The Sam Whitmore Sampler

Walt Mossberg and the Perils of Blogging

Walt Mossberg's new Mossblog doesn't appear to enjoy a great deal of oversight from the Wall Street Journal's copy desk. Then again, that's blogging -- communication with human frailty built in.

Bay Area Traffic Nightmare

Here in the Bay Area we awoke Sunday to a traffic nightmare: a freeway segment collapsed overnight after a tanker truck containing 8,600 gallons of gasoline overturned. Miraculously, no one died. Tomorrow the real fun begins. Motorists returning home to the East Bay from San Francisco will have to take the 880 to the 980 and then up to the 580. Good luck. Or they can go way the hell south on 101 and then west to the 880 over the San Mateo Bridge. "Don't it always seem to go..."

SWMS Tech Media This Week: AllThingsD Launches; Wired's Fred Vogelstein Does it Again

AllThingsD launched this week. The long-awaited Dow Jones site is the  showcase for annual (and upcoming) D: All Things Digital conference in Southern California, co-hosted by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Our review of the site appears Monday on SWMS.

Wired's Fred Vogelstein managed to get himself in another controversy this week. Click here to read Jeff Jarvis's 1,457-word post about it, and its 60 reader responses.

Hear all this and more in this week's edition of the SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast (6:38), which is now posted. To listen now, click here. To receive our podcast automatically each week, paste the following link into iTunes or whatever podcast catcher you use:

http://slapcast.com/rss/SWMS/index.xml

Concentration: an Endangered Behavior

On the plane out to Oakland yesterday I remembered all over again why podcasting hasn't fully caught on with busy professionals. Ever try reading while listening to a podcast? Either I read the same paragraph over and over while engaged in the podcast, or I'd enjoy the article and hear the podcast without truly listening. Finally I decided to listen for an hour without reading, read for the next hour without listening, and then repeat until JetBlue finally got me there. Concentration is truly an endangered behavior.

Busting Fred's Balls

Wired contributing editor Fred Vogelstein is back in the news. Fred wants to go to Mix next week but it's sold out. Microsoft blogger Jeff Sandquist has asked his readers whether Fred should be let in. Jeff could have handled this privately. Instead he chose to prolong last month's contretemps among Fred, Microsoft's internal PR team and the agency, Waggener Edstrom. Sigh.

Stonewall Jackson

No, not the Confederate general. (Maybe we'll blog about him someday.) This time we're talkin' the 74-year-old country singer dumped by the Grand Ole Opry because he was too old. At least that's what the singer claims in a $10 million lawsuit. "They told me I was too old and too country," Stonewall says. Heck, he looks pretty good in the photo to the left -- taken in 1960.

How Many U.S. States Have You Visited?

I've set foot in 46 states in my 50 years. Upon graduating from college in 1978 I seriously considered traveling to Europe by freighter -- steerage class. But being a newly minted History major with an American Studies minor, I felt compelled to see the homeland. How many states have you been to so far?

SWMS Tech Media This Week: Arrington, Rubel in Hot Water

TechCrunch editor Mike Arrington is facing a lawsuit for his Apr. 12 article alleging that Rivals.com CEO Shannon Terry was “involved in securities fraud.” Attorneys representing Terry demanded that Arrington retract, correct and apologize before Apr. 18 or he’d be sued. So far, he hasn’t done so.

On Apr. 13 Edelman PR VP Steve Rubel stated in a Twitter post that he doesn’t read the hard copy of PC Magazine and that his complimentary issue “goes in the trash.” PC Mag EIC Jim Louderback publicly took exception to this, stating in a guest editorial on Strumpette:

Should I instruct the staff to avoid covering Edelman's clients? Ignore their requests for meetings, reviews and news stories? Blacklist the "Edelman.com" email domain in our exchange servers, effectively turning their requests into spam? If we're not relevant to Edelman's employees, then how could we be relevant to their clients?

Rubel promptly apologized.

Hear all this and more in the latest edition of the SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast (9:40), which is now posted.

To listen to our podcast right now, click on the URL below:

http://slapcast.com/users/SWMS

To receive our podcast automatically each week, paste the following link into iTunes or whatever podcast receiver you use:

http://slapcast.com/rss/SWMS/index.xml

Enjoying that SUV?

We'll discuss "peak oil" frequently. We'll also look at oil's short-term supply and demand picture, and no one understands it better than the International Energy Agency. Pay their site a visit.

You're Suppose To Spell Properly

A PR lead-generation service called PitchWire (here's the FAQ) is out there competing with ProfNet, SourceNet (is that still around?) and some others. But this is hardly the way to do it! This slide appears in the presentation designed to win journalists' trust. Proofread your slides, people.