Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Here’s a look at the best news wire in Asheville as generated by social media, that being Twitter.
Smoking ban: Everyone’s still getting adjusted to North Carolina’s new smoking ban, which went into effect at the start of the year. There’s been lots of attention on Hookah Joe’s because of its outright defiance of the law. Meantime, there’s this from @tracyhyorth:
Broadways is now a cigar bar 2. So, if Hairspray & Broadways r able to become cigar bars, must not be hard to do
So it begs the question: Will Hookah Joe’s make the regulatory changes required to allow it to remain a smoking establishment?
Concert cash: @mountainxpress offered up an interesting tidbit out of this weekend’s Asheville City Council retreat that cries out for more explanation:
Avett Bros. on NYE brought estimated $2 Million in economic stimulus to Civic Center and downtown says C.C. and OED director.
Wow. Really? What’s the math being that number? Is that real money, or just some creative math cooked up by Civic Center leaders to make the center look good? The concert sold roughly 6,000 tickets for the Avett Brothers show, so every concert-goer would’ve had to have spent a little more than $300 to equal the $2 million “economic stimulus.” That seems unlikely, even if most people who went to the concert got a hotel room, ate dinner and had a couple of drinks downtown before or after the big show. We know everyone didn’t do that. And you’ve got to subtract the costs of having the Civic Center open and staffed with workers, police, etc. Does every Civic Center concert generate such cash, or are Avett Brothers fans just big spenders? I’d like to hear more about all of this from center managers.
Policing social media: It sounds like Asheville Mayor
Terry Bellamy wants to try to rein in Asheville City Council members’ use of social media, but I think the horse is already out of the barn. Here are the tweets from
@mountainxpress out of the council retreat:
Mayor urges caution among Council members using social media tools and blogs.
Mayor: online messages by Council members can have unintended effects on process, perception and staff morale.
Sounds like Bellamy is directing her caution toward new council members
Gordon Smith and
Cecil Bothwell. Smith is a
well-known blogger, and Bothwell is a well-known former
Mountain Xpress reporter and writer who keeps his
own blog. Smith has an active
Twitter presence, and both Smith and Bothwell aren’t afraid to mix it up with anonymous commenters on web site message boards and such.
Caution is always a good thing, but I think it’s a new world. And Smith and Bothwell see their online activities as adding to government (and personal) transparency, also a good thing. Still, it will be interesting to see if City Council actually moves toward adopting an actual social media policy. Should council consider such a move?
Odds and ends: Here are some other odds and ends I picked up on Twitter:
-Asheville’s newest downtown market, which includes a new Amazing Savings store, opened this weekend on South French Broad Avenue.
-Asheville’s Homeless Memorial Service has rescheduled for Jan. 30, 2-4pm at the UU Church, 1 Edwin Place. @michaelmuller
-The final permit hearing for Cliffside power plant will be held Thurs Jan 14 in Forest City. @canarycoalition
-WCQS radio in Asheville is hiring a new exec. director. Deadline for apps is Feb. 15. App. information here.
-Perhaps best of all, it’s going to hit 50 degrees this coming week, according to Ray’s Weather. Hurrah!
Thanks for clarifying.
Doesn’t the money that the Civic Center pays the people who staff it go into the local economy?
How much were tickets to the show? If a scalper buys a ticket for $50 and sells it for $150, then you can count the original $50 (less the TicketMaster fee) and the $150, for a total of $190 in stimulus. Economics embraces fuzzy math.
Regarding WCQS, I think the new executive director will be the replacement for Ed Subkis, the WCQS general manager who announced last year that he was stepping down.
http://www.mountainx.com/news/2009/general_manager_subkis_to_leave_wcqs
" . . .WCQS radio in Asheville is hiring a new exec. director . . ."
Who is the current exec director?
". . .Mayor urges caution among Council members using social media tools and blogs. . . "
An example of the limits of Journalism-by-Twitter. Did the mayor elaborate her thinking? Was there any discussion? What are the pitfalls of public officials maintaining blogs? Any evidence/anecdotes of difficulties?
". . .Smith and Bothwell aren’t afraid to mix it up with anonymous commenters on web site message boards and such . . ."
Is it possible the mayor was indeed sending a very specific message to Smith and Bothwell not to "mix it up" with their constituents? Bellamy sounds like she may have been echoing the report on government offricials blogging from the IBM Center for the Business of Government: "Think before you blog – miscommunications can damage agency morale and individual careers. " To which I would add, "Think before you blog. Mixing it up with people you disagree with can damage your effectiveness on council and your chances of being re-elected." The Mayor might pass along two tips for blogging by government officials from the IBM report:
5. Be generous.
6. Have a “hard hide.”