August 17, 2008

There were 3 posts published on August 17, 2008 (this is page 1 of 1).

Dog-cloning lady: fact or fiction?

Does anyone else get the idea that Joyce McKinney, the dog-cloning lady, is playing the press? This just has to be some kind of publicity stunt.

McKinney gets worldwide press when she allegedly clones her dog, but provides reporters with a bogus address. Then word gets out that in the 1970s she allegedly kidnapped a Morman man to be her sex slave. Oh, and she’s wanted in Tennessee for allegedly talking a teenager into breaking into homes so she could use the loot to buy a leg for her three-legged horse.

Come on, this lady is a walking punchline! She can’t be for real. Somebody’s being played here, I tell you.

F-street parking

I think Raleigh officials botched the parking layout of Fayetteville Street. The city should’ve made its parking spaces angled. There’s all this wide, unused sidewalk, another four or five feet of which could’ve added a huge number of parking spaces to this area of downtown. The sidewalk wouldn’t have even missed it.

While I’m a pretty big tree-hugger and no fan of the concrete behemoth that used to be the “pedestrian mall,” inadequate street parking limits the growth of downtown business. If one wants a vibrant city core, good parking is a must. There’s enough room on F-street for plenty of parking and sidewalks. What we have now is the result of a botched decision.

Media stickiness

The problem with deadline-driven media is that once one’s printed “all the news that fits” there is precious little room for follow-up stories. Media outlets will chase each others’ reporters around town, hoping to scoop each other on the next breaking story, while few newsrooms provide updates on the stories that aren’t breaking. There are exceptions, of course, such as the Duke Lacrosse case or a notorious murder trial. In general, though, once a story gets bumped off the front page (or the metaphorical front page for broadcast news organizations), it tends to be forgotten.
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