfully proud of its latest site changes on Alabama Live, the corporate template for all Newhouse newspapers. (See Nola.com and Oregon Live.) For example, the editor claims that Internet is “interactive” in nature. Crazy!

Of course, his column has no mechanism for reader comments, or even the social bookmarking tools infecting the rest of the site. Heck, you can’t even click on his e-mail address, jumbled into the last paragraph of every online column. (Ten points to anyone who can even find the mythic interactive peanut butter story cited as an example.) While the daily newspaper wants to create a sense of community, its welcome mat appears frayed around the edges.
• Giving a voice to readers [Birmingham News]

Web 0.0: You would think an alternative weekly cheeky enough to refer to the News as “the Evil Empire” would have a handle on this new media thing? Birmingham Weekly, which launched its overdue site design last week, was thoughtful enough to include a blog called Mixed Media (fun fact: blog is short for “weblog” … neat!). “What is ‘Mixed Media’? We’re still trying to figure that out. It’s a blog-type-thing. That much we know. We don’t yet want to call it a blog, because for now we’re not any good at blogging. We’re dead tree people. Reporters and editors.”

If that kind of brutal honesty doesn’t win over readers and advertisers, we give up, dammit.
• Mixed Media: What the hell? [Birmingham Weekly]

Scapegoats and sinners: And now, the rare plug for something close to home. If you’re in the media, advertising or PR, join us tonight for the monthly Media of Birmingham gathering. Nothing fancy, just drinks and networking and socializing and good-natured fun at Metro Bistro from 5:30 to 7:30. See, we’re building community via interactive media. Double neat!
• Hail to the MOB [Media of Birmingham]

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