Media
Duluth News Tribune website redesign
The DNT’s new website rollout seems to be going exceedingly well. Day three …
Wired’s 15 Most Fascinating at SXSW – Duluthian Mike Scholtz
Mike Scholtz and Amy C. Elliott
Wired magazine posted “The 15 Most Fascinating Filmmakers and Stars at SXSW” and right up there with Tilda Swinton, Robert Rodriguez, and Jon Favreau is our very own Mike Scholtz and his partner on Wicker Kittens, Amy C. Elliott.
Wicker Kittens premiered at SXSW, and apparently got great response. Here’s the trailer.
Enbridge
Why is Enbridge banging out “we’re great on safety” ads on Pandora lately – oh, I get it.
Go west, young man
Star Tribune: Duluth visitors, please look to your right, too
The focal point of Duluth Mayor Don Ness’ State of the City Address will be creating a secondary tourist destination along the St. Louis River.
“We have the largest freshwater estuary in the world in the St. Louis River,” Mayor Don Ness said. “You have all of these amazing natural amenities and outdoor recreation experiences in a fairly small concentrated area.”
The plan comes as hundreds of millions have been spent – with a similar sum still to come – to clean up the St. Louis River, saddled for decades with old industrial pollution. It is in concert with efforts to revitalize the long-neglected working-class part of town, where factory hands raised families in tight-knit communities near their jobs.
Transistor tran bashing?
I can’t help but bring up the Transistor‘s latest cartoon that has spurred a lot of commentary in the Facebook world.
The cartoon has a male figure with the words “She had a dick” in a speech bubble above his head. The bottom of the cartoon makes the statement, “Best reason to break up.”
Is this really the best humor Duluth’s got to offer on the front of its premier arts/culture zine? It is hurtful and tasteless. For posing as such an open-minded literary mag, this cartoon is discriminatory toward our transgender community.
Trampled by Turtles’ song deserves Oscar
There I was, sitting in a cavernous multiplex theater at Duluth 10. The movie, The Way Way Back, is one that I had actually chosen by accident. Or chosen erroneously, I mean. The Mrs. and I were on an impromptu date night and picked The Way Way Back thinking that it was actually another movie I had heard about.
A good 30 minutes in I realized both my error, and that the film was not what I had hoped for, a fluffy summertime coming-of-age story, and that it was instead a sort of dark, introspective coming-of-age story that just happened to be placed in a summer setting. At points during the movie I could actually viscerally feel my own awkward teenage summer loneliness flaring up in some deep, dark buried place in my gut. So the film makers nailed that part.
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Superior Skydivers Crash footage
Hey, I can see my house from here.
The Economics of Sulfide Mining: Benefits and Costs
This address was given by Dr. Tom Power, Professor Emeritus at the University of Montana about a week ago in Duluth. (more…)
TV stations afraid of the word “vibrator”
Renegade Theater Company has been having trouble landing interviews on local television stations for their upcoming play, In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play, because of the word “vibrator” in the title. The odd thing is that other plays that have dealt with subjects as diverse as incest, menstruation, torture, murder, marijuana, drug use, and so on have had no trouble getting airplay.
So, Duluth media, what’s that all about? Why does a vibrator scare you more than any of these things? Why the sudden prudery?
Duluth & North Shore Kayaking on NPR
NPR’s weekly sports show ended with a feature on the area’s whitewater kayaking. Hear Only A Game’s story on SoundCloud.
Another Duluth dateline in the Onion
24-year-old receives sage counsel from venerable 27-year-old
DULUTH, MN-Generously bestowing the kind of wisdom that only comes with age, worldly and venerable 27-year-old Matthew Owen took the time last night to offer his enlightened counsel to 24-year-old family friend Dennis Paige.
(more…)Diversity in the Media
KUWS‘s Final Edition is a valuable local resource — a place where media professionals can reflect on the work they do and the impact they have on the community.
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Publishing Conference that Was Rescheduled and Rearranged
David Wong addresses 40 people at UMD
Architect, author or urban ecologist David Wong of Vancouver BC extended his stay through Monday. (more…)
More on the Publishing Conference that Wasn’t
Mitch Ogden had arranged for an army of undergrads from UW-Stout’s Journalism and Digital Humanities programs to attend the UMD Conference on Publishing. At 6 a.m. we called the bus dispatcher to tell them to turn around. But the dispatcher crossed wires with the bus, and so three hours later, the students were here.
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The Publishing Conference that Wasn’t
Yesterday, were the weather to have cooperated more, there would have been a Publishing Conference at UMD. But it all started badly. It ended amazingly, though, and it’s worth some reflection. Parts of it (including an awesome talk or two by Roy Booth and by David Wong) are still to come, if you can join us. (more…)
Where in Duluth: Buzzfeed edition
I was reading through this list of things Minnesotans are [allegedly] too nice to brag about and I saw this picture, figured it was from Duluth, and it is.
Minnesotans do brag about all of this stuff all the time, but it’s fun to see it on Buzzfeed. Several items in the article have a Duluth connection.
Help us map Duluth’s media ecosystem
I teach journalism at UMD and one of the things I’m interested in is learning how information flows through a community. I’m writing to ask for your help with a project. (more…)
Vegetarian-ish, garlic eating, natural-remedy-using nonsmokers
From the book Wild by Cheryl Strayed:
Who were those doctors in Duluth anyway? What was Duluth? Duluth! Duluth was a freezing hick town where doctors who didn’t know what the hell they were talking about told forty-five-year old vegetarian-ish, garlic eating, natural-remedy-using nonsmokers that they had late stage lung cancer, that’s what.
The Duluth Local Show on Local Current
I’m happy to say that I’ve been given the chance to share some Duluth music with a much wider audience than can hear my current radio program on KUWS. (And by “Duluth music” I mean everything from the Iron Range to the South Shore.)
The show will air on the Local Current stream on Wednesdays (starting tomorrow, March 27) at noon and will be rebroadcast on Thursdays at 11 p.m. and Saturdays at 6 p.m.
In order to put on the best local show I can – I’m gonna need your music if you’re in a band. We’ve got some 180+ acts playing Homegrown this year alone and I can tell you that I don’t have recordings from more than half of them. This is a call to bands from the region to send me your CDs/vinyls and/or high-quality digital downloads for me to potentially play on the Duluth Local Show.
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KUMD’s the Basement on mtvU
KUMD’s student-run programming, the Basement, will be featured on mtvU’s College Radio Countdown beginning tomorrow. We’ll celebrate our national television debut with a premiere party on Tuesday, March 26 at 7:30-9:00 pm in the UMD Lake Superior Hall Lobby.
KUMD students produced a fun one-minute video to introduce the mtvU audience to KUMD and Duluth; it starts with a broadcast from a local ice fishing house. The video will introduce our ten video picks of songs that represent the sound of the Basement, including two Minnesota artists, Trampled by Turtles and Polica.
In addition, KUMD’s Music Directors picked five local videos to be featured on mtvU’s tumblr; our first pick, Brian Barber’s brilliant video for the Black-eyed Snakes’ “Rise Up,” has already been posted and more will follow each day this week.
In the Duluth area mtvU is available on digital cable channel 327 and the show will also be available online at www.mtvu.com.
Duluth in Outside magazine again
Best Adventure Hub Runner-Up: Duluth, Minnesota
Note: The stat “81 miles of running and hiking trails” seems like an underestimate to me. Perhaps we should tally them up in the comments.
Karen Diver discusses another court decision against Duluth
At risk of setting off an avalanche of flaming comments here on PDD I am going to post this interview that I worked on today. (more…)
Idle No More Jingle Dress Dance Event in Duluth, Radio Documentary
Here is something that I have been working on. A one-hour radio documentary collection of sounds and voices from the Jan. 11 Idle No More Jingle Dress Dance demonstration through the streets of Duluth. It airs at 11 a.m. today on 89.1 FM WGZS in Cloquet. In case you are like the other 100 million people who will be instead listening to and viewing the inauguration of President Obama at that time on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday I have posted it online for people to listen to anytime in the form of a YouTube video.
I am still unhappy with some of the mix, the narration and my writing, but I am happy with being able to share these voices talking about this remarkable, historic event.