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About
Howard Owens is a digital media pioneer. He started publishing local news online in 1995 when very few local news outlets had web sites. The header image on the site depicts the film camera he used early in his career and the press pass from his year on the staff of the Carlsbad Journal. For more on Howard's professional background, read his LinkedIn profile.
HowardOwens.com is the personal web site of Howard Owens and covers his range of interests -- political localism and libertarianism, music and personal interests, as well as his professional interests.
Howard is currently publisher of The Batavian and lives in Batavia, N.Y.
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Daily Archives: January 7, 2008
Go win yourself a Scripps Web Reporting Award
As a Scripps alum, I think that the E.W. Scripps company is one of the finest newspaper companies — a long, proud tradition of quality journalism and community service.
It would be an honor, I think, to win an award with the Scripps name on it.
Once again, the Scripps Foundation is offering a web reporting award.
Jack Lail has the details. Continue reading
Tagged Awards, Journalism, scripps
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Contrary to Askimet’s belief, I am not a spammer
Askimet thinks I’m a spammer.
Thankfully, Scott Karp, among others, knows I’m not a spammer. But he has had to hassle four or five times recently to fish my comments out of Askimet’s spam bucket. That led to this post.
On any blog that is using Askimet’s spam filter, if I leave a comment, my comment goes into the spam bucket.
Why? Apparently, it’s related to the fact that my site was hacked twice. One of those hacks involved putting a redirect page in one of my directories, and then the spammers sent traffic from hundreds of other hacked blogs to that page.
That was great for my technorati ranking, not so great for my reputation with Askimet.
I’ve written to Askimet and asked to be taken off the back list. So far, the request has been ignored.
I pretty much hated spammers before these incidents. My inclination to think they should all be shot on sight is hard to resist, even as much as I strongly believe in full and fair trails for all accused criminals. Here’s to hoping people like Alan Ralsky, assuming he’s convicted, get punished to the full extent of the law. We need thousand more prosecutions like this, but then I suspect most spammers reside in countries where the government could careless. Hopefully, someday, those governments will join the civilized world and come to hate spam as much as the rest of us do.
UDPATE: Afternoon of Jan. 9, 2008. I just got an e-mail from Askimet saying I’ve been unblacklisted. Continue reading →