Buttermilk & Molasses

Old Media Is Eating New Media's Pulsating Heart

This week, there is so much love and glamor and just barely news floating around you'd think it was August, or the summer of sharks. But it's just that odd period of convergence where the mainstream media is clapping its hands and the rest of us, quite suddenly, are a bit embarrassed about all of the attention.

First off, Ross Catrow and John Murden were tagged by Style Weekly in the annual Power List for their impact on the way Richmond does the business of communicating news and information. Yes, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. That's Ross and John for you.

Then, Brandon Fox and I were slathered with the buttery love that is Richmond Magazine's annual Best & Worst list -- Buttermilk & Molasses landed the Best Weblog Produced By White Men Over 60 and Brandon Eats was awarded second place for being cute.

But the kicker was the media attraction to the satire that is Tobacco Avenue. Their Gene Cox story got picked up by WRVA as a news item and all sorts of kooky coverage ensued. Ol' Melissa Ruggieri at the Times-Dispatch even covered it:

Today’s minor flap with local blog Tobacco Avenue and WRVA morning host Jimmy Barrett didn’t prompt more than a shrug from the man at the center of the (fake) story — Channel 12 anchor Gene Cox.

In case you didn’t hear, the blog http://tarichmond.com, which is clearly a “Daily Show”-type site of satirized news, reported that Cox went “absolutely ape****” that Style Weekly didn’t include him in its annual Power List. 

This morning, WRVA’s Barrett mentioned the story, which some listeners may have perceived as fact, and turned it into his Question of the Day on the WRVA Web site...

... Barrett couldn’t be reached for comment, but Cox was unruffled by the trifling situation.

“I don’t really care,” he said Thursday evening. “The only thing that bothers me is if someone were to think it were true. I didn’t hear it. I never listen to WRVA, but I guess somebody does. I didn’t know about it until I got to work and someone sent [the blog post] to me .¤.¤. I know I’m open game because I hang my face out there.”

Apparently, the problem with being relevent is that people start paying attention to you.

I'm Not the Most Powerful, but the Middle-Class Likes Me

Here's the irony. When I was a student at VCU in the early (really early) 90s, studying politics and culture, Brandon Fox was my favorite waitress at the Village Cafe. It would be a stretch to suggest the Village Cafe in the early 90s was a place to study food, but bear with me.

Today, Brandon has a weblog where she issues forth on all things food (not frequently enough -- when are those girls going back to school!?) and I have a weblog where I blather forth on all things politics (and some things culture). And we've just been voted the weblog equivalent of Prom King and Prom Queen by the readers of Richmond Magazine. Full circle, in a mildly non-linear way.

Here's the verbage on me:

John Sarvay said he'd take a break when he and his wife had a baby this year, but it didn't take long for him to return to blogging. At Buttermilk and Molasses (one of four blogs he maintains regularly, including North Richmond News, his personal blog Garden of Words and an internal blog for Luck Stone), Sarvay offers up a mix of political musings, pop-cultural observations and a much-needed focus on our community, all of which compelled us to name him one of the media's pleasures in last year's Best & Worst issue. This time, the magazine's readers have wisely followed suit.

So, to answer some questions for the audience:

• The baby is fine. She's currently sound asleep next to me, looking gorgeous.
• I managed to avoid Buttermilk & Molasses from March 31 through April 24.
• I work full-time in leadership development for Luck Stone Corporation. I blog on the side. And cut the grass, cook and walk the dog.
• My wife's blog is more interesting than mine.
• North Richmond News and Garden of Words
• The internal blog is on an interesting platform called Twine. I'm not sure if I like it.
• I may be popular, but I still can't beat Richmond's all-powerful weblog duo (see #75) in a virtual Texas Cage Match.

The Diamond Would Make A Great Terrarium

WRIC TV-8's Chip Tarkenton is still calling them "your Richmond Braves," like they weren't money-grubbing Quislings. And as if we ever really liked them.

Speaking of which, check out Richmond's resident truth-teller, Michael Paul Williams on the lack of baseball love in this town:

Did you check out the fever chart in Thursday's paper on the team's attendance since 1985? Attendance has been in a free fall for much of the past decade. It's not the sort of chart you'd want at the foot of your hospital bed.

Early on this season, officials blamed wet weather for the slack attendance. It turns out ennui, not inclement weather, is keeping fans away in droves.

If anyone should bother to notice, the votes have been tabulated. When the Braves pack up the moving vans for Gwinnett County, Ga., Richmond will have the team it deserves...

...We haven't made a compelling case that we deserve a team or even want one. Baseball in Richmond is flat-lining. Time to pull the plug.

Our Braves. That's rich.

Thank God for the Freelancers

Over the past several years, the Times-Dispatch has dropped columnists, seasoned reporters and veteran critics the way a drunk drops poker chips in Vegas. Some losses have hardly put a dent in the paper's coverage, while others created gaping holes. Thankfully, some of those folks are either so financially strapped or so passionate about their craft that they continue to provide ink for the city's daily.

Today, former full-time critic (now a "special correspondent") Roy Proctor continues to prove his value with two profiles -- one of the outgoing director of VCU's Anderson Gallery, and the second a profile of her replacement.

If A Blogger Falls in the Woods, Would A Journalist Notice?

In a meeting with some fellow members of the incredibly informal RVA Blog Network, ideas bounced around the table with the scattered energy typical of folks who spend their waking hours drinking from the firehose of the Information Superhighway.

In the coming months, some of those ideas will turn into very real and very specific opportunities for the hundreds of people in the Richmond region with weblogs.

We talked about ways to introduce more people -- especially those at the margins of the Internet as a result of age, education or class -- to weblogs, online journaling and community news. We brainstormed initiatives that could strengthen the content of Richmond's growing network of hyperlocal news sites. And we stumbled across a notion that could dramatically increase the relevance of weblogs as a community resource.

We also wondered why Richmond's mainstream media seemed so slow and awkward to embrace the 300+ weblogs (of every shape, color and content focus) as a resource -- or to add to the mix themselves. Why is the connection between the professional media and those crazy kids with their sassy webpages so diffuse?

Later that day, a friend in the thick of trying to reinvent Richmond's print media sent me a link to a new weblog penned by media consultant John Wilpers. He wonders the same thing (but nationally):

You might think that as you move down the list of large American newspapers, away from the tradition-laden (tradition-handicapped?) major metros of the east and west coasts (and, OK, Chicago), that you might find a greater connection between a newspaper and its community (e.g., more local bloggers and vloggers on the papers’ websites).

After all, among the 19 largest circulation metro dailies, we only found seven papers that welcomed bloggers — Denver, Dallas, Houston, Detroit, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Cleveland (hmmm, no east or west coast papers among that group….). It HAD to get better, right?

Wrong.

Sad to say, local bloggers are no more likely to be integrated into daily newspaper websites as you move down to papers below 400,000 circulation.

Of the next 15 largest metro newspapers (numbers 20-34), only five integrate local bloggers (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Portland Oregonian, Indianapolis Star, Orlando Sentinel and San Antonio Express-News).

So, as editors wave goodbye to more and more laid-off, right-sized, bought-out staffers, those editors remain as incapable as “Blind Pew” of seeing the rich content being created all around them. As the old proverb goes, “God protects fools, children and drunkards,” but probably not purblind editors and the newspapers they work for.

But it's not just about integration for the sake of integrating, as Wilpers notes in a previous post. The weblog phenomenon is becoming mainstream, too, and it's starting to steal market share.

Look no further than the RVANews platform, which aggregates news feeds from 11 community news sites -- including one I operate, North Richmond News. NRN generates about 50% unique content (not published elsewhere in Richmond) and pulls together scattered content of interest to North Richmond residents from more than 20 news sources; it has an email subscription list of several hundred and generates more than 6,500 unique visits a month. Is it a threat to, say, the Richmond Times-Dispatch? Not yet.

Wilpers says that's about to change:

It’s time to be name names.

Too many big, ordinarily smart newspapers still refuse to involve high-quality local bloggers and vloggers on their websites and in the pages of their paper in any significant way beyond a lame, well-hidden, token local blogger index page (if that).

Now the thieves are at the door, about to make off with the family jewels (audience and advertising) and newspapers are leaving the doors unlocked and the valuables in plain sight...

...It’s time for editors to drop their tired excuses: “Bloggers aren’t journalists,” and “they’re just loonies in jammies,” and “my paper’s reputation will be sullied” (hey, guys, YOU choose which ones to publish!).

Pull in the best local bloggers and vloggers now or lose them and the thousands of folks who follow them, going where they can find the best local content and communities of shared interests.

So, here's a funny conclusion to this story. The best bloggers in Richmond decided not to wait. In the next few weeks, we hope to announce a new win-win for Richmond's ad-hoc, informal weblog community and for the mainstream print, radio and TV news. Stay tuned.

Style's Power List: Who Are the Real Alternatives?

The pending publication of Style Weekly's annual Power List got me to thinking about all of those people who aren't at the table, but are changing Richmond in ways that the Gene Trani and Bill Goodman's of the world couldn't imagine. What would an alternative Power List look like, Richmond? Here are five names to start the conversation; add your names in the comments section:

Chris Maxwell: My first memories of Max involve him crashing on the couch at the old Commonwealth Times office in the Milhiser House on Franklin Street in 1989. I suppose we were all socially inept at that age, but I never really understood what made Max tick. Apparently, he runs on radio waves. The founder of WRIR radio has given hundreds of people around town a new voice, and thousands of listeners an alternative window into the world of music and news.

Kathy Emerson: It's no secret that the director of Quirk Gallery lives up to its name, but the former Anderson Gallery administrator shakes things up everywhere she goes with new ideas. She kick-started the 17th Street Farmer's Market in the 1990s and this spring's Broad Appetit event shows signs of becoming the Folk Festival of Food along the once-dead stretch of Broad just east of Belvidere.

The RVA Blog Collective: It doesn't formally exist, but a small handful of community-minded weblog publishers are changing Richmond one byte at a time. John Murden launched Church Hill People's News, the area's first neighborhood blog, several years ago; last year, Murden helped launch another 12 community sites. Ross Catrow's RVABlogs aggregates the content of several hundred local weblogs, and his RVNews site serves as a hub for the 13 community weblogs. And a dedicated handful of local webloggers -- covering the political, community, social and personal spectrum -- keep things interesting.

Karen Atkinson: She manages the highly successful Byrd House Market in Oregon Hill, launched the insanely popular South of the James Market in Forest Hill Park, and has been talking about a new city-based market in Northside. Whether its Atkinson herself, or just the timing of it all, everything she's touched has turned green. Oh, and the markets she helps manage have transformed more lives and built more community than you can imagine.

ConnectRichmond: Trying to untangle the web that is ConnectRichmond, which now sits beneath the all-encompassing umbrella of the Community Foundation as part of the Partnership for Nonprofit Excellence, is a challenge. But the web-based organization has been connecting non-profits and their consstituencies for more than five yers now, and recently launched an amazing community website.

That's five, Richmond. Who are 45 more people and organizations busy transforming lives while the rest of the city's powerbrokers sit at tables and twiddle their thumbs? Comment away below...

Style's Power List: The Guessing Game

On Wednesday, July 23, Style Weekly hits the streets with its 5th annual Power List, an arbitrary breakdown of the men (mostly) and women who push the levers and pump the billows installed beneath Old City Hall decades back in an unholy pact between former Congressman Thomas Bliley, civic leader Mary Tyler Freeman Cheek McClenahan and William Wortham Poole. (Here's the 4th annual Power List.)

Here's a blurb circulating about the upcoming Power List:

Mayor L. Douglas Wilder is on his way out. Police Chief Rodney Monroe is gone. Eugene Trani is stepping down in two years. Gov. Tim Kaine's term faces a setting sun. Some of our biggest corporate citizens are in the midst of significant changes. And Richmond ’s power brokers are divided over who should be the city’s next mayor.

What’s next for Richmond?

Style Weekly’s called on a group of community leaders to help us answer that question as part of a lively and frank discussion on power, leadership and the future of the Richmond.

It got me to thinking about how the new status quo around this town would shake out -- easily a half-dozen of the Old Guard on their way out and plenty of questions about not only the new corporate leadership but also the new and emerging civic and political leadership. And while an easy go-to-move would be to carp and be cynical about the all-seeing Eye of Providence that Philip Morris has installed for outgoing VCU President Eugene Trani in his new Prestwould condo, there is some actual space for optimism in all of this moving-and-shaking.

New leadership has arrived or is on its way across the city -- the University of Richmond's new President has already made a joke about Trani at a dinner; there are new faces leading Leadership Metro Richmond and the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce; the Retail Merchants Association's president is stepping down. And empty slots await new leaders downtown at the Richmond Police Department and Richmond Public Schools. Fall elections swept in six new faces onto Chesterfield's Board of Supervisors last year, while this years elections should introduce a bit of new blood on Richmond's City Council and on the city's School Board.

I guess Jim Crupi could read the tea leaves about as well as anyone, huh?

So, Internets, any guesses on who's up and who's down on Style's 2008 Power List? Who bumps Gene Trani out of last year's top slot?

I'll go ahead and start. Richmond's Director of Community Development, Rachel Flynn, will be new on the list this year, as will mayoral candidate Dwight Jones. UR's Edward Ayers will move up, as will mayoral candidates Pantele, Grey and Goldman.

Place your bets in the comments section below.

Style's New Site Revealed (Again)

It's semi-official. Check out the new Style Weekly website, now revealed to the world in all of its post-beta glory. Don't worry, styleweekly.com is still up-and-running as they work any kinks out of the new home. I wonder who's going to fill the "Blog" tab with content? (Calling, Chris Bopst...)

Richmond's Space Cowboys Write Again

Move over Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones.

I know where old columnists go to die now.

If you've spent countless hours wondering what happened to all of the columnists retired by the Richmond Times-Dispatch over the past few years, the mystery has been solved.

Richmond's Boomer Life, the glossy magazine that fills the racks in the foyer of area grocery stores and the waiting rooms of area doctor's offices, has become the home of some of Richmond's senior writers. Senior in age and in years spent inking stories -- most particularly the Times-Dispatch.

Ray McAllister -- you remember him, the guy whose columns were either about his kids or Doug Wilder or nothing -- is now editor. And he's brought some of his old cronies with him.

... obviously I love the column format. Even when I pick up an out-of-town paper or magazine, I always go for the columns. Front page first, then the columns.

Five of us former Times-Dispatch columnists are in these pages, then, writing either columns or stories. We also have a new travel columnist — and Richmond’s best-known radio man writing a column, too.

But it's the columnists who get the cover treatment. There they are in all of their boomer glory -- McAllister, Randy Fitzgerald, Bill Millsaps, Betty Booker and Steve Clark. Apparently, Mark Holmberg got carded on his way to the meeting. Here's the line-up:

Randy Fitzgerald: Randy is an academician by trade but you wouldn’t know it from his down-home columns, often featuring his wife Barb, in the old Richmond News Leader and then The Times-Dispatch. He writes this issue about the very personal nature of the momentous year 1968.

Bill Millsaps: Bill was the paper’s executive editor but is better known for being sports editor before that – and winning Virginia’s sports writer of the year award as often as Tiger Woods wins the best golfer award. “Saps” – it’s OK to call him that – writes here about famed Virginia golfer Curtis Strange.

Betty Booker: Last year, Betty left behind her columns on all things Boomer- and senior-related and, of course, “Answer Granny.” She writes here about what early “retirement” has been like.

Ray McAllister: Ray left the paper in November to expand his book-writing career. With this issue, he also becomes editor of BOOMERlife – but don’t expect his to be a traditional editor’s column.

Steve Clark: Steve was among the best-known writers on both The News Leader and, later, The Times-Dispatch. Known for the “people” element of his columns, Steve talks here with the “UPS whiteboard guy.”

All of this seasoned firepower is aimed right at the heart of Richmond's largest consumer demographic. I wonder when all the former TD news writers are going to start their own weekly...

Richmond.com Is Selling Prada Knock-Off's on my Corner

I feel a bit like the only graffiti artist in town who hasn't either been jailed or turned to fine art reproductions.

Having finally silenced the community-focused voices of Save Richmond's Don Harrison and River City Rapids' Jon Baliles, Buttermilk & Molasses admittedly has been coasting with its ownership not only of breaking news in Richmond but of boring policy matters no one else wants to touch. It's been a bit lonely, at times. Especially when all I wanted to do was link to someone else's thoughtful rants about VCU's illicit affairs with Philip Morris.

Welcome Phillip Moeller, whose new column at Richmond.com looks like it might be as mind-numbingly obsessed with reports and plans and policies as Richmond's old weblog Gang of Three has ever been. Our Time plans to show up every Tuesday with a peek into its crystal ball of Richmond's future (and hopefully remembering Roy West's advice to his colleagues on City Council in the early 1990s -- "Remember, Mr. Mayor," West said to the then-appointed Mayor, "that people who read from crystal balls often end up eating ground glass.").

Good luck, Mr. Moeller, and welcome to the club. Remember to change the coffee filter if you pour the last cup.