Now, I’m a huge Bissinger fan. From “A Prayer for the City” to “Friday Night Lights,” he’s one of the nonfiction authors I most look up to. But his take on blogs — “blogs are dedicated to cruelty, blogs are dedicated to journalistic dishonesty, they’re dedicated to speed” — was one of the most poorly informed thought that has come out of his otherwise brilliant noggin.

It’s not really worth delving into all the distortions Bissinger made on “Costas Now” — besides, he apologized and all but retracted his comments in a subsequent interview with Philly Mag (“Blog Battler Buzz Bissinger”) — but the incident only served to remind me of another blog crank, Mark Cuban, who sounded off about sports blogs back in March.

The difference between the two, though, is that Cuban took on not just NBA bloggers, but also attacked larger phenomenon of newspaper blogs. Unlike the profanity-lace Bissinger belch, he had a well thought out argument, which he set forth, ironically enough, in his own blog, Blog Maverick.

First, I should explain: I came upon Cuban’s rant while attending the “2008 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism.” Like just about every other writer there, I wanted to mill about and network. In reality, though, this meant reading through brochures and reading blog feeds on my iPhone. Right before a seminar with the NYTimes.com gurus about their innovations in “new media,” I stumbled upon Cuban’s post. The title: “Blogging and Newspapers, a Lesson in How Not to Brand and Market.” It was effectively a rant against blogs in general — and the NY Times ones in particular.

Same as with Bissinger, I have a huge degree of admiration for Cuban, who, cliched as it sounds, is a kind of Internet era renaissance man. MicroSolutions, HDNet, Broadcast.com, Dallas Mavs — all that. I had the good fortune to hear him give the keynote address at BlogWorld Expo last November — as well as the less gratifying experience of watching him on “Dancing with the Stars” — and I think his blog is one of the best executive-authored ones out there. Plus, his own attempt to bankroll investigative business blogging, in the form of ShareSleuth, is truly innovative. (Read the Wired story about the venture if you haven’t already.) Obviously, the profit model for that site — i.e. Cuban trading on whatever dirt reporter Chris Carey digs up, before his investigations are officially made public — poses ethical dilemmas about as sketchy as the 1919 World Series, but it’s still an interesting experiment.

OK, so all that said, Cuban’s assault on newspaper blogging was one of the most wrongheaded things I’ve read in the entire anti-blog backlash. Yes, it’s so idiotic that I’m still miffed about it months later. Needless to say, given that I’m posting about it to TurkeyMonkey — on a Sunday, no less — I can’t quite let the topic go.

Now, you may wonder, hey, Ted, don’t you write a newspaper blog yourself? Yes. And aren’t you partly responsible for a network of 60+ blogs at The Journal News? Yes, on that count, too. And while being a kind of blog czar for a mid-sized newspaper in suburban New York obviously gives me a completely biased position, it’s also given me more than enough time to ruminate on the subject.

My problem with Cuban — who briefly tried to ban all sports bloggers from the Dallas Mavs locker rooms, until the NBA overruled him — is that he misunderstands a few fundamental functions of newspaper blogs. Namely:

1. Blogs are a secondary content management system, which is, almost inevitably, superior to the newspaper’s main CMS.

2. Blogs come in all shapes and sizes — including reporter notebooks, analysis, commentary, link fests, and, yes, snarky cespools

3. Thanks to truly robust mechanisms for comments, categories, tags, podcasts and RSS feeds, blogs represent one of the last, best ways for newspapers to elevate the overall funtionality of their sites.

Which brings me to my other beef: It’s not just Mark Cuban (or Buzz Bissinger) who doesn’t get these things; indeed, most newspapers (present company included) fail to see them, too. Remarkably, the NY Times may be one of the only papers that appreciates (a) that blogs can be seen as a CMS, (b) that they can house all kinds of different content, and (c) that they should be integrating them into their website more, not less.

After the break, I’ll explain more about how Cuban’s assertion that “a blog is a blog is a blog is a blog” is dead wrong, and that, likewise, publishers (newspaper, magazine or otherwise) who see them this way risk ignoring what may be the single greatest publishing innovation of the past 20 years.

(more…)

But for the love of sketch comedy, can we please refrain from expressions like “Ted here is a premature ejaculator” from here on forward?Please, Matt. It was funny the first time. Awkward the second. These days, it’s just plain cruel.

Still funny. But cruel, too.

But on the positive side, I had my very first experience getting airbrushed, and I got to successfully present my first Oscar — even if it was a $20 Internet knock-off that really looked more like a little league soccer trophy than an 8-pound hunk of gold.

Flash video:

The show aired tonight — Friday, February 22, at 7:30 p.m. — on RNN (channel six), the Regional News Network. I’ve been appearing on their evening news program, Newscenter Now (a joint venture with the paper I work for), over the course of the past year, to talk about the same kind of celebrity gossip I write about for my work blog, Suburbarazzi. But this was the first time where the blog was used to help anchor a whole half-hour show. Pretty cool, right? Or incredibly dorky, I suppose. Either way, it was a blast.

For more on the show, check out my Suburbarazzi post about it.

Alright, now you can commence teasing.

That’s why i was so thrilled today to find that iTunes is offering a free download of the Renaldo Lapuz tryout for American Idol — quite possibly the best two minutes of television I’ve seen in a decade. I think I already know the entire song by heart: “I am your brother / your best friend forever / singing the songs / the music that you love. … I AM YOUR BROTHER …”

For all you iPhoners out there looking for a little free video to cheer you up, check it out.

]]> http://www.turkeymonkey.com/2008/02/05/yeah-what-barack-obama-and-john-legend-said/feed/ http://www.turkeymonkey.com/2008/01/13/monkeys-at-last/ http://www.turkeymonkey.com/2008/01/13/monkeys-at-last/#comments Sun, 13 Jan 2008 21:28:44 +0000 Ted http://www.turkeymonkey.com/2008/01/13/monkeys-at-last/

I’ve always been a skeptic when it comes to the “all inclusive” racket — the Sandals, Beaches, and Club Med resorts that promise you everything from lodging to food to activities for one package deal. But all that changed this week. I’ve seen the light.

All of the credit goes to Ana, who planned our trip to the Yucatan Peninsula all on her own. She scored a deal at a Club Med just south of Cancun for five nights, including airfare, at $1,000 per person. And that’s literally all we paid. (Well, excluding the taxi to and from the airport and the above $10 photo, which was snapped by some guy on the beach. While I can never condone the leashing of spider monkeys, that pic was just too good for me to pass up.)

To say we had a good time would be a gross understatement. Next to our honeymoon, it was probably the second best vacation we’ve ever taken. Factor in that neither of us got horribly sunburned and, well, maybe it even tops our post-nuptial trip to Belize.

The water was gorgeous, the food excellent and plentiful, the rooms recently renovated, and — most surprising to me — there was so much to do I didn’t get antsy for a minute. Don’t get me wrong, I was still in what Ana likes to call “activity boy mode,” but with windsurfing, sailing, water skiing, and umpteen exercise classes to keep me busy, I wasn’t lobbying to leave the Club Med compound to explore Mayan ruins (like I thought I’d be).

Sure, it would be fun to sightsee on a repeat visit, but for the five nights we were there, we were totally happy to stick to the resort routine: fill up a half dozen plates at every meal with every available dish, sip our shots of capuccino and mango daquari on the beach, listen to my ipod, catch up on old magazines and books, and watch the American Network (best TV show promos ever!) and Season 1 of “The Wire” at nights.

OK, enough gushing. Here are some pics from the trip:

There were also a couple background vocalists, but they really weren’t all that necessary. For half the songs, KT lay down her own voice for background vocals herself anyway. Watching her work her sampler magic was every bit as enthralling as the today show bit — only she sustained it for a good 90 minutes, all the while cracking jokes and cussing it up.

If you every have a chance to see KT live, do it! Thank me later.

In case I did a bad job of summarizing her one-man-band style, here’s a video of it in action:

Over the 4th of July week, inbetween weddings in Philly (Parisa & Mike) and Jersey (Kim & Dennis), we took a trip up to Maine. The first few days Ana and I spent on our own, exploring Portland, Kennebunkport, and, of course, Freeport — aka Outlet Town USA. After that, we met up with the Mann clan in York Harbor, where we stayed for about four days, chowing on lobster, visiting the beach, and suffering near hypothermia from merely dipping our toes in the frigid Maine water. Here are just a few pics from our Summer ‘07 vaca:

The Gordon’s fisherman.

Didi and Philly Ball Game on the 4th.

Winifred waves her princess wand.

Owen dons stylish new shades at the Red Hook factory in Portsmouth.

A foggy morning on the way to the beach.

Philip helps Francesca build a sand castle.

Although I’m sure that at least initially it would go something like this: