thebatavian

A couple of people have asked how to make friends ...

Well, I could recommend a good book, but on The Batavian, there are two easy ways.

First, go to the People link up top and scan all of the people who have registered and look for people you would like to be friends with, click on their names, go to their profile pages and you'll find a link that says "Add to Friends." Click that link and then click "Yes" on the next page.  You can go through that same process for as many people as you like.

The second method is to click on the "My Friends" link in the left-side navigation.  When you go to that page, you'll see a series of links across the top of your friends list that allows you to manage your friends (haven't we all been tempted to do that sometimes!).  There is one link called "Invite Friends."  You go use the form on that page to invite people you know, people you have an e-mail address for, to sign up for The Batavian and become your friend.

Also, a word about guestbooks: We've added the guestbook function so you have a more direct way to communicate with other members of the site. Guestbooks are not private messages, but they do allow for more direct communication (rather than, say, through a comment on a post).  I've already noticed one member has left a couple of messages like, "Hey, didn't I go to high school with you?"

I'm already having fun with the new "Friends" feature. I see other people are, too.  If you haven't tried it yet, please check it out.

Many of you noticed a week or so ago, we added a box on the left side of the site called "Our Towns" and we list links to the towns of Genesee County so you can view news for just those towns.

The links are proving very popular.

If you live in one of those towns and want to add any kind of news about your town to the site, here's how you do it.

1. You must be a registered users and logged into your account
2. When logged in, on the left side you will see a link called "Create Content." Click it.
3. Then click "Blog Entry."
4. Fill in the title field -- try to use a sentence to describe what you're going to post about.
5. In the tags field type the name of your town, such as "Bergen" or "Oakfield."
6. Write your post.

Note:  Step #5 is the key to getting your post to show up on the proper town page.

If we think your post is interesting beyond just your town, we'll add it to The Batavian's home page (front page).

If your post is about some church dinner, government meeting, fund-raising drive, birth or wedding, you can also have it show up on the "Announcements" page by tagging it (using that Tag field) as "announcements."  If the post is also about local sports, tag your post "sports."

What is news? Anything you find interesting and want to share with other people.

"Social Networking" is a wonky term for the ability of people on a web site to connect with each other by, among other things, tagging each other as "friends."

We now have this "friends" feature on The Batavian.

Now you can go to a person's profile page and see all of their blog posts and comments, sign their individual guestbook and, if you want, invite that person to be your friend.

You can then go to your own profile page and look at your friend's activity.

This is a brand new feature on the site, so your feed back is welcome.

Over the next few days, I'll invite all registered users to be my friend -- this will make me, I suppose, a bit like Tom on MySpace, but we want to be sure everybody gets introduced to this new feature.

Most viewed posts for September:

• Responding To Mike Wrona, by Robert Harding
• Your thoughts on the Republican veep..., by Philip Anselmo
• See you at the Pole, by Nancy Baxter
• Letter to the editor flat out wrong about Senator Obama, by Philip Anselmo
• Chris Lee appears to be dodging debates and questions, by Howard Owens
• The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, by Tom G.
• Alice Kryzan's position on financial crisis and bail outs, by Howard Owens
• Palin stumbles in first televised interview. Just the jitters? Or more?, by Philip Anselmo
• Muckdogs sweep Jamestown to win NY-P crown, by Howard Owens
• Driving in Batavia, by Melissa George

We tried this once before: A secton on the site for blog posts about issues in the nation/world outside of Genesee County.

It didn't get a lot of traction, but then I didn't configure it right and it was hard to post to and leave comments.

But we've done some political posts recently that have gotten a good deal of attention, so I thought -- let's see if we can do it better this time.

There is once again a "Nation and World" tab on the top navigation.  First post: About Barack Obama's foreign policy.

If you want to post something in that category, tag your post "nation and world" and it will show up on that page as soon as you save the post.

We used to do some headline aggregation on the home page of nation, world and political headlines. It doesn't seem to have been missed since we dropped it, but we might give the same idea a try on the "Nation and World" page, but this time the headlines will appear mixed in with posts.  I'll do a couple shortly so you can see what I mean.

Why would a locally focused site include such non-local news and commentary.  Well, three reasons:

• The Batavian readers have shown some interest;
• Studies/survey's show that people who are interested in local news are almost always interested in non-local news, also;
• When we say "Online News. Community Views." we mean that we think when people sharing the same community are interested in what fellow community members think on a broad range of topics.

We added two new sections to The Batavian this morning.

First, "Housing." We didn't call it real estate because that implies only homes for sale can be listed there.  We also welcome rental listings.  Ads, of course, are free to both FSBO (for sale by owner) and agents/brokers.  We just ask that agents and brokers submit listings only, not general marketing messages. 

If you click on the "Housing" link now, you'll find a post of home sales since January.  We'll post real estate transactions each month under "Housing" from now on.  This data is public record and provided to us by the County.  It's a common bit of public data to share by news organizations in most communities, but it seems to be a new idea in Genesee County.

The second new section is "Announcements." This is a place for individuals and community organizations to post information about upcoming events, engagements/weddings, births or anything else appropriate to announce to the community.  Click on the "Announcements" link on the tabs above and read the first post, which instructions for posting.  Tell your friends.

Yesterday was crazy and I never got a chance to formally say hello.

I started my day at 9 a.m. in Fairport, which for me was a heck of an accomplishment, came home and took a short nap and then was out at the Muckdogs game. Throw in the photography and writing and it was insane.

Now that I've got a moment to actually sit down and think, I would like to tell you all a little about what I'm going to be doing here at The Batavian.

I love high school sports and want to take the coverage I gave readers at The Daily News for eight years and take it to a new level here. Print newspapers are fading fast (ask Jay Mariotti) and the Internet gives me the opportunity to do so many new and exciting things.

I have some blogging experience but am still pretty raw, so bear with me as I work on that writing style. 

I will be trying to get out to as many games as possible to shoot video, take photographs and blog, giving the great local athletes the best coverage possible.Video intrigues me a ton because I've done very limited work with that and think I can do some excellent work with that. Expect to see video highlights and interviews with local athletes in the very near future.

I am a huge football fan and you can expect to get the best coverage of area teams here in the coming weeks. My quick previews that I wrote at 3 a.m. is just the beginning of what you will see every Wednesday or Thursday.

I'll be covering games Friday night and Saturday afternoon, then doing some in-depth stuff during the week to preview games. Come sectional time, you will get to know everything about the squads making runs here at The Batavian.

I did a basic roundup of local scores last night, but I would like to get local coaches involved with posting blogs to give great coverage of their own teams. I will start making calls next week and asking soccer, volleyball and cross country coaches to directly post their results on the sports page.

Rather than having to wait for tomorrow's Daily for a couple paragraphs on each game, you will be able to come here and read exactly what the coaches saw just after the game ends.  Imagine how well you will get to know, for example, about the Alexander girls soccer team if coach Chad Flint posts after every game. Please let your coaches know about this opportunity if they have not seen The Batavian yet.

Those coaches that do post regularly will stand a much better chance of seeing me out at a practice with my video camera, doing special features on players and the team. 

High School athletes, parents and fans can also register and post comments on any blog. 

Please feel free to contact me at any time if you have story ideas or just want to talk high school sports. My AIM screen name is hillabush12, my cell phone number is 585-993-4662 (expect to hear anything from rap music to Jimmy Buffett when you call) and my e-mail is brian at thebatavian dot com. And don't be shy if you see me at a game, come say hi.

I'm looking forward to meeting many new people and giving my home community the best sports coverage in the coming years.

Now that we have a sports writer, I just wanted to make the point that not all sports coverage will appear on the home page.  If you're interested in local sports, you should regularly visit the sports page by clicking on the "Sports" tab in the top navigation.

Brian posted some scores from last night as well as previews of upcoming prep football games.

And so long as I'm posting reminders, don't forget you can post free classifieds under "Buy, Sell & Trade," as well as free help wanted ads under "Jobs."

In Genesee County, if you follow local sports, you know the name Brian Hillabush.

Brian has been covering sports, mostly high school sports, for the Batavia Daily News for eight years.  In that time, he has developed a solid reputation and built quite a popular following.

Today, he joins the staff of The Batavian.

Brian will be the full-time sports editor for The Batavian (you may have noticed we added a sports tab to the top of the home page the other day).  He’ll cover local sports and help anybody who wants to post their own team or league information on the site.  Besides being able to blog about sports (something he wasn’t allowed to do for the Daily News), he’s also excited about shooting video for the site – so looks for more local sports video on The Batavian.

A native of Oakfield, Brian has spent his entire life in Genesee County. He attended Genesee Community College where he studied broadcasting and managed WGCC.  He even spent a couple of months working for WBTA before embarking on his print career.

In hiring Brian, we fulfill one of our earlier promises – that as we grow, we will hire local staff, people who live in and love Genesee County.

We’re also excited to bring Brian onto our team because he’s just so dang good – a good writer who really knows local sports, has a wealth of contacts and is highly regarded by the people he deals with. We’re confident that with Brian covering sports for The Batavian, we’ll have the most timely and comprehensive Genesee County sports coverage you’re going to get anywhere.
 

• Davis campaign launches a "fake" Powers Web site, by Philip Anselmo
• Bialkowski: Charlie Mallow "has failed miserably as a leader", Philip Anselmo
• Into the black: Audit shows Batavia on the financial upswing, by Philip Anselmo
• The Mall, by Amy Davis
• And the Winner Is......$$$$$........ Your Guess Is As Good As Mine, by Patrick Burk
• Daily News: Muckdog attendence lagging, by Howard Owens
• city centre reality check, by Mitchell Chess
• Let's support the Muckdogs, by Howard Owens
• Not all Democrats are in love with Jon Powers, by Howard Owens
• On the subject of the Mall: Bill Kauffman, by Philip Anselmo

Some people think the web makes the world bigger. I say, it makes it smaller.  Some people say the web makes us neighbors with people in Kenya or the Ukraine.  I say it makes us better neighbors with the family next door.

There was a time in United States history when newspapers served as a centralizing force for drawing communities together -- and then came  television, and cable, and satellite -- all the forces that did nothing to humanize communication, but made mass communication more mass and less personal. (Radio is a mixed bag. For every WBTA there are 10 radio stations programmed by a computer in Texas, Nevada or Pennsylvania.)

The Internet brings back the possibility of human-sized communication.

At a time when too many glass-eyed Americans turn to network TV for their "Heroes" and get "Lost" in the idea that last night's episode of whatever flimflam Hollywood is dishing out this season is worthy of deep discussion,  the Web opens up new possibilities for people, local people, people who share a common interest in a common community, to partake in conversation and pursue change with conviction.

If I might share a bit of personal biography: In 1995, I started a web site in eastern San Diego County called East County Online.  At the time, I would tell any number of colleagues in the newspaper business: "Mark my words, the web is the best thing that ever happened to local news; all the fascination now is with global communication, but eventually, people will look homeward and want to use the web to build better communities."

I've never stopped believing that. I believe it to this day.

I've learned a lot about the Internet and how people use it since 1995, but the philosophy remains the same: Together, we can use digital communication to build better, stronger, more self-reliant communities.

That's what I want The Batavian to do for Genesee County. And maybe, along the way, we can convince a few people to turn off the TV once or twice a week and visit a local art gallery, spend an evening  with the Batavia Players, or "root,root, root for the home team."

If you look at the people page, you'll note that we list only 318 members.  I don't have an exact count, but we're past that.  There's some software glich preventing an accurate count from appearing.  Our engineers will look into it soon.

Account confirmations: But speaking of members -- we've had at least 100 people sign up for accounts, some multiple times, but never confirm their account.

You must confirm your account in order to post anything.  When you sign up, an e-mail is sent to you and you must click on the link in that e-mail to confirm your account.

And to be clear, registering for the site is not required if you only want to read what's posted. That said, we hope and encourage everybody to post blog items and make comments, and registration is required for participation.

UPDATE (from Philip): If you are waiting for a confirmation e-mail or trying to retrieve a forgotten password and no e-mail seems to be showing up in your Inbox, check your spam folder. We've had a few folks whose aggressive spam-filter software relegated Batavian mails to the junk bin.

Advertising: If you have a business and are interested in advertising, write to me at howard at thebatavian dot com.

Free Job Ads: If you're an employer, you can post job ads for free.  Just click on the "Jobs" tab above and follow the directions from there.

Free Classifieds: Any private person can post free "Buy, Sell or Trade" ads. To post, click the "Buy, Sell, Trade" link above and follow the directions. Pictures are allowed with these posts. Just make sure the picture is no wider than 470 pixels.

We have a new commercial on WBTA.

Once again, the spot was recorded by Nici Johnson, local resident and waitress at the Pok-A-Dot.

We're quite proud of it: MP3 File

UPDATE: Ooops. My fault.  Show is at 9:40, twenty minutes later than the original headline indicated.

I will be on WBTA in the morning to discuss blogging -- not The Batavian so much as blogging in general.

My goal is to encourage more bloggers in Genesee County.  I don't care if you blog for The Batavian or your own Word Press or Blogger site, just blog.  It helps extend the conversation.

That will be my theme.

Tonight I am reading, as I have been for the past three nights, Bill Kauffman's Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette.

I come to this passage, related to the rising of Wal-Mart in Batavia:

My voice is as mute as the others in that silent night, unholy night. I supposed I am of the old  school of Thoreau and Emerson in that I distrust political solutions and prefer individual revolutions of the soul. I sympathized with those townspeople who wished to keep Wal-Mart out. But instead of passing laws to compel behavior I would rather my neighbors choose to shop locally. They will only do so when Batavia becomes once more a city with its own flavor and fashions. Whether that day will come, I do not know.

For me, if The Batavian can accomplish one thing, it will be to give voice to the people who want Batavia to be Batavia again.

I'm no Pollyanna. I know we cannot put the Brylcreem back in the tube, or unwind the the movie or rebuild C.L. Carr's, but we can promote an ideal that a rural town like Batavia should be more than bathroom break on the Thruway.

We have our corporate sponsors, which means that if the heavens opened up and Wal-Mart or Kmart decided to bequeath to us some ungodly sum of money for advertising (not likely, ever), we couldn't say no, but we are here first and foremost to support the businesses that support Batavia (and the rest of Genesee County).

We only ask one thing -- that you do the same. Before your next trip to Wal-Mart or Target, find out what local shop can do you the same service and patronize that store first.

Since we launched The Batavian in May, we've heard a recurring question: What about advertising?

The question has come from two quarters: Business people interested in advertising, and people wondering how the heck we're going to make this adventure into a paying business.

Starting this week, we get serious about the business side of the business.  The traffic is now strong enough, we have an engaged audience, the name of the site is spreading fast -- we now  have a good, fair value to offer the businesses of Genesee County.

We have two sales reps who start calling on area businesses this week.

They're going to offer the standard banner ads, of course, but what we're really excited about are the text ads we will offer. 

Ten percent of the revenue from these text ads will go to The Batavia Players, Inc.,  Summer Youth Theater Program.  On top of that, we are sending $500 to the program.

As we've said from the start, the goal of The Batavian is to be more than a news enterprise. We want The Batavian to help our communities grow stronger and enhance an area that is already a great place to live and work.

To that end, we're concentrating our sales efforts on local businesses (the big chains, not so much) so we can help those businesses thrive, and we're giving back to the community through donations and sponsorships.

Meanwhile, here's something you can do to support the youth of Genesee County, and more specifically, the Youth Theater -- go see Jesus Christ Superstar.  It opens tonight and runs through Saturday.  Patrick Burk tells us ticket sales have done well, but there's still plenty of seats left.  You should go. 

Our ad reps are Melissa McIntyre and Vanessa Haar. They, along with me and Philip, will be at Summer in the City on Friday and Saturday. We'll have balloons, water bottle kozies and bumper stickers.  If you come by and say, "hi," we may even put you in a video.  Look for us on Jackson Street on Friday and Main Street on Saturday.

Employers -- you can post free Help Wanted ads -- here.

Everybody else, got something to buy, sell or trade -- post your FREE ad here.

When we launched the Free Job postings, a couple of people suggested that we have a place for people to sell stuff.

Today, we're launching Buy, Sell, Trade -- free classified ads.  Any person registered with The Batavian can post ads for free. The ads must be posted by private individuals, not businesses, but can be for any physical goods.

So you guys that requested this -- please post some items to get the ball rolling!

UPDATE: Ooops, forgot to enable permissions for logged in users to be able to post a classified.  Done, now.  You can post by clicking here.