The wind power whiners and bad reporting about them

The funny thing about wind turbines popping up in rural areas is the fact that farmers - those who work the land and feed America - have never raised objections to having wind turbines built around their property and especially never objected to building wind turbines on their own property. It seems to always be the folks who move from nearby cities to enjoy the rural lifestyle who bitch about everything that is rural.

They find a way to piss and moan about the smell of livestock manure, the dust from gravel roads, lound machinery harvesting crops and, of course, the wind turbines being built around them.

"Rudy and I are retired, and we like to sit out on our deck," (via)

That is and isn't the case with this retired couple living near Elkton (east of Austin, MN) who live across the road from a farm where wind turbines were erected. The only problem with their argument about the turbines ruining their retired lifestyle is that when people object to the plans, the companies building the wind farms often times back down. Of course that part of the story, which would add some clarity to the situation, is conveniently missing. That works well for the Star-Tribune because it generates a boatload of loony comments and tens of thousands of pageviews on their website. But it also proves that they don't care about uncovering truths, they'd rather tell a "shocking" story about a supposed injustice. Never mind the fact that this retired couple, the daughter (who I don't even see fitting in to this story) who claims that her 85 year-old father is "shellshocked" due to the noise generated from the turbine - the nearest which is 900 feet away - that's nearly 1/5 mile.

This sounds like a retired person who doesn't want to see the rural landscape changed. While I agree that I'd hate to see the family farm I grew up on converted to a strip mall or landfill, a wind turbine or four is vastly different. I grew up there and while sometimes the dust from the gravel road choked me as I played in the front yard, I got used to it. If the neighbor to the south was cleaning his hog barns, my mom would close the windows. And with the windows closed, you could only faintly hear the 400+ combined horsepower of electric motors running 100 feet away 18 hours/day for up to three weeks at a time as we harvested and dried the corn crop in the fall. Why? Because we were used to it and we adapted. We never threatened legal action or caused such a stir that a newspaper desperate for a story that few people in the Twin Cities 100 miles away could understand contacted and interviewed a few sources and wrote a story missing a few important pieces to drum up web traffic. Nope, that never happened because my family doesn't bitch and moan about progress. The Jechs of rural Elkton need to realize that they still live in the country and remember that if, once upon a time, they farmed there were probably non-farmers who bitched about what they did. The only difference is that a newspaper from 100 miles away gave the Jechs a voice. A voice that a week from now nobody will give a damn about.

MinnPics has a stance on wind turbines, too. They make for awesome photos and Minnesota has plenty of places to photograph them. Check MinnPics for plenty of other photogenic Minnesota sites.

Is it wrong to say that I am fearful?

In case you've been living under a fucking rock for the past year or so, all forms of media are tanking. There's no kind way that I could say this because it's reality. It's happening more and more frequently and I could list all of the victims of the recent media layoff but with KARE 11 tv laying people off and forcing all employees to take one week of unpaid time off, WCCO tv laying off employees, KSTP tv doing the same and the Star-Tribune filing for bankruptcy. Then there's Minneapolis/St. Paul magazine firing Brian Lambert and another Twin Cities veteran writer.

The sad thing is that this list is short. There have been far more cuts than these which have taken place in the past few weeks. It leaves the media landscape not a leaner operation but one that seems nearly gutted. Can a bare-bones staff fearful for their jobs at every turn be effective in producing and investigating news? Can their support staff, fearful of the same outcome, be effective in their jobs? Will this be the final downturn that leaves us with a media landscape that is a pure laughingstock? What will become of the media companies who cut too far? Is there even a place in the world of tomorrow for the evolving "traditional" media outlets?

Where does that leave these talented writers, producers, cameramen, reporters, personalities and the numerous behind-the-scenes employees of these media outlets? While the evolve-or-die mantra has certainly become true, has it happened too fast?

I hate to think what the media I rely on today will look like at the end of the year. Even more frightening is what the landscape will look like by Spring of 2010 (when I expect everything to begin recovering - slowly). Will I, as a media employee (no, I won't say where or specifically what I do), still have the same job duties or even a job by then? I am at least hopeful in that aspect because I like to think that I understand the buzzworthy trends that are rocking the media world. I've picked up the basic skills over the years that I need to make things work and thankfully I can grasp the new skills needed when they are unleashed.

So there it is in a nutshell. The media landscape - and the world - will not come out of this deep and painful, but necessary, recession (greed and stupidity fucked us all) anywhere near the same as they are now. This will either lead to the richest experience for entertainment and media we have ever witnessed or things will be bleak, bland and totally lacking the personality and skill that is growing and evolving and learning currently.

I am rooting for the former scenario. While you can currently listen to hundreds of hours of music from your iPod which goes everywhere and fits in your pocket, it's lacking the personality and warmth that we still crave and that was lost yesterday and is being lost nearly every day. Hopefully the suits running the world realize that entertainment of any form needs personality. It's what sets the traditional, but evolving, media apart from the "new" media.

Sadly, though, everything hinges on advertising and until those dollars come back into play, things will flat out suck but they will come back but in a wildly different format. A format that I can't wait to see or even be a part of creating.

2009 predictions - #1

I could spout off about a hundred predictions for the upcoming year but instead I'll slowly throw them in to the mix here from time to time. Maybe even before the year is up.

My first prediction has to do with the media landscape. Being from Minnesota and, more specifically the Twin Cities, my first peek in to my crystal ball has to do with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

If you're unfamiliar with this newspaper, they are the largest daily in Minnesota but have been missing debt payments and just announced that they are axing their B section for the month of January as an "experiment". My guess here is that while people will notice and, yes, even complain about the combination of the main news and metro sections but the investment group owners won't react outside of axing still more content in print.

This loss of content translates to a loss of pages and, in turn, leaves behind less value and less of a reason for the increasingly financially pinched average Joe to throw down 50 cents for a smaller paper.

Thus begins the slippery slope leading to a Minneapolis Star-Tribune that nobody will recognize or one that won't even exist.

What little money I have is on the Minneapolis Star-Tribune becoming web-only with a bare bones staff of full-time employees who will write and edit the content, shoot and edit video content and shoot their own photos. A small, free Sunday-only printed piece will still exist on racks as a vehicle for delivering those stacks of printed inserts because that is all that's left that still makes money. While this would leave behind the paper's hundreds of thousands of subscribers, the investment company currently running the newspaper doesn't care because if it lines their pockets, it's good business.

Another scenario leaves the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to be swallowed up by the neighboring St. Paul Pioneer Press. Five years ago I would have punched myself for thinking something so ludicrious could ever happen. Maybe now, though, it's time for this to happen as it would leave the stronger weekly papers whose business models are more nimble to succeed and grab more advertising dollars and actually add subscribers - something the trudging behemoths have almost certainly failed at.

Less doom and gloom exists at the safe-haven known as MinnPics. Check out the stunning photography from Minnesota's finest Flickr-using photographers.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune publishes article about irony

The tech gurus behind the Star-Tribune's website must have their hands full when their RSS feeds seem to be perpetually broken.

Ironically, the story I wanted to read was about some in-house topic about a new way to communicate with the newspaper's opinion staff. This seems to tell readers "don't waste your time".

If only I had my red proofreading pen handy...

Does the Star-Tribune even bother proofreading or spellchecking their "reporting" before they throw their drivel up on the website for all to see?

Apparently they don't any more.

After this morning's storms, a report written by Tim Harlow about the damage caused to the west and southwest of the Twin Cities contained one error in particular in a quote which caught my attention. Let's see if you can catch it.

Click on it to make the screen capture larger. Read it carefully then read it again. Hell, feel free to click on the link to the actual story above to see if the hacks reporting the news actually made a correction.

If you haven't seen it yet, take a gander at this zoomed screen capture.

Got it yet?

No?

Well the misspelled word/brand is "Catapiller". How in the fuck do you manage to butcher a relatively basic word so terribly? It's a brand name that I'm familiar with as my dad operated a piece of CATERPILLAR equipment for 15-plus years and it's a damned insect. Come on, it's not a simple typo, it's not just a juxtaposition when you're hastily typing. It's an outright butchering of a word and it makes me wish that the Star-Tribune actually cared about their content, instead of only the bottom line.

Is it just me or has proofreading and correct spelling in journalism taken a back seat to churning out hastily-produced content to boost page views from people like me who despise spelling errors (yes, even my own)?

Hey, remember MinnPics? It's that cool site that I pimp every day which showcases awesome photos from the best photographers in Minnesota and it's updated daily and contains next to no spelling errors.

Is the Star Tribune going for broke?

Plenty was written earlier today about the story breaking via New York City that our local Star Tribune newspaper is teetering on the brink of full-fledged bankruptcy. Even more shocking is that Avista Capital Partners who bought the Strib just over a year ago for an already firesale price can't turn a profit after running the paper like a Nazi death camp where nobody is safe from the pink slip bandits.

So after reading this, you are probably asking "Sornie, what the hell does this mean for me? I mean, how the crap does this effect me?"

Well, if you are reading this, you obviously read blogs and if not plural you obviously read at least one blog. Your certificate of appreciation is forthcoming. Well, without the unholy behemoth of the Star Tribune, you would be missing news from one large portion of of the country and while I rarely read even the online Strib (anymore, I did up until a few months ago), it still (even in its currently-on-life-support status) covers the news. Sure, it does so with a far slimmer (and arguably far less experienced) staff, it provides plenty of news to the Associated Press (and thanks, guys, for that award back in 2000) who then funnels it to other large news organizations. Without that constant flow of breaking news, citizen-based journalism would devolve into blogs showcasing the antics of the writers' cats and children.

Let's face it, citizen-based journalism is a cool idea but in the long run you get what you pay for.

"Sornie, you didn't really answer much or even offer up a prediction, what gives?"

Alright, the Star Tribune (believe it or not) will actually be a model for newspapers of the future. Yes, a model for how to fucking ruin a profitable business by gutting the living hell out of it! The dolts behind Avista could write an Amazon.com best seller on the topic because they took something which they bought for half price and still screwed it up. Badly. It doesn't mean, though, that a Joint Operating Agreement is in the future nor is a world where across-the-river competitor Pioneer Press comes out on top.

The future for the often-hated Strib is anyone's guess but I'll venture out on a limb here and say that Avista will somehow manage to yank the paper out of potential bankruptcy trouble but what emerges will be sold but what is sold will be only the intellectual property because there is plenty of available office space to lease in some nearby suburbs and that downtown land is very valuable to the right person(s) and printing can be easily contracted elsewhere (Pioneer Press?). The Strib will survive but it will be a feable and weak (as opposed to lean and flexible) paper compared to where it is today. Again, a model of how not to run a business.