On-line news network: more news than you need

This afternoon I joined about 20 Portland “newsbloggers” at a meeting convened by The Oregonian at its downtown offices on SW Broadway.

A rag-tag crew, we assembled around the long news conference table where top editors routinely decide how the news of the day will be played on newsprint.

The big metro, which is fading as a print publication, is trying to find an on-line journalism model that will ensure its survival into the rest of the 21st Century.

The newsblogger meeting was the newspaper’s effort to pull together a one-year “pilot project” called “The Oregonian News Network.”

I was at the meeting to see whether my on-line publication, The Hillsdale News, might fit into the plan.

The Oregonian is using a grant from the J-Lab Institute for Interactive Journalism at American University in D.C. to pay for seven $2,500 grants to local newsbloggers.

In exchange, the chosen few will participate in a hyperlocal newsgathering effort.

Tellingly, the money does not come from The Oregonian or on-line advertising revenues. The bankrolling comes from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which has paid for similar experiments in a few other cities, including Seattle.

I quickly concluded The Hillsdale News is not a candidate for the program, which calls for posting as many as five “hyper-local” news stories a week. I publish three to five stories every two or three weeks.

The Oregonian's working assumption is that small communities like ours really want to know about breaking, “hyperlocal” news, 24-7.

Do folks in Hillsdale really care about every fender bender, shoplifting or brush fire here?

Call me crazy, but I don’t think so.

And if they do, that’s someone else's problem. I’ve got other stories to write that won’t be hauled off by a wrecker, investigated by the police or drenched by the fire bureau.

By not applying for a grant, I’ll be missing out on technical advice, which I could use in the warp-speed change of the internet world.

But feeding the insatiable maw of the internet is too high a price to pay.

Thoreau’s comment about the newly invented telegraph applies equally to the web:

"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

I’ll venture that The Oregonian’s effort will burn out after a year. No representative of the paper had a clue as to how the “News Network” could be made self-sufficient after the Knight money runs out.

“We’re working on that,” said one lamely.

The other problem is that The Oregonian still doesn’t have control over its news web site, OregonLive. The on-line operation isn’t even in The Oregonian’s building. No one seemed quite sure where it is. OregonLive is some kind of organizational Frankenstein that only a corporate insider at Advance Publications back in New York could love — and apparently locate.

The Oregonian’s management has simply thrown up its hands in defeat and unveiled frustration at trying to wrest on-line control from “corporate.”

The meeting wasn’t a complete loss for me. It crystalized what The Hillsdale News is: an on-line news and news analysis magazine for in a hyperlocal market of 7,000 neighbors in Southwest Portland.

Until today, I’d never seen The News as a magazine with relatively leisurely deadlines. I variously and mistakenly referred to it as an on-line newspaper or newsletter.

The Oregonian’s presentation forced me to see my publication for what it isn’t and what it is.

I consider that two-hours well spent.

As for the “newsbloggers” in the room, I suspect some will take the J-Lab money and chase fire engines and patrol cars for the next year.

I wish them well.

The mechanic who fixed car owners

Harold Dick, car mechanic extraordinaire, was an original, or as they say in the car business, "a one off." I suppose that you could say that about anyone, but the truism elbows its way into dozens of memories about Harold.

He died of an apparent heart attack last month. He had been working alone in his shop early in the morning before his employees and customers arrived.

Friday's Melody Ballroom memorial for Harold was packed with more than 500 of his customer/friends.

An excellent profile-obituary for Harold appears in today’s Oregonian.

The on-line guest book has 73 entries — and counting.

When it came to MGs (or Volvos or Jaguars or, well, just about anything on wheels) Harold was the go-to guy.

As Joan Harvey explains in the obit/feature story, you didn’t take your car to Harold; you took yourself and your relationship with your car to Harold. He checked you out to see whether you were worthy of your car — and of him. If you didn’t hold up your end of car maintenance, he told you up-front that he wasn’t going to spare you from the consequences of your neglect.

Going to Harold’s, a bustling obscure garage in inner Southeast, was a bit like going to a straight-talking dentist. The pain in his shop took the form of a rightfully bruised ego.

My particular vulnerability was the SU carburetors on my MGB. Anyone afflicted with these British gas and air suckers needs to keep them in adjustment — constantly.

With Harold looking on, I’d get out the screw drivers. Harold was patient the first time he lead me through the routine. It was like showing me how to floss.

But our relationship approached the breaking point when I returned a few weeks later with the engine sputtering. The problem wasn’t the car’s fault, it wasn’t the carburetor's fault, it was my fault, Harold pronounced. I remember he turned and walked away to serve another customer, just to let the message sink in. Eventually he relented, not so much for my sake as for the car’s.

I wasn’t at the packed memorial for Harold, but I’m told that it was full of similar stories. One woman recounted how she had just purchased an automotive gem and was visiting Harold for the first time. Harold told her that the first thing she needed to do was learn how to pump her own gas. Of course, that’s not legal in Oregon, so Harold dispatched her across the river to Washington to get the feel of holding a gas nozzle and squeezing its handle.

Once she had done that, he said, they’d talk about her car.

As the obituary notes, Harold’s Auto Service was a secret society. Harold never advertised. For years his business card had no phone number and bore the motto “We don’t work on foreign or domestic cars.”

What he worked on were car owners. They were, he believed, the first line of defense in keeping their cars running. If he got you to change your oil every 3,000 miles, pump your own gas and adjust your carburetors, you just might — might — be worthy of his services when serious issues arose.

The Little Beer Truck Story that Could

Last Thursday's little story about Hillsdale’s tipsy beer truck has taken on a web life of its own. Sort of like the one posted here last summer about Sarah Palin’s glasses.

I confess to getting the beer truck ball of web-yarn rolling by forwarding photos to The Oregonian, which immediately posted them on OregonLive. That was good for nearly 200 visits to this site.

But OregonLive postings are ephemeral and maddenly un-user-friendly. (Note to Oregonian editors: Please tell your corporate managers at Advance Publications to give you control of OregonLive, which is presently run by folks who just don't get it.)

The good news from the OregonLive posting is that two TV stations e-mailed me go ask for photos. The bad news is that, as far as I know, the stations neither aired the photos.

I also sent the story to Jack Bog’s Blog (aka bojack), the hugely popular local blog put out by Jack Bodansky. Jack didn’t post a link to the story pictures until Friday, but when he did, visits to The Red Electric skyrocketed, at least by my normal, staid standards. Friday netted 400 plus visits, and the high numbers continued through the weekend. I reckon 800 visitors came over from bojack.

Today one of the photos was picked up by a site called Unique Daily, which posted a link to The Red Eclectic. The numbers are on the rise again.

It’s great to get new visitors. After interest in the beer truck wanes, I hope a few check in from time to time for my slightly less bizarre stories and comment. You know, the ones about outrageous executive salaries, Oregon's absurd "Civil War," Quakerism, TV-B-Gones, and Northwest wanderings.

Oh, and about media madness and the odd lure of stories like the one about a tipsy beer truck.

Cat Diplomacy

Jacques Von Lunen, a former student of mine from PCC, has taken over the pet column in The Oregonian. Over coffee and croissant today, he shared that a whole new world is opening up to him. Covering the domestic animal kingdom is no small task. But for someone who once dreamt of being a vet, Jacques seems to have landed a dream job — at least as long at The Oregonian survives.

Part of his assignment is to contribute to the inevitable Oregonian “OregonLive” pet blog. While blogging, he’s discovered that the mere mention of the word “pit bull” is a reader magnet.

His weekly column appears in the paper on Tuesdays, and today’s topic immediately grabbed my attention. It is about getting a cat to accept new arrivals (nuisances, interlopers, intruders, mortal enemies) to its domain.

We have a cat, who now owns the house we once thought was ours. Occasionally I have wondered whether Izzy (seen above) might accept another cat. After reading Jacques' column, I’ve concluded that The Great One, who barely accepts me, would go ballistic if we tried to introduce him to a “new friend.”

But Jacques did offer some intriguing ways to try to get a well-established cat at least to consider allowing another cat — or dog, or baby — to enter its world.

As I read the advice, my mind wandered to diplomacy. I wondered whether Hillary Clinton might pick up a pointer or two from the column.

There are an awful lot of human beings out there who have trouble sharing real estate. They’ve been known to fight like, well, cats, to keep each other at bay — and, coincidentally to keep the arms industry thriving.

So take Jacques' suggestion that two strange cats initially should be placed on opposite sides of a closed door but let them eat near the door so they can hear each other munching away. That’s like putting human adversaries at opposite ends of the table. “Hey, he’s eating the same food; he can’t be all that bad. I wonder how he likes the shrimp cocktail?”

Then there’s the ploy of tying two cat toys at the ends of the same string and threading the sting under the door. The cats can both “play” with trying to pull the string away from the other without actually seeing the rival. In this scenario, the game’s the thing, not the rivalry.

Diplomats do this with agenda setting and preconditions. They never have to see each other during the give and take.

The suggestion that there be a “pheromone exchange” is a little hard to imagine. It entails rubbing a towel or sock over the cats’ faces and then putting one’s rubbed cloth in the other’s room. I suppose this is worth a try with humans. What if Shiites and Sunnis or Israelis and Palestinians took in each other’s laundry? At the very least it could lead to some serious cuts in defense spending.

The next suggestion is to open the door between the rooms but put up one of those protective, telescoping baby gates. I think the Pakistanis and the Indians have something like this along their borders. There’s a good deal of ritualized posturing, grunting and snarling, but nobody gets killed.

Finally comes the moment of truth when you put both animals in the same room. Jacques recommends keeping a squirt gun handy, just in case. With humans, squirt guns would be novel, but fire hoses, Mace or tear gas might work better.

Jacques adds that it’s also good to create an upbeat, good-times mood “with toys, treats and play.” With humans that might translate into bribes, beer and back rubs. Whatever.

Finally, he says, if none of this works “separate them again and start the process over.”

Patience is the order of the day. Think Ireland, Korea, the Holy Land, Pakistan and India.

No news, ghoulish scanners, Spike City

I have some interesting news I’m not going to tell you. I’m saving it for issue #7 of the Hillsdale News, which I will publish tomorrow.

No, I am not sticking out my tongue as I write this. It's just that I don't want to scoop myself.

You can make sure the news is sent to you by going to the Hillsdale News site now and signing up to receive the e-newsletter. Many of you are already among the 171 on its e-mail list.

Of course after I send out the newsletter, you can always just go to the site to find the contents.

Journalists always worry about being scooped by the competition, but until now I’ve never had to worry about scooping myself. The Internet makes such things possible by allowing me to create two (or three or four…) potentially competing “publications.”

Why am I favoring the Hillsdale News over "Red" with this story? This site is generally for opinion. The "News" is for, well, news.

That said, I do have one sliver of news to share: We have a date certain for the closing of the Hillsdale Wild Oats store. A clerk told me tonight that it will be Saturday, Oct 13.

As I talked with her about the store's demise, teams of Whole Foods inventory takers roamed the aisles, ghoulishly scanning the shelves.

Finally, my previous post about last night’s gutless school board meeting was read by a record number of visitors to the Red Electric. At last count, 117. The high volume is because Steve Rawley, who has a popular, civic-minded site, More Hockey Less War, sent my post to the Oregonian's Oregon Live site and then promptly “voted” for it as the day’s hottest "Oregon Reddit" post. A couple of others did the same and, voila, “Red’s” link was right there on Oregon Live for the clicking.

Over three hours at mid-day, I had 76 visitors.

Spike City.