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Randy Cassingham's BlogHistorical Details and Author's Notes from This is True®
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Media Notice Archives
TJI's The Best!
TJI is proud to be hailed as part of the "Best in Net Entertainment" in Internet World magazine's "The Best and Worst of 1994" issue.
Hail to the Press
This Just In got its first major press coverage this week -- with a nice nod in Newsweek's 11 November issue, in their new "Cyberscope" section. There has been plenty of notice from smaller publications, but Newsweek is certainly a big fish.
I Like TV
The folks at CNN caught the personality piece in the L.A. Times and called to see if I'd go on the air.
Well sure!
Bi-Coastal Publicity
After the New York Times did a nice write-up on me and True, I sent a copy to a Los Angeles Times reporter so he could see how the out-of-town paper scooped a great story right in his own back yard.
"How Did He Get So Popular So Fast?"
Just over a year old, This is True is written up extremely favorably in the New York Times' business section. Their reporter is the first one to really understand the implications of my for-profit e-mail publishing idea.
I'm Being Watched
The Online Journalism Review (published by the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication) did an interesting story on "Value-added E-mail: A Publishing Alternative to the WWW".
The article features Yours Truly, written by News Editor Matt Welch of Tabloid News Services.
Drudgery
True was given the "Fierce Site of the Week" this week award by fierce.com (which now seems to be a singles site, not a publication anymore.) They say that not only is truth stranger than fiction, "it's funnier, too." Like I'm going to argue?
True was also written up in this month's PC Computing magazine (in their "Amazing FREE Stuff!" issue), and I was clued in to a glancing but rather cool mention in Business 2.0's premiere issue. (I really appreciate it when you let me know when you see me or True mentioned in the press. Thanks!)
But the one I truly enjoyed the most this week is a mere link.
Wired -- Behind the Curve
The April issue of Wired magazine finally takes notice of e-mail publishing -- after I've been doing it for nearly two years.
The magazine says True is "one of the biggest lists on the Net.... It's [sic] popularity comes from Cassingham's shrewd selection of subject matter."
Textbook Case
Today's mail brought a copy of the third edition of a college textbook, Computers in Your Future. It has a brief case study on one new trend enabled by the Internet: e-mail publishing, using This is True as its example.
Hoops of Murphy
Last night I was up until 2:00 because I spent an hour and a half doing an interview with a magazine. The interviewer was pretty good: it was more than the usual questions like "Gee, why do you think it's so popular?" He even went into what I thought of the Napster debacle, and the Microsoft anti-trust action.
But about True, he asked, "How do you put the thing together, what do you deal with in the process, what hoops does Murphy's Law make you jump through to make it all come together?" Good question -- no one has ever asked it before.
Influence of the Stars
I don't often read horoscopes. But quite a few people sent me a clip of this one from Cancer for the week of June 8, 2000: "I see no reason why you should agree to your 'incarceration' in the lower depths much longer, Cancerian. In the opinion of both me and the cosmic powers that be, you've been punished enough. You have finished serving your time, paying your dues and carrying out your atonement. Therefore, I urge you to lobby hard for freedom in the coming days. If your oppressors show any resistance, start scheming about how to break out and escape by any means possible. To inspire your efforts, I encourage you to acquire a 'Get Out of Hell Free' card, which is available at..." and my address, with instructions to send $2.
Fred on Everything
Long-time readers (read: most of you) know "zero tolerance" is one of my pet peeves: my ZT page has a lot background on the concept, with several follow-up pages linked from the bottom. I've been ranting about ZT for some time: the first story I ran on it was 10 years ago!) I'm very pleased that more and more journalists and columnists are starting join me in railing against ZT. The latest is Fred Reed, in his Fred on Everything column. I had heard of Fred before, but never had checked out his stuff until he ran a rant on a couple of ZT cases (see his 25 July column, #283). At the bottom he included a link to my ZT page -- which brought hundreds of his readers to True.
Professional Thieves
The 11 December issue was reruns from 1995 since I was down with the flu. One of those stories was this one (which dealt with trying to embarrass journalists into better writing so there aren't so many errors in the paper). It was only the second "rerun column" ever in 11-1/2 years of weekly True issues.
Be Unreasonable
Today I got a copy of the new book Be Unreasonable: the Unconventional Way to Extraordinary Business Results by Paul Lemberg. In the book, Lemberg uses me and True as an example of starting a business in an "unreasonable" way (in his chapter on "Unreasonable Thinking").
G. Gordon Stella
I had an interesting experience on Wednesday: I got a phone call from the producer of G. Gordon Liddy's radio show, asking if I could be on their show -- in five minutes. I was just sitting at my desk, so I said sure. He asked me to pull up my Stella Awards archives so I could talk about pretty much any story during the half-hour segment. No problem, I said.
The Dvorak Keyboard
I've heard from several friends who spotted me in the Wall Street Journal today. It was just a tiny mention in an article about the Dvorak keyboard, an ergonomic alternative to the common "Qwerty" layout that you probably use.
