#mike miner

[shotgunhoney]

William E. Wallace and the completion of the OEP Re-Issues

William E. Wallace and the completion of the OEP Re-Issues

It’s been a while, and kind of a crazy year. How have you been? Last year, almost a year ago, I announced our new partnership with Down & Out Books. I can’t say enough great things about Eric and Lance, who have done a stand up job with their own line of books, and have become home to so many talented writers with the inclusion of new imprints like ABC Group Documentation, All Due Respect Books,…

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[cbcmusic-blog]

From this week’s Songs You Need To Hear:

Orange O'Clock, 'Belly Button'

Pretty big week for Orange O'Clock last week. Not only did they win Searchlight, they dropped their new album, Crazy Carnival. Check out "Belly Button," their new video featuring crunchy Hives-style garage rock, kung fu and spooky ghosts. And this week they're in Songs You Need to Hear! The winning streak continues! — Mike Miner (@mikeminer)

[cbcmusic-blog]

From this week’s Songs You Need To Hear:

The Almighty Rhombus, 'Down South'

The Almighty Rhombus is one of the key bands in Sudbury, Ontario's burgeoning indie scene. But what's really going to put Sudbury on the map is hosting the Monster Olympics. The new video for their Searchlight entry, "Down South," was shot in and around town, including the final Monster Olympics showdown at Laurentian University between the purple-skinned protagonist and his zipper-mouthed nemesis. Turns out they're both horrible creatures. — Mike Miner (@mikeminer)

[serenitynowincorporated]

Mark Miner you will be missed...

[chicago-reader]

There is something you need to understand about people as sick as I apparently am. We need distractions. We need petty wars we can march off to that take our minds off the big campaign that in the end no one wins. As absurd as I had discovered the rules and regulations of Medicare to be, I took comfort in the absurdities. It was sort of fun trying to get the Medicare ombudsman on the line and getting nowhere. And I needed to laugh.

Mike Miner discusses his liver disease, the taste of kale, the price of Vitamin K, and the joys of dealing with Medicare.

[chicago-reader]

Is Aggrego a savior to the Pioneer Press papers—or a threat?

Wrapports LLC, the parent company of the Sun-Times and the Pioneer Press suburban weeklies (and the Reader), is surely proud of Aggrego, the hyperlocal-news-gathering operation that is "building the future of community media" by tapping into a huge market: 18,000 communities that represent 13,000 local media outlets and $135 billion local ad dollars.

These are the impressive figures flaunted on the Aggrego website. However, Aggrego is starting small: at the moment it operates in only 43 of those 18,000 nationwide communities—the Chicago suburbs served by the Pioneer Press papers. The relationship between Aggrego and those weeklies is not unlike the ill-fated one between Journatic and the Tribune Media Group—the former being an aggregator that provided content to the latter's TribLocal suburban properties. Like the Journatic-Trib relationship, which ended after Journatic was discovered to be fabricating bylines and lifting quotes, the Aggrego-Pioneer one is also contentious—though for a different reason. Pioneer Press is a union shop, and the Chicago Newspaper Guild recently filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board accusing Wrapports of trying to "undermine" the guild by "unilaterally" turning guild duties over to Aggrego's nonunion cub reporters.

Wrapports representatives have told the guild that these are duties its members should be glad to get rid of: producing routine police-blotter stories, community calendars—that sort of thing. Emancipated from the mindless grunt work that readers expect to find in community newspapers, the guild's veteran reporters can focus on the enterprise journalism their years of experience have honed them for.

But the guild is not persuaded.

Continue reading Mike Miner's piece on the latest shakeup in Chicago media.

[braydenstudio]