Raven Writings

Death of a Newspaper

2009-03-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

The Rocky Mountain News closed its doors last month. This newspaper was Denver's oldest. When the workers heard the news they were devastated. The closing was due to declining subscriptions caused by more and more people getting their news online, a common trend in newspapers everywhere. The trend was made especially hard on The Rocky because Denver was one of the few remaining "two newspaper towns", home to both The Rocky and its rival The Denver Post. Mike Littwin, a well-known columnist, was one of the few on staff who had another job waiting. He was hired by The Denver Post after The Rocky closed. Mike says he still feels guilty that he survived when so many of his former colleagues are without a newspaper job. Kim Humphreys however, was one of the unlucky ones who had no other job waiting. Kim was a copy editor for The Rocky. The story is not all bad though. Kim and about a dozen other former Rocky staffers joined with three local entrepreneurs to launch InDeverTimes.com, a partially subscription-based site aimed at Denver residents. The site will offer free news, but subscribers will have to pay $4.99 a year to get access to special content such as reporter's columns, live chats, and multimedia options.

This story really touched me. I guess it's because my fiance is a journalist and works for her college's newpaper so I've spent quite a bit of time in the newsroom and I've seen the relationships that form between the staff. I just think its amazing that these people are willing to forgo looking for another job to put their time and money into doing what they love most with the people they love doing it with. They could have easily given up and gone on to other things but instead they are striving to keep the spirit of The Rocky alive in a new online medium.

You can hear the full story as I heard it by clicking Here.

Movies, potholes, and jazz piano

2009-03-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

I went to the movies Thursday night to see the new movie "I Love You, Man" starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel. This has to be the best movie I've seen since "Role Models", which coincidentally also stars Paul Rudd. I don't think five minutes went by without me laughing. I think this may be my new favorite movie. I would definitely recommend seeing it.

Also on Thursday I heard the news that KFC has given Louisville KY $3000 to fill in about 350 potholes. In exchange, KFC gets the right to put advertisements on the filled in holes. However, considering the type of paint they are using for these ads, they are only expected to last about two weeks before the traffic will rub them off completely. I would say this is a good idea for a company who wants to help out their community.

And finally, I want to talk about Eric Lewis. He is a jazz pianist who uses the raw emotion of alternative rock songs to create stunning jazz renditions of the songs. My first encounter with his music was when I came across the video below showing his version of Evanescence's Going Under and as you might imagine after watching it, I wasn't too impressed. Maybe that song is just too experimental for me and I just don't "get it", but there are parts of it that I like so I decided to give him another chance. I went to his website to see if he had any other songs and I actually like all of the songs he has playing there, especially the cover of Linkin Park's Breaking the Habit. I'm going to keep an eye on this guy. He seems to be rising in popularity pretty quickly. I have included another video below of a song I thought was much better.

Refugee Fishes

2009-03-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know, I work at an apartment complex getting vacant apartments ready to be leased. Anyway, the apartment I was sent to today had a fish tank left in it with several fish. Amazingly the fish were still alive even though the apartment had been vacant for about a month. I couldn't bring myself to just dump these poor fish in the dumpster to die so I rummaged through my car and found a couple empty water bottles. I then caught as many of the fish as I could and took them home. Sadly one of them died on the ride home, but the other four seem to be doing good. I guess I should start naming them. I'll have to ponder on that for a while.

I want to mention Netflix real quick. One DVD at a time and unlimited online watching for less than $10. Between this and the Redbox, how is Blockbuster still in business?

Next, I heard on the radio this morning that even after receiving more than $13 billion in taxpayer loans, GM's managers still get a couple extreme perks. They get a brand new car for free every six months AND get all the gas they want completely free. This is just ridiculous. The company claims the managers who receive these vehicles are required to provide crucial feedback that is used to correct flaws and to make the vehicles better. A former GM economist estimates that last year alone, the automaker spent nearly $12 million on fuel for its staff. These guys need to take their heads out of their asses and put that money towards bailing themselves out instead of charging taxpayers for it.

Lastly for today, I've heard that Obama plans to host an online town hall meeting this Thursday. Anyone can go onto Whitehouse.gov and submit questions about the economy to ask Obama. You can then vote for the top questions which Obama will answer in a live online video at 11:30 a.m. ET. Obama has used the internet and technology more than any president before him which has helped immensely in his popularity in the younger age groups who have grown up in the internet age. This truly is the beginning of a new era.

Of Beginnings and Compatibility Issues

2009-03-24T21:06:00.002-07:00

Lately I've been feeling the urge to do something meaningful, and while starting a blog is probably not all that meaningful, at least it fulfills the "doing something" part. Alaina (my amazing fiance for those of you who dont' know) recently got her own Macbook which means I'm no longer sharing mine with her. And since my life consists of becoming obsessed with one thing or another for a short while before moving on to something else, I've delved into the whole internet experience. I've been reading blogs and news and watching videos and wasting way more time than I probably should on Facebook. I have to admit, I was mostly inspired to start this blog by the Nerdfighters and Brotherhood 2.0 which spawned the nerdfighters. In fact there is a small possibility that if I continue doing this it may become a video blog.

Speaking of videos, I went to the Aquarium in Jenks, OK with Alaina and Lily, a little girl we were babysitting. I took quite a bit of video and Alaina took mass amounts of pictures. I am planning on putting the video and photos together to make a sort of video montage. I would already have it done but my camera is stupid and only records in .asf format, a strictly Windows video file so I had to track down a converter to make it a Quicktime movie so I can import it into iMovie. I am currently waiting on it to finish converting. But I promise I'll try to finish it soon and put it on here for all of you to see.