SFist, San Francisco News Site Which Featured Zennie Abraham, Is Back
ONN – SFist, a San Francisco-based news blog site, is back. The online publication that was part of the “Gothamist” series of websites owned by billionaire Joe Ricketts, has been acquired by San Francisco-based media company Impress3 Media.
Impress3 Media was established October 30, 2013, according to Crunchbase. The founders are Gabriele Genghini, Paul Frielman, and Zachary Chen. It’s listed as focusing on “Content Automation, Local News, Industry News, Videos” – much like my Zennie62Media. Still, clearly a different path for SFist from the past.
In 2009, SFist discovered me via my rant about J.J. Abrams Star Trek, and my Zennie62 on YouTube viral video of a fight that took place in front of Harry’s Bar on Fillmore during the Fillmore Jazz Festival. The video was and is a kind of Rorschach test for society. Anyway, SFist wrote “Zennie sounds like he could be one of the most interesting people this city has got going for it. In addition to ruminating on Star Trek or Giants games, he comes across great action around town.”
The “Fight on Fillmore at Fillmore Jazz Festival” video: https://youtu.be/vvQXjh-NnLM
The only issue I had with the SFist editors at the time was what I perceived was a developing pattern of the publication making fun of anything I pointed to that was racist. Hopefully, the new SFist will seek to have a better relationship with me.
The Impact Of Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, On Media
Beyond me, the story of what Joe Ricketts did in closing the Gothamist, and SFist, is intructional. The billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade wrote “I’m hopeful that in time, someone will crack the code on a business that can support exceptional neighborhood storytelling.” Workers of the publications argue back that it was their desire to unionize that caused Ricketts to shut them down. I contend that both Ricketts and his workers failed to see the real cause of the demise of the publications: social media.
According to a late 2018 Pew Research Survey, 68 percent of Americans get their news via social media. And the leaders in where eyeballs are placed are Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, with Instagram and Snapchat pulling up the rear because of they are image-based. But the pattern of gaining information from and handful of social media sites is so hard-wired that much of news today is either gotten from one of those platforms, or those platforms are used to communicate that info.
That dynamic, alone, has contributed to the demise of local news publications. There is a way out of this…
Stay tuned.
Oakland News Now Note: this post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest version of an experimental Zennie62Media mobile media video-blogging system network – part of a new approach to the production of media. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 on YouTube Partner Channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site and social media pages. The objective is real-time on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. We are constantly working to improve the system network coding and also seek interested content and media technology partners.