Rodney's Blog

[troone]

I had this image of Rodney sitting in the building of death recently, waiting for hours so that some CC weenie might come out and give him a no comment about Jennifer Reed's future or whatever -- and I felt badly for him. I realize no one here is curing cancer, but such a stakeout would try a man's soul.

Made me curious as to whether the radio execs enjoy having the radio blog around or if they wish it would die. On one hand, its a way of getting "Jingle Jam" and "Wasn't Jeff Dauler a bad boy today" out to the public but it's also a nuisance to the execs when they're firin' and flippin'. Not that any of us care about their agitation.

Myself, I enjoy reading it and miss the weekly radio column in the paper. As for the format, the cheeky, off-hand style of the AJC blogs can be a little annoying. Ironically, the intention seems to be to counter the decline in paid circulation and make the online experience more participatory, but in the process, young readers confuse the blog sausage-making approach with what constitutes journalism. Can you imagine twenty years ago that Tom Hughes' "go to hell" email would have been printed by a reporter as the subject of that day's story? I mean, for some AJC columnists/reporters, being told off is a daily occurrence. No offense to Rodney -- those are his marching orders -- but will we see a day where all of Cynthia Tucker's hate email gets printed online?

That said, I gather the radio blog is a very popular on-line feature. I guess I wish on the slow days that the content was more enterprising. Maybe stories about how songs get added, radio business issues like how much do music stations pay to ASCAP/BMI for music licensing, or even jock horror stories/ how they get started, etc.

Lot of potential, I think.

 

[middlega]

Maybe stories about how songs get added, radio business issues like how much do music stations pay to ASCAP/BMI for music licensing, or even jock horror stories/ how they get started, etc.

FWIW, I think that's actually one of the better ideas I've seen on this forum in quite a while.

I'm picturing some sort of "irregular feature" along the lines of Radio 101 type topics, stuff that people inside the business know & take for granted but that isn't always common knowledge (or at least isn't always correctly understood) by those outside the business who have an interest in the topic.

Just my unsolicited .02 worth.

 

[rodneyho]

Troone: I appreciate your thoughts. And you're right. I could do more enterprising work for the blog, no doubt about that. But I still have the print paper to deal with so I can't spend all my time on it. Plus, I do the "American Idol" blog, too. And yes, the blog is definitely an odd, make-it-up-as-we-go-along entity. It's not pure journalism by old-school definitions. It's an amalgam of many things but enables me to feed my radio geekness to the fullest and provides the Atlanta radio market more scrutiny than most radio markets get.

As for the blog when it started in September 2004, I was given no particular marching orders. I've just been doing it more or less organically. So please, email me blog item ideas at [email protected] I could use on slow days. I'd be happy to pursue them when I have time! And yes, it is one of the more popular blogs on ajc.com. I know Get Schooled, Momania, Misadventures in Dating and Jim Wooten's blogs all do very well (as well as many of the sports ones.)