Was it all worth it? The countless minutes spent criticizing the guys at FrontBurner? Probably not.

Blogs like LodoWick are based on the successes and failures of another entity. That model only works under two conditions: 

1. Everyone hates said entity and wants a place to complain.
2. Everyone loves said entity and wants a place to party with fellow fanboys. 

The problem arises when there’s not enough substance to stir up either emotion. Let’s use a baseball analogy. A blog about the Tampa Bay Rays works fine. Let’s all get together and chat about those huggable Rays! (Can you believe that playoff run last year? OMG!)

Similarly, a blog about the New York Yankees is perfect. Let’s all get together and bash the Evil Empire! (Can you believe that playoff run last year? That’s right There wasn’t one!)

But, let’s face it, nobody wants to read about the Kansas City Royals. FrontBurner is the Kansas City Royals. It’s just sort of… there.

Sure, FrontBurner has its Zack Greinke (Zac) who isn’t a complete disaster. But then they have guys like Miguel Olivo (Tim) who have nearly twice as many strikeouts as hits. Still following me?

I’m saying that Zack/Zac gives you reason to hope, but then Miguel/Tim pushes those hopes back to reality.

Had enough of the baseball analogies? Me too.

Until next time,

RayRay

A hundred comments is a great milestone. At one time, FrontBurner would surpass 100 comments in one day. Now, according to my calculations, it will take approximately ∞ days for them to reach that number.

But to me it looks an awful lot like this conversation is just now starting. Or if not that, it’s really become apparent. Perhaps Wick sent a memo out to his staff telling them to start this public conversation. It probably looked like this:

Dear Staff,

I told FrontBurnervians that we shut down comments because FrontBurner was always meant to be a conversation among ourselves. 

Because of that, I want to start having a conversation among ourselves. So I insist that you respond in your own post any time I write something (which I will be doing a helluva lot more now that we’ll be losing page impressions).

Also, use the odd abbreviation “Ctd.” at the end of the blog subject line, because we’re trying to keep our character count low.

All the best,

Wick Allison

Or something like that. But a quick search of FrontBurner shows that they just started using “Ctd.” after the comments era ended.

Is it just me or are they going out of their way to force this conversation on us?

UPDATE (4:11 p.m. April 27): A LodoWickian has e-mailed me to remind me that “Re:” was often used by the FrontBurner guys before this “Ctd.” fad started. And, of course, the editors (mainly Eric, Zac and Tim) used the comments sections to offer feedback on others’ posts. It’s just more noticeable now because it takes up more real estate, I guess. False alarm?

But most of the time he was within his right to do that. I mean, who doesn’t hate drivers who take up two spaces?

This time, however, he went one step too far. In attempting to publicly humiliate someone who he claims he saw break the law, he himself might have broken it.

Here’s what happened. Tim called out someone by name in “An Open Letter to a Litterbug.” He says he saw someone flick a cigarette butt out of the window of a car. He then created a blog post and used the person’s full name several times, meaning he had gotten the information by using a license plate search at a Web site.

What’s wrong with that? Well, it’s illegal for a journalist (or anyone) to use that information in that way. That’s thanks to the Drivers Privacy Protection Act of 1994.

There are ways to be exempt from the law. This isn’t one of them. When Tim went to a reverse license plate search Web site to obtain the person’s name, he had to check a box agreeing to the terms. Here’s an example of what those terms look like:

I certify, and affirm, under penalty of perjury that the below identified DPPA exemption applies to this search and its follow-on displays. Further unauthorized disclosure of this information may result in penalties imposed under Title 18 U..S.C. Section 2721 et. seq., and applicable federal and state law.

He doesn’t qualify for an exemption. For more, check out the Society for Professional Journalists’ FAQ about the law. 

Here’s Tim’s original post. It has since been deleted from FrontBurner, which, to me, looks a lot like he’s admitting fault here. We removed the name of the alleged litterbug. Here’s the cached version of the post if you’d rather see it in its original format.

As well-meaning as Tim might have been, he wasn’t in his rights to do that, and the person he named can press criminal and/or civil charges. It’s possible this all might blow over and that the alleged litterbug isn’t overly upset. Either way, let’s hope Tim learned his lesson on this one.

I have sent Tim an e-mail and will allow him the opportunity to respond if he wants. Don’t hold your breath.

Thanks to a very bright LodoWickian for sending me this info.

Thoughts? I’ll have a complete story on this soon. Watch for it.

</mysterious>

Like the Cleveland Cavaliers, FrontBurner has become a one-man show.

Though there are four regulars (Wick, Tim, Eric, Zac) and a few part-timers (Glenn, Sarah), Wick Allison is taking all of the glory for himself. He’s a ball hog, even if most of his shots are clanking off the rim. Okay, so maybe he’s nothing like LeBron James.

Anyway, 24 of the past 50 posts have come from Wick’s hands. (I didn’t count any “Leading Off” posts since he never does those.)

Two questions about this: 

1. Why is Wick trying so hard to flood FrontBurner with post after post about the latest Dallas-related study or poll?
2. Generally speaking, do you enjoy the dull, humorless posts from Wick more than ones that actually are engaging, like those from Zac?

FrontBurner, like nearly every other Web site with advertising, charges advertisers based on page impressions. A page impression, of course is what happens every time you load a page. Here are some of their rates, courtesy of Lauren herself:

50,000 impressions        =          $1,437

100,000 impressions      =          $2,625

200,000 impressions      =          $4,250

There are two ads on FrontBurner: the banner and the tower. So let’s assume they’re both paid ads (though they frequently are house ads instead). That means that each time you visit FrontBurner, you could be giving Wick Allison nearly 6 cents.

50,000/$1,437 = $0.02874… multiply that by 2 (for two ads on the page) and you get $0.057 per impression.

Load the page 10 times in a day, and Wick has received 57 cents courtesy of you.

That’s the extreme example, since advertisers may choose for the better deal of buying 100,000 or 200,000 impressions. But you get the idea.

As you can see, it’s important for Wick that people return to FrontBurner throughout the day. I reloaded that page probably 50 times a day when I was commenting there, but, of course, I don’t do that now. The point is this: Less reason to return throughout the day will mean slightly less revenue for Wick. 

Want to really stick it to him? Use the RSS feed at the top right of LodoWick. Rather than checking back with FrontBurner to see if there’s a new post, just look there first. If there is and it looks interesting, sure, click and read it. If not, save the 6 cents.

Without commenters to keep people coming back, FrontBurner writers have been working overtime to keep fresh content up on their site. I mean, Tim wrote a post at 8 p.m. yesterday. Shouldn’t he have been out drinking or something?

But seriously, take a look at the numbers from the past 15 days below. I didn’t include weekends, since nobody works on the weekend.

• April 23: 17 posts
• April 22: 14 posts
• April 21 (The Day the Comments Died): 19 posts
• April 20: 7 posts
• April 17: 9 posts
• April 16: 12 posts
• April 15: 7 posts
• April 14: 9 posts
• April 13: 5 posts
• April 10: 4 posts
• April 9: 5 posts
• April 8: 8 posts
• April 7: 8 posts
• April 6: 6 posts
• April 3: 6 posts

So this is hardly a statistical sample, but in the most recent 13 weekdays of the YC (Yes Comments) era, we were getting 7.17 posts per day. Through the first three days of the NC (No Comments) era, we’re getting 16.67 posts per day.

To me, that says something. It says that they’re afraid of losing repeat readers who returned solely to read responses to their comments. What does it say to you?

UPDATE: He has now posted a corrected version. Apparently it’s OK to post something factually inaccurate and then later come back and correct it. As long as you cover your tracks.

Here was Wick’s first post:

Big Drop In DMN Online Numbers 

To be expected, considering the Texas presidential primary was last March.  The News is down 30%. Even so, that’s better than the Miami Herald (-85%), the NY Daily News (-71%), and the Raleigh News & Observer (-106%). So I would consider it a News victory, to have retained as many readers as it did.