WKRN weblog aggregator launches:
Channel 2 has launched its weblog-hyperlocal news aggregator. Former
waitress
blogger Brittney Gilbert is now the News 2 blogger, aggregator, on-air
personality. The only thing I find weird about it is the strange name
they gave it, “Nashville, I Stalking” What is that about? Nashville, I Stalking!

Update: Oh, wait. That’s Nashville is Talking, not Nashville, I Stalking. Nevermind.

(via: Thursdaynightfever.com)

Staci’s & LaShawn’s sessions have already begun: Staci Kramer is leading a session (and a food for thought dinner) next week at BlogNashville and has started up the conversation
on her heretofore-soon-to-go-live weblog. She’s
inviting the experts (translation: everyone is an expert) to join in.

Quote:

Also, La Shawn Barber has started the conversation for her session
on Faith-based blogging on her weblog. She suspects she’ll be one of
only two evangelicals there and is soliciting help in formulating
qestions for discussions (and has already received 49 comments as of
this moment). As BlogNashville is in, well, Nashville, I don’t think La
Shawn will have too much trouble throwing a rock without hitting
another evangelical (no, wait, that’s not a very good metaphor, is it?).

Actually, I think she’ll find her session filled with individuals who
are seeking ways to use blogs as a means to express their faith and
convictions. I expect she’ll discover a very friendly, kindred-spirited
crowd.

Technorati Tag: blognashville

Why I blog: Yesterday, a business acquaintance asked me a question
that lots of business acquaintances ask me when they discover I’ve been
blogging so long. “Do you make any money from it?” (I have blunt
business friends.)

I
explained how blogging has turned me from an obscure minor figure
in an unknown outpost of the magazine publishing world into an obscure
blogger in an unknown outpost of the blogosphere.  Somehow, that
explanation convinced him that I must have some tremendous economic
incentive in doing this.

So, let me try once more to explain this whole blogging thing, from my perspective. I’ll use an anecdote.

A while back, I posted a really short piece about a group called MagazineLiteracy.org and said something like, “this sounds like a great
thing.”

Unbeknownst to me, one of the rexblog’s seven readers, Shawn Lea, read that post and also blogged about the group. Shortly after that, John Mennell,
the organization’s chairman and founding director, contacted Shawn about possibly helping
resize some ads that were offered free of charge by several national
magazines. Shawn, of course, said yes…and then she also
helped raise funds so that 400 kids homes in Mississippi now receive
magazine subscriptions.

Shawn also encouraged the organization’s founder and chairman, John Mennell, to start blogging. And he has. And today is that blog’s official launch.

And that’s why I blog.

That, and the possibility of a huge cash windfall one day.

I give up — reporters will never get the whole math thing: I
keep trying to retire from my continuous ranting about how ridiculous it is when a
reporter sees one set of numbers (online advertising reaches a gazillion
dollars) and suggests that such a statistic has any relevance to TV upfront spending or
consumer magazine ad sales. I know that nothing I say will convince
reporters that regression analysis is something they should understand before, hmm, let me make this simple, comparing apples to broccoli.

Please, if you’re a reporter who may ever be tempted to compare one set
of numbers to another set of numbers and actually think you’re coming
up with something that is meaningful, pick up a copy of the new book,
Freakonomics. It is written in language even you can understand. It
will make you realize that something you think is so statistically
obvioius will actually make you sound clueless when you include it
in a story.

Nick Bradbury on RSS & advertising: Nick (of FeedDemon fame) blogs why he’s decided that FeedDemon should not strip ads. (Sidenote: Nick is registered for BlogNashville.)

A while back, I complained about the type of RSS advertising (not
about advertising, per se) that was included in the feed from Josh Rubin’s Cool Hunting (the specific ad I was complaining about was, in effect, an animated
gif ad embedded in the RSS feed). After I complained, Kevin let me know that he also offers
an ad-free, summary feed of his posts.

This “tiered approach” may be something others try. However, can
you think of any feeds that are so critical or irreplacable that you’d
allow it to make your newsreader blink? I mean, other than the rexblog.

100 8th grade boys: The 14
year-old in my household attends an all-boys school at which one of the
great rites of passage of the 8th grade is a 2 1/2 day trip to Atlanta that is designed,
as best I can tell, to eschew all hints of the school’s typically
rigorous academic demands. It’s about having fun, in other words.

Anyway, the school’s middle school headmaster is a great e-mail writer
and, in a message to parents reporting on the trip’s first 24 hours,
included this:

    The food tally was most impressive:

Tonight they’ll be going to the Atlanta baseball game — Look for them
on television: they’ll be the large, boisterous group in right center
field … with sleeping chaperones.

(7 cokes per boy may explain that boisterousness.)