Because when they somehow manage to bribe (or extort) a producer into letting them do “a little field reporting” they end up doing something like this.
This inevitably leads to some very public ridicule – administered in this case by FARK.
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In case you think it’s a joke (which given the inane content would be understandable), rest assured that this is “serious reporting.” Here’s the super secret site this 2005 version of Ron Burgundy mentions, and the guy who helped him make it…
I saw this live on the news and laughed my butt off. It was unreal.
Yes, we Farkers can be a little mean 😉
Of course, it only requires about two months of constant Fark viewing to learn all of our cliches — but at least you can see how they come about 😀
Somebody got paid for writing that?
Makes my blogging read like Faulkner.
While it’s inane to us, I still think the average person probably doesn’t know much about blogs. I’ve often asked people in real life if they happened to see something on Instapundit, and they just stare at me blankly. So, I won’t be too harsh on the guy.
I will however be harsh on the commenter at the blog that said ” Very nice first blog.” Uh, all he said was “Hello world!” and announced whose blog it was. Why, I bet that took tons of effort to craft so precisely and eloquently. Very nice indeed!
And, hey, are you suggesting that picture sharing isn’t fun? 🙂
Apparently a new wrinkle at Ric’s blog:
Comments on this blog are restricted to team members.
Dang — and I was hoping he;d explain to me this newfangled “television” thing.
Did anyone notice the date on those blog posts? They’re two and a half months old! Either that, or there’s a severe system clock error somewhere.
“…we Farkers..
Oh dear God, that makes blogs sound like online clubs. What’s the special handshake? Two long double clicks of your mouse, followed by 3 short ones? It’s the ultimate in geek fiefdom.
Oh brother…
I missed the disclaimer in his story:
“Now, I am not an expert with computers, so I asked a friend that works for AOL to help me…”
as mentioned on the blog entry you link to, kabc came over and shot their bit back in august. the purpose of the “exercise” was to briefly show what blogs were, and how easy it was to put one “out there”. nothing more.
I guess one of their producers stumbled upon my blog, and asked whether i’d help them with illustrative fodder for a story they were looking to do on that blogging thing.
being the sucker for 5 seconds of fame that i am, i accepted. duh.
While they were shooting, i posted those 2 cheesy blog entries on their behalf as part of the exercise.
This wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination meant to be any attempt at kabc’s big foray onto t3h “blogosphere”, or any attempt at displaying online journalistic prowess.
We might have made the blog more personal and called it “rick’s blog” instead of “kabc”. We didn’t exactly have all day to weigh out the options, some of us do have a daytime job. All they wanted to do was show how easy it was to just “put stuff out there”, and that’s exactly what we did during the exercise.
With all this said, it’s indeed very funny to us geeks to see a local tv station “discovering” and doing a “special consumer coverage” on what many have been doing for years. I did try to convey a sense of “hey this has been going for quite a long time” during the interview, but that got largely scrapped. “Yesterday’s news” doesn’t exactly foster ratings: “coming-up next, we’ll tell you about what you should already know! STAY TUNED and be sure to endure our commercials!”. Shyeah.
But as another poster mentioned above, what may seem “so 5 years ago” to geeks, is actually, as inconceivable as it may seem, still new many, whose notion of media consumption is still stuck in the 1960’s almighty broadcast era. Of those who have heard about blogging, many perceive this activity as the past-time of choice of a nerdy fringe. Seeing a famed news anchor guy, many grew-up watching on TV, “boldly” enter the blogosphere just might make them reconsider their position. Do we need more noise on the blogosphere? Some might argue we don’t.
I argue that anything beats passive media consumption. When we start to write, no matter how dumb, silly, cheesy, uninteresting, nerdy it starts out … or stays, we start to think.
Naive, low-brow bits on blogging such as this one that are likely to reach a wider audience, just may one day get us closer to a tipping point at which the whole concept of participatory culture turns into a profoundly society-changing pandemic.
Let your local tv station cash-in on the blogging-hype. It’ll only help a wider audience realize that there is life beyond TV.