The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., is testing newly launched Web pages leveraging the public's once-every-generation interest in the environment. Corporate sees big bucks in the appropriately named All Green To Me beta site, which looks like a variation on the Moms Like Me social-network franchise. I haven't had a chance to take it for a spin yet. Until then, please let me know what you think.Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.
Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester NY) has a local version called RocEarth www.democratandchronicle.com/section/ROCEARTH.
ReplyDeleteThis site makes no sense. Some links open up in new windows, some links cram new windows in a narrow windowbox, some links take you off-site to other "content providers" like the New York Times.
ReplyDeleteAre we now going to turn into aggregators, like Google?
This just seems like another half-assed, on-the-cheap effort.
How about some serious content? How about stories about emerging green technologies and the companies behind them?
I don't know. This doesn't make me feel hopeful.
The value of sites like these will be greatly diminished when Gannett starts supporting it with businesses falsely claiming to be green only to gain more green for themselves.
ReplyDeleteIf the company wants to make this site, and others like it, stand above all others (an ever emerging lot too), then set a green standard that all advertisers have to meet before accepting their money or at least before they can make green claims in their ads.
Hard concept to swallow, but reader support of advertisers would likely be very loyal, perhaps even akin to Nascar fan’s support of their advertisers.
They didn't spell it correctly on the front page Sunday. It was spelled ALLLGreen.com. Now that's funny
ReplyDeleteJust another indicator of how the once-mighty copy desk has fallen. Errors like that - simple, basic stuff - are going to become far more prevalent with fewer eyes and shorter deadlines.
ReplyDeleteGannett's sudden interest in greenery other than money mars the sincere the environmental movement. It is a phony moneygrab by shameless corporate sharks. Disgusting.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the Washington Post appears to be considering shuttering its green site, Sprig, which launched back in April 2007 (when these kinds of trendy green sites still made a little, and only a little, bit of sense)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/digital-downloads/broadband/e3i57845f198f95ed9348180bc62b88fc92
Is this one tied into Ripple6 and those cloud communities and all?
ReplyDeleteHow innovative:
ReplyDeletehttp://green.foxnews.com/
10:03 - The answer's no. They're doing a book about him, after all, so they need to get him out there as much as they can.
ReplyDeleteI predict no more than 500 copies will be sold.
Once again, Gannett is a day late and a dollar short. Green was so last year, now all people care about our their jobs and the economy.
ReplyDeleteIf they really wanted to localize the site they would do some real reporting and start with DuPont, Conectiv and the polluters in Delaware City. Delaware has the third highest cancer rate in the nation and these companies continue to pollute the state and everyone turns a blind eye.
A green site in Delaware — it's a joke, but I'm sure it will be a site every Gannett online site will soon have. Cookie cutting once again. How original can they be!
Delaware has the third highest cancer rate in the nation and these companies continue to pollute the state and everyone turns a blind eye.
ReplyDeleteActually, Wilmington has done a shitload of reporting on cancer and pollution. Jeff Montgomery's reporting on the big industrial polluters has been nothing short of phenomenal.
Unfortunately, he can't control the administration's actions or compel officials to take regulatory action.
Wilmington is a good site to beta the green stuff, because Montgomery and Molly Murray are top-notch environmental beat reporters. They've been covering the topics for years. But it makes me wonder just how applicable this concept is to other content generating sites (formerly known as "newspapers") with not as strong a tradition of environmental coverage.
This web site has been in the works for a long time - I first heard glimmerings back during the summer. I'm not sure why it's taken so long to get up and running.
Louisville produced their own Green site and I don't know which is worse, the name or the design.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.kentuckianagreen.com
Sounds like someone is taking this WAY too personal. Think it's time to get a life rather than living through Gannett.
ReplyDeleteAs far as capitalizing on the GREEN opportunity, don't think so. How many projects like this in the past have not brought in revenue.
Don't forget to shut off the lights when everyone else is gone and you are still believing Gannett can save the day!
What part of BETA testing the site don't you idiots get? If it keeps two more jobs in the LIC, wouldn't you negative naysayers be happy about that? Give 'em credit for trying to capitalize on the opportunity. As far Biden, he ain't going away anytime soon and you can bet your $5 donation to this blog that they'll sell way more than 500 books. Oh wait, that's right ... the books helped save a couple more jobs in the LIC too. I guess that was stupid right? You're all cynical bastards that live in a world of entitlement journalism. Guess what? You gotta go earn your stripes today. Shut up and go to work.
David Ledford, Executive Editor, The News Journal
ReplyDeleteYou’ll never respond to this e-mail - you’ve never responded to one before. Nevertheless, I was amazed at the front page article in your paper written as though all this should be news to those of us who have struggled mightily in this state to get someone to rein in runaway development, polluters, etc. It must be the moon or something.
As long as we have civic “leaders” like Mayor Klingmeyer in New Castle, and DNREC for the state we’re not ever going to get anywhere, and putting the burden on individuals to try to save and clean up the mess the big guys make is absurd. Mr. Klingmeyer and crowd worked hand in glove with the developers of RiverBend on Rte9 just outside of Dobbinsville, which has destroyed hundreds of acres of wetlands. This is supposedly okay by someone’s calculation. Since the only advertisements alerting the public to the fact that this was in the works appeared in the crummy little New Castle paper - and thereby satisfied the must-be-advertised requirement, no one really knew it was coming. Today it sits there in all its woeful glory and I hope and pray it sinks back into the marsh. It also has the nerve to advertise that it provides a wonderful view of nature - the same nature it’s busy destroying. Who knows what else the Czar of New Castle has coming next.
Yesterday at 5 AM when I awoke to the rumblings yet again of Valero or whoever, I waited until about 7 AM to call DNREC where the cheerful little lady who answered the phone told me it was “nothing to worry about”! Easy for her to say from Dover!! I told her I knew it was “flaring” which she confirmed, and which I no longer need explained to me - neither what it is nor why it is. I disagreed with her on whether or not it was something to worry about, especially since it happens frequently and with impunity. I fully understand that, especially now,
Delaware needs all the jobs we can get/save, but do we really need to also increase business for the selected few, like doctors and undertakers? This constant pollution during which time it’s impossible to open windows has been happening ever since I’ve lived here - since 1991. I’m sure it’s been going on long before that. The modus operandi, so to speak, is when the fines and pressure finally get serious, the plants are sold and the new owners get a “bye” for a period of time - during which a lot of hoo-ha occurs about how the new owners are trying to correct old problems, blah, blah, blah. And here we are today - no change or improvement. Oh, and the darling girl said she’d have someone call and talk to me. In all the years I’ve been here and all the complaints I’ve made, on a fairly regular basis as needed, I’ve had responses from DNREC about 4 times - and definitely not yesterday.
Here’s a way the state could save money - do away with DNREC - it’s totally useless for the important problems. New Castle has instituted the Instant Fine for sloppy yards. I’d much rather have a car next to me up on blocks than know I live between Army Creek and Valero - too bad for me.
I'm sure Delaware will be GREEN soon, thanks to this new Beta site. Could all of you please stop taking those pills corporate gave you. They aren't for migraines:
ReplyDeleteOnce again, the environmentally-monstrous, union-propped, corporate sockpuppet (currently Valero) Delaware City oil refinery is belching "excess" poisons into Delaware's environment for the umpteenth time in recent memory.
At what point is enough enough??
I hope Governor Markell begins to look at permanently "sunsetting" all state permits for this antiquated pollution-belching nightmare, smack in the middle of the northern half of Delaware.
When it was foisted on a sleepy part of lower New Castle County by J. Paul Getty circa 1953, things were different. Now 1000's of families and individuals live and work within close range of this site.
The potential and real harms to these communities and Delaware's environment have gone on far too long. Clearly the string of corporate owners of the Delaware City refinery are simply not (and have never been) interested in even bare minimum emissions compliance.
This is a clear-cut case where profits are maximized for a few at the expense of directly endangering many people.
Thanks to the horrible Ruth Ann Minner administration these profiteering polluters have gotten away with murder in this century so far.
Alan Muller at Green Delaware has been all over this for at least a decade. It is time policy makers in Delaware pay heed to Alan's prescience about this, and other issues involving reckless environmental damage caused Delaware by legacy polluters.
Please end this, Governor Markell. Clean energy is close enough at hand to begin mapping the light at the end of the tunnel for this industrial blight on Delaware.
Pollution 'flaring' series hits Valero
'Things could have been a whole lot worse,' DNREC engineer says of refinery's troubles
By JEFF MONTGOMERY
The News Journal
Problems that triggered a large pollution release at the Valero refinery near Delaware City on Feb. 16 took a turn for the worse Wednesday, prompting a shutdown and major repair notice for one of the plant's larger refining units.
Ravi Rangan, a Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control engineer assigned to the refinery, said Valero had recovered from the original steam and boiler problems that disrupted operations Feb. 16. But the company was unable to resume use of its 50,000-barrel-a-day petroleum coke processing unit and reported a series of pollution "flaring" episodes on Feb. 18, as well as Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Pollutants released from company flares and smokestacks in recent days included sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide and ammonia. DNREC officials have reported fielding a number of complaints about odors after the incident Feb. 16.
"We do have excess emissions. Those excess emissions are under review for possible enforcement action," Rangan said. "There's no question about that, but they did a lot of things correctly, and things could have been a whole lot worse."
Refineries routinely used flares to burn off hydrocarbons or acidic gases when regular systems are interrupted or break down. The Environmental Protection Agency and DNREC barred routine use of flares, however, after complaints that companies needlessly dumped thousands of tons of pollution into the air each hour by flaring instead of preventing or controlling problems.
........
During the Feb. 16 incident, Valero was required to cut off coker production because it was unable to continue sending waste gases to systems that control carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, soot and other emissions. Some of the hot fluid eventually hardened in the system, however, snarling attempts to restart operations.
Delaware City's coker once ranked as one of the dirtiest refining units nationwide, releasing tens of thousands of tons of irritating sulfur dioxide to the atmosphere yearly, along with soot, nitrogen oxides and other pollutants. New scrubbing systems started operation in 2006 under the terms of a court-approved state and federal order, and DNREC barred the company from routinely bypassing those systems during breakdowns.
EPA records and past accounts of major problems at the refinery show that odors and pollution can wander for miles in any direction.
This is so typical of Curtis Riddle. Come up with some bullshit section and take the focus off the real bread and butter - the daily paper. He has done this a thousand times in his pitiful career and the initiatives never make money. Curtis Riddle is a dope. He was a dope when he came to Wilmington and he is even dopier today. Wake up and focus on the daily paper Curtis. It's more important to the future of the Wilmington operation than any bullshit "special attention getting" section ever will be.
ReplyDeleteHaving a "green" site beta-testing on the News Journal's web site is fine with me. I hope it makes lots of money because although I got axed from the paper in the last layoff, I don't want to see anyone I worked with go through what I'm going through, which is a nightmare basically with no hope of even a minimum wage job in sight. So I hope it's a success.
ReplyDeleteI do like the comment from 9:44 p.m. I never met the publisher, Curtis Riddle, and never ever once saw him my whole time there. EVER. He had his own wing of the building. In fact, I mistook him for one of the old fellers who still works there and wears a tie every day.
Where do you suppose the money to pay your salary comes from idiots? Are you really that disconnected that you think people paying for the paper is paying your salary? For that matter, your probably the same boob who thinks folks buy the paper to read your writing.
ReplyDeleteI am assuming it's not you. Keep up that great additude, should win you lots of friends.
ReplyDeleteThe reason Gannett is losing money is because they didn't pay attention to their readers and strayed from their original idea of local content. They also made the mistake of depending on advertisers to keep them a float. Now they are a shell of what they once were. With this economy, which was announced today, that we will not see relief until 2011 or 2012.
Might want to work on those personality skills cause I don't see a future for Gannett. They can't stay a float that long.
Where do you suppose the money to pay your salary comes from idiots? Are you really that disconnected that you think people paying for the paper is paying your salary? For that matter, your probably the same boob who thinks folks buy the paper to read your writing.