Top 5 things recordnet.com needs to do to actually be eligible for an award

First of all, please join in in welcoming Bris Isaak into the fold finally. We're expecting his second post in approximately 4 months.

When Duké told me Recordnet.com had won an award I thought he misspoke and was actually talking about 209Vibe.com, which is an outstanding site. Then he showed my the half page ad they took out to blow themselves over it and I still can't believe it. Something's fishy. Why? Because as we've stated time and time again, Recordnet.com sucks a bag of dicks. But instead of focusing on the negative like we tend to do, we got the brain trust together and came up with 5 basic things Recordnet needs to do to actually be mentioned anywhere near the word "award". Unless it's an award for frustrating unnavigability. (Yes, this list is still painfully negative, but at least it's constructive criticism this time)

1. Linkback to relevant stories

This has to be one of the most frustrating things they do that's easily fixable. Let's use the recent Stockton Rodeo debacle as an example. Here's the Record's story about the Rodeo being called off/postponed/whatever the fuck they're doing. Now, if you happened to miss the Record's story about the Rodeo coming to Stockton (like Duké did) or perhaps saw the word "Rodeo" and skipped the story completly (like I did), then when you saw the story about it's cancellation your reaction was probably similar to ours. "What fucking rodeo?" The story on the Record's website doesn't linkback to the original story about the Rodeo so you have no idea how some hick duped the city council into giving him $75,000. (Hint: Bring a cowboy hat)

2. Have the search engine organize results in a way that makes sense

So since Recordnet doesn't post a link to the story a followup story is actually following up, your next option is using their search feature. For a story about the Stockton Rodeo it would make sense to just type in the words "Stockton" and "Rodeo". Here's what you get when you do. The first page is all links to the rodeo being called off. Three of those stories have nothing to do about the rodeo. They just happened to contain the link to the story about it's cancellation, so putting quotations around the words "Stockton Rodeo" to narrow the search down to just stories that contain the phrase Stockton Rodeo together won't work.

3. Quit telling us to read about a breaking story in the paper tomorrow

When the rodeo cancellation broke, I found out about it through 209Vibe's Twitter. Ian Hill had an entire story up on the 209Vibe.com. What did the Record have? They told us to come back tomorrow. What's the point of even having a website if you're not going to break already broken news? The reason print journalism is going the way of the dinosaur is for reasons like this. People want their news and they want it fucking now. Telling someone to read about it in the paper on your website is a dickish move to begin with, but at least we understand the reason is that The Record is clearly still dedicated to the pulpy version of news than the current generation of journalism. But if you're going to then post David Siders' story on the website when Ian Hill had already written it a day earlier, that's just spitting in the face of a guy who alrady broke a semi-important story. (We're still debating whether or not anybody should be crestfallen that we'll be denied a rodeo in 08.) And putting that Hill contributed to the story at the end doesn't make up for the fact that Recordnet.com refused to give him his daps.

4. Put your news stories in some discernible order

Let's get away from the rodeo now and focus on something Duké mentioned earlier. (See, a linkback, html isn't that hard. Promise.) He wrote about the story that was on the front page of the Record about the prison guard union trying to recall Gov. Schwarzenegger. Considering our proximity to the state capitol and the amount of time the average Stocktonian spends around prison guards, you'd think this would be a fairly important story. Too bad you'd only read about it if you got the print version of the Record. The story was nowhere in the Recordnet news section. You will however see the stories about the 1-5 crash and Stockton PD blowing up a dufflebag full of clothes (way to earn that raise guys) listed twice! I assumed it was because they only listed stories they wrote and left the AP stuff to the AP. But then I saw not one, not two, but eight AP stories in that same list. The most locally relevant of which was about the morgatge crisis. Go figure. Alright, let's round out this list.

5. User driven content!

This is the most frustrating out of any of the things on this list, it's just not as easily fixable as the first item on the list. It's also one of the simplest ideas of all time. People want to give their opinion on shit to other people. (Hey, I wonder if that'd make for a good website...) The reader feedback used to be a decent feature because it appeared on the same page as the story, made it kind of easy if you needed to reference something in the story. They moved them to the forums probably because most of the time the reader reaction at the bottom of the story was negative towards the Record (Which is actually how I got the idea for this place). Past the forums though, there's no real reader driven content. You can submit photos for them to put up, but you'll only see them if they fit into one of the categories. Look at the rest of the Reader Interaction Homepage. You don't interact worth a shit, it's just their fancy word for "internety" stuff. You can read a bunch of blogs that are updated once every equinox. You can suggest a poll? Buy a photo? Is that really interacting? Buying a photo from the record is interacting like buying a cheeseburger from McDonald's is "interacting" with Ronald McDonald. And it's not like Stocktonians don't want to contribute. 209Vibe thrives off of user contributions and they're run by the Record! (Note: We don't include 209Vibe.com as part of the recordnet.com site's user driven content because for all intents and purposes, it's about as separate from the Record as we are. The only difference is Ian Hill also works for the Record from time to time) In non-San Joaquin Media Group sites, Stockton's creative side still comes bursting out. You ever type Stockton into YouTube? Here, we did it for you. You're saying that can't easily be put into a YouTube channel and put on the Recordnet's website? Hell, I think we might have just done that here with that fucking link.

Now, that isn't all that's wrong with recordnet.com. (#6 would have been "Fire Lori Gilbert", but that's not really the website's domain.) I'm sure if we tried we could find a lot more, but we're starting to feel like we're picking on their webmaster. We don't want to, but we're the audience you're trying to reach, information junkies who get their news mainly on the internet. When print finally dies, all you're going to have is that website. And when it comes to that we want it to be good. Same reason we criticize the paper version of the Record, we just want it to be good.

El Duke visits the new UOP University Center (It's fancy, and green)

One of the advantages blogging has over print media is we can get our stories to you right away instead of the next morning. So in an effort to scoop the Record (again), I'm getting my review on.

UOP's brand spankin' new University Center opened today and as a way to drum up press test the new facility, they gave away free lunches to pretty much anybody who walked in with a confused look on their face. Yours truly included.

Personally I was hoping that the new campus pub the Tiger's Lair would be giving away free brewskis, but I knew that wasn't the case. I would have tried but as soon as I walked in I knew I was going to be in for a long wait for my free lunch and soda (finally with free refills!), so I picked one of the 37 lines that protruded out of the Marketplace (their fancy name for the cafeteria) and promptly realized I was in the wrong line.

Eventually one of the many Pacific staffers on hand enthusiastically handed me a map and gave me a quick guided tour of the 5 available food stations. Which I will now list if for no other reason than to show of their hilarious names:

On Exhibition
Apparently this means grilled items. Like burgers and and such.

Grainery/Deli
Technically they're two separate station, but one's bread and soup and shit. The other's the sandwich station. Bet you can't guess which is which!

Pacific Rim
Asian food. Allegedly including sushi. And other various Oriental delights.

Classics
All that classic food your mom used to make like spaghetti, meatloaf, and chicken.

Taqueria
This is a Stockton based blog, I shouldn't have to explain what a Taqueria is.

There's also a salad bar and a coffee shop on the first floor in the general vicinity of the Marketplace. But those cost money so I didn't even go near them.


I opted for the Oriental section, mostly because in the old Summit (the previous cafeteria-type place) that meant a bowl of rice with stir fry on top. As I approached the station, I realized that was not the case. Instead of a made when you order it rice bowl, the Asian station has turned into pretty much a cafeteria-style experience. You have your tray, you tell the person behind the counter what you want, and they scoop it out of another tray and hand you a plate with your food on it. Maybe the the Summit spoiled me (As a college age resident of Stockton, I've spent my fair share of time at UOP). Granted, this new system isn't a bad thing, I'm just a creature of habit. While disappointed that I didn't have my rice bowl, I was happy that I was able to get my food almost immediately (that "almost" being the line). Before, while waiting for the rice bowl, you had to kind of stand around with a usually huge line behind you while waiting for the stir fry to..well..fry. Time is the price for freshness.

I was also happy that they finally added some variety. Before, the rice bowl was the extent of the Asian cuisine experience at UOP. Well, unless you count the sushi trays. But I make it a general rule to not buy prepackaged sushi sitting in an open air fridge. Just a personal choice, but understandable. But while I was excited to try something new, it also exposed one of my cultural weaknesses. I'm not really up snuff on my Asian foods. I recognized some of the easy ones, there was some chow mein, white and fried rice, and an egg roll. But past that I was at a loss. There was something that was deep fried that tasted kind of sweet and soury, but didn't have any sweet and sour sauce. (Unless they cooked it into the deep fry batter McGriddle style. If so, I want to marry that little sweet and sour ball and have its kids.) There was also some sort of vegetable mix that swam around in what I think was teriyaki sauce. (Oh yeah, I'm no food critic either. But we'll get to what I thought of the foods later.)

After I got my food I needed to find something to wash it all down with. On each side of the Marketplace there's fountain drink stations. Unfortunately while there were 6 or so food stations, there were only 2 drink stations. Depressingly this was twice the amount of drink stations the Summit had. (3 times if you count the Lair) After finding which winding line was the one that ended with me getting a drink, I informed the two empty handed people in front of me that this was the drink line. I then handed them my map and they thanked me as they braved the free food frenzy. The drink line took longer than my food line, but that was more because the jackasses in front of me had an undetermined number of people in their group. Sometimes I was only 3 people away, but then 2 of their friends would come back with cups, because they all forgot cups. And then after all of that, the assholes get water. It's free food fuckos! That means load up on the Mt. Dew while it flows like water!

When it was finally my turn I was disappointed to find out that the ice had run out. It was excusable because roughly half the population of Stockton had descended upon the place in search for a free lunch. Although that still didn't take the sting out of waiting 10 minutes for some warm Dr. Pepper.

I expected finding seating to be a bear, but as with the entire time I spent there, UOP was on the ball and expected it. They had plenty of outside seating to accommodate the penny pinching masses. The food was good considering I wasn't sure what to expect with many bites. Although I guess mystery is what you get when you tell the server "just give me a little bit of everything." What can I say? I'm adventurous.

After cleaning my plate (ok, so maybe it was good regardless of the mystery), I realized one big downfall. My plate was an actual plate, not a paper plate. I have to give this back. Yes, I almost immediately realized that the new UC was a green building. Fucking hippies. At first I thought that I had overlooked the disposable to go plates, but then I remembered my plate was handed to me already full of food. If I then wanted to go back and chow down in the dorm of some broad I had picked up earlier in the Lair, I'd have to come back to return the plate. (Because I would never just throw the plate away anyways in that situation.) Also, I remember drinks coming in different sizes so I could enjoy my Dr. Pepper throughout the day. Now I have a small plastic cup. But hey, free refills!

All in all it was a pretty decent experience. I was expecting mass chaos and was pleasantly surprised that I was in and out within a half hour. During free food day no less. The new UC is a sight to behold. Althought hat new water "fountain" is a drunken death waiting to happen. It's basically a rock slate with a half-inch lip, and the water pours over the lip into a grate that recycles the water. Considering it's in front of the building that houses the only legal public drinking place on campus, I'm predicting a "UOP Student's half inch of death" headline sometime in the future.

I hope you enjoyed this semi-review. I'm used to reviewing movies so being a food critic was kind of new to me. But I guarantee this will be better than the inevitable Fitzy column on the place. But we had it here first, so suck it Record.

This is a genius idea I wish I'd thought of when I started this place

I think I've stumbled upon the answer to the question that bloggers have been asking since their inception. Why do print journalists hate us so much? Is it the whole watchdog being watched thing? Is it because they're old and don't want to learn how to use a computer? Is it because they spent years honing their craft only to realize some jackass living in his mother's basement is better at writing than they are? Is it because they secretly wish they too could pepper their columns with well placed dick jokes?

Well, the answer to those questions is probably no. The reason they hate blogs so much is because they're way too easy to navigate.

I've been writing this site for a whole week and I'm already ready to throw my monitor across the room. Why? Because I've been scouring The Record's website for all those stories that I've read over the past couple months that pissed me off enough to make me create a blog. I forgot that I usually consume The Record in fishwrap form. (aka print) But I can't really link to a piece of paper, so I mosey on over the the previously linked webstie to give you guys the precious precious links that makes half the potshots I take at this town make sense. You have no idea how much of a task this is.
The Record's website appears to have been put together by a retarded 4 year old. If I want to find something I read in the Local section, it would seem natural that if you click the Local link, it would show you the stories from the Local section. And guess what? It does. Only the stories seem to be organized in no real discernable order. One would assume the stories deemed important enough to grace the front of section B would also be the stories most easily found on the Local webpage. Unfortunatly that old saying about assumptions making an ass out of "u" and "me" rings true here.

So after a couple of increasingly irritating minutes, I gave up and just used the search box to find every story I'll probably ever be linking to. And all to make it easier on you to find the interesting stories online that are buried beneath the 50 or so "God damn it's hot, isn't it?" stories.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. The Record recognizes how frustrating it can be to locate a web version of a story you saw in print. So as a gift to you the reader, they created the erecord! That's right, for the low low price of the cost of a 7-day subscription you too can peruse an almost exact digital copy of The Record (layout in tact!). Yes, you too can pay whatever outrageous price they charge these days to read all those pages of AP stories that you already read on Yahoo for free.