The Enlightened Redneck

Posted on 08.07.12 by Danny Glover @ 5:35 pm

You know what I think would be a great idea? Mitt Romney granting an interview to “The Enlightened Redneck.” Gov. Romney will be two blocks from our house Saturday afternoon, and he needs the enlightened redneck vote. What better way to get it than to visit the home of The Other Danny Glover?

If anyone on the Romney campaign team is reading this blog post, please know that it is a legitimate invitation. I have two decades of experience as a journalist covering politics and policy and thus am qualified to interview a presidential candidate. See my credentials on LinkedIn. I also know many conservative bloggers and tweeters who would appreciate that you granted an interview to one of their own.

The interview doesn’t have to be all meat and potatoes. I’d certainly ask you some substantive questions. The journalist in me wouldn’t have it any other way. But this is a lighthearted blog, and I love dessert, too. After your rally down the road, swing by our house for a chat. It will be fun for me and a potentially great PR opportunity for you.

Email me at danny@enlightenedredneck.com or tweet @Danny_Glover, and let’s make it happen.

Politico vs. The Washington Post

Posted on 05.15.12 by Danny Glover @ 8:11 am

When you attend the annual Milblog Conference, you can expect to hear defense hawks and the bloggers they love sniping at the media. But this year’s conference, hosted by Military.com for the first time and held over the weekend in Arlington, Va., featured a bonus — journalists sniping at each other.

The pointed but brief rhetorical clash between defense reporters Austin Wright of Politico and Greg Jaffe of The Washington Post occurred as the two pondered the changing media landscape. It got personal when Wright framed the discussion in the context of the rise of Politico and corresponding fall of the Post (as seen most recently in another round of buyouts and an 8 percent drop in revenue).

He credited Politico’s success in part to its mastery of “niche journalism.” “Politico specializes in politics, and if advertisers want to reach people in politics, they advertise in Politico. If people want to advertise to people who watch sports, they advertise in ESPN,” Wright said. “And it’s harder to figure out what the audience is for The Washington Post because it’s such a broad [audience]. I think it’s a really big problem.”

Jaffe’s journalistic hackles raised at that last comment:

I think we put out a product that’s significantly better than Politico, which I find very chatty and very reactive and doesn’t provide much context. It’s a publication for this tiny percentage of insiders and doesn’t have bureaus or newsrooms.
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Filed under: Blogging and Business and Media and People
Comments: 1 Comment

A Writer Fired For Being Too Creative

Posted on 04.13.12 by Danny Glover @ 12:50 pm

This firing of a young journalist even before he started his first day at the Wilmington News Journal in Delaware was predictable:

Although Gannett has developed somewhat of a bad reputation in regards to caring for its employees, I was excited to start my new job. … I was so excited, in fact, that I decided to announce my hiring in a press release-style post on my blogs.

An unknown person saw those posts and sent the URL to media gossiper Jim Romenesko. Romenesko interviewed me yesterday morning and wrote a post about my announcement. He thought it was creative and interesting. I was honored to be on his site. …

And then my cell phone rang. Phil Freedman, the News Journal’s local editor, called and said the newspaper is rescinding its job offer. I was being fired for using the company’s logo on my personal blog and quoting the executive editor from my job offer letter.

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending for a greenhorn who, although naive about the norms of business behavior, clearly has the creativity to succeed as a writer:

I pondered all this while sitting at my desk at Black Voices. I looked at the computer screen and suddenly I had a handful of emails. Job offers. All across the country, from as near as Connecticut, out to Iowa and even more pouring in today. … Hopefully the next time you’ll see my name, it’s under a headline and not in it.

Kristopher Brooks shouldn’t have published his job announcement before clearing the idea with his new employer, and he definitely shouldn’t have used the company’s logo without permission. But the News Journal overreacted by rescinding the job offer. Now it won’t benefit from Brooks’ “narrative storytelling and your natural curiosity.” His new employer will.

Filed under: Blogging and Business and Media and People
Comments: None

Pinterest For Rednecks

Posted on 12.23.11 by Danny Glover @ 3:14 pm

Pinterest is the latest social media craze, and as someone who makes his living in the digital marketing world, I’ve been meaning to try it for awhile. I requested an invite to join Pinterest a few days ago and received it this morning. That’s when the inspiration hit me to create a “Redneck Humor” board.

But first a bit about Pinterest: As the name implies, the site is a place where you “pin” pictures of the people, places and things that “interest” you. But this virtual pinboard also has a social aspect to it. After you pin photos to your topical boards, other people can “like” them, “repin” them to their own Pinterest boards or comment on the photos.

The network is especially popular with women, who use it to create collections of recipes, clothes and other items. But as I poked around the site today, I realized that it’s a great forum for creating photo essays and themed albums on topics that interest me, too — sports, politics, West Virginia and, of course, rednecks.

I decided to make my trial run on Pinterest a fun one by pinning photos from past “Redneck Humor” entries on this blog. (One potential benefit is new readers.) I also scoured the Internet for other photographic displays of redneck humor and pinned several of them to my board.

This photo album is a win-win for both you and for me. It makes it easier for rednecks who love to laugh at and with their kinfolk (in spirit, if not reality) to find “snapshots of happily uncultured American life” in one place. And It’s much easier and quicker for me to pin multiple photos to Pinterest than to blog about each photo individually.

When it comes to redneck humor, pictures tell the story far better than my words anyway.

So if you have not done so yet, click on over to my new Pinterest board and get your fill of redneck laughs. And if you’re so inclined, request your own invite to Pinterest and repin or like the photos that make you laugh the most.

Filed under: Blogging and Human Interest and Just For Laughs and Photography and Redneck Humor and Social Media
Comments: None

Twitter Hall Of Fame (And Shame)

Posted on 12.05.11 by Danny Glover @ 7:42 am

Twitter has released its picks for the top 10 tweets of 2011. Some of them will make it into my new Tumblr-blog-in-progress, the Twitter Hall of Fame.

I’m covering the flip side of Twitter on a second Tumblr, the Twitter Hall of Shame. The “fame” blog recognizes previously unknown people who found their proverbial 15 minutes of fame through Twitter, and the “shame” blog is a memorial to famous folks — celebrities, politicians, athletes and more — who tweet before they think.

Feel free to recommend stories past, present and future for both blogs. Email your nominations to danny@enlightenedredneck.com.

Filed under: Blogging and Business and Social Media and Video
Comments: None

Old Advice For A New Age

Posted on 10.29.11 by Danny Glover @ 10:15 pm

Back in the late 1990s, I briefly joined the National Conference of Editorial Writers while I was working at an e-zine called IntellectualCapital.com, which we liked to think of as the op-ed page on the Web. At the time, many NCEW members held the freewheeling Internet masses in contempt. I was among the few who didn’t and had some rather pointed debates over the issue with my skeptical colleagues.

I had forgotten that I wrote an article about the issue for the NCEW magazine, The Masthead, back in 1999. I just rediscovered that article online. It’s as relevant in today’s era of blogging and social media, where the power of editorial gatekeepers is greatly diminished, as it was more than a decade ago, so I’m going to reprint the article. Here it is:

Old Advice For A New Age
The Masthead
March 22, 1999

By K. Daniel Glover

A half-century ago, at the first convention of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, renowned newspaperman Henry Louis Mencken admonished our founders with these words: “No editorial writer,” he said, “ought to be permitted to sit in an editorial room for month after month and year after year, contemplating his umbilicus. He ought to go out and meet people.”

Simple words (with the exception of umbilicus!), simple message: Get out of your ivory editorial tower and listen to the people lest you make a mockery of your profession.

Mencken’s message retains its relevancy today, which explains its presence within the corner of cyberspace we know as NCEW Online, and it is a message every online (and perhaps offline) commentator ignores at his or her own risk. Why? The one-word answer: interactivity.

You see, there are no ivory towers on the Internet. “The people” have rejected both the editorial elitism of the past and the hit-and-run punditry of the present. They have demanded a voice in the national discourse, and the World Wide Web has given them that voice — one that often is unfiltered and unlimited.
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Filed under: Blogging and Media and Social Media and Technology
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Welcome To The D.C. Snoburbs!

Posted on 09.24.11 by Danny Glover @ 11:28 am

I discovered an awesome blog and website called Snoburbia in the latest issue of SOJ Insider, the magazine of the journalism school at West Virginia University.

Snoburbia is the work of Lydia Sullivan, a fellow Mountaineer who graduated in 1984, a few years before me, and who currently lives and works as a freelance editor in the Washington suburb of Montgomery County, Md. Though our paths have never crossed in West Virginia or in the D.C. journalism community, we clearly have much in common, including the world view of our blogs.

Snoburbia is the kind of blog enlightened rednecks can appreciate. I love this insight into the blog from the SOJ Insider story:

Sullivan has many pet peeves about upper-middle-class suburban life, including a particular averstion to food snobbery and “foodies.”

“When I go to a party … I can usually be found by the potato chip bowl,” Sullivan said. “I live on the nuclear-orange Cheetos (I know, I know) and Pepperidge Farm Sausalito cookies. I recently proclaimed my love for Nutella on my blog, and someone told me I was destroying the ecosystem of Borneo or something.”

I love Nutella, too, and I’m not ashamed to “check in” at fast-food places via location-based services like Foursquare or to eat at chain restaurants like Applebee’s — two decisions which have surprised some D.C. friends. One day I may even order a Redneck Snack Basket.

Sullivan has turned Snoburbia into the kind of brand I’d love to have for enlightened rednecks. She sells t-shirts and an array of other products that illustrate the absurdity and condescension of suburbia. The image above of a U.S. map as coastal snobs see it is my favorite.

Filed under: Blogging and Food and Rednecks and West Virginia
Comments: None

Deserted With Barack Obama

Posted on 08.20.10 by Danny Glover @ 12:10 pm

I like the way Tim Carney thinks. The newly promoted senior political columnist at the Washington Examiner had this to say when the media blog FishbowlDC asked, in its lighthearted interview series, who he would want as his lone companion on a desert island:

Barack Obama — because then Barack Obama would be trapped on a desert island. Nothing personal, but this could slow the growth of government. Also, the military would try to find us.

And here’s another great Carney quip from the interview: “When and why did you last laugh so hard you had tears in your eyes? When I asked my 3-year-old the president’s name, and she answered ‘Big Government.’”

It’s pretty clear that Carney talks politics in front of his kids as much as I do. Mine like to buy me Obama knick-knacks as gag gifts. I cherish them all because it’s the humorous thought that counts.

Filed under: Blogging and Government and Just For Laughs and Media and News & Politics and People
Comments: None

Journalism TBD

Posted on 08.07.10 by Danny Glover @ 12:01 pm

Journalism has been in a state of upheaval for years. The Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and people in the news business will tell you that the future of media in the digital age is still to be determined.

“To be determined” — sounds like a great name for a news outlet. And it is. TBD.com, a local news venture funded by the same company that built Politico, will go online in the Washington region next week.

I was immediately intrigued when the talk of the as-yet-unnamed TBD started in media circles several months ago. TBD had big money in the bank (from Allbritton Communications), and it had a digital news visionary at the helm (Jim Brady, who built washingtonpost.com). I also was ending a contract job at the time and eager to work in local journalism again, so I tried mightily to join the TBD team.

Alas, with so many qualified journalists in the Washington area looking for work, I never made the cut. So like many others, I’m relegated to watching from the sidelines as TBD tries to win the game of media innovation in a changing marketplace.

I like what I’ve seen and heard so far. For the past few months, TBD has been focused on building a network of more than 100 local bloggers whose work will supplement TBD’s original reporting. And yesterday, TBD shared more of its plans for rewriting the future of news. Here’s a recap by tweet from Steve Myers of Poynter Online:
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Filed under: Blogging and Business and Media and Technology
Comments: 3 Comments

Where I’ve Been

Posted on 05.20.10 by Danny Glover @ 10:51 pm

I have been negligent for the past month in my mission to enlighten the world about the ways of the redneck, so I wanted to take a moment to explain my absence. Two ongoing events have robbed me of much of my spare time:

I started a new job as the editorial director of the David All Group, so I am (thankfully) back to commuting to an office rather than working contract, temporary or multiple jobs from home. My commute is a long one — three hours round trip each day — so I have limited spare time during the week.
My wife’s mother is dying of cancer. Her condition worsened a few weeks ago after surgery, and I have been on the road back and forth to Columbus, Ohio, the past two weekends.

The new job likely means I will be blogging less because I, like politicians who face the prospect of electoral defeat, want to “spend more time with my family.” I also have a book to edit for a friend, a long-overdue project — and I’m a FarmVille addict who needs his fix almost daily.

But I want the few loyal readers I have to know that I am committed to preaching the redneck gospel, so please do check back regularly. I appreciate your interest in this blog.

Filed under: Blogging and Family and Media
Comments: 1 Comment

The Blog Bash At FreedomWorks

Posted on 02.19.10 by Danny Glover @ 9:47 am

Conservatives are the talk of the town in Washington this week because of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that started yesterday, and FreedomWorks joined the festivities by hosting a “blog bash” at its headquarters last night. My wife and I were there.

Hot Air has the proof in picture. By sheer luck, we happened to be chatting with James Joyner of Outside the Beltway when FreedomWorks honored Ed Morrissey of Hot Air as its “Blogger of the Year.” My hot wife, Kimberly, is in the hot pink blouse in the right of the photo, and I’m the dude next to her having a really bad hair night. (I really need a haircut!)

Kudos to my friend Ed for the much-deserved honor. He also will be honored as CPAC’s “Blogger of the Year” today. Ed was one of the first bloggers I met after starting Beltway Blogroll for National Journal in 2005, and he is among the most thoughtful and fair-minded bloggers on the Web. If you don’t already read Hot Air, now under new management, then you should.

I blog there occasionally myself in Hot Air’s Greenroom. I just posted an entry there this morning in my new role as the editorial director of the free-market think tank Digital Society. The topic is the left’s spooky vision for media reform. Here’s an excerpt:

It took 90 minutes but Tuesday evening’s panel discussion about the future of news ultimately devolved into a predictable attack by media “reformers” on commercial media and communications companies that see the Internet as their “plaything.”

The panelists — Robert McChesney and John Nichols of Free Press, Jane Hamsher of the blog Firedoglake, and Ivan Roman of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists — all said their ideas for media reform depend first and foremost upon winning a fight for control of the Internet. Their idea of victory is government oversight and massive federal spending. …

McChesney accused phone and cable companies of having a business model aimed at “buying off politicians.” He called them monopolists who want “to take over and effectively privatize the Internet, make it their private plaything.”

McChesney’s rant against an imagined “rip off” perpetrated by “commercial media” is consistent with his oft-stated (but under-reported) “ultimate goal” of dismantling the capitalist system in general and getting rid of the “media capitalists” in particular. His perverted vision of a “free” press features a government that has regulatory and financial influence over both the infrastructure underpinning journalism and the people producing it.

Read the whole thing, and stay tuned to Digital Society for analysis of technology policy and how it can help or hurt America’s burgeoning digital culture and commerce.

Filed under: Blogging and Family and Government and Media and News & Politics and People and Technology
Comments: None

Read The Capitol Hill Tweet Watch Report

Posted on 01.04.10 by Danny Glover @ 5:35 pm

It’s time for a bit of self-promotion: “Danny Glover is the new editor of the Capitol Hill Tweet Watch Report.”

That’s the big announcement in today’s edition of the aforementioned daily newsletter, which tracks all things policy and politics on Twitter for the Beltway crowd.

My friend and new media maven David All launched Capitol Hill Tweet Watch Report last month, and I eagerly accepted his invitation to start the new year as its editor. Here’s a snippet from the blurb about my new gig:

The year 2009 marked the emergence of Twitter as a valuable news barometer on Capitol Hill, and with more lawmakers, congressional aides, policy experts and journalists embracing the medium, 2010 promises to be a milestone year in the Twitterverse. I’m thrilled to be starting the year as the new editor of Capitol Hill Tweet Watch Report to help chronicle the news for you.

Serving as your editor is a natural outgrowth of my tenure as the author of Beltway Blogroll for National Journal from mid-2005 to early 2008. Just as the blogosphere was an unfamiliar world in official Washington back then, Twitter is now. But Twitter will quickly become just as important and influential in policy and political circles this decade as the blogosphere did in the 2000s. I’m here to try to help you make sense of it all.

If you want to push a policy message, bolster a political brand, float a trial balloon or just comment on the news of the day, you should be doing it on Twitter. But even if you haven’t figured out just how to use the tool yet, you need to be aware of how others inside the Beltway are using it to accomplish their goals. That’s why Capitol Hill Tweet Watch Report is here.

While the publication is geared toward people inside the Beltway who don’t necessarily use Twitter themselves, it’s also a useful publication for anyone who wants to keep tabs on the policy and political news in the Twitterverse. If that includes you, please subscribe to the daily e-mail, follow @tweetwatch on Twitter, and spread the word about the publication.

Filed under: Blogging and Government and Media and News & Politics and Technology
Comments: None

The Path To Media Failure

Posted on 12.04.09 by Danny Glover @ 12:59 am

Newsrooms all across America are celebrating this holiday season just like they did last year’s — by handing pink slips to loyal employees. Layoff news has become so common that it’s a wonder there is anyone left to report the actual news.

Sadly, the people who run the media show still seem clueless about how they arrived at this depressing point in journalism history. Given every opportunity to embrace emerging technologies to improve the news product, they not only resisted change but scoffed at bloggers and others who led the way. Now they are firing the very people within their own organizations who could help them right the media ship.

Here is one telling report from Chris Gray Faust, a long-time journalist who had the foresight to learn new skills but was still shown the door:

[W]hat bothers me the most is what my firing represented. See, I’ve been learning all the tricks that a modern multi-platform journalist is supposed to know. In the past 22 months, I’ve blogged, tweeted, shot photos and videos, and handled speaking engagements. I edited my section, managed my high-personality staff and then in my spare time, I wrote cover stories — something that very few other editors at USA Today do. I hustled and I cajoled, and I ended up out on my a** anyway.

I’d like to think her story is the exception to the rule, but it’s not. Looking for places to cut, The New York Times is rethinking its commitment to blogs, which is strong evidence that the Old Gray Lady was never all that committed to them from the start.

Why would a struggling news organization lay off the innovators best prepared to help them transition into a technological world they clearly don’t understand? Or as MediaJobsDaily put it, “We don’t know why you’d take resources away from online, in the year 2009, but that’s the report.”

Faust at least appears to have learned her lesson. She’s going to invest her energy and talents in herself rather than a news industry determined to fail and destined to make more foolish mistakes, like running to the government for a bailout or implementing “business/news integration” that puts sales managers in charge of editors.

“These freelancers-slash-entrepreneurs are smart. They are nimble,” Faust said. “And now they are my role models, as I join their ranks. So to the managers who made this decision, in less than 140 characters I tell you: Good luck steering the Titanic. And thanks for the head start. Now I’m really going to run.’”

CORRECTION: As Faust noted in the comments, she’s a she. My apologies for the gender error, which I have fixed in the entry.

Filed under: Advertising and Blogging and Business and Media and Technology
Comments: 3 Comments

Morons On The Internet

Posted on 09.27.09 by Danny Glover @ 3:55 pm

The Internet is a force for good or evil, depending on who’s making the connection. Lots of “morons” trying to score political points at the expense of truth have been online lately.

Which brings us to the quote of the day:

You’d be surprised what some of these morons write on the Internet … that they wouldn’t say to somebody’s face.

Filed under: Blogging and Technology
Comments: None

Of Media Poverty And Passion

Posted on 08.18.09 by Danny Glover @ 8:18 pm

When I decided to become a newspaperman, everyone tried to talk me out of it.

My Dad was at the top of the list. He wanted me to be an engineer so I could earn a good living. Even j-school professors warned my classmates and me that we had better be passionate about the profession because journalism in general and newspapers in particular are no place to make money.

They were right. I never could have afforded the rent in Morgantown, W.Va., on my first full-time salary. Thankfully, my two brothers were in college and we shared a one-bedroom apartment. Dad paid the rent, and I paid the utilities.

I was reminded of the vow of poverty I had to take in the early days of my career when I saw an ad on JournalismJobs.com for a reporter in Sandusky, Ohio, which is near Cleveland. The paper wants someone “with enthusiasm, energy, a good sense of humor and the ability to report and write a range of stories” — but it’s only willing to pay $20,000 to $25,000 a year for that person.

Just out of curiosity, I checked the median income in Sandusky. It’s $34,085. The average house in the city costs $110,000. No reporter could ever afford one.

You might think that would make me second guess my career choice, but it doesn’t. I knew the financial realities when I got into this business, but I also believed I had the passion to succeed — and with God’s help I have.
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Filed under: Blogging and Business and Media and West Virginia
Comments: 1 Comment

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