The Deets

A new site from KARE-11 is launching tomorrow called Metromix (link not yet active). Probably the shortest description I can come up with is that it’s KARE’s answer to the StarTribune’s Vita.mn site. KARE-11 uses the following description on their job board:

“A new local entertainment site aimed at 18-to-34-year-olds.”

They also offer $5 for each business description you write for them, which is 1/2 of what Google pays for the same type of work.

The site is built on a platform already in use in other cities, so to see working examples today, check out Metromix.com.

The site seems to have three personalities: local, syndicated, and social.

Local

Locally produced content will include a local bar and restaurant directory with maps and ratings.

The mapping looks pretty good so you can see other neighboring restaurants on the maps. The local music scene will be covered by Rob Van Alstyne, who’s pre-populated the site with at least one piece:

A local events calendar (music and other) is also being maintained.

Syndicated

Some of the site’s content - generally the stuff under the tabs to the right - is syndicated from national sources. Things like movie times and reviews from nationally syndicated reviewers, TV show updates and schedules, etc. Nothing that people can’t already easily find online today.

Social

The local angle could be valuable if they get some traction there, but the social side is where the bigger value and stickiness could come from. People can sign up with the site and create “playlists” which are a stupid name for what are simply “lists.” Lists of things you’d like to do, recommendations, etc. For example, you could create a list of places you’d like to hit on a pub crawl, or plan a weekend of events, restaurants, and a concert using this feature, then share it with friends.

Additionally, users can upload photos from events and venues they’ve attended or visited, which is a great way to share experiences with friends and strangers. Here’s an example from a Solutions Twin Cities happy hour at Herkimer:

However, the social side only works if the local Metromix team can convince locals to join and contribute to the site.

Metromix has a few important things going for it: first, it’s on a stable, proven platform that has already been used in other cities, so the site will work. Second, they will get a lot of cross promotion from KARE-11. Promoting great photos uploaded to Metromix on KARE-11 could help sell the value of contributing to people who like seeing themselves (and their friends) on the TeeVee.

According to local tech blogger and surfer Graeme Thickins, former WCCO weatherman Paul Douglas is working on a startup called, WeatherNation that will provide weather reporting to mid-size markets.

Very interesting concept. Douglas offers some more details on his LinkedIn profile:

This summer we launch WeatherNation, syndicating, “central-casting” weather reports for web sites, cable channels and broadcasters from a new studio in the western suburbs of the Twin Cities.

If mid-size stations don’t have to staff locally for weather, they could certainly save a ton of money. But what happens to the farm team of weather personalities who work through the mid-sized markets on their way to the majors?

The Freakonomics blog had a recent column about the accuracy of weather forecasts by TV stations in the Kansas City market. The stations admit to hiring as much for presentation as accuracy, and none of them track the accuracy of their weather presenters. Could a centralized teams to top-notch meteorologists do a better job for mid-sized market TV stations than someone with a local knowledge? And how does this effect the presentation vs. accuracy balance?

The Paul Douglas fall-out continues. But now it has nothing to do with Douglas and has degraded to public jabbing between local columnists.

Apparently, Paul Schmelzer of the Minnesota Monitor thought it was odd that CJ claimed to have the scoop on the Douglas departure, so he thought he may have been the first to break the news on Douglas’ departure from WCCO, but he thought CJ may have scooped him and sent her an email to confirm:

It turns out that CJ was pretty darn confident that she scooped Schmelzer and took offense at Schmelzer’s email. You can read how that turned out at MinnMonn.

Schmelzer mentions in his email to CJ that he went live with his article at 2:45pm. He thought that was pretty good, but I have news for Paul: I had already edited Douglas’ Wikipedia page by then:

18:55 GMT is 1:55pm, so 50 minutes before Schmelzer’s story was published.

And I Twittered a minute before that:

Sorry, Schmelzer, but you weren’t even close. UPDATE: (But it also doesn’t seem like you particularly care, unlike CJ.)

But while Schmelzer wasn’t sure if he may have been first, CJ seems confident that she was. Unfortunately for her, the facts don’t seem to support her claims.

Below is a screenshot of the edit I made to Wikipedia that went live at 1:50pm:

See the URL in there? That’s a link to Bob Collins’ Newscuts blog on MPR where he went live with the news at 1:12pm.

Sounds like CJ was 18 minutes behind Bob Collins since CJ’s email to Paul Schmelzer says she, “Broke it around 1:30.”

And how did I find out? From Aaron Landry via IM.

Going way back before his WCCO days, Paul Douglas rocked the weather scene on KARE 11.

Here’s the intro from July 18, 1986:

Good times. Good times.

Warning: Less safe for work than a typical Deets post, but that normally doesn’t stop you from surfing from work, so why should this? You’ve been warned.

Who profits more from prostitution: Craigslist, who allows escort to advertise for free, or CityPages who charges escorts to run ads. Melissa Gira Grant is reporting at Valleywag that the Connecticut attorney general is trying to shut down the erotic services section of Craigslist. While that sounds reasonable considering that it’s highly unlikely that anything legal is going on in that area of Craigslist, the response from Craigslist is also quite reasonable where they suggest that at least they’re not PROFITING from the display of prostitution ads, unlike old school YellowPages and alt-weeklies like CityPages.

I decided to see if there was a local angle on this that would help illustrate the point. Here’s what I found.

Brown Sugar Baby (aka Sunshine) is a hard working local girl who’s been doing some advertising on Craigslist.

Hershey Kisses (aka. Sunshine) is a hard working girl who’s been doing some advertising on the CityPage’s online classifieds known as Backpage.com.

Is it just me, or do Brown Sugar Baby and Hershey Kisses look familiar? Take as much time as you need to compare.

Googling Sunshine and Sunshine’s phone numbers brought back two results:

Would you look at that. Craigslist and Backpage both return results for the same number.

Want to place an ad on Backpage for Sunshine? Here are the steps:

It costs $5 to post an ad on Backpage in the “minneapolis / st paul female escorts” category, yet it’s free to place the same ad on Craigslist.

I’m sure a few of you are thinking, “Yeah right, Backpage, is associated with CityPages? Oh, Please.” Well, here is CityPages’ take on it:

It sounds like the CEO of Craigslist has a point. At least Craigslist isn’t making money off prostitution while our local alt-weekly is.

In fact, CityPages goes as far as providing incentives to escorts to get other escorts to advertise their escort services in their classifieds:

I don’t know if there is really a winner here, but I have a feeling that it’s not CityPages.

Tish Grier is suggesting over on the E-Media Tidbits blog that the National Do Not Call Registry, first launched in 2003, may be partially responsible for the drop in newspaper subscriptions over that time since it’s harder for newspapers to pester potential subscribers.

Newspaper Marketing Taking a Hit from the Do-Not-Call List?

One rather unscientific example I can give of the effect of telemarketing on subscription rates is my own interaction with them. Before I put myself on the NDNCR, I received several calls monthly from newspaper telemarketers. These calls were for both my local papers (The Daily Hampshire Gazette and The Springfield Republican) as well as for The New York Times and The Boston Globe. Occasionally I took the home subscription offers for varying lengths of time from the Republican and the NYT. In my way I was helping to increase circulation, even for brief periods.

I can relate to Tish’s experience with newspaper telemarketing. I’ve similarly gone through seasonal on-off relationships with newspaper subscriptions over the past 10 years. If they threw a good enough 8-12 week offer at me going into the fall/winter, I’d take it.

However, there is little chance I’d subscribe to the StarTribune today. They blew it at least twice by auto-renewing telemarketed offer.

Here’s how it went down: They pitched me on taking 12 Sunday papers at a discounted price. I accepted. Sometime during that period, envelopes looking like renewal notices or bills start showing up. Since I didn’t plan to renew, I just threw them away without opening them under the assumption that the paper would stop showing up at the end of my commitment. Eventually, the bills were replaced by letters from collections agencies threatening to ruin my credit over $13.

Had the telemarketer told me, “While you just agreed to accept 12 Sunday papers, what you’re REALLY agreeing to is an eternal subscription to the paper. By accepting 12 papers, you’re acknowledging that you must proactively cancel something you didn’t ask for in the first place.”

Basically, I’ve lost trust in the StarTribune’s subscription sales department and I’m not sure how they’ll gain it back.

These are the people who call in to local radio shows and make the shows more valuable. The telephone version of blog commenting.

1. Dan from Woodbury on Dan Barreiro’s KFAN show
2. Undertaker Fred on T.D. Mischke’s AM 1500 show
3. Carl Gerbschmidt on Barreiro
4. “Allan” on just about every political talk show in town
5. Walter “The Secretary of Insight” on Common Man’s KFAN show

The Rake’s farewell print issue (March 2008) includes a sidebar survey listing where local people say they get their news. Here’s how they ranked things:

StarTribune
Pioneer Press
The Rake
Minnesota Monitor
Daily Planet
City Pages
MinnPost
Cursor
MNSpeak
The Daily Mole
Politics in Minnesota
Talking Points Memo
Gizmodo
Informed Comment
Blogumentary
Eyeteeth
Walker Blogs
Mediation
Downtown Journal
WCCO
Southwest Journal
Minnesota Lawyer
MN Blue
The Sky Blue Waters Report

However, if you run that list through the Technorati search engine and sort by how often each site is mentioned in blogs, you’ll get a different ranking.

But before getting into that, it’s worth mentioning that a few of the sites on the list are nationally focused sites rather than local, such as the popular tech blog, Gizmodo, or the national political news site, Talking Points Memo. Strangely, the locally produced, nationally focused right-wing blog, Powerline, is missing from the list, which may say something about who was informally polled.

I took the above list (along with a couple sites I’ve involved with: The Deets and Technology Evangelist), ran each site through Technorati (just type the site’s URL into the search box) and made note of the blog reaction count. Here is how the above sites break down using that measure:

News Sites Mentions

315462	Gizmodo
144322	StarTribune
61249	WCCO
43608	Talking Points Memo
16098	Pioneer Press
13641	Informed Comment
5850	The Rake
4303	City Pages
3427	Minnesota Monitor
2569	Technology Evangelist
1642	Cursor
1594	MNSpeak
1307	MinnPost
1023	Walker Blogs
946	Daily Planet
673	Eyeteeth
571	Blogumentary
379	The Deets
365	MN Blue
310	The Sky Blue Waters Report
287	The Daily Mole
268	Mediation
181	Downtown Journal
179	Minnesota Lawyer
164	Politics in Minnesota
7	Southwest Journal

It’s interesting to see how things sort out. First, I’d drop Gizmodo, Informed Comment, Talking Points Memo, and Technology Evangelist from the list since they’re not local sites.

Looking at what’s left: It’s amazing that a TV station beats a major daily newspaper site (WCCO over the Pioneer Press). I’m not sure if that’s a statement about how little news the PP creates, how inaccessible their website is, both, or something else.

MNspeak’s page views to employee ratio has to be among the highest in Minnesota.

Eyeteeth, Blogumentary, and The Deets, receive between 1/2 to 1/4 as many mentions as Minnpost with 1/50th as many writers. Another 300+ blog mention local site run by one person is SkinnySki.com.

I’m trying to understand why Southwest Journal came out so low. My best guess is because they truncate their feeds, causing a lot of local influential bloggers to avoid reading that site.

I’m sure plenty of other local sites are missing from this list. The rest of our local mainstream media sites, Metblogs, and The Bridge come to mind. Let us know where other sites stand in the comments.

This looks like a scene from the preppy frat in Animal House. 1981 at the Summit House condos near Loring Park in Minneapolis, via Skyway News.

I received some emails from people asking about what other sites besides the StarTribune.com are link unfriendly.

Here is a list of the Top-10 sites I’ve linked to in the past who’ve broken the links I’ve given them:

www.startribune.com
story.news.yahoo.com
daily.misleader.org
slate.msn.com
www.animalhumanesociety.org
www.rakemag.com (update: The Rake changed platforms [and with that, story URLs] but did a great job with redirects. See comments.)
www.swjournal.com
www.latimes.com
www.minnpost.com
www.wcco.com

I’ve linked to photos of dogs on the Humane Society website. Those pages have been removed rather than updating the status of the dogs. Adopted or dead? Who knows?

The Pioneer Press didn’t make the list because I hardly ever read that site. And if I don’t read it, I probably won’t end up linking to it. It doesn’t help that I keep having to log in to read the news. I imagine they’ve broken more links than just about anyone due to their domain changes over the years from pioneerplanet.com to pioneerpress.com to twincities.com. I’d like to a TwinCities.com story about the changes but that’s not possible. Instead, here’s an Entrepreneur.com story on the issue:

ON-LINE BRANDING EVOLVES AS SITES FIND PLACE(S)

Knight Ridder’s St. Paul Pioneer Press operates twincities.com, but in Minneapolis, the Star Tribune labels its site simply startribune.com.

Same locale, same market. What happened?

In 1995 St. Paul started with pioneerplanet.com to demonstrate the site’s intended reach beyond its franchise. “We wanted it to be more than the newspaper on-line, but all our research indicated consumers still thought of it as such,” says Site Director Mike Peluso. “We even considered renaming it pioneerpress.com.”

A year ago, as part of the Real Cities strategy, the site was renamed twincities.com.

“The name could not be better,” says Peluso. “We include things you would not find in a newspaper, such as an extensive annotated directory of local web sites and more entertainment listings than the alternative weekly. You put that together with the newspaper and you have a package that is the best way to extend what the newspaper provides in local news and what the national site can offer.”

I predicted the Minnpost dead links. They’re all from MinnPost’s pre-launch site where they created a bunch of press release pages and later threw them away creating dead links. Dumb move, considering that MinnPost’s pre-launch press releases were getting quite a bit of press.

Mainstream media sites tend to be the worst offenders. Apparently, they don’t think their news has any value after a week. If they’re in the ad delivery business, they should make it easy for people like me to send traffic to their ads.

Notice that no blogs made the top-10? The highest ranking blog was MNPublius, which appears to have changed blogging platforms without updating their CMS system to redirect their old URL structure to their story’s new locations. It’s a problem that could be fixed with a little work (301 redirects).