On Thursday mornings, we used to find the “community” edition of the Tampa Tribune at the bottom of our driveway. We didn’t ask for it, it just showed up.

The small tab with what newspaper journalists call “chicken dinner news” was not really given to you out of concern for community, but a decent way to get advertising into the hands of the Tampa Tribune’s non-subscribers. The community news wasn’t very exciting, but at least gave us some insight about what some of your neighbors were up to.

Of course that facade of “community” ended (for us, anyway) some time back. I assume the cost to produce the 24 page tab was too much for stockholders, and it switched to something insiders call Tampa Tribune – TMC.

This replacement is an 8-page kraft wrap that no longer even attempts to disguise itself as anything other than an advertising vehicle. Instead of the “Carrollwood News,” or something, it is simply titled “Trib Clips,” that some coupon clippers love, but have nearly zero journalistic value. It simply allows the Trib an relatively inexpensive way to get ads in your hands. Well, not necessarily in your hands, but rather in your driveway, strewn across your yard, and mashed into your street.

The circulation department delivers this thing every week, PERIOD. On vacation? It’s there. Moved out? The new owners get it. Foreclosed and abandoned for six months? You’ll find a pile of crap 26 issues high.

Hey Trib: If you are not going to stop delivering the newspaper, and you’re not going to stop using single-use bags, the LEAST you could do is take notice when your piles of garbage begin growing.

By the way: I took a trash bag with me, and after taking the photos linked above, made sure they all made it into our recycle bin.

You’ll remember that St. Pete Times columnist Sue Carlton denounced using single-use bags at the grocery store, and supports banning them. But a recent DEP report suggests a public education campaign is as good as an outright ban, and she is disappointed. Still, she is hopeful you will take it upon yourself to bring your own reusable bags to the grocery store.

Not surprisingly, a Tampa Tribune editorial is happy government isn’t banning plastic bags. And even though we pointed out that your newspaper subscription is delivered in a plastic bag every single day, the focus is always on grocery stores:

Chances are, when you go to the grocery store today you’ll chose plastic, and the bags will end up in the trash or littering the landscape, creating trouble for Florida’s natural resources, wildlife and public infrastructure.

Like our friend Sue, the Trib goes on to tell us that these plastic bags are pure evil:

… bags have become a nuisance, especially plastic ones. They have caused equipment malfunctions at recycling facilities and landfills, according to DEP. People thoughtlessly litter the landscape with them and the wind blows them away from landfills. And, alas, the plastic bags are durable, making them a persistent polluter.

They can harm animals that eat them and clog stormwater ponds, lines and ditches, creating drainage problems.

But the Trib tells us we don’t need a ban, we simply need YOU CONSUMERS and YOU OTHER BUSINESSES to man up and take care of this:

… merchants and consumers can address this environmental offender without a ban, requiring customers to pay “deposits” for bags or enacting fees, which were among the options DEP gave the Legislature. Lawmakers also should consider substantially increasing fines for littering… Concerned citizens and motivated retailers can solve this problem without government dictates…

“Motivated retailers” can clean it up? How about hypocritical businesses, such as the St. Pete Times and Tampa Tribune? What are these corporations doing to help?

My family chooses to use reusable bags, and I don’t know if a ban on single-use bags is the right idea or not. But I’m certainly tired of newspaper people scolding us without even acknowledging their significant part in the problem.

I do not like those bags, the litter, the waste.

… In this country we use billions of them a year, bags that can kill marine life and clog stormwater pipes, not to mention littering land and sea.

She suggests that if somehow forced (banned or taxed), we would “get used to” bringing our own bags to the grocery stores and retail outlets.

I wonder if she realizes that her employer, the St. Pete Times uses 160 tons of paper every day (2006). It takes between 12 and 24 trees to make a ton of paper, so a conservative estimate of 12 trees and 140 tons (circulation is down since ‘06), the Times uses about 1,680 trees a day. Every Single Day.

Oh, and to deliver, the company tucks that newspaper into a single-use plastic bag every day of the week.

That might be a good place to start, Sue. If you force your customers to read only on the internet, you’d save trees and plastic bags. We would “get used to” it.

Let us know how that goes.

PS: You can make a grocery bag out of your old newspapers (or buy one).

The housing authority is using surplus revenue from rent at its Palm Lake Village complex. Funneling money to help the homeless is part of a shift in priorities…

Someone over at the Times may have read that and thought: “I bet those folks over at Palm Lake Village are really rankled!” Perhaps some excited editor told DeCamp – “Go over to Palm Lake Village, tell them that their rent money is going to help the homeless, and get some quotes. Hurry – I’ve already got a headline for it – I’m using ‘rankle’.”

That dreamed-up scenario may (or may not) have been the impetus for this week’s Times follow up: Money for homeless tent city rankles residents paying higher rent.

If you read the whole story, you will find exactly ONE person who was complaining, and my guess is that Betty Hover, 74, did not call the newspaper to alert them of how upset she was. In fact, if you read Betty’s quotes, she is not complaining for herself, but concerned about OTHER people living there…

there are people that live in Palm Lake Village that could really use more help, and they‘re not getting it,” said Hover, a three-year resident there. “And their living conditions could be improved with this money, and they’re not getting it.”

Renters at Palm Lake Village are subsidized by the authority, and rent for Betty recently went up $15 to $435 a month. By going after this poor woman in this manner, the Times makes her sound like an ingrate.

Nonetheless, the Times got their headline, filled up a few inches of newsprint on a non-story, and online readers are having a field day picking on 74-year-old Betty Hover.

It’s your Times…

We are especially pleased to note the Tribune report includes new albums that have recently been featured at MTB and SOF.  These include the new album, Tainted, by Judy Tampa and Bunko Squad, and Come Out of the Rain by Leigh Humes, both of whom are being featured this week with one track every hour by both artists, who are also both planning CD release events this weekend in Tampa. The Tribune report also included Steve Vaclavik’s latest CD, The Roof Needs More, a recent MTB feature artist and part of the first live streaming event ever on Music Tampa Bay just a couple of weeks ago.

What is interesting in the Tribune’s list are those new CD’s by artists that were not mentioned, including the current release by Richard MacLemale called Every Single Day, which was also part of the live streaming webcast in late October, and Have Gun Will Travel, also with a new album release event planned this weekend in Ybor City, though the newspaper list did include the group’s previous CD release, Casting Shadows Tall as Giants.

A number of Bay area artists who also told us they have new CDs include Fremont John (Guitar Songs), Bob Lever and Crossbridge, with a new CD called Rumor Has It that will be featured in coming weeks, Soulshaker Wendy Rich and her new album called Driver, and smooth jazz maestro Winfield Davis and a new album called Bass and Beyond.

Other new albums not mentioned in the published report include CDs by David J. Potts, The Double M Band, Francillia, and the artist who has been heard recently describing himself as “the artist formerly known as Molten Mike”, soon to be releasing an album under his given name, Michael Deselle.

In addition to new albums, Music Tampa Bay has also learned of new singles or collections of singles by Rich Whitely’s Earth Bombs Mars, Dean Johansen’s Human Condition, Cindy and Frank LaRosa’s North 2 South, Just Plain Folks driving force Jerry Jakala, recent MTB feature artist Alex Wolfe Parnes, and a new artist in the MTB playlist, Bill Flatch.

We here are grateful to the Tampa paper for compiling its latest list of new music by local artists, including the online version which also has an impressive list of past releases.  The Tribune’s summary of new music by local artists is a tribute to the enormous pool of great talent in the Tampa Bay music scene, and an encouraging sign that original music by local artists deserves greater recognition by the mainstream media.  We hope big media will continue to update and report on the creative effort by local artists all around Tampa Bay.

And of course, all these artists have a home, all day, everyday, on Tampa Bay’s online source for all original music by local artists all the time, Music Tampa Bay.com.

According to the story at the Business Journal, the St. Pete Times lost more than 10% of its subscribers in the past year, while the Tampa Tribune is down almost 19% for daily subscriptions.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune lost most than 16 percent of its daily subscribers, The Ledger in Lakeland had an 11 percent drop in daily subscribers, and the Bradenton Herald circulation dropped 10 percent.

I have included links to each of the newspapers’ websites. We hope that those folks no longer getting the paper delivered will continue to read online. We should all know what’s going on in our local communities, and not many sources give you the depth as newspapers traditionally have.

I searched twitter’s updates for “USF,” and found lots of items being “reported” by lots of folks.  But I wanted info I could depend on, and the first name I recognized as having any authority was USF’s student-run newspaper, The Oracle – on twitter, @USFOracle.

That 140 character missive led me to the USF Oracle blog, which led me to the home page for USF, which at the time was covered with official updates of the scene at the school – the same stuff sent to students’ cell phones.

The Oracle did a very good job getting the information out to those of us interested.  Coverage included 28 twitter updates, a handful of which pointed to The Oracle News Blog, which had nine fuller entries about each individual new tidbit they received about the ongoing incidents.

The Oracle’s only downfall is that the timestamps on the blog are inaccurate.  For instance, the gunman was first reported by them just after 2pm, but the timestamp says 6:17pm.  The “all clear” was reported and published at 4:34pm.  The result is that the main blog page is not in chronological order, which is unacceptable.  (Hey Oracle Editors – go to your WordPress dashboard – main settings, and correct the time zone.)

Still, they updated more often, and had more accurate information than the professional media outlets.  I checked website and twitter feeds of other local news outlets.  Here’s how they used ‘em:

Generally, local media used their websites to report one single story that they continued to edit, add to, and update all day.  The exception was 10connects, who gave us two separate updating stories.

Most of them used twitter to keep followers updated, point to those main stories, and sometimes ask for information from any followers near the scene.

NewsChannel 8 (@wflatampa) had only two twitter updates, both pointing to TBO’s single page of the evolving story.

The St. Pete Times (@tampabaycom) had four news updates, and three requests for information.  Only one tweet referred the their single story.

Fox 13 (@myfoxtampabay) had six twitter updates, the first of which included a plea for “anyone with updates.”  Four of them pointed to their single constantly updating story.

10connects (@10connects) gave twitter readers six updates, four of which directed readers to two separate updating stories.

TBO (@tbocom)had eight updates on twitter, four with links to a single updating story, and one with a request for “You there?  Tell us” more.

Bay News 9 (@BN9) issued nine tweets, eight of them linking to a single updating story.  They also issued one clarification.  Near then end of it all, they also included a link to a submission by a USF student who was there.

The twitter page of ABC Action News (@abcactionnews) included eight news updates, each linking to the same updating story.  In addition to the news updates, there were three explanations as to why they reported USF had the “all clear” before the “all clear” was given, and two clarifications regarding the fact that multiple incidents were reported.  One additional tweet asked if anyone was on campus, and could they send the TV station some pictures.

Side note:  I’m sure he wasn’t the only journalist doing this, but TBO’s Howard Altman (@haltman) was desperately trying to find anyone on campus who could provide info, or take photos or video, issuing 20 pleas for assistance in under 2 hours.

In a tense situation where news and rumors were flying around crazily, USF’s The Oracle used the tools at their fingertips (twitter, blog) to create a clear picture of events that were unfolding in real time.   Once the dust settled, their reporter put together a complete story that was published this morning on the main Oracle website.

Note that while the professionals announced from 5 to 10 bits of information, leading to a full story, the amateurs relayed 37 updates while putting the story together.

A great example of how reporting breaking news should be done in this “now is too late” age.

This year’s winner for Tampa Bay’s Best Local Blog is WEDNESDAY-MUSIC!!!  For those that don’t know ‘em, WEDNESDAY-MUSIC has been “saving the world from bad music since last wednesday,” although they have actually  been around since the start of 2008.

The site has a simple mission.  Each week – on Wednesday, of course – they review an album from an artist around the world, while always encouraging us to support independent record stores.

Congratulations to WEDNESDAY-MUSIC for winning Creative Loafing’s 2009 Best of the Bay Best Local Blog!

Runners-up include Artsqueeze, a “visual arts blog written by Megan Voeller, freelance writer and new media enthusiast” and Sticks of Fire, the steaming pile of nonsense you are reading now.

Short for spam blogs, splogs take and use content created by someone else to attract search engines in the hopes that users click their site to increase traffic (and therefore ad revenue).  Here area couple examples of splog.

Now wait, tommy – you are constantly linking to real journalists.  Isn’t that the same thing?

Not quite.  I certainly do link – often – to real journalists, and I also grab a few lines in stories from traditional media.  But in most (if not all) of these, I add my own thoughts or findings.  “Fair use” is what we’re talking about, and this is what allows parody, satire, and opinion to flourish.

The trick is that to be considered fair, the US Copywrite Office says the new work must have a specific purpose, “such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research” (read the part about Section 107).

To be sure, “fair use” is somewhat subjective.  Over the past year, the Associated Press has been aggressive in trying to expand intellectual property rights in an attempt to give their member newspapers greater protection.

In some cases, individual newspapers are sending “Cease & Desist” letters to bloggers if they feel those bloggers unfairly use their information.

All of this will wind through the courts eventually, but in the meantime, it’s been made pretty clear that we bloggers can’t simply cut & paste an entire article and stick it on our website without express written consent.  This should be true even if we announce “This article was originally written by A. Real Journalist at Ye Olde Newspaper,” AND we include a link to the online version.

Yet TBO.com has been doing that to bloggers.

In June, Michael Hussey noticed a post of his was republished on TBO.com.  And then just last week Alex Pickett and zencomix Dave – a couple of other writers from the Pushing Rope blog network – found their posts being lifted in their entirety and published on TBO.com – without permission.  We found the same thing was happening with Sticks of Fire, Lakeland Local, and plenty of other blogs.

So on Friday, I wrote to TBO’s director of online content, Loren Omoto, asking for an explanation.  In an email response, Loren said that he never knew about it:

don’t know of any place on the site where we’re publishing complete blog content — or anything beyond a headline, summary graf and link to the original post. If that’s happening, it’s unintentional.

This has been going on at TBO since late April.  And TBO’s Director of Content claims he was unaware of the content on TBO for over four months.  His defense is that they are not evil, just stupid.

I replied back saying that wasn’t good enough.  Even just a “headline, summary graf and link to the original post is not enough to constitute fair use – at the very least, you need permission.”

At 9pm, I got another email from Loren saying that they had:

… turned off all incoming content until we can get this to display the way we want, and the existing items have been truncated…

Apparently, Loren still doesn’t get it.  It’s not about properly displaying the work of others.  It’s about a supposedly ethical multi-million dollar entity stealing the work of others.

In that regard, Pushing Rope’s Michael Hussey started a facebook group:  Tampa Tribune: Start Paying Bloggers.  Join the group if your writing has been used without your permission.

I’m sure we’ll hear more about this in the coming days.