Changes coming to Esrati.com

A live local news show that’s interactive? We’re testing it out with the Esrati Report on YouTube. If we can get the workflows going we’ll also add it to Facebook live. Right now, we’re working on mastering the graphics via OBS software, a teleprompter that stalls, changing mics, lenses, and practicing the delivery.

Here’s episodes 2 and 3.

There are a lot of moving parts, and I never thought of doing a live news broadcast until I realized that about half of the people out there just don’t read. While local news is still doing “if it bleeds, it leads” my goal is to talk about things that actually impact our community- as in all of us, and advance the discussion of regionalization- bringing attention to the facts gathered at the Reconstructing Dayton site.

I’m also trying to monetize the content we’re producing and uploading- like Wright State Board of Trustees meetings and Trotwood board of Education meetings etc. Until every public organization starts making their meetings accessible (and not just on Facebook which is a walled garden and virtually unsearchable) this will be our method to showcase all of our local banana republics and their questionable usefulness in moving the region forward.

If you want to support this type of public journalism, all I ask you to do is to subscribe to the YouTube channel.

Also in development- a new look for Esrati.com The theme we’ve used for the last three or four years has pretty much died- but, since we’ve build some custom functions in – it’s not as easy to just swap themes and be done. we’ve also been pruning old data overhead from the database. For any techies out there- we had millions of rows of data from the old Spam Karma plugin still in the database. It’s been defunct for probably 8 years. This blog has been in continuous operation since 2005, making it the granddaddy of all Dayton blogs.

Current blog stats:

  • 2,810 Posts
  • 23,027 Comments

Which still shows that there is way more contributed content than mine- making this a community site. Although it used to have comments at a factor of 10-1, which leads to the next item: We’re  looking at our comment moderation tools, since we know comments dropped when we switched tools and themes. Hopefully, we’ll see an uptick in participation with the new theme/tools.

I’m also exploring bringing in other authors to the discussion. Mario Gallin has been following DPS in my self-imposed exile. Really, I have to hand it to her- I couldn’t stand the levels of stupidity anymore, yet she still sits watchdog. For all of you who elected William Harris and Sheila Taylor to that board- shame on you, we’re all paying the price.

I started blogging originally to test my hypothesis of  WordPress as a content management system that would make websites more accessible and useful for business. I started teaching the Websitetology seminar in November 2005 after seeing how well both this site and my business site were doing using this technology. Fast forward to today- and WordPress is running about 30% of the web. It’s the engine for The New York Times- which is a successful news website, unlike the bastard sites Cox runs that barely function. I’d offered many times to try to guide them in their digital offerings- it’s too bad they didn’t listen, because the mess they’ve built is almost unfathomable.

Other goals are to build the research database of Reconstructing Dayton to provide a clear and rational path to regionalization. This all requires time and money. If you’d like to join in, donations via the 501(c)(4) organization are possible here. We’re hoping to work with some motivated college students to help gather and crunch the data to build the case.

If you have any suggestions for things you’d like to see covered, or ways to improve the site or the daily video, please comment below.

Thank you

 

 

 

If you enjoyed reading true breaking news, instead of broken news from the major media in Dayton, make sure you subscribe to this site for an email every time I post. If you wish to support this blog and independent journalism in Dayton, consider donating. All of the effort that goes into writing posts and creating videos comes directly out of my pocket, so any amount helps! Please also subscribe to the Youtube channel for notifications of every video we launch – including the livestreams.