Following up on my [somewhat]

“It’s content sharing on an extremely local level and will bring our great work to an audience that does not currently see it,” explained Times editor Russ Stanton in an all-hands memo.

So far it’s good blog content, written mostly by Carolyn Kellogg, a friend who was once editor of LAist (she also blogs for the Times’ book blog, Jacket Copy). The appearance and presentation could definitely pop more and have more interactivity, especially if Brand X is aimed at the younger set.

It certainly is nice to see the LA Times fully embrace the culture/entertainment/tech blog style of an LAist, BoingBoing, or LA Metblogs and I’m sure to read more content via this RSS feed than I ever did in the print <em>Metromix</em>.

So, what is Brand X? It’s trading next-generation ideas on lifestyle, tech, entertainment, food, events, volunteering, style and the outdoors. Brand X is a curated shot of shared intelligence about how we live now and how we want to live tomorrow — the next movements in social networking and the return of the kitchen garden; micro-philanthropy, and the breakthroughs in science and art that are helping Southern Californians evolve and thrive. — editors Dean Kuipers and Deborah Vankin.

Speaking of Coachella, I’ll be there this weekend. You?

But don’t let the cat out of the bag before you’ve got a basic index page, 404 or… anything but the de facto Register.com-branded ztomy.com-fueled link farm.

So when the LA Times announced a “new product launch” in an all-staff memo this afternoon (thx, Ed) it was disappointing to see that said product was nothing but a Register.com link farm. Not to mention, what the memo describes is merely a repackaging of the short-lived print edition of Metromix along with some “reverse-published” blog posts. Whatever that means. Perhaps it can only be read when held up to a mirror?

Times editor Russ Stanton had this to write about the so-horribly-named-it-makes-me-quiver ThisIsBrandX.com: “It’s content sharing on an extremely local level and will bring our great work to an audience that does not currently see it.”

I feel for my friends at the LA Times who do amazing work in spite of it all. But the news about newspapers these days just gets me depressed. And with a name like Brand X — which implies knock-off, pirated, counterfeit merchandise — I just hope that the bulk of the content isn’t produced in China.

And anyway… THIS is Brand X:

UPDATE 4/7 kinda but not really there yet:

UPDATE: Read Tony Pierce’s like-it-is response.

in the time ive been blog editor at the times, i have been in countless meetings in regards to launching new blogs. in each of those meetings the question of name comes up. because i have seen “good” names and “bad” names make absolutely no difference, i have now reached the point where i advise those involved “i dont care what you name it, just name it and move on to far more important things like content.”

I’m anxiously awaiting said content so that I can just as quickly forget about the name (and strike out the Register.com Link Farm part of theh hed).

UPDATE: Brand X went live on April 15th.

They don’t write headlines like this online (or M-Sa, no less) so I’m archiving the screenshot (see also here and the LAT print edition archive)…

But damn if you didn’t spend your last $1.50 after seeing this on the newsstand Sunday I grabbed this image from Newseum.org (PDF). No mushroom cloud (the bombing was in Pakistan but the context is Wall Street) online either, only in the Southern California distributed (and in a few locations in SF) print.

D-R-A-M-A

At least they managed to squeeze in a Palin column beneath the mushroom cloud.

The photo above first aired on CNN and was sent in by someone who was supposedly in the supermarket at the time — what CNN terms as an iReporter. Sure, it is very possible that many of the paper goods were shaken to the ground during the 15-20 seconds in which the ground, building, and everything else shook. But how are we to know when to believe whether a photo or video is faked, fabricated, or Photoshopped? CNN’s iReport Terms of Use addresses nothing about photo manipulation or regulations. And, to be fair, it’s not just citizen reporters that purposely fake photos for effect or attention, there are the memorable lessons in photojournalism fakery brought to us by the likes of Reuters, the LA Times and most recently, the Iranian government (and here are more.

Considering the small size and low resolution of the above photo, I won’t venture to investigate the possibility that it was digitally manipulated or whether it’s an honest to goodness eyewitness photo. But below, you’ll see a few surveillance camera or eyewitness camera viewpoint of what is clearly either real footage of the earthquake and it’s after affects, or simply fakes.

REAL:

See also: Earthquake as experienced on the set of Big Brother

FAKE:

Twitter cofounder Biz Stone commented on the Twitterquake phenomenon this afternoon on the Twitter blog (see image below):

Whether it’s updates from best friends, internet pals, companies, brands, or breaking world events, the real-time aspect of sending and receiving Twitter updates continues to motivate our work.

Zoliblog comments on the meaning of Twitter breaking two recent California earthquakes as well as recent quakes in China and Japan:

People do take advantage of the relative naivete of social media and donâ€t hesitate to post fake news to gain 5 minutes of fame. But that doesnâ€t undermine the importance of speed, which in some cases can provide early alerts and potentially save lives. We need both.

I think the true power of tools like Twitter and social media sites like youtube andn even 12seconds is it’s ability to broadcast to your contacts/peers/circle without a net and without delay. You don’t have to gather or collect either yourself or relevant data like officials and news wires / outlets must. You only need to react, in 140 characters or less.

For more on fake photojournalists, check out this conversation last week on NPR’s Talk of the Nation.

The blogger and LAist editor who inspired myself (among others) to dedicate much time, passion, and keystrokes to group blogging, is moving on after 17 months at the helm of Gothamist‘s Los Angeles operation.

Myself and Zach Behrens interviewed Pierce soon after he dropped the bomb on LAist staffers last Friday.
Read the whole damn thing here.

The news doesn’t surprise me — Known to some as “The Blogfather,” Tony Pierce worked hard for many years to land this gig. LA Times Interactive under Meredith Artley continues being proactive, taking chances and gaining steam toward staking its claim as the new media beast it should be.
Perfect match.

Pierce worked his ass off for LAist as I imagine he did in previous jobs — always doing it his own unique but successful way. A big fan of city-centric sites since my days with Centerstage, I considered trying to write for Chicagoist and LAist but it wasn’t until I got hooked on Tony’s and his bulked-up, liberated staff’s posts (OK, and also because Tony is an insanely die-hard Cubs fan like myself) — about one year ago — that I gave it a shot.

Not everyone in the blogosphere is as congratulatory, or understanding, of Pierce’s move to the LA Times and likewise the Times’ decision to recruit Pierce away from “his dream job.” But Pierce is over 40, although he claims to be much older, so it’s not like he’s just a lucky young pup who went from straight from YouTube to the networks.

Some nasty comments popped up on a blogging.la post that did nothing but link to our interview which broke the news, so to speak. blogging.la’s David Markland followed up with another interview of Pierce the next day, definitely a great read.

It isn’t the first time that a “blogger” has climbed to such heights — “running all the blogs at the LA freakin Times in this case — and in his six years of blogging and year+ at the helm octupling LAist’s traffic I have to say he’s the man.

Save those PJ’s for the Blogger Hall of Fame.

But I couldn’t help but note the irony today, that soon after listening to On the Media‘s lead piece examining newspapers’ definition of “waterboarding” — I stumbled upon Fuller’s “News sells more opinion, at cost of sincerity” in the Trib.

“The concern with large news media corporations has been that they would stifle diversity of political opinion,” wrote Fuller. He picks on MSNBC’s and FOX News’ commercialization of political opinion slanted “toward whatever attracts a crowd.”

Now, with the fragmentation of media and audience, there is no clear commercial argument against presenting the news with a point of view.

But there remains an atmosphere of politicization and “stifling” in print, take for example the Chicago Tribune’s definition of “waterboarding” as explained on the aforementioned On the Media very uncomfortably and definisively by deputy editor Randy Weissman:

Our official definition is — effective today — “an interrogation technique that simulates drowning a prisoner, comma, creating the sensation of imminent death.”

OK. Just as inefficient a definition as the New York Times (“simulated drowning”) or the LA Times (“an interrogation technique simulating drowning that dates to the Spanish Inquisition”) but its his awkward defense that seems to reveal political motivation behind using “simulate” and “sensation.”

Weissman:

Simply put, if you look in Webster’s, drowning is death, and waterboarding would only fit that definition if, if the prisoner died. Ask most people if a person drowns what happens, you — I would be willing to bet you that they would say he died.

Even after On the Media host Brooke Gladstone reiterated that drownING is the gerund and surely someone who is drowning can still be saved, Weissman blamed the politicization of the Trib’s semantics on Webster’s (where the gerund is not defined):

Well, I will go along with Webster’s New World Dictionary, which says “to die by suffocation in water or other liquid.”

Weissman was embarrassingly off the mark in his radio interview but at the same time Fuller may have a good argument with what he sees emanating from the dark side of today’s rich media environment that COULD filter wisdom, knowledge, and fact via free expression theory.

It’s not that Fuller hasn’t fully accepted media in the universal multimedia sense by blaming TV news and entertainingly charged, one-sided blogs (he wrote ten years ago quite knowledgeably on the future of so-called convergence in News Values).

Fuller attributes humanity’s neurological disinterest in neutrality as a main reason for the decline in newspaper readership and rise of fanatical talk radio and cable tv nutjobs. And I wish the following sentence didn’t sound so true:

…[T]he information revolution itself has created the conditions in which the emotions come to the surface and emotionally hot presentations of information — such as ideological slant, shrillness, even humor — draw the brain’s attention.

In the depressing epilogue, Fuller buries serious journalism with the sad fact that corporate ownership and consolidation will likely breed further insincerity (uh, hello Tribune Corp?).

And this is where the independent journalist and blogger can keep serious, honest reporting alive. Assuming free expression and social trust works to filter the good, real, legitimate news and information to the forefront in the networked world.

— Fire Evacuees are Not ‘Refugees’
— Ann Coulter to Speak at USC for Islamo-Fascism Wingnut Awareness Week
— Larry Himmel Reports from the Scene of his Burning Home

Viss has some amazing photos of the Witch Fire here.

I’ve messed with numerous mapping applications — namely Mapbuilder and Platial and none are as effective, easy to maintain / update and share as this map tracking the ongoing fires in Southern California. Nice one, Times.

Map Updated 10/29

View Larger Map

SignOnSanDiego is also in breaking coverage mode via their text-only Fire Blog updates. With up to a quarter million people already being evacuated from areas of San Diego County it’s possible Qualcomm Stadium could be very reminiscent of the Superdome staging area (except of course that it’s not covered and the weather ain’t nearly that bad, save for the smoke in the air).

Also, LA City Fire Department is now live with its long-incubating real-time alerts feed. Subscribe via e-mail or Twitter. For very regular updates from San Diego to your mobile device, follow Nate Ritter.

Below, The Daily news‘ less-detailed Google Map focusing on Los Angeles and the Valley and a real-time slideshow of the more incredible photos documenting the fires via flickr:

Satellite photos of the fires here (NOAA) and here (NASA). InciWeb fire containment chart here. More fire-mapping resources here.

Finally, video via Google/YouTube here

The inspiring and occasionally hilarious Points West columnist delivered the commencement address to graduating undergrads and graduate students of USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism last Friday.

The HUGE bonus, is this awesome audio/photo slideshow. Nice, one, LAT. More, please!

Read “Attacked by a Grizzly” Part One | Part Two.