Freedumb isn’t free

It's ever so much cuter than an actual journalist. I mean, have you ever seen an actual journalist? Eeeeyew.

OK, I think I have Freedumb Communications’ little content-distribution problem solved. Let’s run this one up the strategically repositioned collaborative flagpole and see who facilitates a transformative salute in real time.

First you buy up a metric shit-ton of Berg’s Little Printers. You’re buying in bulk, so there should be a deep discount.

Next you pre-program the cute little dickenses to download updates from The Associated Press, Mayor Bach’s smoke-and-mirrors dispensary and the Colorado Springs Police Department blotter.

And finally, if there’s anyone left in the art department after the last round of layoffs you get him to redo the face so it looks like Tim Tebow just before you have security escort the poor, no-longer-useful sonofabitch off the premises. Hell, the fucking thing already has orange feet — give it a blue body and you’re golden.

Then you sell ‘em to the readership — whoops, pardon me, the community — at a steep markup.

And hey presto! Content delivery without all the hassle, expense and human interaction required by content creation. You’re welcome.

Merry Christmas, you’re fired!

The Bibleburg Gazette continues to bleed like a hemophiliac with  Ebolla in a sandpaper suit.

Today word came — not from the Gazette, natch — that owner Freedumb Communications has sacrificed another dozen or so staffers to The Invisible Hand of the Free Market.

It’s not clear whether editor Jeff Thomas was among those let go or resigned in protest.

But no doubt Michelle Malkin’s column will survive the carnage. Every circus needs a clown.

• Late update:The G finally issues a statement — in MarketSpeak®. Any journalist who would write content-free spooge like the following should be slapped in the mouth with a copy of “The Elements of Style” (duct-taped to a baseball bat):

The goal is to reposition The Gazette’s content center strategically to create and facilitate community conversation around issues that are important to the region, and deliver relevant information that serves the needs of readers on any platform.

“We need to evolve to meet the changing needs of our audience,” (content director Carmen) Boles said. “We’re embarking on a transformation. We want to collaborate in real-time with the community in defining what is relevant.”

It seems Thomas did resign — or “was resigned,” as we used to joke. No mention of the others tossed over the side. And the story was buried and spun in hopes of showing vision rather than myopia.

It can’t be much longer before Billy Dean Simpleton at MediaNews adds this floundering rag to his collection of smelly bumwads. There goes the neighborhood.

• Even later update: Behold the Gazoo’s future, via Mashable Tech.

Free market(ing)

Bibleburg is getting more roasts than toasts for its $111,000 tagline-slash-brainfart “Live It Up!” And rightly so. The out-of-town campaign has all the sex appeal of an Easter Sunday three-way involving Roseanne Barr, Rosie O’Donnell and Andy Dick in an oil-filled Uncle Wilber Fountain at Acacia Park.

Naturally, the local alt-weekly, the Colorado Springs Independent, was all over this half-master like a slobbering televangelist, instantly declaring a community contest: “We Brand the Springs.”

The Indy is urging Pikes Peak region residents to top “Live It Up!” with their own logos and slogans and/or promotional videos. The staff will thin the herd to five or 10 finalists in each category, then put it to an online vote. The $1,100 prize will be split between logo-sloganeers and videographers, and the winners get to help present their work to Experience Colorado Springs, a.k.a. the convention and visitors bureau.

I emailed the URL for Lib’ It Up, Bibleburg! to the Indy straight away, conceding that this blog doesn’t qualify as an attempt to project “the most fitting image of the Springs,” but rather is “a juvenile bid to use a free WordPress blog to make fun of the place. …”

But still, damn. Five hunnerd and fitty smacks — I gotta draw another cartoon of a bike racer studded with syringes to make that kind of cha-ching, and it takes me almost an hour.

So I probably should start brainstorming here, although it may be more of a braindrizzle, or perhaps a brainmist (it is a La Niña winter, after all):

“Colorado Springs: It Could Be Worse.”

“Colorado Springs: Gateway to Fountain.”

“Stick ‘Em Up, Colorado Springs!”

“Colorado Springs: It’s Not So Bad If You’re Stoned.”

“Live it Down, Colorado Springs!”

“Colorado Springs: We Got An Airport And Everything!”

“Colorado Springs: Just One More Reason to Home-School the Kids!”

“Colorado Springs: We Don’t Kick the Shit Out of Our Occupy Protesters.”

Whew. I’m exhausted. Cartooning is loads easier. Take your best shot at a new slogan in comments.

Let them eat scenery

Once again satire runs a very poor second to reality as Bibleburg’s Barnums piss away $111,000 for a new tagline — Live It Up! — plus a logo that would look right at home on a bottle of something a Baptist could drink, even on Sundays.

Never mind that drunkards living it up in the Tejon Street saloon district, and then beating the shit out of/knifing/shooting each other in the streets after closing time, are hardly a firm foundation upon which to erect a Chamber of Commerce campaign in a town shunned by venture capitalists, where unemployment was pegged at 8.6 percent in September, slightly above the statewide average.

The new tagline is reminiscent of a similar campaign in Richard Russo’s “Nobody’s Fool,” led by a dimwitted huckster of a bank president who has the brainstorm of hanging a street banner that reads “Things Are Looking ↑ in Bath,” equating its brilliance with the fabled “I ♥ NY” campaign.

The citizenry and merchants of Bath “were not fetched by this argument,” wrote Russo. “They were waiting for something tangible. …”

As are the citizenry and merchants of Bibleburg, no doubt. Given our reputation for religious intolerance and right-wing idiocy, perhaps “Live It Down!” might have been closer to the mark.

Or how about this? “We’re Jobless, Broke and Hungry, and We Can’t Eat Scenery.” Or bullshit, either, for that matter.