brewery33

Stockton is lucky to have this guy!

Guest blogger day at @brewery33 Labs. I met Greg while working on a local political campaign. We instantly became friends based solely on the fact that we were the only people that were not in contention for an AARP discount working on the campaign. As we conversed more, his passion for philanthropy through positive event organizing became apparent. This guy is one of the integral reasons that the Miracle Mile is having community events. His latest endeavor of the Neighborhood Renaissance Committee’s “Save our Post Office” event, was a wild success. I have video to prove it, and will post sometime in the next few days.

Without further ass kissing I give you Greg Bahr “unofficial Mayor of the Miracle Mile” (a title that I officially coined) Thanks for coming to play.

Hello David Siders & Record Staff,

It was good to see you at last weeks City Council. I’m sure your still adjusting to the new resident in your home. As always, I also read your blog from the meeting. I thought it striking that there was no mention about the unique and trailblazing partnership between the City and UOP and many others in the median project at Pacific Ave & the Calaveras River. The fact that UOP donated $86,000 to pay to create a shovel ready project isn’t something commonly seen here. This is good news that the Record should be covering. It is a source of never ending frustration that important things like this are often neglected, passed over, or dismissed. The Record plays an important part in our community. Stockton suffers a bad self-image, and this springs up from many issues, such as; crime, education, and unemployment. However, the Record also shoulders some of the responsibility for our low self-esteem. If the Record were to embark on a “what is great about Stockton” campaign, and create a noticeable, focused, and consistently positive effort at promoting this community, it would go a long way to garner good will equity with the community. A lasting effort to promote the positives of our community would help to spur economic development. And, this part is for the business end of a newspaper, growth in economic development would increase potential advertisers.

I’m trying to do my part to improve the quality of life here. What is the Record doing?

Please be more mindful of important opportunities to report news-worthy events such as the public/private partnership between the University of the Pacific, Stockton Beautiful, the Miracle Mile Improvement Dist., & the City of Stockton.

Greg Bahr
Co-Chair
University Neighborhood Renaissance Committee

With a little help from my friends

I have been at an odds with the @recordnet’s decision to paywall their content. My initial reaction was that they were basically slitting their throat. As the notion of charging for content has fermented in my mind a while, I think that the decision is not far from the solution. Definitely not anywhere close, but closer to solution than to total and utter failure.

Being in business myself, I respect the ideal that a business must make money. Profits are not the only reason a business must produce a black bottom line. For instance if an organization plans any sort of future, innovation and pushing limits is essential. In order to innovate and push limits the organization must employ some pretty talented staff. Talented staff costs money. I get it.

Rather than outline the history of the newspapers presence on the web, we will just assume that if you have made it this far in the essay that you understand the newspapers are charging for previously free content. If you are not aware of that, let me Google that for you.

Enter the paywall. A blogging colleague by geographic area, stated some pretty good criticism of the new fangled business plan that the Record was embarking upon. @slickDiaz noted that if we are supposed to pay for this content, make it worth our while by offering some dynamic content such as podcasts, video, and supporting documents, just to name a few. I have a whole long winded opinion that addresses this approach, but since people like to read 500ish words, I will practice brevity and speak on it another day.

What if we allowed people that are paying customers, to share the article with their friends by providing a link to the paying customer. This special link would end with a number that a script on the referenced page recognizes and allows the person who followed the link access. Influence by creating a social following. I am sure through scripting this could all be possible and traceable to analyze what type of content is popular, by digital word of mouth. Yes there will probably be some sort of hack that will generate scripts to allow common journalism thieves to view the documents without receiving a link from a subscriber, but I don’t think that I would worry so much about people pirating my writing, because at least they are receiving my news and have worked hard to get the news from my source. It is actually kind of flattering.

The notion of allowing people to share is not so crazy. Liken the concept to making a copy of an article to share with a group that you are working with, or to post on the bulletin board at work. Copyright laws are probably broken when people share writing this way, but you just reached an audience that would have otherwise never read your offering. It creates a sort of affiliance program that might encourage people that do not subscribe to the online version of the paper to realize the value of the product through a little taste, from a person that they trust. You could even leverage the power of suggestion by offering local influential bloggers a free account to offer to their readers a peek behind the paywall at the green pastures of dynamic content.

People such as myself and the rest of my generation, digest news a touch different than say our parents and grandparents. Through a completely un-scientific poll I conducted, found that the only people that have agreed to the new paywall model the Record has offered us, are the old people who probably use an aol email start their web surfing by reading the news at Yahoo!, and think that an email client is someone that I sell things to. In my opinion it is time to upgrade your news criers from the kid on the corner and the creepy guy that hangs out in front of the grocery store to the revolutionary idea of social sales.

If anything, the managing staff at the Record could allow this notion access onto the agenda of whatever meeting that whatever board of executives deal with the online subscription department. At that point they can realize that I don’t know what I am talking about and continue down the path of alienating their audience.