Hey SPCA, let’s cut a deal

I’ve been meaning to do non-Port City Sun posts on here, here’s the first of hopefully many. I’ll have a Sun update up soon. Sorry for the delay, it’s been a rough month.

The other day I was at a friend’s house and a familiar commercial came on the screen. It was that incredibly depressing SPCA ad featuring Sarah McLachlan’s “In the Arms of an Angel”. In my pre-DVR days, I couldn’t change the channel fast enough when this commercial came on. I never really minded that song back in middle school when it was popular, but now that it’s synonymous with that awful commercial it’s the equivalent of ear rape. Naturally I let out a string of profanities as my friend frantically tried to change the channel to anything. No really, any other programming was preferable, even Millionaire Matchmaker (shudder).

After the blinding rage subsided, my first though was “Wait? Isn’t that commercial like 5 years old now? Why are they still showing it?” I have nothing against the SPCA, well, I had nothing against the SPCA until they decided that one commercial featuring a mediocre singer from the late 90s would suffice for the next 20 years. Now that commercial dissuades me from donating any of my hard-earned dollars to what is actually a very worthy cause. One commercial has made me hate that organization so much that if I happen to see it multiple times in one day (which is a common occurrence given the economy’s effect on ad revenue), I briefly consider throwing a burlap sack of kittens into the Delta in protest. I try and give them (them meaning the SPCA, not the kittens. Who I’d never actually harm, I’m just being a dick) the benefit of the doubt by assuming that they stick with that commercial because they can’t afford to shoot a new one since all donations actually go towards saving animals, but it’s getting to the point where I’d actually pay a princely sum to have that commercial, song, and McLachlan herself banned from TV for all eternity. That’s when the lightbulb went off.

Let’s cut a deal SPCA. I’m asking you to name your price. I don’t care how much it is, but let’s make a deal. I’m willing to bet there are millions of other couch potatoes out there willing to cough up some dough for you to never eeeeeever play that 2-minute guilt trip again. You wouldn’t even have to shoot a new commercial right away. Just come up with a number, say $5 billion, and superimpose it over the existing commercial. Give us a number to let it know when it will stop. I guarantee you reach that number by the end of 2011. Think of all the puppies you could save with $5 billion. That’s a crapload of milkbones.

All we ask in return is that after we hit that goal, you can never show that ad again in any form ever. Not during The Price is Right, not on Animal Planet, not even at 3 am inbetween reruns of Reno 911!. Never. In addition to that, Sarah McLachlan must take a 5-year hiatus from the public eye (which shouldn’t be too hard considering we only see her in those ads), and can never appear in a commercial for anything ever again. On top of that, “In the Arms of an Angel” is banned from the airwaves for at least 10 years. We might let McLachlan sing it at Lillth Fair or something. Might. We’ll talk about that one.

Regardless, the madness needs to end. I hate having a good day derailed by that depressing commercial. I hate having depressing days made even worse by that commercial. I hate that whenever the family dog gets a sad look on its face, instead of giving her some attention I go into a blind rage because that awful song pops up in my head. Which is incredibly sad because I love that dog. This needs to end and it needs to end soon. The ball is in your court SPCA. Think of all the animals you could save. Sleep on it for a bit. Just name your price.

Moving along…

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog, sorry about that. Don’t worry, the project is still coming along. The behind the scenes stuff just isn’t that exciting to write about. Unless you find setting up subdomains riveting work. Regardless, I’ve been keeping busy. I even finally settled on a name and bought the URL. Since nobody e-mailed me with a better name (or at all), this should be fairly anti-climactic. I’m going with Port City Sun and will deal with the SEO ramapercussions when they arise.

With the name out of the way, it’s time to move on to a bigger issue, hosting. This issue has gotten even bigger recently after my start up funds went from “whatever I have left from my paycheck after rent, beer, and food” to “the $10 I already spent securing the URL”. So until I get this ball rolling and hopefully stumble upon some finances, I’m going to have to get creative. Luckily there are plenty of free/low-cost options to help out until I can take the next step.

If you clicked the link above, then you already know I’ve settled on WordPress to host the actual site. I did this for a few reasons, most notably their flexibility and my own familiarity with their services. Eventually, I’ll move the site to a more permanent home (a process that WordPress makes surprisingly easy). Right now bluehost is leading that contest, but as always I’m open to suggestions.

Until then, I still need a place to host all my other files. Two big aspects of the site are going to be integrating audio and video into coverage. Video hosting has come a long way over the years. It should be no surprise that the videos for the site will be hosted on YouTube.

Audio on the other hand is a little more tricky. Eventually I’d like to have a weekly podcast (I’ll get more into how I’ll be using the various forms of media in the coming weeks), but I’ve learned from other adventures in podcasting this year that finding a good host can be annoying. The one I eventually settled on was PodBean, which I wasn’t particularly impressed with. It costs $5 a month for the most basic plan that was worth a damn. That’s not really that much, but the user interface was kind of a pain in the ass on my end. Plus, for just a buck or two more a month I could host it myself along with all my other files and get a message board if I use bluehost. So I’m torn on that one. If anybody knows of an easier, cheaper host then let me know.

So that’s where I’m at right now. I know it’s not too exciting but people have been asking me what the deal was with the site so I figured I owed everybody an update. Hopefully next week I’ll show you the layout and point out my issues with WordPress’s customizations (having to pay to edit CSS is BS). I’ll also try an outline my plan for each of the different sections (news, opinion, sports, and entertainment) and include more detail on how I’ll be using audio and video and such.

The goal is to have this site up and running by the start of the new year so there’s a lot of work ahead, just got to keep moving along.

Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name

Before I get started, I have to thank everybody for the support I’ve gotten for this idea. Any feedback I get is humbling, but it’s especially appreciated this time around.

You’d think it’d be easy to find a starting point when literally everything needs to be done. Of the feedback I’ve gotten, the most frequent questions are either related to the server host (mostly indirectly, but they’re all questions that can’t be answered until I solve the hosting problem) and the name of this project. Both are very important, but today I’m working on the name part. Mostly because it’s the easier one to deal with, but also because the name is arguably more important than hosting because most server problems (at least the one’s I’ll be having early on) can be solved by throwing more money at it. The name though, that’s your entire brand. A bad server alienates visitors, but a bad name means they might not even get there in the first place. (I also need a name to set up all the accounts I’ll be using for the site)

When I have an idea for a blog, I usually think up the catchy name first. You have no idea the amount of names for blogs I’ve come up with that I never intend on starting. When I started writing a sports blog I intended on concentrating on the Sacramento Kings so I came up with a name that I knew would catch the eye of any Kings fan with Google Alerts, Las Vegas Kings. This was a couple years ago when Vegas seemed like a certainty if Measures Q & R (Arena building tax measures) didn’t pass. This time around I also started with a name, the Port City Post. It’s catchy and it got a good response when I would tell friends about it (and I really enjoyed the possibilities the acronym provided “Try some PCP!”), there was just one problem. Some chick in North Carolina has PortCityPost.com registered already. Even worse, she’s not doing anything with it, it’s just kind of there. I assumed she was just URL parking and would sell it to me for an inflated price, but she wasn’t open to selling when I contacted her.

Dejected, I went back to the drawing board. Of course, once you have one good idea it’s hard to keep it out of your head. So I invariably began to think up a bunch of different versions of the Port City Post name. I’m not the biggest fan of the “Port City” part for Search Engine Optimization purposes. People don’t search for Port City news, they search for Stockton news, but I couldn’t think of any newspapery names that go with Stockton. So, as I’ll be doing a lot during this process, I turned to Google. No really, I Googled “newspaper names” and clicked on the first link available.

There are a lot of good names on that list. Personally, I’d love to start a paper called the Stockton Juggernaut and just steal the famous internet meme (NSFW language) for advertising. The Stockton Standard is another name that jumped out at me, but I’m not sure I want to set that standard. Other awesome but flawed names that list inspired include the Valley Vindicator, the Delta Beaver, and (for Dallas Braden) the 209 Times.

Then, naturally, I went back to plays on the Port City name because I still kind of like it, SEO be damned. Plus, I think the port best represents Stockton’s working class culture. So right now I’m stuck on the name Port City Sun, but I’m open to suggestions. Feel free to use that list and the power of alliteration to help me come up with a catchy name for what I’m still ominously calling “The Project”.

If I happen to get some good names (which you can post in the comments, Twitter, or in an e-mail to me), I might even put up a poll or something, but I’m not getting my hopes up that much. All I ask is that the “.com” version of that name is available. Seems nitpicky, but it can be kind of important. Then, once I settle on the name, on to the next baby step. Hopefully there will be more on that here later this week.

The Start of a Start Up

I haven’t posted anything here in a year because I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with this blog. In my mind, the best blogs serve a specific niche/demographic/whatever. This blog probably won’t be doing that. I still don’t know what it’s real purpose is going to be, but over my lifetime I’ve found that it’s better to jump in without a plan than to not jump in at all. And really, jumping in with both feet is the definition of Congraving. Getting “Congraved” probably means one of us pushed you in. Either way, here goes nothing…

As probably 80% of the people reading this know, I semi-anonymously maintain a blog about my hometown of Stockton and the crazy stuff that happens here. I started it with no real plan in mind (sound familiar?). I just needed a creative outlet and Stockton provides a lot of material to write about. Eventually, people even started to read my blog, which amazed me considering I don’t advertise at all outside of a Twitter account.

Regardless, people started e-mailing me. Which itself was a new experience since my previous online exploits garnered no response and the only real feedback you get in print work is broad and usually negative. One discussion with a reader brought up a question that’s stuck with me ever since, “What’s your plan with this?” As I mentioned above, planning isn’t my strong suit. I’ve always just immersed myself in a problem and went where the current took me. I had to admit I had no real plan. I hadn’t written regularly for a while and the very basic plan I had laid out was to knock some rust and see where it goes from there.

That was 2 years ago. My writing still needs tightening (and probably always will, I love the longform), but I’m pretty sure I’ve taken a wire brush to any reddish-brown parts on the creative section of my brain. So then it’s back to the perennial question, what’s next? Surprisingly, I have a plan.

The past 2 years haven’t been kind to journalism in my area. Local papers have eliminated entire sections (and crippled beats in the process), raised prices, and started charging for online content. As a blogger largely dependant on free online content for links and referencing, that last on irked me the most. The market price for online news had already been set at free, changing that now is akin to a city deciding to charge a weekly toll for use of their roads. One might argue that roads aren’t comparable to news because roads are infinitely more important, but I find the comparison apt because my area doesn’t really have many information outlets. If you want to do anything from promoting an event to getting information about an upcoming election, the only real option you have locally is The Record. The only problem is, they’ve progressively been charging more for access to their news, even denying print subscribers access to online articles unless the cough up more money for articles available to them in another medium.

It’s frustrating because journalists have a duty to get information out to the masses, but the business side more often than not gets in the way. Right now, business is getting in the way of what the goal of every newspaper should be, get as much information as possible out to the highest amount of people possible. Instead, the amount of information appears to be shrinking and the number of people newspapers reach has been steadily shrinking for years.

What does this have to do with my plan? Well, I want to provide independant, free online news to my community. Essentially, an online newspaper. What I was doing before was largely opinion-based. I don’t even really consider that real journalism. Does it have elements of journalism? Yes, but I’m just a guy with a WordPress account. Having a blog does not automatically make you a journalist. This new site will be a journalistic endeavor meant to fill the void left by The Record when they started charging for online content.

It’s important to note that filling a void is the exact intention of this site. I don’t intend on competing with The Record. That’s just foolish. They’re one of the larger papers in Northern California and have the backing of Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones Media Group. Their war chest is undeniably more robust than mine. Mostly because I don’t even own a war chest. While competition is out of the question, there are still plenty of ways to carve out a piece of the journalism pie locally with out stepping on any toes.

As I mentioned earlier, coverage of certain beats has waned a bit in the past couple years. Entertainment coverage was dealt a fatal blow when The Record decided 209Vibe (an entertainment mag that, full disclosure, I wrote freelance pieces for briefly) was no longer financially viable. While The Record still tries to cover the beat, it pales in comparison to what we had before and that’s a shame. We have a really good local music scene and it almost always takes a backseat to other mainstream art stories. Local entertainment coverage will be a big part of the new site. We’ll also try my best to cover other news that often falls through the cracks for various reasons. Like I said, I don’t intend on competing with the information behemoth that is The Record, just to patch up the holes that things they miss get through. Call it Stockton’s spackle.

I know this is an enormous undertaking. I have no funding, no writing staff, and questionable amounts of free time as it is. Part of what Congraved.com is going to be is a chronicling of starting this start up. I’ll try my best to provide updates on site design/development, recruiting writers, sales calls (ugh), the works. I don’t know exactly how it’s all going to work out. Please, for the love of God e-mail me if you have any interest in helping, even if it’s just friendly advice or words of encouragement. I have a loose plan, a little knowledge, and a lot of passion. That’s more than I usually go in with, but it’s time to jump in and see if I can swim. Stockton, prepare to be Congraved.

Prepare to be Congraved!

Coming soon….