Happy Holidays

Scuttlebutt and Scuttleblog will be turning out the lights until the new year. Enjoy the holidays!

Spank me

Each day we do get a report on who subscribes, and who unsubscribes from the e-Newsletter, and we look at that for several reasons. One of the reasons is that it is an early indicator of job changes in the industry. But it doesn't always work in that order.

Last week in Issue 2494 (December 12th), we announced that Peter Harris had resigned his post as president and CEO of West Marine. But today he unsubscribed. We hope he subscribes again under a different email address.

In today's report, we also noted that Alinghi lawyer Ana Gilrobles was added to our subscription list. It seemed to be her task during the 32nd ACUP to spank all the little people for their use of the America's Cup brand. She spanked us. I wonder if she will spank me if I unsubscribe her?

Online holiday cards don't count

Maybe I will never be fully embraced by the X generation, or whatever label has followed it. To me, online holiday greetings don't count. Lord knows I do plenty by email. Heck, I am a publisher and I don't print anything. Sending out mass updates to my advertisers, to Forum users, to subscribers of the Scuttlebutt e-Newsletter... all simplified by the email process. But not holiday cards, no, can't do it.

Between my family and business, it was over three hundred cards this year. I labeled every one of them, stuffed every one of them, stamped every one of them, and mailed every one of them. No, I didn't personally sign every one of them... okay, none of them (though it would have been nice to have done so). But I thought about each person when I prepped their card, and that is why I do holiday cards.

The online holiday greeting is environmentally friendly, but as soon I read it, I delete it. I hang up the mailed holiday cards I receive. They become part of my holiday decorations. I hope they never go away.

Forum problems

I got a call from my webhost last Friday to say that they had to disable the Scuttlebutt website because of an issue with the Forum. After some technical tactics, I was able to disable the Forum, and get the Scuttlebutt website back online.

What happens next is so typical: the webhost says the problem is with the forum, and the forum provider says there is something wrong with the webhost. Needless to say, I have seen this movie before.

The Forum is still down, which is a shame as we were getting some great posts for our “Best Event in 2007” thread that was tied into our Issue 2500 celebration that is occurring this Thursday.

Some days you just don’t want to get out of bed.

Defending our honor

Credibility is a big deal for the team at Scuttlebutt, with the goal being that each newsletter carries only factual and fair information. You can’t be perfect all the time, and we make our share of mistakes. When we do, we post the correction, and hopefully learn something to keep it from happening again.

Last week we carried a report about the Barcelona World Race that had some information that was not correct. We received the information from the race press agent, and the error had an effect on a third party. This set off a chain of events that still puzzle me. Rather than this third party contacting us, or rather than this third party noting the source of our information and contacting them, they instead sent out a press release to the worldwide sailing media that we screwed up.

On Friday, I learned about this release by reading it in one of these media outlets, which I believe to be the only one that chose to carry the “story”. When I contacted the media outlet, which should have realized that we were not the source of the misinformation, and asked that they amend their story, they refused. This same media outlet goes for more a “quantity over quality” approach, so I guess their response shouldn’t have surprised me. After a few fruitless email exchanges, I gave up, made my corrections, and moved on.

When you sit and wonder, “Where did all the time go,” some of it is always spent dealing with stuff like this. Ugh!

Porn and Hip-Hop

We started a suggestion box on the Scuttlebutt website, figuring that it was time to ask what readers want. Like always, you got to be careful what you ask for. Of the respondents so far, 19% specifically asked for porn. There was another 50% that asked for more photos, and we suspect they were too bashful to say that they wanted more photos of naked people. Porn and hip-hop music seem like they are today's gold mine. Guess we should be happy that folks aren’t asking for more hip-hop.

I have a dream

There was a flurry of America’s Cup email last Friday, an event that becomes more like daytime soap opera with each passing sunset. The reason why we do things is often as interesting as the things that we do. This is certainly the case these days with the Cup, and maybe we will some day learn why the current defender Alinghi has handled the business of the 33rd event in the manner they have… but that day is not here yet.

If you read Issue 2492, you will see that Ernesto Bertarelli sent out an Open Letter that states his desire to change the Deed of Gift. The timing of this letter is odd, as ideas like these should have come immediately following his successful defense, and not now, after all the criticism and legal defeats. Soon after Bertarelli’s release, we received an announcement from the New York YC, which had agreed the night before at the club's Annual Meeting to help the defender and new Challenger of Record (BMW Oracle Racing) get the event back on track.

There are some people that are wholly vested in this event and take it quite seriously, and that is appropriate. However, for the majority, we are just trying to be entertained. It is for that later group that we did some word association, and share the first thing that came to mind regarding these announcements:

Ernesto Bertarelli statement: "I have a dream" (Martin Luther King)

NYYC: "You got a friend in me" (Randy Newman) *

We kept waiting for the BOR announcement, but it never came. However, if it did, we thought it might be this:

BMW Oracle Racing: "Shut up and dance" (Aerosmith)

* We learned Monday morning that whatever friendship that might have been forged between Bertarelli and the NYYC prior to Friday, became strained when they were blindsided by Bertarelli’s “I have a dream” announcement. Their release was planned for today, but was quickly assembled and released on Friday instead, as they felt it vital to better clarify their position in these negotiations.

Parity or Parody?

In Issue 2489, we provided the results for the poll that had asked about the best boat for the 33rd America’s Cup. Based on the poll results, it was evident that folks liked the boats used in the 32nd event this past summer, because they provided close racing. The phrase we used was that “Joe Public likes parody.”

When will we learn? Somebody please smack us over the head, and help us say “parity” when referring to “closeness.” This seems to be a reoccurring problem, and as always, the astute ‘buttheads were there to point it out. Here is a great letter from Rick Hatch:

“The America's Cup may indeed be a parody (see definition no. 3 below) of the "friendly competition between foreign countries" envisaged by the settler of the Cup (George Schulyer); however, Joe Public is more interested in PARITY!"

par·o·dy (n)
1. amusing imitation: a piece of writing or music that deliberately copies another work in a comic or satirical way
2. parodies in general: parodies as a literary or musical style or type
3. poor imitation: an attempt or imitation that is so poor that it seems ridiculous
[Late 16th century. Via late Latin from Greek paroidia , from para “secondary, indirect” + oide “song.”]

par·i·ty (n)
1. equality: equality of status or position, especially in terms of pay or rank
2. similarity between things: the quality of being similar or identical
[Late 16th century. Directly or via Old French parite , from late Latin paritas , from par “equal” (see par).]

Listening and learning

When someone unsubscribes from the e-Newsletter, they are prompted to a survey that asks them why. More often they are only changing email addresses, and removing the old one. The next most frequent reason is that the person either died, or has otherwise checked out, perhaps going on a long trip.

The purpose of the survey is to hopefully find out when we have messed up bad enough to where the person no longer wants to receive Scuttlebutt. Here were a couple of recent ones:

“The time it is delivered wakes me every night on my blackberry! Change from 3am and I will re-subscribe.”

Note: Our 6pm PT delivery time is to allow for evening reading in North America if desired, and morning reading in Europe.

“Email newsletter format is a 3rd grade level. Too much hassle reading with broken up lines & paragraphs, good content, excellent website. Sorry, a simple link to readable version would be enough.”

Note: We’d like to do an HTML version with photos and fancy formatting, but then we’d have to hire staff and either sell subscriptions or increase ad rates, and we fear neither would work. The e-Newsletter does have a link at the top for anyone who still wants the email reminder, but then prefers to click through to the website.

“Too much, way too much, America’s Cup-related crap. This stuff leads 4 out of 5 newsletters, for heaven's sake. I suspect you run this stuff because it’s easy, it's cheap, it's sordid, and because you’ve become fundamentally lazy. Scuttlebutt has become just another source of bacon.”

Note: Agreed, it is pretty easy to find ACUP stories, so we seem to spend our time either finding the best ones, or writing our own. The rest of our time is spent seeking non-ACUP stories, and always appreciate any/all help that is provided.

“The Curmudgeon’s Observation about different sports being for different racial groups seemed cruddy. I was looking for something more easy going.”

Note: It was a joke by Tiger Woods. However, we shouldn't have been surprised by this comment, as we learned long ago that our content should avoid Politics, Religion, Sexism, and Racism. We thought this one was safe... guess not.

Fortunately, most of the comments are like this one, which we tend to get when someone is changing email addresses:

“ I can''t live without it. Awesome reporting and great fun to read. The highlight of my day.....”

Keep em coming, and we’ll do what we can on our end.