E-Slam on the Rise in the Western World, It's NOT about Islam

I am responding on behalf of Mike Gomez, Editor of the West Coast Midnight Run. First of all thank you for even taking the time in critiquing the press release. I have taken the trouble to read the small quote from Ms. Didion you have in your profile:

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear." - Joan Didion

But your question about what is newsworthy in this press release begs the question what exactly is newsworthy when every week on CNN we see Lou Dobbs covering the same story, The Battle Against Middle Class Americans, what exactly is newsworthy when MSNBC/MSN, Yahoo and other Internet publisher regularly publish excerpts on the decaying environment. Has much changed since the report I read last week? or the one I read a few weeks before it?

The West Coast Midnight Run felt it was newsworthy to publish a segment on the excesses of the Internet, not just the internet on circuits and transistors but the Internet hardwired between your ears. At least that is just my superficial read on IT.  Now how we do IT is left to style and editorial license. We believe using the cookie cutter approach is corrosive for original expression or for artistic license.

The who and where and when is when a reporter is reporting on a 6 O'clock soundbyte, on a person being chased on the freeway, a cat stuck in a tree, or an immediate accident or event. In this case we are reporting on a trend that has been building up since the 70s and in our opinion has reached saturation levels.

This is a press release for a magazine segment so we beg your forgiveness and your patience with our style for journalism and magazine reporting.

  citadelmedia,  The Press release is in the wrong section.  Politics is an inappropriate section for this content.  We have a section for PR.  Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. Although the term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments (from Wikipedia)  I am commenting here because, we want your writing to be successful.   The website you are referring to is very interesting. I am concerned that you may be self promoting a product for sale. If so you have come to the wrong place.  NowPublic is a news environment with the ability to build on your story from others within the community.  How about a story on your current issue or Share a portion of the issue in the entertainment section.  I have noticed two stories from you on NP both are some form of redirecting reader to another website.

I am writing on behalf of the editor of the West Coast Midnight Run.  Thank you for finally making note of the fact that this is a PRESS RELEASE and not a story.  The editorial offices of the West Coast Midnight Run do not accept pointers on EDITING an already published story.  The publisher, Citadel Consulting Group LLC, does not allow moderators of blogs to edit our own press releases due to best practices (corporate policies).

I checked with our assistant editor and while you have a drop down menu marked Press Release I was informed this option was not functionally available on the drop down menu when the installation of the press release was made (on your website).  We selected POLITICS since this segment deals with political and social issues on an international scale and this option was available at the time of installing the content.

On the topic of self-promotion, if I may say so, news media, magazines, film, movies, if produced with quality, are self-promoting so I don't really understand the nature of your comment.

By definition a PRESS RELEASE is produced and distributed to inform the public as to a new story, informational or entertainment programming content of a newspaper or newsmagazine nature or for a heads up on an upcoming segment.  That is, at least how I understand, what a Press Release is designed for.

If you are alluding to the original blurb introduction "How The West Coast Midnight Run Was Conquered" it was a short paragraph which we wrote to introduce your readers to our publisher and the source of our stories.

WE WERE INVITED TO POST CONTENT ON NOWPUBLIC FROM ONE OF YOUR OWN EDITORS.  If you would like to see a copy of the original email our offices received I would be happy to send you a copy.  Simply forward your office fax number.

If NowPublic is interested in having us post excerpts of the magazine segments we would be delighted.  That was our intent this week with I want My MDD.  Unfortunately your moderators have been bagdering us about wanting us to edit and improve the content of a PRESS RELEASE.

I am very glad someone finally realized the difference between PRESS RELEASE and story.

We cannot write stories for NowPublic and I am an operational manager.  Our columnists and reporters write exclusively for the West Coast Midnight Run.  All original story content is available for readers on our own magazine websites.  We only post teasers, excerpts and press releases elsewhere. 

Finally despite this lengthy comment, allow me to congratulate your people on your diligence and efforts in keeping this publishing platform a place where quality content can be viewed or reviewed.  Some websites simply provide webspace bandwidth without any real active management.  While we appreciate your patience and latitude with our own policies we will do our best to accomodate your own to the best extent we can.

If you would like us to move this press release to a different section please let me know how this can be done.

Please let me know if there is anything else I can be of help with.

Tom Scolari, for the West Coast Midnight Run

There is something I forgot to mention.  We can add a small excerpt from the story "I want My MDD" but if you really take a good read through all of the pages you will realize it would be extremely difficult to do the segment justice.

Part of the reason is that in this particular instance, only due to the topic we explore in "I want My MDD", we use pages of advertising where the advertising itself and the commentary above it is part of the storyline.  We cannot post these pages here since NowPublic does not have a contract with our advertisers.

Please note that many of the images on the pages of this segment (and everywhere else on the magazine pages of the West Coast Midnight Run) are dynamically linked to other stories published earlier in the West Coast Midnight Run and the entire "serving of entrees" makes up the story itself and its social commentary with its different nuances.

A vital part of the story are the captions you can read if you move your mouse over the small page before clicking on it for the full-size layout.  We always get this complaint: "where are these captions?"  "where are these photo links to other stories?"  The browser needs to be Javascript enabled so the captions with the critical commentary can appear when you do a mouseover (when you move your mouse/pointer on top of them).

So while it would be our pleasure to post excerpts from this segment it would really be just the introductory page, a few photos, with a link to our pages for your readers to explore the entire story.

Please let me know if your senior managers approve of this approach.