Havelock Scoop

As newspapers strive to bolster their online presence, more of my Freedom ENC Communications colleagues are blogging. Here are a few newer blogs that pique my interest.

Huff’s World — Sun Journal sports editor Jess Huffman shares his perspective on local and national sports — and the task of reporting on them.

Press Play — Jose Perez of the Kinston Free Press writes this interesting and insightful technology blog.

Lost in K-Town – The Free Press’ Phillip Ameling provides a newcomer’s view of life in Kinston and eastern North Carolina.

Off the Cuff — Jacksonville Daily News crime reporter Lindell Kay discusses Onslow County crime in this, ahem, arresting blog.

For a more or less complete listing of Freedom ENC’s staff blogs, click here.

HaveNews.com, the online home of the Havelock News, premiered its new look today. All Freedom ENC newspapers are getting a facelift in order to make information easier to find and more attractive for our readers.

Along with the new look comes a homepage link to the Havelock Scoop, so I’ll try to update more frequently as Web traffic to the blog increases. Your blog comments, e-mails and phone calls are always welcome!

There’s no right to freedom from offense. There’s no right to freedom from offense. There’s no right to freedom from offense. There’s no right to freedom from offense. There’s no r…
 
If that’s a smidgen repetitive for you, you’re probably not in government. Can’t say it enough times to penetrate the ponderous skulls of the well-meaning lunkheads we put in office.
 
A Missouri teen hanged herself last year after receiving insulting MySpace messages purportedly from a teen boy. Earlier messages from the profile, which had been created by a neighborhood woman and accessed by the girl’s classmates and at least one mother, suggested the fake boy had a crush on the teen.

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Some folks are wondering why so many comments on a story about Havelock’s deputy police chief being placed on leave have mysteriously disappeared.

Technical glitches affecting many (if not all) Freedom ENC Communications Web sites caused many stories to appear without the comment form yesterday. Most of the comments seem to be restored as of 12:10 p.m. today, but I think some are gone for good.

Just thought I’d refresh everyone’s memory about story comments. We at the Havelock News do not moderate the comments, that task is left to readers. You can click “Remove” when you encounter something that violates our code of ethics. When enough readers flag a comment, it is removed immediately.

Can this self-policing tool be abused by people who simply disagree with a commenter’s argument? Sure. But, we hope cooler heads will prevail.

Andre Gide admonishes me to “Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”

Bertrand Russell chimes in: “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts.”

These zingers were accompanied by links to seedy Web sites and posted as comments to the Havelock Scoop. Because all comments must be approved before they show up, you don’t have the dubious benefit of seeing all the spam I get to wade through.

Most spam comments are purely advertisements, but these stood out from the pack. The sales pitches came with punchy, poignant quotes — pearls of wisdom from porcine spammers. Now I’ve seen everything.

The piggyback ride is over.

Fair Isaac, the company that conjures FICO credit scores, will no longer apply cardholders’ good credit to those listed as authorized users on the account, The Consumerist reported today.

Commonly known as piggybacking, the practice of becoming an authorized user on a parent’s, spouse’s or relative’s card to artificially inflate your credit score is no longer worthwhile. Authorized users will no longer get credit for a cardholder’s good payment history.

Humbug, Fair Isaac, humbug. How else are folks my age supposed to buy their first homes…that is, without paying 18 percent interest on a parasitic mortgage extended by First National Bank of Transylvania?

Are you tired of providing valuable sales data to supermarket and retail chains in exchange for the measly few-cents discount that’s widely advertised as the regular sale price? Then maybe, The Consumerist suggests, you should be swapping loyalty cards.

Each store has its own cutesy moniker for the memberships — Food Lion’s MVP Card, Harris Teeter’s VIC Card, etc. — but the function of each is the same: Find out what people are buying. Discover which advertisements seem to work. Understand the mind of the average consumer.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d rather not do any heavy lifting for these billionaire companies without some remuneration. If you want to pay me to shop and provide you with that data as a marketing specialist, fine, but my entire purchase history from now until eternity in exhcange for 10 cents off canned pineapple? Raw deal.

If you feel the same, Consumerist links to a Web site allowing supermarket subversives to trade their cards and scramble the data trail.

To the consternation of language purists everywhere, iPod thieves are now coloquially known as iJackers, thanks to the “Dateline NBC” special, “To Catch an iJacker.”

Presumably a takeoff of the show’s successful “To Catch a Predator,” the iJacker episode featured NBC producers leaving Apple’s pricey portable media players unattended in shopping malls and on convertible dashboards. Folks would walk up and swipe the iPods, but the doctored software included with the like-new gadgets would copy user data to NBC when and if the devices were registered.

The Dateline gang tracked down its prey and confronted the so-called iJackers and others who wound up with the iPods after the thieves sold or gave them away. An entertaining premise, to say the least, but I wish they could have resisted creating yet another irritating iBuzzword.

By the way, handheld mp3/digital video players without the benefit of Apple’s sleek styling and slick marketing work just as well and cost half as much.

North Carolina’s own Roy Cooper is leading a charge of state attorneys general who want stricter controls on MySpace and other social networking Web sites, the Associated Press reported.

Cooper and others are calling for stringent verification methods before new users are approved, including a requirement that children demonstrate parental approval before opening an account on MySpace or a similar Web site.

Sounds reasonable enough, at first blush. But consider the words of Hugh Stevens, a Raleigh attorney quoted in the AP story. (Disclosure: Stevens is also lead counsel for the N.C. Press Association, of which the Havelock News is a member.) He compares networking sites to brick-and-mortar buildings — like the ice cream parlor he uses in this parable:

“In theory, this is like a rule where the government might come in and say, ‘Well, we think sexual predators might hang around this store, so you can’t go there and buy ice cream without a note from your parents,” he said.

Food for thought.

Sorry about the extremely large type that’s cluttering up the once-clean look of the Havelock Scoop. I must have accidently changed a default setting. I’m trying to fix it as we speak, but I haven’t a clue how to make the text nice and normal again.

Blogging will probably be sparse until I get this fixed, but please check back in a couple days.

UPDATE (3:34 p.m. July 17) - Thanks to the efforts of Shana Norris of the Freedom Interactive team, that irritatingly large type has been exorcised from the Havelock Scoop. I’ll now try to resume daily postings.