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Ted's Excellent Adventures
Most campaign honk and wave fables seem to deal with exposure of
various body parts of passersby. We previously chronicled a few
of Peter Corroon's tales in the recent campaign
where for his efforts he got a lot of honks and a few middle fingers.
Ted Wilson has a few racier stories (Democrats
have all the fun), no doubt improved in the telling over the years.
In his Salt Lake mayoral campaigns, Ted said his campaign manager,
the legendary Dolly Plumb, liked to stake out a
spot at the mouth of one of the canyons the Friday of the annual
deer hunt. She would stage a Burma Shave kind of arrangement by
placing signs along the highway in advance of the group that said:
Honk & Wave . . . Shout & Cheer . . . Vote for Ted . . .
And Get Your Deer!
On one honk-and-wave outing, a pickup truck came by with a smiling
woman in the passenger seat who promptly pulled up her sweater and
flashed a bare and ample bosom. “After that we never had trouble
getting volunteers for honk and waves,” Ted said.
Another time, a guy with impeccable timing in a passing car dropped
his pants and offered a full moon view. The honk and wave crew was
shocked for a few moments until a campaign associate said, “That
was Con Harrison!” (Ted's opponent in the mayoral race).
“How do you know?” Ted asked. “I could tell by the smile,” came
the reply.
Delivering News as it Happens
I received a couple of perceptive responses to my Tuesday comments
about newspapers posting news on their Web sites as it happens,
instead of waiting until the next morning.
Russ Hill, news director at KSL Radio 1160, sent
along this interesting and insightful response:
“I enjoy reading your daily policy email. A quick response
to your column about newspapers being timely. First, I couldn't
agree more. You are seeing some of the major national newspapers
post articles quickly. If something breaks, the Wash Post
or NY Times will immediately post the AP story and then within a
short time get their own version up. This is in large part
what drives their late day Web traffic. They're also posting
the next day's big stories in late evening. That pushes up
evening Web traffic numbers. I understand why local newspapers
have some reservations about doing the same thing, but they could
sure get a 2 for 1 hit if they were to post some of the less time-sensitive
stuff the night before.
“Having said that, I need to give props where they're due. You
may have to wait until tomorrow to read a print reporter's story,
but increasingly often, you're able to hear that same reporter talk
about the event/issue they're covering much earlier. They're
talking about it on KSL Radio. Take, for example, today. Two
BYU football players are in court for sentencing. You will
hear the reporter from the Deseret Morning News assigned
to cover the hearing on KSL Radio several times today. So,
before they write their long pieces for the next day's paper, these
reporters are going on KSL Radio to talk about what happened. You
won't get the depth you'll get in the paper, but at least you're
hearing from some of these reporters earlier.
“It's great for us in the radio business as we're able to take
advantage of the huge resources of a newspaper. It is a great
complement to our own team of reporters out on the street hustling
to gather the news every day. And, it's a great development
in print newsrooms that reporters are becoming accustomed to getting
the news out there much quicker than before. Just something
to think about...”
Former State CIO Phil Windley , who publishes
Web logs at www.utahpolitics.org,
and www.windley.com,
wrote to say he wishes the newspapers, in addition to posting news
in a timely fashion, would also publish RSS feeds so he could get
automatic updates as new items are posted. “That way I could have
it on my MyYahoo! page and see it on my browser right away.”
Meanwhile, I did notice that the Standard-Examiner publishes
a Midday Update Monday through Friday on the paper's Web site, www.standard.net.
The update is a quick glance at any news that breaks during the
day.
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