Posts Tagged ‘sfist’
Wednesday, February 27th, 2013
The question is whether The Bold Italic website from Gannett Company, Incorporated (NYSE: GCI,FWB: GTT, S&P 500 Component) is “villainous” – that’s the talk of the town, lately.
To wit:
“They’re hardly the villains in this town.”
Well let’s see.
I’ll tell you, over the years I thought that TBI was just one dude, a dude that I came across all the way back in 2010. He was proud that the average TBI visitor stayed on the site or on a webpage or something for like five minutes. Now we’ll see about that stat in a moment, but I’m just shocked that TBI has/had all those employees plus a custom-made clubhouse in Hayes Valley. That’s where I’m coming from.
Hey did you know that’s there’s a website called The Gannett Blog and it’s based in San Francisco? (I didn’t.) Anywho, let’s hear about the TBI from Anonymous:
“The revenue plan was mysterious because there was no revenue. Not for the first 24 months anyway. The Bold Italic had a burn rate that rivals some of the most infamous dot.com fizz outs. They blew through $2 million a year for the first 2 years, before snagging a whopping $41k in revenue based on their skimming from entertainment ticket / event sales.”
Is that true? I don’t know. But where did that $41k figure come from? Such specificity!
Of course public relations doctrine from your S&P 500 type of companies is to say that such a specific statement such as this is “false” or “way off.”
That kind of thing is called a pregnant denial by some.
So, has The Gannet Company, Incorporated spent millions and millions of dollars on The TBI the past few years?
Sure looks that way.
Wow.
That’s starting to remind me of The Bay Citizen, actually.
(Of course the TBC produced a lot of great journalism, IMO.)
So that’s one side of the ledger, millions upon millions spent, or wasted, whichever, but what about revenue coming in? What about the number of readers, for example.
Let’s check Alexa, The Web Information Company.
Ooh, here’s something:
Click to expand
The above graph show what the Alexa people think has been going on the past week. The San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate.com is in there as a baseline – it’s consistently something like the 1000th most popular website in the world, or something. No surprise there.
And look, this pathetic blog, the one you’re looking at right now, the one filled with animal photos and whatnot, the one with overhead of less than $100 per year, managed to make the grade as well. I can assure you that this is anomalous – either it’s a mistake or maybe a big website pointed to one bit and that generated a burst of traffic. I don’t actually know, or care to know, to be honest.
The real test is how TBI does compared with someplace like SFist, which is basically run by one dude. Check out Alexa – you can see that TBI gets beat by SFist consistently and thoroughly, week after week, month after month, year after year.
Ouch.
And I suspect that blue bump you see up there, when TBI clearly broke into top 100,000 territory, mostly had to do with the controversy related to a recent post from KevMo, Kevin Montgomery of TUA, The Uptown Almanac.
Mmmm.
And even that minutes-spent-onsite-per-visitor stat, the one that’s supposed to Have Meaning, turns out to be three minutes for both The TBI and SFist.com
Mmmm.
Of course there are other ways of getting revenue than simply having people look at your site.
Like there’s “partnerships” ‘n stuff.
That issue will be Exhibit 2 in the case against TBI.
(I haven’t proven villainousness yet, I’ll agree. I’m still on the fence. But I’ll look into it.)
All right, TBC, To Be Continued…
Tags: 2013, 40 going on 28, alexa, barbary italic, bay area, bay citizen, blog, bold italic, california, Gannett, gannett blog, gentrication, Kevin Montgomery, kevmo, publisher, raven keller, San Francisco, sfist, tbi, The Bold Italic, tk, UPTOWN ALMANAC
Posted in media | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 13th, 2012
Nevius, if you had been an ex-jock* writer / columnist for the Das Reich Newspaper Group, you know, back in the day, would you have gone out combing the ghettos to find One Good Jew and then made him/her an example for all to follow, by writing column after column on the same person?
Prolly.
Presenting, once again, CW Nevius on Larry Moore, the homeless shoeshine man.
What your dozens of columns on one single homeless person are saying, Nevius, is that it’s too bad that all homeless people can’t dress up every day, basically.
Nevius, you need an intervention.
Oh, but I’ve been beaten to the punch by Jay Barmann of SFist.
See?
Click to expand
Imagine, if you will, a 12-step Nevius:
[The Nevius] : Hello, my name is CW from the East Bay. I’m a recovering maudlin Republican and I just celebrated my two-week birthday on November 27th.
[Crowd]: Hi CW!
If only.
Nevius, how will you disappoint us next?
*Imagine that you lost the long jump to Jesse Owens in ’36 and then found a cushy part-time writing gig promoting the values of whichever regime is in power, you know, as an Jedermann, an Everyman.
Tags: 2012, bay area, california, Columnist, homeless, Intervention, Jay Barmann, larry moore, Nevius, Nevius Intervention, newspaper, San Francisco, sfist, shoeshine, Writer
Posted in paranormal | No Comments »
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
Apparently, there aren’t enough printing presses available in the Bay Area to keep up with the enormous demand the public has for “The Real Ed Lee – The Untold, Untold, Story.”
(Uh…, moving on.)
Anyway, the upshot is that now you can see the text online in a searchable format. See below.
(Or kick it old-school with Bluoz, your choice.)
Click to expand
To review:
“The book goes through the details of how Lee rose through the ranks at City Hall, along the way approving a couple of fraudulent vendors and getting caught up in Willie Brown’s sleaze. It discusses how his campaign is taking credit for other people’s work and ideas. It describes how he promised over an over not to run, then went ahead and did it anyway. It’s got a great picture of him steering a 139-foot yacht with the caption “I’m on a boat.”
(Nice link there, Tim Redmond – I hadn’t made the connection.)
All the deets:
“The Untold, Untold Story” Goes Online - Leland Yee campaign can’t print “The Real Ed Lee” book fast enough for demand
SAN FRANCISCO – The reviews are in and the “The Real Ed Lee: The Untold, Untold Story” is a smash hit!
Has a serious political point, but it’s actually funny, sometimes really funny, and it’s much easier to read than the plodding “Ed-Is-Greater-Than-God” prose of the original…. For once, we have a campaign piece that made me laugh instead of crying. - San Francisco Bay Guardian
OMG, A new best seller to be! – Some guy on the internet
Everyone is talking about it! – SFist
The 55-page parody shows Lee on the cover as downcast, grumpy and triple-chinned. The book recounts dozens of previously published stories detailing everything from the two district attorney investigations into alleged ethics violations by his supporters and alleged cronyism. – San Francisco Chronicle
The 56-page booklet is heavily footnoted with URLs – The Bay Citizen
I totally LOL’ed – The San Francisco Citizen
((*sound of crickets*)) – Interim Mayor Ed Lee
The slim volume oozes sarcasm as it covers the history of Ed Lee’s tenure as mayor, including his promise to not run for a full term and charges of inappropriate campaign donations from contractors. - San Francisco Examiner
This is the first “hit” recipe in political history. - Eric Jaye
Less than three-months hence, Lee’s campaign is beset by multiple criminal investigations into alleged campaign money laundering, ballot tampering and other campaign election violations. – Fog City Journal
[Ed Lee staff] were pretty disgusted by it. – Tony Winnicker
Painstakingly put together to resemble the original propaganda mailer to the smallest detail. The type fonts are identical. The jaunty writing style is mocked all too well. – SF Weekly
The Leland Yee for Mayor campaign has already distributed thousands of “The Real Ed Lee: The Untold, Untold Story” to voters throughout San Francisco, however, the demand for the book has been so great that today Yee’s campaign launched the book online at http://www.lelandyee.com/the-untold-untold-story.
“We can’t print the books fast enough,” said Jim Stearns, Yee’s campaign manager. “Now that it is online every San Franciscan will have the opportunity to read this accurate account of our interim mayor and be able to compare his tarnished and corruption-filled record to Leland Yee’s 23 years of leadership and experience fighting for our community, especially seniors, students, and the most vulnerable.”
“The Real Ed Lee: The Untold, Untold Story” is a response to a book produced by one Ed Lee’s billionaire IE committees, which falsely glorified the interim mayor and ignored the multiple scandals and ethics violations of his campaign. The highlights of “The Real Ed Lee: The Untold, Untold Story” include Lee becoming interim mayor on false pretenses, his approval of fraudulent contracts, giving “golden parachutes, embracing cronyism, failure to follow ethics laws, illegal campaign contributions, money laundering (well, the first time), voter fraud, and the city’s future if Ed Lee were elected. The book also includes “Willie [Brown] & Rose’s [Pak] ‘No Longer Secret’ Make-A-Mayor Recipe.”
By comparison, Leland Yee has released several detailed plans on job creation, environmental protection, transportation, and schools. Maybe the most important of his plans – “An Independent City Hall” – would clean up City Hall, bring real transparency and accountability, kick out the powerbrokers, and return our local government to the people. To read Yee’s plan, visit http://www.lelandyee.com/issues/plan-for-an-independent-city-hall/.
Tags: 2011, 2013, Americas Cup, bay area, bay citizen, biography, bluoz, boat, book, california, campaign, central subway, chinatown, chronicle, contents, ed lee, electronic, Enrique Pearce, entire, Eric Jaye, Examiner, fraud, free, I can't say no to Willie and Rose, ie, interim, jim stearns, lawyer, leland yee, Mayor, pak, paperback, pdf, Poongaloong, real, REAL ED LEE, recipe, recology, rose, San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Guardian, san francisco citizen, scanned, scanner, Senator, SF, sf neighbor alliance, sf weekly, sfbg, sfist, story, table, the, THE REAL ED LEE, THE UNTOLD UNTOLD STORY, tim redmond, Tony Winnicker, UNTOLD, UNTOLD STORY, wilie brown, willie brown, wily brown, yacht
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Monday, October 17th, 2011
Via Ron Russell’s Bay Area Observer comes word of this post from John Mecklin that’s been getting attention today.
The SF Weekly‘s Editor from 1997 to 2005 starts off with news of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies changing its name to the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and then he offers thoughts.
Thusly:
“Much of what had been staples in the bag of alt-weekly editorial tricks — event listings, music coverage, restaurant reviewing, smart-aleck attitude, general (though not universal) leftyism — was also undermined, coopted, replicated, done better or made obsolete by the rise of a host of online competitors, from the lightly staffed city observer sites (SFist, Gothamist, etc.) to Yelp to Gawker and on and on and on. In the lingo of the trade, the alt-weekly was unbundled, disaggregated, knee-capped by the kind of entrepreneurial twentysomethings the founders of many an alt-weekly had been, once upon a time, back in the historical mists of the 1970s.”
Yep, pretty much.
Read the whole thing, if you want.
Tags: 2011, alt weekly, Association of Alternative Newsmedia, Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, bay area, bay area observer, california, editor, Gothamist, John Mecklin, online, Requium, San Francisco, sf weekly, sfist, SFist.com, village voice, weekly
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Friday, July 29th, 2011
Remember back last decade when Beyond Chron won BEST LOCAL WEBSITE from the San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper? Good times.
And really, how can you forget, what with the daily reminders from the masthead?
Like this:
But the problem with that is that BeyondChron hasn’t won that particular award recently.
BeyondChron didn’t win last year (FunCheapSF) and didn’t win the year before (Broke Ass Stuart) neither. And this year, well, I don’t think that the Guardian even has that particular category anymore.
Maybe I’m missing something here. Your winners for 2011:
“BEST OVERALL LOCAL BLOG - SFist
www.sfist.com
BEST OVERALL LOCAL WEBSITE - Funcheap SF
www.sf.funcheap.com
BEST NEWS BLOG OR SITE - Bay Citizen
www.baycitizen.org“
Does BeyondChron need even more money from the taxpayers of San Francisco, you know, to revise the masthead, to bring it current?
Looks that way…
Tags: 2011, award, bay area, bay citizen, bay guardian, best local website, BEST NEWS BLOG OR SITE, BEST OVERALL LOCAL BLOG, BEST OVERALL LOCAL WEBSITE, beyond, beyondchron, california, chron, Funcheap SF, newspaper, randy shaw, result, San Francisco, sfbg, sfist, tenderloin, tenderloin housing clinic, thc, winner
Posted in paranormal | 2 Comments »
Thursday, May 19th, 2011
[Oh, here we go, it's the Citizen of Tomorrow Awards, just posted.]
Now, the problem I had last night was being too ambitious, thinking I could drop by the First Birthday Celebration of The Bay Citizen and then hustle it uphill to the Specfic Whites neighborhood by nine-ish, thinking that this year’s party would be like last year’s, you know, the one they had in the Twitterloin. That one was off the hook.
Anyway, here it is at the stated 8:00 PM starting time. (A dozen people to park your car, but only one to check you into the place.)
(Why, yes, Terra _is_ 200 feet away from a bridge and two miles away from a tunnel – why do you ask?)
And here are your food trucks. (Everything seems to taste better when it’s from a truck, non?)
Click to expand
I guess things got going later in the evening. But I’ll tell you, if you skipped the first hour of last year’s soiree, which was off the hook, you would have missed a lot.
The good thing is that The Bay Citizen produced, as designed, a lot of good stuff the past year.
Anyway, Bon Anniversaire, The Bay Citizen.
Tags: $25, 2010, 2030 Media, 26, 501c3, 511 harrison, Anne Stuhldreher, Annette Fuentes, Anthony Bernhardt, Anthony Moor, Arthur Rock, awards, bamp, Bay Area News Project, bay citizen, Bay Citizen editor-in-chief, Bay Citizen managing editor, beats, Berkeley, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, bloggers, Brock Keeling, business, Citizen of Tomorrow, civic, Community Editor, core, crime, culture, Dede, Diane Wilsey, didi, don, Douglas McGray, editor, editor in chief, Elizabeth Lesly Stevens, Elizabeth Stevens, environmental, eve batey, Family, Fellow, finance, fisher, gamh, Gerry Shih, government, Graduate School of Journalism, great american music hall, hardly strictly news, health, in chief, interns, Jeanne Carstensen, jeff, Jim Daly, Joe Payne, Jonathan Weber, Jr. Foundation, Kate McLean, Katharine Mieszkowski, kickoff, Knight, Knight Foundation, land use, launch, Laura Fraser, Laurie, Lisa Frazier, Lois Beckett, Lynn Feintech, managing, Marie McIntosh, Maureen Fan, may, Michael Stoll, Michelle Fitzhugh-Craig, Neil Henry, New America Foundation, news, Newsroom, nonproft, o'farrell, Owen Thomas, paid, Partner Program, party, photographs, photos, pics, politics, Polk, post, project, Queena Kim, regional, Reyhan Harmanci, Richard Parks, S.D. Bechtel, salaries, San Francisco, san francisco appeal, San Francisco Foundation, science, SF Public Press, sfist, Shoshana Walter, soma, Staff, stanford, Steve Fainaru, street, students, Tasneem Raja, terra anniversary, the bay citizen, Ubben, uc berkeley, university of california, VentureBeat, warren hellman, washington post, Wilsey, Writer, yahoo, Zoe Corneli, Zusha Elinson
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Friday, August 13th, 2010
Looks like LAN Airlines (let’s all welcome our newest arrival at SFO – “Latin American Network” is one way to remember it) is moving on from that whole “bareback today” ad controversy.
To review, here’s the original ad, as seen on the Streets of San Francisco. (Ignore that white oval, it’s vandalism, possibly from a Women’s Studies major, srsly.)
Photo by Brock Keeling / SFist
See? It went, “Boring bus ride today, bareback in Brazil tomorrow. SFO nonstop to South America.”
Which, I don’t know, if you’re trying to do the whole alliteration thing, that’s not too bad. (I mean what other words starting with the letter “B” can you think of?) Anyway, that bit of double entendre met with a bit of controversy. So LAN got all corporate and said they would set things right.
And here’s the result:
Traffic today. Tango tomorrow.”
See?
Click to expand
Meh.
Anyway, looks like this brouhaha has been put to bed.
So, all you can do is start saving your pennies to get your ticket. Then you grab your dollies…
via suedehead
…and put up your feet for the long trip south:
via David Berkowitz
Tags: 2010, ad, advertisement, agency, air, airlines, America, bareback, bay area, boring, brasil, brazil, bus, california, condom, controversy, doll, Gay, LAN, latin, LGBT, market, mta, Muni, parade, pride, San Francisco, sex, sfist, SFMTA, SFO, south, sponsor, street, tango, today, Tomorrow, traffic
Posted in advertising, airlines | 2 Comments »
Sunday, June 13th, 2010
Well the “possible arrests” didn’t occur last Friday evening down at the famous Fell Street ARCO station near Divisidero, but lots of media vans showed for the “misdirected” protest, so that’s something. Read all about it here, here and here.
This Toyota driver got hectored so much other drivers were able to jump the queue. Pwned:
Click to expand
This driver waiting for gas also got hectored for talking a on a cell phone the wrong way:
“ARCO – part of BP” - this slogan could use a rethink:
Most cyclists in the evening drive managed to get by and on into the Panhandle:
Everything got back to normal by today, anyway.
They say a fix is coming (and what about the route from the Panhandle to Scott Street and the start of the Wiggle Bike Path? Who will protest that?)…
Tags: 1775, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 76, arco, area, Assistant, association, automobiles, autos, bicycle, bike, BIKE NOPA, bikes, block, blocking, BP, cars, cyclists, divisadero, divisidero, EaPA, east of panhandle, engineer, fell, fulton, gas, gasloline, golden gate park, gulf, intersection, James Shahamiri, jannah, lane, Line, media, meeting, metropolitan transportation agency, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, mexico, mta, Muni, neighborhood, nimby, NOPA, nopna, north of panhandle, oak, oil, panhandle, parking, prtest, queue, San Francisco, SF, sfist, SFMTA, spill, Station, street, traffic, union, vehicles, wait, Waiting
Posted in bikes, streets | No Comments »
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
[Whoops, spoke too soon - turns out that the SFGate/San Francisco Chronicle's Katie Baker was en la casa. The conspiracy of silence broken.]
Despite all the obituaries written earlier this year, The Bay Citizen celebrated its launch yesterday at the Great American Music Hall. Some TBC editors on the scene were fretting about getting a new batch of “stately idiom” finished up for the following morning, but a good time was had by all.
They literally rolled out the red carpet in the Tenderloin last night:
Who was there? Everybody. (Everybody excepting some of the hAtERz in local media who feel any new investment should go to existing concerns, you know, the ones that employ the hAtERz themselves. The hAtERz that showed somehow even managed to generate, with noticeable effort, Mona Lisa smile/smirks for the camera.) The place was packed from the get-go, baby. Check out the Party Pix from E.B.Boyd showing who all was there.
Standing room only:
Bay Citizen CEO Lisa Frazier (pronounced fraze-yah) started things off by inviting Founder Warren Hellman to play a song.
Lois Beckett snapped the chorus and here are the full lyrics to the sing-a-long tune Hardly Strictly News. Note the A-A-B-B rhyming scheme. Also note:
“We met with Lisa Frazier who pronounced ‘for now it will be free’/
A multi-layered news hub is the only way to be.”
What, “for now?” Uh oh:
Click to expand. It’s quite legible at 1200 pixels.
Anyway, F. Warren appeared to be somewhat irked by the constant chatter of the assembled throng. Oh well.
Here’s the mise-en-scene from up on the catwalk:
A big thank you to all the founding investors, founding members, patrons, and corporate sponsors. Notably, Dede Wilsey’s name isn’t on this list, so perhaps she just recently kicked in her seven figure donation? (Or let’s call it a $500,000 donation with Uncle Sucker kicking another half mil., mas o menos. That’s the thing with non-profit journalism – the federal govmint lowers your taxes by about 50 cents for every dollar you donate, assuming you pay a lot of taxes in the first place. This is the Unfair Advantage that the Chronicle people complain about. Speaking of which, nothing yet about TBC from the SFC – check for yourself.)
Everybody’s a star:
$5 tote bags just like Trader Joe’s and the KQED, plus loads of free bumper stickers:
The lives of the party:
Anyway, had to bail early to get down to Massive Attack at the Warfield while Arcadio was playing the TBC party. The booze was flowing and the place was still packed when I left, anyway.
Bon Courage, Bay Citizen!
All the deets, after the jump
(more…)
Tags: $25, 2010, 2030 Media, 26, 501c3, Anne Stuhldreher, Annette Fuentes, Anthony Bernhardt, Anthony Moor, Arthur Rock, bamp, Bay Area News Project, bay citizen, Bay Citizen editor-in-chief, Bay Citizen managing editor, beats, Berkeley, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, bloggers, Brock Keeling, business, civic, Community Editor, core, crime, culture, Dede, Diane Wilsey, didi, don, Douglas McGray, editor, editor in chief, Elizabeth Lesly Stevens, Elizabeth Stevens, environmental, eve batey, Family, Fellow, finance, fisher, Fwix, gamh, Gerry Shih, government, Graduate School of Journalism, great american music hall, hardly strictly news, health, in chief, interns, Jeanne Carstensen, jeff, Jim Daly, Joe Payne, Jonathan Weber, Jr. Foundation, Kate McLean, Katharine Mieszkowski, kickoff, Knight, Knight Foundation, land use, launch, Laura Fraser, Laurie, Lisa Frazier, Lois Beckett, Lynn Feintech, managing, Marie McIntosh, Maureen Fan, may, Michael Stoll, Michelle Fitzhugh-Craig, Neil Henry, New America Foundation, news, Newsroom, nonproft, o'farrell, Owen Thomas, paid, Partner Program, party, photographs, photos, pics, politics, Polk, post, project, Queena Kim, regional, Reyhan Harmanci, Richard Parks, S.D. Bechtel, salaries, San Francisco, san francisco appeal, San Francisco Foundation, science, SF Public Press, sfist, Shoshana Walter, Staff, stanford, Steve Fainaru, street, students, Tasneem Raja, the bay citizen, Ubben, uc berkeley, university of california, VentureBeat, warren hellman, washington post, Wilsey, Writer, yahoo, Zoe Corneli, Zusha Elinson
Posted in media | 2 Comments »
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Get up to speed here and then see what Lois Beckett and Leanne Maxwell have to say about last night’s event.
Click to expand.
Tags: 2010, 24th, 2nd, 3rd, 595 market, Alexia Tsotsis, AlterNet.org, Andy Wright, avenue, blogger, boing boing, Brock Keeling, Broke-ass Stuart, brokeassstuart.com, Cecilia Vega, channel 7, chronicle, clement, Co. Inc., commonwealth club, Curbed SF, DailyKos, design, director, district, district one, Dyanna Pure, eater sf, editor, Examiner, Gannett, If Not the Chronicle, Inforum, Innovation, Jaimal Yogis, Jeff Hunt, Joe Eskenazi, journalist, JT, kgo, laughing squid, Lea Troeh, Leanne Maxwell, Lois Beckett, Mac McClelland, march, Mark Frauenfedler, Markos Moulitsas Zתniga, media, Media Partnerships, meet your mar, Melissa Griffin Blog, Michael Bauer, Michael Maness, Mission Local, mission mission, MissionMission, Moderator, Mother Jones, muni diaries, new chronicle, New Face, Paradox, Park Life, people, Robin Sloan, San Francisco, San Francisco Magazine, SF, sf weekly, sfgate, sfist, SFist.com, street, Supervisor, sweet melissa, Tana Ganeva, The Bold Italic, The SF Style, The Week, Then What?", twitter, Vanessa Carr, voters, VP, Who is the New Face of San Francisco Media, young, youth
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