Pinch-hitting on Sound Off

I've returned to my roots this past week in The Californian newsroom, playing daily editor in backstopping the vacationing John Arthur. 

With that editor role comes the privilege of publicly responding to reader complaints, compliments and other feedback in our Sunday Sound Off column. I used to write Sound Off regularly when I was The Californian's managing editor, but these days it's a gig that comes around just a few times a year. 

This edition of Sound Off is typical, responding to two readers' completely different takes on our recent series on foreign doctors, questions about our priorities in sports, and suggestions on our sourcing on healthcare coverage. 

RIP: The Word

I'm still numb two days after learning The Word magazine is closing shop. 

As I tweeted on Friday, "I am heartbroken."

I had just gotten a letter in the mail a few days ago from Word editor Mark Ellen thanking me "for renewing my subscription and, obviously, congratulations on your impeccable taste." Like a lot of things in The Word, the use of the word "obviously" was not only clever but understood. 

I've been through this kind of magazine death before with Trouser Press and later Musician, but it's been decades since both those magazines closed. This is a fresh wound. 

I read a lot of music publications, but I guarantee I won't feel the same if Rolling

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Breaking Promos puts small business in spotlight

As part of our increased focus on affordable and innovative advertising vehicles, The Bakersfield Californian has launched Breaking Promos, a Twitterlike tool that connects our audiences directly to small-business advertisers. 

Breaking Promos launched Monday on Bakersfield.com, and we're working to roll the feature out to rest rest of our sites on The Bakersfield.com Network. 

The think Breaking Promos ticker scrolls deals across the bottom of local websites. The concept is simple: Local businesses can log into our self-serve system using their Twitter handle, buy digital tokens that can be redeemed as 140-character promotional posts, or so-called Breaking Promos. Those Breaking Promos go live in the Twitterstream but more importantly appear in a ticker that scrolls at the bottom of our websites.

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