Jay Mariotti is a genius! I don't know how he did it, but he realized something no one else has figured out yet. News, and especially sports news, he said is moving to the INTERNET! Wow, why didn't I realize that?

Oh wait, I did, along with hundreds of other people. But that's not my big beef with Mariotti's sudden departure from the Chicago Sun-Times. I hadn't even heard about it until today when a good friend told me about it. (Thanks David!) What really gets me is Mariotti's audacity in how he announced his resignation. Newspapers may not be the medium of the future, but if Mariotti really cared about sports journalism, I don't think he'd be so eager to jump from a sinking ship.

I mean, take a look at what this guy told the Chicago Tribune.

"I'm a competitor and I get the sense this marketplace doesn't compete," he said. "Everyone is hanging on for dear life at both papers. I think probably the days of high-stakes competition in Chicago are over.

"To see what has happened in this business. … I don't want to go down with it."

Gee, that's great Jay, so when the going gets tough, you get going, I guess. In the same article he talked about how he's fielding several offers from web sites. So I guess he's jumping to where the action is.

Give the originators of the Jay the Joke web site all the credit in the world for calling Jay on his bluff.

Plus, I am sure that his family is thrilled to see Jay walk away from millions of guaranteed dollars in a tough economy so that he can seek his* fame and fortune alongside porn sites, gambling sites and us. By “thrilled” I mean it in much the same way as any sane person would cheer an outbreak of Ebola in their neighborhood.

His decision isn't just about money, however. In a later post Jay is a Joke hits the nail on the head again. Jay's doing what's good for Jay, not what's good for the business.

The citation of Jay’s resignation due to “newspapers are dying” is bogus. Not that long ago, the pundit bemoaned over the supposed illegitimate blogging ways of those dreaded Internet creatures. And rather than stay on board and fight the good battle alongside Rick Telander to preserve the newspaper business, Mariotti fled. “Courage of conviction”? I think not. His former colleagues were not fooled and neither is the reading public of this city.

As a media researcher and former professional, I just want to echo Mariotti's critics. Newspapers are facing a change - that is certain. But to say they are dead and everything's gonna be Web sites is shortsighted and probably premature. Newspapers need the best people in line to help them through the transition to help them maintain their credibility and give audiences someone to trust to give them the straight scoop. Obviously, Mariotti isn't one of them.

But he does teach those of us who still care about the business a valuable lesson. Now is not the time to give up! Now is the time to look at what we do best, what we are trained as journalists to do, and find a way that we can keep doing it online. Maybe this doesn't mean we are the only sources for news now. Maybe it even means we read and (gasp!) quote from a blog here and there. Maybe we even open our news pages up to (gasp, gasp!) citizen stories and comments. But there's no reason to trade away the credibility we have left (enough credibility to get you a $6 million over three year contract) just because no one is playing by our rules anymore.

CROSS POSTED at The Cyberbrains

For his birthday my son got the peanut butter and jelly game from a friend. It's a fun game that he and his three-year-old sister really like, but when the four of us sat down to play it together, we ran into a dilemma. We got to a point where we all had two of the three sandwiches you need to win, but there were no bread cards left in the deck. We were left with ant and fly cards. When this happens, as Ryan W, who goes by Maxac on the Board GAme Geek forums, so eloquently put it, you're screwed:

"The game becomes an endless tedious cycle of all of the players stealing/blocking each other, making the chance for the stars to align and a single player to win very small."

The only reason I found Maxac's review was I went online to see if we were missing a rule somewhere. Online FAQs about game rules that creators didn't envision when they initially created the games are staples in the collectible trading card game universe. Just look at the long list of Magic: The Gathering rule interpretations. Wizards of the Coast doesn't have to publish this, (The wiki that fans have created may be even better.) but their effort to use the power of the Internet helps them connect and forge strong relationships with fans of the game. In fact, you could say this willingness to adapt has made Magic the highly competitive and popular game it is.

Now, I know that the Peanut Butter and Jelly Game probably wasn't intended to be played competitively, but Fundex makes a lot of other games. I might be more likely to buy those others if I felt the company listened to my concerns about the first one. To be fair, the company's site does have an e-mail address for customer service, but am I really going to write customer service about whether my ant can steal a jelly card from another player's completed sandwich?

My point is that it wouldn't be hard to create an FAQ on the site for each game. It would be even easier to create a wiki and allow the fans to answer questions themselves. But like so many other brick-and-mortar companies, it looks like Fundex doesn't get it.

(On a side note, the Peanut Butter and Jelly Game doesn't have a wikipedia entry yet. Maybe I should start one?)

In case you missed it, I just wanted to point out my updated banner. I needed something to make my blog's name a little more clear. I threw this together pretty quickly (instead of studying for my comprehensive exams), and even with my limited Photoshop skills (I'm still using version 6), I think it looks OK. It's simply a collage of some of the pictures I took during my career.

Yes, the dude in the middle is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. One of the highlights of my career was covering his visit to Fort Irwin, Calif. He's not as intimidating as I thought he'd be.

The others are kind of random shots, and I can give you their back stories if you are curious. Just ask in a comment, and I'll oblige. I love telling war stories, even though there's not a lot of war in them. They're mostly about funny elderly people and goofy features, but I don't mind. I had a lot of fun as a reporter.

I also have to say, in answer to my own question, the more I play with SimplePHP blog, the more I like it. It was easy to put the new banner up, once I figured out I had to clear out my cache to see it. I also added myself as a new user so all my posts don't say they are written by "administrator." I'll keep you updated on other new things I find.

I never used to believe my teachers when they said I could do anything I set my mind to. I wanted to write the great American novel, I told them, but getting it published required the "perfect storm" of skill, luck, and contacts. Well, maybe it's the delusion of studying for comps setting in, but I've started to believe them lately. In fact, this belief informs all my research.

I preach a lot about how the Internet has removed the barriers to entry that once existed preventing regular guys like me from publishing their masterpieces, but I don't think I do a good enough job of backing that premise up. Sure I could launch into the scholarly works of Sheizaf Rafaeli or Robert LaRose and Matthew Eastin, but I don't need to when I found all of these gems from combing through my friends sites. I'll add more as I find them.

Cakewrecks
Eric's Planes

By the way, a word of advice. When your blog starts taking off, make sure you make a claim on Technorati. Look, I did it below!

Technorati Profile

I wonder what kind of trackbacks I'll get from this ...

I haven't been great at keeping my resolution, which I should have expected. I'm easily distracted. As I'm creating the syllabus for my class this fall (J4700: Online Journalism), I'm inspired again because I'm requiring my students to start a blog, and it gave me an interesting question to pose here: What blogging software or application is the best? Please sound off. I want to break my record of 1 comment. (Thanks Emily!!)

Here are your options:
I use SimplePHP blog mostly because that's what I learned in class. I do like that it's easily customizable IF you know a little PHP, which I don't really. I also like some of its other features such as ratings and auto tag discovery, but on a well-read blog like mine, they're not really getting used.

Next, there's the ever popular Blogger, which is what most of my friends use. It's nice and simple, and you aren't required to find someone to host your files. Hey, I like it too, don't get me wrong, but I'm wondering if some of you longtime Blogger (or Blogspot) users are frustrated with its lack of customization now that you know how to or want to do more.

Finally, there's Wordpress, which might be strike a middle ground between the two. You can actually download the software at Wordpress.org so you can customize to your heart's content, but you can also have the Wordpress folks host it for you for free. Tons of applications and development notes are available for it, but it again requires a little more effort to find and install them, often using html code.

Other options exist as well. I found this great link I'm sharing with my class if you are interested. I hadn't heard of Mephisto before, although Ruby on Rails did sound somewhat familiar. Take a look if you want, but mostly, I'd love to hear your opinions. They might make a difference on what my students are required to do this semester. I think I'm going to make them download and use WordPress. That's what we use at MyMissourian.