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Sh*t Dallas People Say

Jason Heid — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:02:05 +0000

It’s way, way too long.

Best line comes early. “Can you get me a Coke?” ”What kind?” ”Dr Pepper.”

But that’s not even really a Dallas-specific thing, is it?

Haiku Review Seeks $65,000

Tim Rogers — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:34:49 +0000

Three Dallas guys — Stu Hill, Wes Hendrix, and Brad Alesi — want to build an app that only publish reviews of restaurants and bars and suchlike in haiku form. Is it as silly as it sounds? Maybe not. They’re using Kickstarter to fund the project, which is explained in the video below. PS: Today is National Haiku Poetry Day, so there’s that.

TM Daily Post Goes Live Today

Tim Rogers — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:54:03 +0000

Spend a few minutes poking around on Texas Monthly’s new TM Daily Post, which went live today. TexMo editor Jake Silverstein describes the effort as “an online destination devoted to organizing, prioritizing, and analyzing the news of Texas every day.” At first blush, here’s what I like: it goes beyond merely throwing up a link and saying, “Here’s something that’s interesting.” This post about the recent New York Times story on the fight in Gun Barrel City over late-night liquor sales is a good example. Dig the way Sonia Smith not only summarizes the story but lays out some of the reaction to it, from blogs around the state and from folks who live in Gun Barrel City. That sort of work can be exhausting. TM Daily Post, looks to me, is being populated by two people, Smith and Jason Cohen (though a third, Andrea Valdez, is also on the masthead). They all appear to have real jobs at the print product. I wish them luck in sustaining the grueling pace of a daily site that digests the entire state.

A Note About FrontBurner Traffic

Tim Rogers — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:21:55 +0000

In the comments to Leading Off this morning, a FrontBurnervian named M Schwartz said that there has been a “significant drop in traffic on FrontBurner” because of the way we moderate comments. FBvians who have been around a while know all about the Time of Darkness a few years back, when Wick shut off comments altogether because they weren’t much fun to read. Traffic did drop then. But the decision to moderate comments — and to do it with a fairly heavy hand, tossing remarks not only because they are vulgar but because, for instance, they don’t use upper-case letters to begin sentences — has proven to be a solid decision.

From August to October last year, FrontBurner averaged about 56,000 unique visitors per month. For the same period this year, we have averaged about 114,000 unique visitors. Now then, owing to the way Google Analytics does its job (and the way we do ours), the number from last year doesn’t account for visits made on a mobile device, which the 2011 number does. A tech genius here (Hi, Randy!) says adding 10,000 unique visitors to last year’s average would be a crazy high number. Let’s do it anyway.

Conservative estimate: traffic is up 70 percent over last year. Lesson to be learned: don’t confuse the number of comments to a post with the number of people who are reading it.

We’re humbled by your patronage.

(Not really.)

What Happens When Your Priest Tries to Friend You on Facebook?

Tim Rogers — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 18:31:47 +0000

Here’s some more stuff from the September issue that didn’t make it online till here and now, with this up-to-the-minute update: I still haven’t approved Father Roch’s friend request. But I did call him to let him know about the story, in case he hadn’t read it yet. I told him I loved him and that I hoped he’d read it in the spirit in which it was intended. Still haven’t heard back from him. So, you know, see you hell, friends.

Barrett Brown in the Guardian

Tim Rogers — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 20:30:56 +0000

Barrett Brown, who until recently identified himself as an unofficial spokesman for Anonymous, has an op-ed in the Guardian today wherein he details the findings from an investigation he’s been working on for the past few months. Headline: “A Sinister Cyber-Surveillance Scheme Exposed: Hacked emails from security contractor HBGary reveal a disturbing public-private partnership to spy on web users.” You can learn more about what Brown has found on this wiki.

It all looks to me like a first step. Brown’s on to something, for sure. But as I told him, it seems to me like he’s trying to describe an animal by looking at its shadow. To see the beast, someone will need to shine a light on it. A whistle-blower will need to step forward.

North Texans Don’t Read Local News Online

Tim Rogers — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 21:04:38 +0000

Check out this new study of online consumption of local news by a fellow named Matthew Hindman. He studied 100 metro areas and found that people in Dallas/Fort Worth don’t consume much local news online. For instance, in the top city, Salt Lake City, a typical web user generates 89 pageviews per month of local news. In Oklahoma City (roughly the median), the typical web user generates 12 pageviews per month. In Dallas/Fort Worth? Just 5.5, tied for seventh-least pageviews.

Then there’s the matter of how many local news sites he found in each market, defined as a site that captures at least 1 percent of the market’s web users in a month’s time). He found we only have nine, about the median. By comparison, Indianapolis has 17, and Boston, the top city, has 28.

It would be nice to know which are the nine North Texas sites he measured. All we know is that four are TV sites, four are print, and one is web-only.

Evil Village Voice Media Admits To Spamming Reddit

Tim Rogers — Wed, 04 May 2011 14:53:49 +0000

I’ve been away for a few days so I’m coming late to this story that several alert FrontBurnervians sent me. The Dallas Observer’s parent company, Phoenix-based Village Voice Media, has copped to spamming Reddit in an effort to drive traffic to its websites. VVM apologized profusely, but the Reddit community doesn’t seem to be accepting those apologies. Sample:

In your initial post there was no apology. Just links to your website pretty much. Then, people criticized you for not actually apologizing, so you edited and added an apology. Sounds pretty sincere to me.

It’s important for Dallas readers to know that Robert Wilonsky is almost solely to blame.

Update (9:54): Kidding about Robert. Hi, buddy!

Shouldn’t Tom Leppert Have More Twitter Followers Than Me, @zaccrain?

Zac Crain — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:42:23 +0000

I mean, he is running for Senate, after all, and I am just being me. Bearded and debonair and, yes, somewhat awkward, but just me. And yet, as of press/me pushing “publish” time, SCOREBOARD:

Mayor of Handtown — 1,206

Zac Crain — 1,538

Step it up, T-Lep.

Barrett Brown Is Prepared for Some Nasty Comments

Tim Rogers — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:46:58 +0000

For our April issue, I wrote a 7,000-word profile of a guy named Barrett Brown. Barrett can’t tie his own shoes (literally), but he’s an unofficial spokesman for a group of hackers called Anonymous that doesn’t really exist. It’s complicated. That’s why it took me 7,000 words to explain the whole thing. Well, that and Zac was my first editor on the story, and he’s lazy. He refused to cut anything.

In any case, I’m putting up this post because after he read the story last night, Barrett said, “I can’t wait to see how viciously I get attacked in the comments by Anonymous.”

Have at him, folks!