Last week Pressroom Buzz told you about the coming of Patch.com, a new local news venture from AOL.com. This week, two short follow-up items:
The Geek Squad: Steve Schuster, a reporter for a group of weekly papers affiliated with the Baltimore Sun, has competed with Patch.com reporters up close on his beat covering government and politics in Baltimore County. What struck him the most was how technologically well-equipped the Patch.com reporter was.
At an election night party, Schuster was one of three reporters who got a chance to quiz the winning candidate. The other two? A veteran from the daily Sun and someone from Patch.com‘s Baltimore operation.
“We conducted our interviews almost simultaneously,” Schuster recalls. The Sun man scribbled his notes in shorthand “at an unbelievably fast pace.” The Patch.com correspondent, meanwhile, used a digital recorder. Schuster says he was later told by another pol that the recording was apparently uploaded to the website via voice-recognition software that instantly transcribed the interview. A story was up minutes after the interview was over.
I checked with Patch.com spokeswoman Janine Iamunno, who says that while the site’s editors are issued laptops, cell phones, scanners and cameras, the voice-recognition software doesn’t seem to be part of the standard-issue equipment. So Schuster’s competitor may just be a particularly enterprising individual.
On quality, however, Schuster still gives the nod to the Sun reporter doing things the old-fashioned way. “His story was obviously crafted with a lot of experience. You can tell the difference.”
For that reason alone, “at least for now, I don’t consider them much of a threat.”
But there’s no doubt that the new guy might get the older hands changing some of what they do, even if it’s as simple as sending tweets from government meetings still under way. Schuster’s taken to doing that himself.
“As a bill or measure is passed in a council meeting, people know that in seconds,” he says.
Farewell, Racine Post: With the news that Dustin Block, co-founder of the 3-year-old online news site Racine Post, was going to be one of the Patch.com regional editors, I asked his co-founder Pete Selkowe about the Post‘s future.
While it might not go completely dark right away, it looks like the scrappy online operation’s days are numbered. Selkowe, a retired Racine Journal Times publisher, says he’s not able to go it alone, and there haven’t been any new stories on the site for about a week as far as I can tell.
That’s unfortunate. With all the challenges that it faced being run on even less than a shoestring, the Post was an interesting – and yes, even noble – effort to bring some media competition in Racine. As a resident of that city, your friendly neighborhood Pressroom columnist followed it with interest above and beyond that of a disinterested media observer. And the site developed a following, however small, among local residents who valued an alternative news source to the Journal Times, owned by the chain Lee Enterprises
There’s a cute so-long cartoon up at the Post now – but that’s small consolation for the loss of another voice.
Even as he looks forward to his second retirement, though, one gets the sense Selkowe will miss the gig, too.
“It’s been fun working with a guy 30-some years my junior,” he told me. “I can’t tell you how many times I thought, ‘What the hell is he doing? …. Oh, that’s an interesting way to handle that!'”
Farewell, Garry Howard: A decade and a half after becoming the first African-American sports editor at a major daily paper, Garry Howard leaves at the end of this year to take the reins at The Sporting News.
He leaves behind a section that is clearly one of the powerhouses at the Journal Sentinel. Over several rounds of downsizing at the paper, sports has been the least affected.
“It’s just a wonderful opportunity to lead an iconic brand,” Howard says of the opportunity to run the national sports paper, now owned by American City Business Journals, which also owns The Business Journal serving Greater Milwaukee.
The JS has been successful in mining its sports news for added revenue online, as Pressroom reported in Milwaukee Magazine’s October issue. The Sporting News is busy building its online brand as well, with a daily paid e-edition (“a daily sports section on steroids,” Howard quips), video on its website and other features. “A lot of the things we’ve done here I think I’ll be able to bring with me,” he says. “I want it to be one of those go-to places, similar to what we were able to do here in Milwaukee.”
Farewell, too, to Greg Bedard, who’s left the JS to return to his home turf and cover the New England Patriots for the Boston Globe. For now, the paper’s filling the hole in football coverage with golf writer Gary D’Amato, but Howard says the search is still on for a replacement.
And Good Luck, Dave Edwards: As reported initially by The Business Journal, WUWM-FM general manager Dave Edwards will chair the board of National Public Radio. With not just the continued sagging economy nipping at the institution’s heels but also right-wing critics seeking to use the recent Juan Williams firing as an excuse to defund the news organization, it’s likely to be an interesting term, to say the least…
And with that… A Happy Thanksgiving to Pressroom readers everywhere.
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