'Black Wednesday' in Tampa

Remind me to slit my wrists if I ever take a photo off Facebook and run it in a newspaper. Thanks.

 

We've done it. For a story about athlete's facebook pages and how universities were looking to tone them down.

Context is everything.

 

Eh, that doesn't bother me.

I'm just uncomfortable with Facebook being the new yearbook I suppose.

 

It's definitely a two-way street. It just bugs me to have someone claim that knowing technology suddenly makes you a journalist or whatever.

I'm a print designer. Just because I know how to use Quark doesn't mean I know the first thing about putting together a Monday NFL section.

 

I guess I'm not a journalist then because I don't know how to twitter... oh to be 21 and perfect again.
Hey Shelia, fuck you.

I call bullshit on that. If a female supervisor is chewing out a male intern for screwing up and calls him "young man", it might indeed be condescending, but it isn't sexist. It is indeed what he is, a young man, and a not-so-gentle reminder that he (or she in the case of a young lady) doesn't know everything.

 

Oh good Lord.

A few thoughts for you Sheila:

I've been blogging for years and can function comfortably in the Internet world which you described.

That doesn't make me a journalist.

Nor do those skills make journalists out of some of the Internet staffers I've encountered, staffers whose primary tasks are downloading audio/video, posting links from other sites and having fun on Twitter.

I've stopped keeping track of all the mistakes that wind up in our blogs because new "journalists" (such as the woman in Tampa) link and/or post away without reading carefully enough. Or, if they do take the time to read the copy they fail to catch the mistakes because of a lack of journalistic experience.

All those toys are useless if you don't have the basic skill set.

But you're still my hero.

 

Yeah, for some reason she left that bit of information out of her post. What an incredibly egotistical, snooty and ill-informed comment.

 

Boy oh boy does the attitude of some of these yahoos just drive me crazy. Here was my response to her:

ANDY KENT

Well Sheila, since you asked and were so quick to jump to your own conclusions, perhaps I can enlighten you on my credentials:

I happened to author one of the most successful hockey blogs in the country from 2004-07 — a blog that was written about and referenced by a number of papers nationwide — at my last stop. I’ve been uploading and posting audio clips for almost the same amount of time and also did regular podcasts and vodcasts at the same paper.

Currently, I am doing quite well as an Internet writer for an NFL team, where I also co-host a three-times-a week Internet radio show and regularly conduct on-camera interviews for the video portion of our site. I also write a weekly blog for another site and have carved out a niche in this market as a reliable freelance writer across all platforms, even shooting my own digital photos for a golf publication. And yes, I do know how to shoot video and upload it, although I have chosen not to jump into the YouTube foray.

I have no desire to interact on Twitter or to have a Linkedin or Facebook page, and if you’re using that as a basis to criticize me or anyone else for that matter then yours is a helpless cause.

Should I go on?

Oh, and by the way, I haven’t lost the ability to accurately report, research and investigate.

So before you come here and stand on your soapbox, I think you need to learn the valuable lesson that Jessica supposedly has about thinking and re-reading what you type before you hit the enter button.


And then after about four other people fired back at her with a little more fire than I did, here's how she chose to respond me:

Sheila Scarborough

Hey Andy Kent,

Boy, you’re a hostile type. Chill out. Hit your own “enter” button and reset your head.

That’s great that you do all that, but I would submit that not enough people in purely print/newspaper journalism have your skill set, so their chances are thereby reduced of taking an important institution into the future. Got any “old school journalism” friends/colleagues who could use some of your knowledge? Go teach them.

And, hell, eat some chocolate or something. You need endorphins

Can you say, lost cause?

 

Chris Nolan: Famed for inaccuracy at previous jobs. That she is now a blogger (I assume with no pay) is perfect.

 

Looks like she's blazing a new trail in that realm.

 

I didn't know Chris's gender; misinformed at any chromosome level.