The Oklahoman – Page 2 – Jim Stafford's BlogOKC

In my hometown, the long decline of a Fort Smith institution

Screenshot — The Southwest Times Record building in what appears to be the early 1960s. (Photo courtesy of Southwest Times Record former employees Facebook group)

Here’s a bit of nostalgia for you. When I walked into the Southwest Times Record newsroom for the first time as an employee in 1978, I encountered a bustling community of talented writers, editors and photographers all scrambling to publish local news seven days a week.

The Fort Smith newspaper was a great place to learn the craft as my first job out of college. There are many folks among my former colleagues there whom I will never forget. I worked at the SWTR for five years in a variety of positions before moving to Oklahoma City and working for The Oklahoman for almost a quarter of a century.

My parents were among the 40,000 or so SWTR subscribers who fetched the newspaper off their driveway every morning. Established as the Fort Smith Times in 1884, the SWTR had a strong following not only in Fort Smith, but across a multi-county region of Western Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma.

So, it’s been disheartening to watch the SWTR decline as a community force over the past few years as the number of subscribers declined and employees were laid off. It’s a situation not unlike that in many other cities across the nation.

Now owned by industry giant Gannett, I’m not sure there remains a single Fort Smith-based editor or reporter chasing down local news stories.

In fact, my 90-year old mother, who subscribed to the SWTR in our hometown of Fort Smith for more than five decades, finally gave it up a couple years ago because the paper had so little local news. Sometimes she still reads the obituaries published online.

As for me, I’ve stayed connected to the SWTR by subscribing to the paper’s free emailed daily newsletter that allows a peek at its headlines and free access to the obituaries.

It all makes you wonder when the hammer will fall and Gannett will halt publication of a physical paper for any remaining subscribers, leaving only online access.

Well, we’re close.

I received a notice recently that the SWTR was transitioning to a “mail only” newspaper with no more home delivery. Here’s what the email said, in part.

“Beginning tomorrow, look for your copy of the Southwest Times Record and our other regional publications to arrive with your daily mail. As announced in the Jan. 10 edition and in letters mailed to subscribers, the U.S. Postal Service will be delivering the Southwest Times Record to optimize resources amidst increasing digital readership demand.”

Now subscribers can read ‘news’ that is already at least 24-hours old when it arrives in the mail. What’s that old saying about nothing as stale as yesterday’s newspaper?

So, why am I writing this?

Well, it’s not a diatribe against the current ownership, because I see what’s happened to my old employer as a product of emerging technologies and a big change in how the public consumes news. Online access to news — much of it free — has removed the incentive to subscribe to a daily newspaper that lands on your driveway every morning.

I’m mourning the SWTR for its former employees and the folks who subscribed to the paper for decades. It’s like watching a close relative slowly fade away from an incurable cancer.

Here in OKC, I’m still a subscriber to The Oklahoman’s physical newspaper, which is delivered to my driveway every day but Saturday. Yet, when I look up and down my street as I pick up the newspaper each morning, I see no other papers on my neighbors’ driveways. None.

However, I’m confident the path determined for the Southwest Times Record won’t be a template for The Oklahoman. It remains an enterprising news organization, despite repeated rounds of staff reductions.

That notice I received of the SWTR’s “all mail” newspaper delivery prompted me to ask a couple of former colleagues and longtime SWTR employees who still live in the Fort Smith area their thoughts on what has become of their former newsroom.

Patti Cox was a longtime news editor at the SWTR with whom I worked on the news desk. She shared her perspective with me as both a former employee and a current subscriber.

“It is very sad turn of events for Fort Smith,” she said. “We still are taking the day-late-in-the-mailbox paper but not sure for how long or why. End of so many meaningful things like insightful, timely local news and commentary. Long gone are noisy newsrooms filled with reporters, editors, interns with common purpose and multiple deadlines.”

Carrol Copeland, longtime SWTR photographer and creator of a Facebook group called Southwest Times Record former employees that has 162 members, also shared his thoughts with me.

“Back in the day, we covered local news, and there was very little worldwide or nationwide news in it,” Carrol said. “Probably 80 to 90 percent of it was local news. At one point we had the Poteau office and the Van Buren office, and somewhere around 150 employees.”

That was then. This is now.

“There’s not even a physical location anymore,” Carrol said, who recalled tornadoes, spectacular crimes and criminal trials that he covered over the years. “I think it comes down to a lack of income. If you can’t sell advertising you can’t have people to work for you.

“Now that people are going to the Internet or Youtube for their news, no one is advertising anymore. The technology overtook them.”

How will the daily newspaper voice be filled for former SWTR subscribers who loved its local news angle? Digital news services that focus on local news offer some hope.

Here in Oklahoma City, we have Oklahoma Watch and Nondoc, among others, which are sort of complementary to The Oklahoman, for now.

In Fort Smith, there’s an online site called Talk Business & Politics that focuses on Fort Smith and Northwest Arkansas. It was started by a former SWTR editor. I read it first thing each morning five days a week.

Actually, as I think about it, I’m not sure folks aged 30 and younger will miss holding an actual newspaper because it’s likely they never read one on a daily basis anyway.

But for those who grew up with ink-stained hands, it’s a difficult transition.

“I just know I loved newspapers and the dedicated (mostly young) quirky stressed out folks who worked for them,” Patti Cox told me. “Grateful for the lifetime lessons learned there.

“Good memories, my friend.”

We’ll carry those memories with us long after the final edition is published. It’s coming.

Confession: I was an Internet domain name squatter in 2006

Bennett Sonics — New Seattle Supersonics owner Clay Bennett showcases a Sonics jersey after purchasing the NBA franchise in 2006.

EDITOR’S NOTE: When it was announced in July 2006 that a group of investors from Oklahoma City had purchased the Seattle Supersonics NBA franchise, everyone in OKC knew what that meant. The team would relocate to Oklahoma City sooner or later. Probably sooner. That happened in 2008. Sorry Seattle. I was working in The Oklahoman newsroom at the time as a Business News reporter, and hit upon the idea of buying some potential Internet domain names that the future OKC Sonics (we thought) might want. Then I could sell the rights to that domain name to the team owners for a nice profit. Buy low, sell high. It didn’t work out, but I did get a nice story out of my brief tenure as an Internet domain name squatter. It was published as a column in The Oklahoman back in 2006. And that was the sole purpose of buying a domain name. This is that story.

By Jim Stafford

Like a tsunami traveling across hundreds of miles of ocean, it didn’t take long for ripples from last week’s $350 million acquisition of the Seattle SuperSonics to wash into Oklahoma.

A group of Oklahoma businessmen now own the Sonics, and less than a day after the deal was announced another group of enterprising Oklahomans spotted opportunity in a possible relocation of the team to the Sooner State.

We huddled in The Oklahoman newsroom.

A colleague I’ll call “Don” suggested that we research available Internet domain names using such words “Oklahoma, OKC, Sonics and Super-Sonics.” We could pool our resources and buy up the most promising real estate.

“I’m in,” I told him. The new team owners will need some prime Internet real estate if they relocate to Oklahoma, and we wanted to own it when they got here.

So began a race not unlike the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889, although the mode of transportation this time was a high-speed Internet connection. Using the domain broker GoDaddy.com, we did a search of virtually every combination of Oklahoma, OKC, Oklahoma City, Sonics and Super-Sonics.

Apparently, some Sooners had already anticipated the deal and staked out some virtual land before we got into the race. Names like oklahomasonics.com, okcsonics.com and sonicsokc.com were all gone. Even okiesonics.com was no longer available.

We settled on okc-sonics.com as the best of the unclaimed property. We formed a 50-50 partnership and sealed the deal through GoDaddy. Total investment: $9.40.

When word spread that a pair of Internet real estate moguls inhabited the newsroom, several of our colleagues began clamoring to join the investment group. They wanted in for $1 each, but Don and I decided the value already had risen beyond the original purchase price.

We decided to expand our investment empire the next day and claim another domain name. This time we went for sonics-okc.com. Another $9.40.

An editor who heard of our venture happened to wander by the business news desk. What were our intentions in owning these domain names, he inquired.

We’re not going to hold anybody up, we assured him. If the new owners of the Sonics want one of these domain names for the team’s Web site, we’ll demand nothing more than season tickets for each of us. And our spouses. On the floor. Plus parking.

The editor decided to play devil’s advocate. “Let me ask you this,” he said. “On whose computer and whose time did you make this deal?”

Gulp. The devil IS in the details.

Uh, we only took this move to assure the new Oklahoma owners that prime domain names will be available to them if they need it. Just kidding about the season tickets. HA! HA! We won’t really need to be on the floor anyway. And we can pay for our own parking.

Meanwhile, Don began looking for a possible exit strategy. He located the domain name auction site afternic.com where homesolutions.com recently brought a bid of $9,210. Therapy411.com reeled in a $2,000 bid.

Suddenly, new opportunities seem possible. We will wash our hands of this Sonics deal just as soon as our auction is over.

The auction won’t end until our reserve price is reached. We will set it just high enough to cover a pair of season tickets. Parking included.

The OKC Origin Story of the Dot Race

Dot Race live — The Dot Race as presented on the Texas Rangers scoreboard in the 1980s.

If you frequented the late All Sports Stadium to watch the Oklahoma City 89ers Triple A baseball team play during the 1980s, you probably were a fan of an animated scoreboard feature known as the Dot Race.

I know I was.

I can remember many nights at the ballpark when the Dot Race prompted thousands of fans to cheer on their favorite computerized, pixelated “Dot” like they were at Churchill Downs. Sometimes, there seemed to be more excitement surrounding the faux scoreboard race than the actual game.

If you can recall through the hazy years of the past, the three Dots — labeled Dots 1, 2 & 3 — raced down an animated speedway toward the finish line. Sometimes a dot veered into the wall or had a breakdown just when it appeared it would win the race.

A form of the Dot Race lives on in the 2020s as between-inning entertainment for the Texas Rangers and other Major League parks around the country. And as time has passed, few people recall that the Dot Race had its beginning as humble, white dots on the 89ers scoreboard in Oklahoma City.

Turns out, the Dot Race was the brainstorm of a then part-time 89ers employee and University of Oklahoma student named Larry Newman.

By coincidence, when I arrived in The Oklahoman newsroom as a sports copy editor in 1983, Larry also worked part-time at night on the paper’s sports desk, taking scores and writing up short summaries of high school basketball and football games.

I got to know him as a bright, competent young man who also had an interest in computers and software coding. One night he brought the first Macintosh computer I had ever seen in the wild into the newsroom.

So, it wasn’t long before I learned that Larry was the creator of the Dot Race, although I didn’t know the full story until a recent Saturday morning when we caught up with one another at MentaliTEA and Coffee in Bethany. It was the first time we had seen one another in roughly 40 years.

I wanted to know the story of the Dot Race, and Larry was happy to share it.

Larry Newman began working as a ticket taker for the 89ers while in high school back in the late 1970s. He eventually was asked by owners Bing Hampton and Patty Cox to take over duties of operating the scoreboard pitch count from the press box.

“I did balls and strikes for probably two or three years,” Larry said. “In that role, you are watching every single pitch of every single game throughout a baseball season. So, a lot of innings.”

The next development leading to the Dot Race involved a new scoreboard installed at All Sports Stadium in a sweetheart deal between the 89ers, the City of Oklahoma City and the Miller Brewing Co.

“The people from Miller said we will give you a brand new scoreboard and attached message center in exchange for leaving the Miller Brewing Company logo advertisement on top of the new scoreboard for some number of seasons,” he said. “That’s what the Dot Race ran on; that message center.”

That brand new scoreboard offered a three-line message center, which provided the opportunity to not only display text, but to develop simple graphics that would be displayed. It came with a couple pre-made animations that had clapping hands and home run celebrations.

So, Larry learned to do frame-by-frame animations that were written in code to magnetic tape storage — no fancy floppy discs for this scoreboard. Larry began working on his Dot Race idea because the 89ers had no between-inning entertainment during one half inning of each game.

Larry dove into the coding challenge. He said it took about 35-40 hours to create the first race course and the dots — “pixel by pixel,” but after the first one was completed, programming each individual race to run on his course took about 30 minutes a night, he said.

So, the Dot Race was born.

“When I showed the idea to 89er owners Bing Hampton and Patty Cox, they approved the idea and actually promoted it at each 89er home game,” Larry said. “The public address announcer said, ‘hey, we’ve got a new feature, the Dot Race. Pick your winning Dot.’ We did it every night and people started getting into it.”

Larry programmed a new Dot Race for every game, and fans liked it so much that some asked him to tell them in advance what the winning Dot was going to be that night. He said he never disclosed the winner prior to any race.

“I had a race once where a Dot ran into the wall and an ambulance came out and picked it up,” he said. “That one took a lot of time to build.”

During this time the 89ers switched Major League affiliation from the Philadelphia Phillies to the Rangers, which was critical to the eventual spread of the Dot Race across baseball.

One night, visiting Texas Rangers officials that included then-General Manager Tom Grieve came to OKC to watch their minor league players. The Rangers reps spoke to Larry in the press box that night.

“They came up to me and said, ‘hey we want to see this Dot Race thing; we’ve heard about it from a couple of the players,’ ” Larry recalled.

The Rangers officials watched it and saw the fans reacting to it.

“They asked, ‘how did you do that?’ I said ‘it’s a very involved process.’ “

A short time later, he got a call from the Rangers scoreboard operator. The Texas version of the Dot Race was soon born and became hugely popular.

The 89ers — but not its inventor — got credit in early DFW area newspaper articles about the Dot Race phenomenon.

A story in the August 24, 1986, edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram quotes Rangers PA announcer Chuck Morgan as crediting the idea to the 89ers, but said it came to the Rangers via a newspaper reporter.

But in newspaper articles about the Rangers Dot Race just a decade later, Morgan made no mention of its Oklahoma City roots.

And on the current Website called “Ballpark Brothers,” the Dot Race is 100 percent attributed to Morgan.

“The Dot Race at Arlington Stadium was first originated by Arlington Stadium announcer Chuck Morgan, who somehow got the tech guys to have 3 colored dots circle around an oval on the scoreboard, much to the fans’ glee. It was this dot race that spawned all other video races and the human races in ballparks across North America.”

I guess you can chalk that up to the loss of institutional memory over time.

So, I asked Larry if he was bitter at not receiving any recognition for creating the Dot Race phenomenon that continues to circle scoreboards in different forms around the nation.

“It didn’t upset me, but I do remember walking into the Rangers stadium not too long after they came to Oklahoma City,” Larry said. “They were handing out a small card with a dot color on it to everyone entering the stadium. Some of the cards had a red dot, some had a blue dot and some had a green dot, and it was sponsored by Wendy’s or Arby’s or someone. If the dot you were handed won the race that night, you could go to the restaurant and get a free small burger or something.

“I’m like, ‘these people are finding a way to make money off my Dot Race.’ ”

But decades have passed, and Larry Newman is now a retired technical writer whose last employers were tech giants Google and Oracle. He looks back over the years and finds the silver lining in the story.

“I’m happy that people have enjoyed it for so many years,” he said. “Absolutely.”

In the grand scheme of Dot Race life, that’s a winner.

EDITOR’S NOTE: More info on the roots of the legendary Dot Race:

Larry Newman told me the Dot Race got a big boost with the 89ers audience when 89ers Director of Communications Monty Clegg began doing play-by-play announcing of the racing dots. I contacted Monty, who now lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, to get his side of the story and here’s what he told me:

“Larry was really creative and worked some magic with a limited slate of a three-line message center with the 89ers,” Monty said. “Bing Hampton suggested that we have a Dot Race track announcer. Since I worked in the press box, I think I was volunteered. I still remember that as the dots rounded for home, I would always say ‘And they’re spinning out of the final turn!’

The Dot Race tale is a great story, and I thank Larry Newman and Monty Clegg for letting me share it.

Why I’m all in now on Sellout Crowd

Sellout crowd video — Berry Tramel joined Sellout Crowd colleagues Bob Stoops (right) and Sam Mayes in a broadcast during the new venture’s Launch Party at The Joinery in Bricktown.

Berry Tramel told a story to a boisterous group of roughly 150 people earlier this week at The Joinery restaurant in Bricktown. Berry tells great stories.

He recalled a phone call a few years ago from a former colleague at The Oklahoman newspaper who sought his interest in joining a new, online only sports reporting venture.

Berry said he was interested. As long as his fellow Oklahoman columnist Jenni Carlson came along, he was ready to go.

Turns out, the timing wasn’t right for Mike Koehler’s brainstorm. The deal didn’t happen. Berry and Jenni continued to carry The Oklahoman as its lead sports columnists as they had for the past two decades-plus.

Then Berry got another call from Koehler in 2023. This time, Koehler had financial backing for his project and he had a name. Sellout Crowd.

Was Berry still interested? Berry replied that as long as Jenni was still part of the plan, yes he was.

The next thing you know, “Berry Tramel is a Sellout” billboards started appearing across the OKC metro, teasing the launch of Sellout Crowd.

Sellout

That’s the story that Berry told at the Sellout Crowd’s Bricktown launch party, where he was joined by Koehler, Jenni Carlson, Mike Sherman and a host of other Sellout Crowd content “creators” and backers.

All of those folks I just named are former colleagues of mine at The Oklahoman.

The Launch Party also featured Toby Keith and Bob Stoops, celebrity investors in the venture. There was Kris Murray, Koehler’s business partner and son of long-time OKC broadcaster Ed Murray.

And there was a lineup of other content creators that included former Tulsa World columnist Guerin Emig, Brett Dawson, Jon Hamm, Todd Lisenbee, Sam Mayes, brothers Ben and Sam Hutchens, Ed Murray, Bob Stoops and Eli Lederman. The team also includes a couple of other former Oklahoman colleagues of mine, Jay Spears and Jacquelyn Musgrove, both of whom provide technical expertise.

I’m spending time daily on the site and have figured out that I get most of the same type content from Berry and Jenni that I found in the newspaper. There is heavy coverage of OU, OSU and the OKC Thunder.

And video. Lots and lots of video blogs, I guess you call them.

This morning I watched Tramel’s awesome interview with sports radio broadcast star Paul Finebaum.

So, you get the drift of the type of coverage the Sellout Crowd is bringing readers/viewers, and the content is not behind any sort of pay wall. In fact, it appears a number of advertisers have jumped on board, as well.

As I talked to some of the folks who showed up at the Launch Party, one guy said Sellout Crowd reminded him of The Ringer, which is the sports and culture site launched about a decade ago by Bill Simmons. I can see the resemblance, but glad Sellout Crowd has an Oklahoma focus.

Sellout Crowd itself is well put together in my opinion. You can see that lots of thought was put into making each article/post look professional in its presentation.

The Launch Party concluded with a series of remarks from Berry, Koehler and Kris Murray. Koehler also has another thriving business known as Smirk New Media.

Anyway, Koehler made some heartfelt comments, tearfully thanking those who supported his vision and those who have come on board.

Sellout crowd Koehler couple — Sellout Crowd founder Mike Koehler and his wife, Gaylee

“We want to honor the people for the great work they do,” Koehler told the crowd about Sellout Crowd’s presentation of its content creators. “And we got the cream of the crop.”

So, while I was pleading “say it ain’t so” a couple of months ago in a blog post, I’m all in on Sellout Crowd today. It has my favorite writers and focuses on topics in which I’m interested.

Which doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned my first love, the newspaper. I’m still a subscriber and a reader of The Oklahoman every day.

There is room for both.

Sellout crowd jerseys — Special Sellout Crowd jerseys were presented to investors and backers during the venture’s Launch Party

Say it ain’t so

Sellout As I was sitting in the stands at OKC’s All Sports Stadium in roughly 1987 watching the Big 8 baseball tournament with my Daily Oklahoman colleague, Tom Kensler, a lanky young man sat down with us.

Kensler, now deceased, was the paper’s OSU beat writer in 1987. He introduced me to the newcomer.

“Jim, I want you to meet the newest member of our Sports staff, Berry Tramel,” Tom told me as I shook Berry’s hand.

Although I had worked as a copy editor on the Sports desk at the Oklahoman since 1983, I didn’t know Tramel, who worked as a sports writer at the Norman Transcript.

Something happened, however, and Berry did not become a member of The Oklahoman’s Sports staff until 1991. Maybe the Transcript offered him a raise or he still had things to accomplish at the Norman paper.

But Berry eventually joined The Oklahoman staff and became our lead sports columnist. He quickly established himself as one of the top sports writers not only in Oklahoma but across the nation.

I don’t remember much of that first conversation with Berry at the ballpark, but eventually I found him to be warm, empathetic, approachable and the most prolific and hard-working writer I’ve ever known.

Berry writes in what I consider a folksy manner that carries the reader along. He has an incredible ability to uncover the critical issue that may be plaguing — or helping — a team, a coach, a school, a state, whatever. And he’s a walking encyclopedia of sports history.

Berry’s most influential article of them all may be the infamous “Taco Bell” column from the late 1990s when he compared OU’s hiring of John Blake to a company that put a management trainee in charge of the entire business.

You can read the column here.

Berry Taco Bell

Not everyone loves his style — ask my friend, Casey — but he’s attracted a huge following far and near over the years. Including me.

Berry was joined on The Oklahoman Sports staff in the late 1990s by Jenni Carlson, a Kansas native who brings a unique point of view to whatever she’s writing about. I’ve come to know Jenni, as well, and love reading her intriguing takes that often focus on people who have overcome long odds to become successful.

I’ve written all of this because, as most people know by now, both Berry and Jenni are leaving the paper. They’re joining a new online venture called The Sellout, Sellout Crowd, or something like that. It should debut later this month, from what I understand.

I got wind of Berry’s impending exit about three weeks ago and immediately sent him an email with the subject line “Say It Ain’t So.”

Berry responded and said it was so. He said it’s a good thing, not bad, because readers who follow him and Jenni will be able to read their work in a free online newsletter. He even wrote about his impending departure from the paper after billboards appeared saying “Berry Tramel is a Sellout.”

But I’m mourning for the newspaper because of the loss of such immense talent. I was part of that newsroom as a writer and editor for over two decades.

Although I’ve been gone from The Oklahoman for almost 15 years, I’m still a subscriber and a daily reader of the newspaper. I still pick it up off my driveway every morning (except Saturday).

We all know that the Internet has changed the way people consume news, sending the newspaper industry into a long decline, including The Oklahoman. In my opinion, the paper has done a great job of building its online enterprise while still keeping print alive.

For now.

But the loss of Berry and Jenni is a huge blow to readers like me who look forward to unfolding the paper every day (but Saturday) and seeing what one or both have written for us. Who can replace them?

So, what’s next? I’m anxiously watching as the leaves continue to fall from the tree and the newsroom branches become bare.

Say it ain’t so.

Berry Jenni1

A short thread on Threads

I’m here today to write about the new social media platform, Threads. But first I have to talk about Twitter, because without the bird app, I’m pretty sure there would not be a Threads.

Back in the Spring of 2008, my friend Russ Florence invited me to connect with him on Twitter, a social media platform that debuted in 2006. I was in the final year of my career as a reporter at The Oklahoman.

So, I signed up on the app and followed Russ as my lone Twitter connection.

As a Twitter newbie, I didn’t realize there was a big Twitter world out there with lots of potential accounts to follow. I loved following Russ and his personal tweets like the one from the day his dishwasher quit on him.

But one day I happened to look at Russ’s profile and saw he was following scores of other Twitter accounts. So I clicked on his follow list. It opened a new world to me because there were so many news and technology sources that I didn’t realize existed until that moment.

I followed a couple dozen right off the bat, and my interest in Twitter grew exponentially.

What I loved about it was being able to follow big national media sources like the New York Times and NPR, or more local sites like The Oklahoman and Tulsa World. Plus there were sports accounts like ESPN, and eventually MLB, NBA and NFL. I got instant alerts anytime there was breaking news or sports.

Plus there was a growing number of Oklahomans joining every day, providing local perspectives.

I enjoyed Twitter immensely, because, until Donald Trump started opining 30 times a day on Twitter on the run-up to the 2016 election, there were few of what I call the Crazy Uncles on Twitter that you frequently find on Facebook. It was upbeat and fun.

Fast forward to 2022.

Billionaire Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter in October, and it’s all been downhill from there. Musk encouraged less-than-objective news sources to begin posting on Twitter. He appealed to the type of voices like podcaster Joe Rogan, who broadcast and repeat misinformation. Trolls blossomed. New rules were imposed that limited the number of tweets a subscriber could view on a daily basis.

With all that roiling long-time Twitter subscribers, along comes Threads, owned by Meta and launched through Instagram. I heard about it and signed up on Day 2. By the end of the week (last week!) I read that 110 million individual accounts had opened.

Threads looks suspiciously like Twitter in that you can comment, like and repost items with or without your own commentary. In fact, Twitter has threatened to sue Meta over the copycat status of Threads.

The downside I’ve seen so far is that you can’t set up lists that contain just the accounts — Threaders? — or topics you want to see, and posts aren’t presented in chronological order. And there’s no Threads site set up for Mac or (I assume) Windows computer users — it’s all mobile based so far.

But I’ve read those features are coming soon. Read this article from the Wall Street Journal, if you want to know more about Threads.

So, here’s my dilemma and that of millions of other long-time Twitter users. Many — including me — have made their living posting items on behalf of employers to Twitter accounts that are well established and have many followers. Many thought leaders still post regularly to Twitter, although you can find many of the same folks over on Threads.

Instead of just dropping my Twitter account, I’m hanging on, checking both Threads and my Twitter feed on a fairly regular basis.

Until further notice, I’ll be tweeting and threading simultaneously. I welcome followers on both.

Twitter: @James_Stafford
Threads: @jimstafford

Below is a sample Threads post. Seems familiar?

Poultry ruling or punchline that took way too long?

Poultry ruling

As a public service, I’m repeating a newspaper headline from this week that I’m sure a lot of people missed because it’s 2023 and there’s no longer a place for the daily paper in their lives.

“Ruling puts water pollution stamp on poultry companies”

I had deja vu all over again when I stumbled across the story on page 4A of Friday’s edition of The Oklahoman.

The case began in 2005 when then Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson filed a lawsuit on behalf of the state against 13 integrated poultry companies.

Edmondson alleged the poultry companies — most based in Western Arkansas — had polluted the Illinois River basin from the spread of chicken manure across pasture and cropland .

So, why is this important enough that I write a blog post about it?

Well, in 2008 I was a Business News reporter for The Oklahoman, with agriculture as one of my beats. When a hearing began in February 2008 in Federal Court in Tulsa on Edmondson’s bid for an injunction against spreading poultry manure in the Illinois River watershed, my job required I cover it for the paper.

drew edmondson — Drew Edmondson at poultry hearing.

The hearing was held in Tulsa federal courthouse before Judge Gregory K. Frizzell.

Turns out, the injunction hearing turned into a long-haul of court dates. It ran through four February hearings before a week’s pause, and then picked up in March for another week.

There was testimony from “expert” witnesses and acrimony between attorneys for both sides.

Judge Frizzell was clearly frustrated over the slow pace of the hearing.

“Frankly, this is the longest preliminary injunction hearing I’ve ever conducted,” Frizzell was quoted as saying in one of my stories.

What do I remember of the hearing 15 years later? Seared into my memory is how vigorously attorneys from both sides of the case — plaintiff and defendants — attacked the credibility of every expert who testified.

In fact, attorneys worked so hard to destroy the credibility of the witnesses that the actual testimony seemed like an afterthought.

My friend Russ Florence also sat through each day of the hearing because his Tulsa-based public relations firm, Schnake Turnbo Frank, was working on behalf of the defendants. Today, Russ is President and CEO of Schnake Turnbo and is currently writing a book on the history of the firm, which includes a section on the trial.

Russ writes: “Like the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, each side tried to out-maneuver each — politically, legally, and publicly. They circled one another, trying to deliver a punch that would resonate …”

I was grateful when the hearing finally ended and I didn’t have to make a daily commute to Tulsa and back. Several months later Judge Frizzell denied the injunction request.

The actual trial over the pollution issue began the next year. I was no longer working at the paper, so someone else had the pleasure to cover it.

And now, almost 15 years later, we have our verdict. The poultry companies — 13 of them originally — are responsible for the poultry manure pollution of the Illinois Watershed.

“So much has happened since then,” Russ told me. “Some of the poultry companies have been acquired by others. Several of the key players have retired. And to think, I was single then, and am now married and have a fifth grader.”

And what of the punishment imposed on the responsible poultry companies?

“The parties are hereby directed to meet and attempt to reach an agreement with regard to remedies to be imposed in this action. In the event the parties are unable to reach an accord, the court shall enter judgment,” Judge Frizzell wrote in his ruling.

That’s it? It’s a ruling easily could have been imposed back in, say, 2009.

Seems like a joke that took way too long to get to the punchline.

Saving Christmas, 1983 version

As I looked out over the frozen tundra that was northwest OKC at 5 degrees this morning, I thought of another holiday season that was disrupted by bitter weather.

Back in 1983, I had just moved to Oklahoma City to work at The Daily Oklahoman newspaper. My folks lived in Fort Smith, Ark., roughly 200 miles to the east.

Anyway, as the newbie on the Sports staff at the paper, I would only get Christmas off if the holiday fell on my normal day off.

It did not, which meant that I had to drive over to Fort Smith a few days before the holiday to celebrate with my family, then drive back to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

As I was preparing to leave town on roughly Dec. 18 or Dec. 19 (the dates are hazy now), a massive outbreak of Polar air settled over Oklahoma and brought sleet and snow with it.

The Polar air covered much of the continental U.S., and I recall stories about frozen underground water mains bursting as far south as Houston. Here’s a good read from the Farmers’ Almanac about the Christmas storm of 1983.

It was apparent the roads were going to be awful, so I even checked the bus schedule to Fort Smith. I called the bus station and they told me that all bus departures were canceled.

OKC temps 1983 So, I called my dad and asked him what he thought.

“Come on over,” he said. “It can’t be that bad.”

It was.

I managed to make it with no trouble to Henryetta, OK. But about 5 miles east of there, as I was climbing a fairly steep hill, my car began to fishtail and swung around 90 degrees. It went off I-40 backwards and into a snow-filled ditch.

Oh, great. These were days before we could even conceive of having a phone in our cars. How was I going to contact anyone?

As I walked up the steep shoulder to the road, a young man in a Camaro pulled over and asked if he could help. I asked him if he would call a wrecker in the next town.

He looked down at my car in the ditch and said, “I think you can drive out of this. The ditch flattens out at the bottom of the hill and you should be able to drive onto the highway. I’ll wait until I see if you can get out.”

I got back in my car, eased down the hill, made it to the flat part, and, like magic, drove right back onto the highway.

I never got to thank the Good Samaritan.

But the road was so ice covered that I drove no faster than 30 mph the remaining 85 miles to Fort Smith.

So, my trip took hours longer than expected. My parents were greatly relieved when I finally pulled up, but I was angry at my dad because he urged me to make the challenging drive.

A better mood took over, and we celebrated the holidays as a family.

There was still plenty of ice and snow to negotiate on the trip back to OKC, but I made sure I kept it on the road this time. I arrived safely back into town and made it to work my holiday shifts on time.

So, thank you, Mr. Good Samaritan, for saving Christmas in 1983.

Black Friday in 2008 was cold, dark … and fun

Shortly before 4 am at the Elk City Walmart store on ‘Black Friday’ 2008.

It was dark and cold on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving in 2008 as I left my mother-in-law’s farm outside of Hammon, OK.

At roughly 3:30 am on that Black Friday, I headed into Elk City to see what the crowd of shoppers was like at the Walmart store on the west side of town. The store was scheduled to open at 4 am.

My wife and mother-in-law thought I had gone off the deep end.

But it was all in the name of work, because I had been asked by Clytie Bunyan, then the Business Editor at The Oklahoman, to contribute some color from Elk City for the paper’s annual Black Friday shopping roundup.

I rolled into the Walmart parking lot about 10 minutes before 4. The only spot I could find was at the far fringes of the lot about 100 yards from the store. The rest of the spaces were filled with vehicles.

So, I walked toward the entrance, where hundreds of people sort of jumbled together in not so much of a line but what I would call a crush of shoppers. There was a genuine excitement in the air as they anticipated nabbing the ultimate Christmas bargains that had been advertised to go on sale on an hourly basis.

It reminded me of the incredible lines of folks that used to wait outside the Apple store when a new iPhone was released. A lot of camaraderie.

Folks patiently waited for the doors to open and chatted among themselves. I talked to a few people about what drew them to this store well before dawn on the day after Thanksgiving. They came not just from Elk City but from surrounding communities such as Sayre to the west, Mangum to the south and, yes, Hammon to the north.

In the darkness, I shot what was a poorly lighted photo — it’s at the top of this page — with whatever digital camera I had at the time (not an iPhone) and posted it to my Twitter account.

Shortly after 4 am, the doors opened and the crowd surged forward. I waited a few minutes until it cleared and walked in. There were already lines at the cash register as people claimed televisions, toys and whatever the hot electronic item of the day was.

I sipped free coffee the store offered as I wandered through the aisles and managed to get comments from shoppers and store personnel about the Black Friday shopping experience.

My Black Friday early morning routine remained the same for the next few years.

2009-walmart

Looking back on this memory from a distance of 14 years, it now seems like the Good Ol’ Days of Black Friday shopping. Back in those days, grabbing a copy of the newspaper fat with holiday advertising on Thanksgiving Eve was the first stop for most shoppers.

In just a few years, stores started opening ON Thanksgiving Day, so there was no longer the urgency to head out in the pre-dawn darkness.

Now we’ve come full circle. Online shopping has made a big impact on how we approach Christmas buying, and most stores — including Walmart — will again be closed on Thanksgiving this year.

So, I guess early morning Black Friday shopping is back, although in what I assume to be a less frantic manner. A Google search showed Walmart stores are opening at 6 am.

But, check your local listings, as they say. Here’s a link to a story in The Oklahoman that lists opening hours for OKC stores both on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. (The Wednesday paper this year was still fat with holiday ads.)

Yes, I fondly recall the camaraderie of that crowd of Elk City shoppers in the pre-dawn hours of 2008.

But I’ll still be in bed when the doors swing open this year.

Still an Apple fanboy after all these years

The Apple IIe with two 5-1/4 inch floppy disks, just like my first setup

I read a magazine article in the late 1970s about a couple of young Californians who built a new stand-alone computer in the garage of a Cupertino, Calif. home.

They started a company called Apple Computer to sell their innovation.

I had never used a computer at that point in life. As a journalism student at Abilene Christian University, we did all of our writing either on our own antiquated typewriters or on IBM Selectric typewriter in the newsroom of ACU’s student newspaper.

Anyway, the more I read about Apple and its Apple II computer, the more fascinated I became with both the company and the concept. Like most people, when I thought of computers, IBM and its massive room-sized mainframes came to mind.

After graduating from ACU, I went to work at the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith, Ark. We worked on typewriters when I arrived in late August 1978, but by the Spring of 1979 the paper had installed its first computer terminals for reporters and editors to use.

They were so-called “dumb” terminals that were tied to a mainframe computer. They crashed a lot, usually right at deadline.

Meanwhile, I was still keeping up with Apple and its computer, but thought it was way beyond what I could afford.

Besides, who ever thought of having a computer in your house?

Fast forward about seven years. I was working at The Oklahoman when J.T. Goold, one of my co-workers, said he had a used Apple IIe for sale. It had been his father’s,

So, I ponied up about $500 and bought the Apple IIe, which came with a green monitor and two 5-1/4 inch floppy disks.

That Apple IIe sealed my love of all things Apple. I learned to use word-processing software on that computer, as well as a spreadsheet, a simple database and a page-design program.

In a few months, I added a 1,200-baud modem, which opened up a whole new online world of what were then known as bulletin boards. Then came AppleLink.

I tried my hand at learning some BASIC programming skills, but never got much further than making a little routine that filled the screen with a single sentence.

I’ve written all of this because I’m deep into Steven Levy’s book, “Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.” The Apple II and its creator, Steve Wozniak, play a huge role.

In Hackers, Levy detailed the founding and growth in the early 1970s of the Homebrew Computer Club in the San Francisco Bay Area. The club attracted scores of computer hackers who shared a vision of a future where everyone had a stand-alone computer of their own.

Levy wrote: “These were people intensely interested in getting computers into their homes to study, to play with, to create with … and the fact that they would have to build the computers was no deterrent.”

Steve Wozniak attended the very first Homebrew Club meeting, but it was a few years before he actually built his first computer. His friend Steve Jobs convinced him to create a company as partners and sell his computer invention.

So they began building computers in the garage of the home of Jobs’ parents. The Apple II became a runaway bestseller, bringing computers to millions of people.

I became an Apple fanboy after reading that early magazine article in the 1970s. The used Apple IIe that J.T. Goold sold me in the mid-1980s ensured it would last.

And here we are today. I’m writing this on an Apple MacBook Air while the my Apple iPhone keeps buzzing with text alerts and notifications. I’m reading Levy’s excellent “Hackers” on an Apple iPad Mini.

It’s been a long-term relationship, to say the least. Still an Apple fanboy after all these years.