Friday, February 22, 2013

The Maven Needs Your Help...

Like most people, the Maven enjoys games and puzzles that exercise the mind. However, the Maven is stumped on this news story from WANE TV

It all makes sense until the word "resin" appears in the second line of this copy. 

Do you have a guess? Let the Maven know, because it's irritating the hell out of him. 

You can leave your comments below. Thank you. 

Here's the puzzle:


Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Should I Be Wearing A Condom?

Not sure what's going on, but it looks like visiting the IndianaNewCenter website might be hazardous to your computer's health.

A local website expert tells the Maven that it's most likely a third party ad that has rotated into their display ads and is tripping this alert when that ad is present. 



Or, perhaps, they've just blocked the Maven's access....much like WOWO has done. YMMV.


Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Some Free Advice

The Maven can't decide. Sloppy? Lazy? Poorly trained? For whatever reason, the news copy churned out by media outlets in Fort Wayne is, at best, poorly done. There are the predictable spelling and 'cut and paste' errors. Grammar suffers daily. In addition, story structure and basic who, what where, why and how are often missing.

Some of the most egregious infractions occur when the media attempts report on what our elected representatives have been doing with our tax dollars. So, as a public service, direct from the AP Style Book, here's a little help:












So, for those of you who think the Maven sits around in a drunken haze making this crap up, I offer you The AP Style Book as a trusted source of guidance found in newsrooms across the nation. 

Oh, and if you are writing news copy, and you've never heard of or read the AP Style Book and Libel Manual, you might consider going back to answering the phone, and opening the mail. 

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Welcome Back Fox Network

The Maven is tan and rested thanks to a week in the Caymans, visiting his money and drinking Red Stripe, and wanted to mention some good news. 

Congratulations to WFFT channel 55 for regaining the Fox network affiliation beginning in March. You will recall that WPTA/WISE/INC/Malara/Granite grabbed the Fox affiliation after WFFT's parent company could not come to terms with the Fox network at affiliation renewal time 18 months ago. 


Once again, the Maven will be able to see the World Series and NFL games in true High Definition and without having to surf a couple of hundred channels on the Comcast spectrum to locate the current standard definition signal, or to suffer the over the air digital signal breakup resulting from WPTA/WISE/INC/Malara/Granite shoehorning the signal onto one of WISE 33's sub channels using duct tape, chewing gum and bailing wire.

While the Maven is totally happy with this turn of events, word is that some staff changes might occur on Butler Road as a result. A woman, purporting to be the wife of a WPTA/WISE/INC/Malara/Granite staffer, populated a local message board with the tearful tale of having to rejoin the labor force since her husband was probably going to lose his job. That's sad. However, in the Maven's opinion, the only person that should be fired is the imbecile responsible for playing a "NoNo" hair removal device infomercial in place of a Sunday NFL game at the beginning of this season. From that incident, and a few more, it's clear that WPTA/WISE/INC/Malara/Granite only siezed the Fox network in order to keep it away from other competitors. Let's see if WFFT does a better job presenting and representing the Fox content.