Category Archives: Media

Dec 21 0 comments
Media

Charlotte O’s social media conference

You know the media world has definitively changed when the local daily newspaper announces its hosting a social media conference.

The Charlotte Observer will host their day-long conference on Jan. 23 at Queens University:

Throughout the day, you’ll hear from some of the most forward-thinking social media gurus in the region, including Jeff Elder, Lisa Hoffman, Crystal Dempsey, Scott Hepburn and Jason Silverstein. Observer Editor Rick Thames will deliver the keynote address. Capping it all off will be a panel discussion on “The Next Hot Thing in Social Networking.”

The event is only $30, but there are only 200 spaces open. If you want to go, you’d better register quick. Get more info and register at ObserverSocialMedia.com.

Nov 11 3 comments
LGBT, Media, Special Report

Is OutGayLife back to its old copyright infringement tricks?

A special follow-up to our Jan. 6, 2009 exclusive, “OutGayLife website network allegedly stealing news content from gay pubs, blogs, mainstream press”

Update: See important update at bottom of post.

After coming under fire for republishing more than 300 Associated Press articles and dozens more from LGBT-focused blogs, news organizations, publications and other media, the OutGayLife.com network is again raising suspicions of more instances of copyright infringement and intellectual property theft.

Get the whole story »

Sep 02 0 comments
Media

Levi’s Playgirl spread

A short, but hilarious twitter convo to help take your mind off whatever political mayhem in which you currently find yourself overwhelmed:

interstateq Ooo goodie: http://snipr.com/rjuuk Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks Levi Johnston is hot?

KipEsquire @interstateq Perhaps, but only in a “dumb submissive houseboy” sense. (Indeed, houseboy is probably asking too much – poolboy maybe.)

dmcrawford @interstateq Stay away Matt. Levi will be mine. though you will be invited to the wedding.

interstateq @dmcrawford Maybe it is time to rethink the laws against plural marriages, too. Massachusetts should be game in, oh, 25 years. : ) lol

Sep 01 0 comments
Anti-LGBT, Media

One-sided coverage in S.C. Lt. Gov. outing

NBC WIS 10 reporter Jack Kuenzie

NBC WIS 10's Jack Kuenzie

On Monday, Washington, D.C.-based blogger and activist Mike Rogers outed as gay South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. With a 100 percent rack record outing anti-gay, closeted politicians, Rogers’ reporting can’t be ignored.

Try telling that to NBC affiliate WIS 10 in Columbia, the Palmetto State’s capital.

In a report by Jack Kuenzie, Rogers’ track record is ignored. His past reporting absent from Kuenzie’s account.

In the report, various websites reporting Rogers’ claims were quickly flashed across the screen, including Rogers’ BlogActive, Advocate, Towleroad, Huffington Post, On Top Magazine and Q-Notes [my employer] but failed to mention Rogers’ site by name or the blogger himself.

jackkuenzie_qnotes

Q-Notes website

Who got the precious airtime, you ask? Bauer aides and political activists aligned with him (and one, perhaps unbiased public policy professor, Dr. Robert Oldendick, from the University of South Carolina). At the end of his report, Kuenzie says a party activist told him the outing claims “are not bound by the truth” and should be “ignored by voters” and “ignored by the mainstream media.”

Maybe if Kuenzie dealt more in matters of truth, and if his reporting were accurate and complete, Columbia’s local NBC affiliate couldn’t be accused of covering for its state’s second-highest-ranking executive?

Just in case you’d like to politely ask Jack Kuenzie to file a more accurate and complete follow-up story, you can email him at jkuenzie@wistv.com.

Aug 14 1 comments
LGBT, Media, Politics

Bill Clinton and me

I don’t know Bill Clinton. I’ve never met him. I’ve only seen him speak live once — last night when he gave the opening keynote at Netroots Nation in Pittsburgh. Nonetheless, I do feel like I know good ol’ Bill. He was my president as a child growing up in little Winston-Salem, N.C. He’s a fellow Southerner, a good and respected leader around the world and someone who understands the needs of all Americans.

In 1992, I was six. For whatever reason, I knew I liked Bill Clinton. I saw him on the news when my parents watched at night and, immediately, I knew I should be on this guy’s side. I begged my mother to let me stay up late and watch the election returns. My first grade class in the morning be damned, I was going to watch Bill Clinton become president. I pleaded with my mom at dinner, after my bath and before I climbed into bed. She finally relented.

Get the whole story »

Aug 13 1 comments
LGBT, Media

From Prop 8 to full equality

Pam Spaulding at the NN Prop 8 panel

Pam Spaulding at the NN Prop 8 panel

The small workshop room is almost full for one of the first morning panels at Netroots Nation. The panel is “From Prop 8 to full equality,” and the panelists are Julia Rosen, online director for the Courage Campaign; blog mistress extraordinaire Pam Spaulding; Michael Wilson from Americans for Democratic Action; Monique Hoeflinger, from the LGBT Mentoring Project.

Marriage equality and other LGBT equality issues are showing themselves to be the definitive civil rights issue of our day. To win equality across America, in all 50 states, we’ll have a lot of work to do, including organizing and strategic action. But we’ll action from more than just LGBT folks. We need allies, Michael Wilson says.

“The LGBT movement can’t win this alone and shouldn’t have to,” Wilson says. “We will be an ally and will help to corral other allies and join effort to help advance the cause.”

Wilson added, “Prop 8 will be seen as the Dred Scott decision of our time.”

Click down below the fold for a run-down of the some of the conversation. Don’t want to have my face in my laptop the whole time, I’m folding it up. Look for updates on Twitter.

Get the whole story »

Aug 13 0 comments
LGBT, Media

Hello Pittsburgh

From my hotel in downtown Pittsburgh

Good morning America, live from Pittsburgh. Today is the day. Thousands of progressive bloggers, journalists, activists and politicians gather in the Steel City for four days of networking, conferencing, workshops, education and more at this year’s Netroots Nation.

I’m here, too. Completely excited and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of everything to be taken in. I have no idea where to go, what to see, who to talk to. My ADD is kicking in. But it is a good thing.

I spent yesterday evening mixing in with LGBT bloggers and friends I haven’t seen since last December’s LGBT blogger summit in D.C. It was a fun evening. I managed to grab a quick pic on my phone (before the battery went dead), of Bilerico’s Jerame chatting it up with National Equality March organizer Kip Williams. I gotta give it Kip… not many other folks would walk into the “lion’s den.” Despite our minor disagreements over strategy and the March, Kip’s goals of a nationwide grassroots movement sound great and I have every intention of learning more as the weekend goes by.

I’ll try to score some good interviews, photos and more through the weekend and bring them to you here. Be sure to pop back in this evening, tomorrow morning and through the weekend!

Jun 03 1 comments
Media

Freedom of the Press? Not in Charlotte

The Charlotte Observer reports:

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police have launched an internal investigation into a confrontation between an officer and a WBTV (Channel 3) photographer in which a camera was damaged and the photographer detained.

The incident occurred near midnight Friday. Travis Washington, a photographer with Channel 3 for about three years, was sent to the scene of a fatal accident on Interstate 485 near Beatties Ford Road.

Washington and a photographer for WSOC (Channel 9) were shooting video of the scene from an embankment overhead, next to the Beatties Ford Road bridge, said Dennis Milligan, news director of Channel 3.

“A couple CMPD officers started shouting orders at him to stop shooting. And they approached and continued to shout orders to take his camera down.

“He felt like he was doing his job. He asked them why. A female officer stepped up and started to grab the camera out of his hands, and it fell to the ground. She told him, ‘Because you’re not showing proper respect to people in the accident.’”

Washington was then handcuffed and put into a cruiser, where he was held for about an hour before being released without charges. He was treated afterward at an emergency room for a minor back injury related to the confrontation, said Milligan, who went to the scene after the station’s assignment desk alerted him.

Police took no action against the Channel 9 photographer.

The incident was recorded. That video hasn’t been released because it hasn’t yet been made available to investigators.

Dennis Milligan, WBTV news director said, “We have a difficult situation here because it’s not up to the Police Department or any police officer to decide what a newspaper or television station or radio station gathers at the scene of an accident.

“I’m hoping this is a limited situation with a police officer who, for whatever reason, had a lapse of judgment. We’re concerned about our First Amendment rights being compromised in this situation.”

Robin Whitmeyer, news director for Channel 9 said she’d never heard of police officers ordering reporters to shut off their cameras. “We control the content, and they control the scene,” she told The Observer. “It’s not their choice to tell us what to shoot or not to shoot.”

Read the whole article here.

Apr 07 0 comments
LGBT, Media, United States

New Media: Moving small and regional LGBT news-media outlets forward

qnoteshomepageIt has been a year, this month, since my day job, Q-Notes newspaper, upgraded its website from a mis-matched collection of simple, static HTML pages to a fully automated content management system (CMS). In the year since, I’ve learned a lot about new media and how it complements and improves traditional news-media, including the gay news publishing business.

In Q-Notes‘ case, we chose to use Wordpress as a CMS. Really, the “software” is a blogging platform. Its uses, though, are almost limitless. Tweak your site design/template and the way in which you post your information and it makes a great CMS for a small newspaper or magazine; student newspapers across the country, I hear, are using Wordpress and other similar blogging platforms as CMS solutions.

The choice was easy for us. Wordpress is an open source project. It is free to use and the worldwide community it has spawned provides plenty of technical support and information. It’s amazing, really, that so many people around the world would seem to have a vested interest in something like a blogging platform.

Our online news publishing process before our CMS was cumbersome, slow and horribly out-of-date and behind the times. Prior to our use of a CMS we’d have to wait two weeks before the website was updated. In the most urgent of cases, we’d call up our out-of-office web designer and have him add a small notation regarding a breaking event or news on the front page. Wordpress immediately changed the way Q-Notes utilized online mechanisms to publish news. Updating breaking news stories or publishing recent headlines on a daily basis became a reality, improving our connection to readers and keeping our content fresh, exciting and new.

Get the whole story »

Mar 25 2 comments
Anti-LGBT, Media, United States

Ted Haggard: Broke and crazy as hell

I don’t know how many times Ted Haggard has to do something so insane. He just keeps pushing the envelope to new extremes. He and his wife will be the subject of a two-art episode of “Divorce Court” the first two days of April (h/t PageOneQ):

Disgraced American pastor Ted Haggard says he wanted his wife to divorce him after a sex scandal involving another man, but she refused.

Haggard made the comments in a two-part episode of the syndicated television show Divorce Court, to be broadcast April 1-2. The show released a partial transcript on Tuesday.

The couple was paid “an undisclosed amount” of cash for the appearance.

I’m just wondering: When will it get bad enough for Haggard to have to whore himself out on the streets? I mean, he’s already proven he’s crazy enough to do anything for money, right?