The Madison Press and the Market

Madison city alder Brenda Konkel has an interesting post up about Wisconsin State Journal editor Ellen Foley, who should be familiar to those who've TA'd J201 over the last few semesters. Konkel says, among other things:

Ellen started off her talk this morning offering to help non-profits learn how to write press releases and lamented that she has been offering this service, but that no one seems interested. Then she goes on to tell us about how in the age of email the press release is a thing of the past and its really all about personal relationships, how we need to make sure that all our personal contacts are in their database, and how we need to provide them with people willing to tell their stories and be photographed . . . and she ends by offering, once more, to help with a training on how to write a press release . . . what? Did she read her little speech before she gave it or listen to herself?

...

Finally, she explained that they had reduced their government coverage - which has been clear to me for some time - apparently government isn't fun and entertaining. All I could think was, isn't this the same paper that doesn't understand why people don't run for office and have been voting in lower and lower numbers . . . don't they see the connection between lack of information from the newspaper and lack of interest . . . geez, 90% of the people I talked to today didn't even realize there was a school board primary today . . . I wonder why . . .

Anyone have a sense of how the readership has reacted to the changes Foley has made to the State Journal in the last couple years?

Reminder: Grad Student Mini-Conference on Sat.

Our annual grad student mini-conference will be held on Saturday, from 9:30 to 5:00. All students, faculty and staff are invited to join us. The day's itinerary is:

9:30 – 10:00 Coffee and Opening Remarks
10:00 – 11:10 Session 1: State-of-the-Art Research in Public Opinion
11:15 – 12:25 Session 2: Historical Analysis of Civic Boosterism and Civil Liberties
12:30 – 1:30 Lunch (provided by the SJMC)
1:30 – 2:40 Session 3: The Changing Mediascape: Communication Technology and Practice
2:45 – 3:55 Session 4: Press Politics and Policy
4:00 – 5:00 Closing Remarks and Discussion
5:00 Adjourn to The City for Food and Drink

Pandering to the New Media Law Folks

Madison city officials are becoming concerned about alders' blog potentially violating open meeting laws. Lee Sensenbrenner reports:

So far, four of the 20 council members have independent Web sites to which they've attached their names and fill with their thoughts, observations and opinions. As Lisa Veldron, who staffs the City Council office, pointed out, this group already constitutes a quorum of the council's Organizational Committee, and she's on the edge of issuing another warning about electronic communication.

Last year, council members got what Veldron called "a cease and desist order" about rapidly exchanging e-mail by hitting the "reply all" button. At the time, City Attorney Michael May issued an opinion that said that these exchanges were essentially a conversation, not an exchange of memos, and as such they fell under all the regulations of holding a public meeting.

A collection of blogs, Veldron said, is "a very gray area" that's starting to draw her concern.

I admit, I'm unsure why the blogs are a concern. Aren't they, by nature, public?

Open Content Alliance

The Internet Archive has launched the Open Content Alliance:

The Open Content Alliance (OCA) represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that will help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content. Content in the OCA archive will be accessible soon through this website and through Yahoo!

The OCA will encourage the greatest possible degree of access to and reuse of collections in the archive, while respecting the content owners and contributors. Contributors to the OCA must agree to the principles set forth in the Call for Participation.

Contributors include MSN, RLG, UC libraries and the University of North Carolina.

Sports & Drinking: America's Favorite Combo

A reminder: If you're interested in being a late addition to the basketball roster (especially if you're a woman, as we have an overabundance of Y chromosomes), our first game is Thursday night at 8:00 at the Nat. Just show up with your student ID and we can add you to the team.

Also: Hilde's pictures from the pub crawl are now up at Facebook. See how many of the things you were photographed doing you actually remember doing -- you might be surprised!

[Open Source|Homebrew] Polling

Liberal blogging grandaddy MyDD recently put together a poll of their own, put into the field by Wright Consulting, based on questions developed by the site's community and money put up by users. They found some pretty interesting things, a couple of which track well with something I just found in the new MCRC data, and will be making all of their raw data available for download sometime this month.

Click here for a compendium of what took place, as well as links to the seven pages of results they've compiled and released.

B-ball info open thread

Comment thread to discuss basketball logistics -- go to it!