Channeling Larry King

Spent too much time traveling this week, so I'm going to channel a bit of Larry King with this junk-drawer brain dump that came from some extra time in the airport today:

• Paid $5 extra for a seat on a Bakersfield-Phoenix flight so I could have extra legroom and be closer to the front of the plane to catch a tight connection to Philadelphia. Get on board and find a 95-year-old woman sitting in my seat. Anyone who has lived 95 years deserves props, so after about 3 seconds of internal groaning at the thought of being jammed into a window seat, I jammed myself into same window seat and made friends with Hazel. That -- not the legroom -- was worth the extra $5.
• On return flight from Charlotte to Phoenix today, saw a woman sitting in first class but her two small children -- probably 6 to 7 years old -- were sitting in coach a few rows directly behind her. I can understand wanting to keep costs down or even needing quiet time from your kids, but how about stooping to sit with your kids on a 4-plus-hour flight?
• Unfortunate headline placement from USA TodayUnfortunate placement: Wednesday’s USA Today sports cover gave prominent play to the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, which the National League won after a 13-year drought. The headline – “National nightmare is over” – would have been great had it not been placed immediately above a secondary photo of controversial Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who died Tuesday.  Ouch. Or was it intentional?
• Do we really need a footlong hamburger? Apparently so, Carl’s Jr. has decided. $4 gets you just the meat, cheese and bun; and extra 50 cents gets you lettuce and tomatoes to make it healthy.
• Saturday night's Phoenix-to-Bakersfield flight had a few local sports celebs on board. Mike Dallas was flying back home, fresh from his nationally televised boxing victory in Mississippi. Dallas remains undefeated at 15-0-1. Word is his next fight may be televised live on ESPN. And LA Dodgers consultant George Culver was heading back home. Culver, who tossed a no-hitter during his time in the major leagues, has a long history of supporting local college baseball programs.
• If you’re on the run from the law, you probably don’t want to be tatted in a very promiment way. This Bakersfield suspect would probably be less conspicuous if he were wearing a hockey mask.
• Philly has done it right when it comes to pro-stadium placement. The stadiums for the Eagles, Phillies and Sizers/Flyers are all in the same place, meaning they can share the same parking, theoretically creating a smaller imprint on the city, consolidating mass transit efforts and more.
• Love the public-use rocking chairs placed here and there in the Philly airport. Nice touch and a way to help calm the masses.
• Saw a restaurant named Legal Sea Foods at the Philly airport. Not a very inviting name if you ask me, even if it’s supposed to put one at ease. Maybe it’s a regional thing.
• US Airways gives you the ability to upgrade your coach seats AFTER you book. So, instead of choosing your choice seat when booking at their rock-bottom price, they get your money, then upsell you later anywhere from $5 to $20 depending on the length of the flight. And this is just within coach, not up to business or first class. I suspect they know I’m a big guy who has tight connections because invariably my default seat is in the middle of a row and at the back of a plane. And because their data will show I’ve upgraded in the past, they know I’m likely to do the same thing again if they conveniently plop me in the middle of a row toward the back. Aggravating to me, but not a bad business plan where airlines have to pick up quarters anywhere they can.
   

Two heavyweights leave The Californian

This has been a tough week in Bakersfield, as The Californian said goodbye to two supremely talented people who helped take our company to new heights.

Editor Mike Jenner left the paper today after nearly two decades in Bakersfield. He's taking a prime journalism teaching gig at his alma mater, the University of Missouri, one of the best journalism schools in the country. If there's paradise in a tumultuous business like ours, that might be it.

Mike started working with the paper as a design consultant 17 years ago, but soon was hired to fill a series of top newsroom and "new media" positions, including executive editor. I've never met anyone who had a better mix of news, design and technical skills. Some editors are great wordsmiths or managers but lack the knowledge or want to understand the processes and technology that can make or break good journalism. It's hard work to get "underneath the hood," but that knowledge is invaluable, and I've always marveled at Mike's thirst to understand exactly how things like press configurations worked so he could take full advantage in producing a newspaper every day.

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Changes ahead for our community strategy on bakersfield.com

There's much more to come on this in the coming months, but we're going to be making some major changes to how we engage our readers on bakersfield.com and elsewhere in what we call the Bakosphere ("Where Bakersfield and the Web collide").

Those changes include a next-generation Opinion site to come that will require real names to post and comment, new strategies with our popular bakersfield.com blogs, and more engagement with local people outside of our network of websites.

You can read more in the BdotCOM blog on bakersfield.com, where reaction understandably has has been mixed.