Results tagged “sfgate”

Under the impression that online internet world wide webloggers are swiping their golden nuggets of wisdom without linkage, SFGate recently infused their site with inane cross-scripting nonsense that automatically adds a url link when you copy/paste any of the Gate's content. Basically, it's like a teddy bear cam for writers who use their site. It is, for lack of a better word, retarded.

We are highly offended that, in a headline, SFGate uses an acronym that includes a letter that stands for the word "fuck."

Well. Hm. So, it looks like the Getty brothers posted another web-log entry over the weekend. They write about drinking lemon juice. Or miracle fruit. Or liquid acid. We can't say for sure. But is Ed Harris telling them to write this stuff, then stick it in a secret mailbox? Because it's starting to look that way.

Conspiracy theorists freaked the holy hell out this morning over a piece penned by Phil Bronstein -- one that was critical of Gavin Newsom as California's next governor -- which was pulled. Or so it seemed. What happened was, local-politics fanboy types, like the anonymous ILoveGavinNewsom and journo Josh Wolf, accused SFGate of censoring the anti-Newsom bit. (While Wolf, a journalist by fame, didn't balls out accuse them of censorship, he retweeted the anonymous blog's assertion without consideration of the source.)

Oh wow. OK, don't be jealous, but one Mr. Peter Getty, it seems, responded to SFist's little ol' post about their new business venture: web-logging for SFGate. Behold:

This story may not beat the Napa gal who faked her cancer so that she could collect donations and disability, but it comes close! We find today, via SFGate's Mommy Files, that a Chicago Mommy blogger who went by the name of "B" and claimed to be carrying a terminally ill fetus to term, turns out to be one Becca Beushausen, a social worker from Mokena, Illinois who mostly just wanted to work through the loss of a child a few years ago by composing this fiction and finding readership. Her primary readership appears to have been abortion opponents who thought her willingness to carry out God's will by not aborting a baby that was likely to die within days of being born. And as the Chicago Tribune notes, it was only after Becca's posts got 50+ comments and she saw her traffic spike that she became addicted to the medium and let her lies get out of hand.

After more than 60 years of broadcasting in analog, television stations across the nation made the switch to digital today -- following on an Obama-mandated six-month delay so that more outreach could be done for people likely to be most affected, namely the elderly and rural poor. But interestingly, Ryan Kim who writes for the Chron's Technology Chronicles, will also be affected because he decided recently to go cable-less. This seems ironic given the fact that the Tech Chronicles' tagline is "News and views from the digital frontier" (emphasis ours). Ryan apparently has some trouble seeing NBC from where he lives in the Inner Sunset, and must concentrate his technology coverage on the digital frontiers outside of the TV sphere -- also, he appears excited by the idea of getting digital TV streamed on his mobile phone via Qualcomm's FLO TV. Why not have it on a ful screen, Ryan?

Dude.

It's rumored that 20 newsroom-based Media Workers Guild employees at the San Francisco Chronicle will be involuntarily laid off today. We're told that a union steward sent a message to its members recommending that, if they are indeed called to HR, to bring a guild representative with them to help protect their interests. Yikes.

Daring to go where no online writer in their right mind should ever, ever, ever go, SF Chronicle's Ryan Kim profiles SFGate's most "prolific" commenters, Kimble McSweeney, a Dallas resident. (!) During the first three months of 2009 alone, "McSweeney posted about 1,400 comments -- about 16 per day -- on a variety of stories." And much to our surprise, he's allegedly none too shabby when it comes to penning his thoughts on the Gate, or at least when compared to the others. (While not necessarily at the level of YouTube commenters, SFGate comments, much like arguing on the Internet, can lean toward the developmentally-disabled side -- or, as Kim too delicately puts it, "playground humor.")

In today's installment of "No One Cares About This Story, So Shut Up and Do Your Job, Journalists," artisan newspaper publication The New York Times -- which is having its own economic problems -- talks about SF Chronicle's demise. Among other things, it informs the public that the Hearst publication is not a serious newspaper, one that "more closely mirrored the city’s irreverent, politically liberal outlook."

So, your industry is collapsing. Hell, your is collapsing. So, what do you do?

Seeing as how the entire American Apparel-on-Valencia brouhaha was traffic gold -- and the Gate/Chron is on no financial position to turn down traffic -- it seemed like writing about the AA store meeting at City Hall was a given for most local pubs. Today, after reading a Tweet asking if the Chronicle planned on covering yesterday's American Apparel planning commission meeting, we asked political scribe Carla Marinucci and editor Audrey Cooper the following.

Chronicle film critic turned amateur psychologist Mick LaSalle has a lot to say about those filthy peons known as commenters. Mainly, that they suck. Hard. In his post "The Real You is the Anonymous You," LaSalle boasts that he never reads his stuff online, only in print. (In between leafing through a well-worn copy of Finnegans Wake, no doubt.) But by random chance, it seems, he ended up reading remarks on his year-end review piece, and was "struck by the belligerence and the willful stupidity of some of those comments." (Welcome to the club, angel. Can we get you a drink?) While he had initially dismissed comments as vessels for which people could play a character, LaSalle now reads them kernels of readers' true selves.

Things are getting prickly over in the anonymous tips section -- which, as you all well know, should be reserved for delicious tidbits of info only -- so we moved the discussion over here.

• Silicon Valley whores less than pleased with Viagra. [Valleywag]
• That Nina "Bad Wife" Reiser trial is still going on, and getting interesting. [SF Gate]
• The rules of PDA during dinnertime. [CHOW]

It was announced today that SF Chronicle's editor, Phil Bronstein, will be "shifting his role from running day-to-day operations in the newsroom to taking on broader strategic responsibilities at the paper and for its owner, Hearst Corporation." Whoa.

The body of the TGI Friday's manager--whose was found earlier this week by an employee inside the restaurant, making this San Mateo's first homicide since 2006--was identified as Douglas Castello, 36, "a mild-mannered guy with an infectious laugh." Reports claim that he was bludgeoned to death by a "blunt force type object." He was reportedly heading down the road toward marriage just before his death, "shopping for a promise ring in two weeks and had already bought tickets for an April cruise in Mexico," according to his choked-up girlfriend, Laura Johnson, 45.

Image credit: Signe's Blog

• School buses to run on waste grease from local restaurants. [SF Sentinel]
• 2007, as Chrissy from Newport Harbor: the Real OC might say, is "o-v-e, but the 'r' is not there yet." Totes, dude. Totes. [SFoodie, SFBG, CHOW, Gridskipper, Yelp]
• "Subprime" is your word of the year, or so says the Gate. [SF Gate]
• Tiger stuff. (An aside: Big-Cat Expert is perhaps the best job title in the world, ever.) [Examiner, SFBG]
• New Jersey bans sexual predators from the Internets. How very boring of them. [ValleyWag]
• A Sunday win by the Oakland Raiders could, like, make them be really super special. Or something like that. [Oakland Tribune]
• Best breakout performance: Mint Plaza. And more over at Curbed SF Awards 2007. [Curbed]
  Continue reading "Day Around the Bay"

We just heart reading Two Cents to find out what people on the streets of the Bay Area think about a wide range of local, national, and international topics.

-- Fallout from yesterday's tiger-ian death of 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. continues. [CBS 5, SFGate, Spotswood, FCJ, SF MetBlog, Peta (cuckoo!)]

In an effort to tame the trolls, SFGate's site (as well as a few others like ThinkProgress) use software from an outside company that implements a unique "block user" function. This feature blocks all comments made by a user from view by anyone but themselves (upon login). That is to say, whenever the quasi-banned user logs in to the site, they see their comments intact; but to everyone else, the offending comment is simply...

In today's world of Xtube and the like, Dennis Saunders -- Healdsburg's very own convicted peeping Tom, whose stash was confiscated by the police -- now wants his pornographic material back. And as one commenter pointed out on SF Gate, "Who in their right mind will pay for porn this day and age?"

Seeing as how the Summer of Love was the single most important event in the history of time and space, we thought it would be delightful of us to review a smattering of Summer of Love anniversary reviews for you. In no particular order, discover the music, elderly genitalia, and abundance of ATMs you missed.

-- Whole Foods might be in a whole mess of trouble. Federal regulators look over seven years worth of (not-so) anonymous, ethically-questionable financial site postings made by chief executive John Mackey, who apparently has never heard of an IP address. Dumbass. [AP via SF Gate] -- Elderly man shoots garbage truck because of the union lockout. But probably more so because of the sundry of shitty smells, senility. [KTVU] -- Tim Goodman talks about...

Last night when we and a few of our more tolerably-alcoholic friends took a break over at the St. Regis (why not?) -- which included SFist emerita and SF Gate/Chron rescuer Eve Batey for a few, short seconds -- we were jarred to find former San Francisco Mayor Willie Lewis Brown kicking it right next to us. It should go without saying that insouciance was seeping out of William's ears, nose, and ass. What's more, this precious SF-celeb encounter totally put last month's St. Regis B.D. Wong sighting to shame.

-Bay Area not the only place that's had an up-tick in violent crime-- everywhere else has too. It's just a little worse here. -And crime is also heading to the suburbs.

This just in ... the Glen Park BART station was shut down approximately an hour ago due to police activity, according to SF Gate. Seriously, it was not the "police activity" as described in the link above, it was just another suspicious package. We're always intrigued when we hear the announcements about "police activity on the BART system," because it could mean so many things, though we are so often disappointed because it usually turns out be either the aforementioned suspicious package or an obstreporous drunk person who has lost their BART ticket.

Wow, another year of SFist Reads seems to have whipped right by. Another year of online reserves checked out from the SF Public Library, another year of shopping at our fine local independent bookstores. As we here at SFist have eyes in the back of our heads, we happily look back over 2005 and ahead to 2006 for this year-end edition of SFist Reads.