DeRusha

Sometimes I Hate E-mail

There was a time when people who were angry about a minor error in one of my TV reports, they didn’t have a lot of options.

• Complain to their spouse
• Pick up the phone and call the newsroom
• Write a letter

Today, with e-mail, viewers can send obnoxious notes without even thinking about it.  For example, this note:

Hi
Spelling is obviously no longer considered to be a part of good journalism.
Power Point bullet highlights can be useful, but I would recommend doing a spell check first or it only magnifies errors.
You had Suprise. Most 5th graders can spell this word correctly - s u r p r i s e
Good Luck with your career
Steve K****
Minneapolis

I responded in a nice way, taking responsibility.  I wish I could have responded like this.
Hi. (note the period I put after the word “Hi.”  It’s called a sentence.  Look into it.)

Courtesy is obviously no longer considered to be a part of good citizenship.

I don’t type the words on the screen, so I’m not sure you can associate one mispelled word with journalism.    Also, most people in TV can’t spell at a 5th grade level, so cut us some slak.

Good Luck with being a douche.
Jason D
WCCO

Great Question

Star Trib Subscribing: Always A Pain

As usual, subscribing to the Star Tribune is such a delight.  The renewal in the mail quoted a price of $48.75/13 weeks.  I looked online, where the price is the same.   I called customer service, and they offered me $3.50/week if I did Easy Pay, which seems to mean they bill me every three weeks, and lock in my price.  That’d be $45.50/13 weeks.  Without easy pay, apparently I get one bill in the mail, so it’s worth it to give me $2.25 off.

Of course, I don’t understand why it’s not cheaper to just renew online, since that would involve zero personnel costs and virtually zero overhead. And why not have a huge discount for doing an entire year, so they don’t have to deal with me and can lock me in for 52 weeks?

The last time I wrote about this, the Strib was trying to charge me $66.69 for 13 weeks, and over the phone they gave me something like $33.  That was insane.  It looks like things are starting to make a little more sense.

WELCOME TO OLD SKOOL ADVERTISING WEEK ON MEDIATION!!!!!!!!

mediation:

Hey folks.  I know a lot of you read this site either through RSS or in your tumblr or reblogged on other sites, or other places not directly on this site.  And that’s cool.

This week, however, there’s a treat for all the direct visitors. We’re going to be doing some throwback advertising on this site.  So check back every day for new… SPLASH PAGES!!! BLOCK ADS IN THE SIDEBAR!!! MICROPAYMENTS!!!  And as soon as I can figure out how to do them, POP UP ADS!!!

Don’t worry, next week I’ll go back to the “Content Partner” model, but I thought I’d just take you all back to 2005’s advertising methods so you can remember how crazy it was.

Big hugs to my stand-in advertisers, most of whom I think know I’m using them as advertisers, and most of whom you readers won’t even see because you totally ignore advertising or because you’re getting the content somewhere else.

Robyn's Good Question

“Why do cats love the taste of human ear wax?”

-Robyn from Frederick.  This was a real submission.  I’d love to hear suggestions on how to answer this one.