Blast recently got an exclusive interview with the cast of “Hank,” Kelsey Grammer’s latest return to prime time.

We did a great story, and we were happy to have the access. But there was one problem: The show stinks. It’s getting bad ratings and worse reviews.

The good thing is that interviews and reviews are done by different reporters, but my question was: Is it ok to cheer for or hype a show because of our coverage? We gave the show a bad review but still pumped the interview.

Any thoughts?

There was some networking here. After the story was published, Skipper Hull and I spoke again about him doing some car stories for Blast. We just started an automotive section.

I think a lot of this whole scenario reflects how much of myself I try to put into Blast. My worst habit is that I tend to get into trends and start blogs about them. I bought my first “mine” car in June — previous ones (92 T-Bird, 96 Taurus, 01 Corolla, 00 Ranger) were my parents’ previous vehicles. (I crashed the T-bird, R.I.P.) As a result, I’ve gotten really into cars lately, buying things for my 08 Corolla and doing features about the results.

Though this time we have some help. We’ll work with Hull on some how-to’s and articles about classic cars his garage restores. Separately, we’re bringing in a female car blogger and car reviewer that we’re going to call “The Diva of Driving.”

I have a voice, and I want to share that with you.

Whether you like it or not.

I’m going to talk about my exploits as a freelance journalist and the editor of the happy little online magazine, Blast. This isn’t going to be a Live Journal or a diary. I hope to make some interesting observations and analysis on my job and what’s going on around me.

-john

Kudos! Blast Magazine is using it now!

First, we do not use WordPress Widgets. We use WAY too many plugins and have about 15 different variations of a sidebar on Blast, so we aren’t using Widgets. But it seems like everyone is converting the best plugins to “Widget only” — that sucks for us and I get the feeling there’s a lot of actual bloggers out there that havne’t assimilated to the Widget world yet. 

My question: How do you manually insert/activate/use a Widget in a sidebar or a page without activating the dynamic/widget sidebar function? 

Number two: Importing text for dummies.

Blast has about 20 different people who insert articles or blog on the site. Many of them are not web savvy. But the two most common ways writers send us stories is by email (Gmail usually) and in Microsoft Word .doc (or that stupid .docx) format. 

The problem that leaves us with is that Gmail takes pasted text and inserts random linebreaks all over the place and Microsoft Word inserts all kinds of crazy crap, code, fonts, sizes, etc, etc, etc. I’ve training my editors on how to use the “Paste from Word” function, but even that’s not filtering out all of the MS Word garbage now.

Oh, and we could really use a good multi-author plugin that integrates to the post editor and lets us assign multiple authors to a single post…

“Twilight Sucks” article on BlastMagazine.com’s PSA blog, 1,428 comments. One thousand, four hundred, and twenty eight comments in a single article.

I don’t have a strong opinion either way, but it’s amazing to read all the responses we’re getting to both our several Twilight features and our well-written “Twilight Sucks” opinion piece.

None of them are covering the Olympics.

In fact, the only serious coverage Blast has given the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing consisted of the three pieces I did on the American that was killed Saturday.

And this sample of the rest of our coverage: Bush watches beach volleyball — Drew more visitors than ALL THREE serious stories.

Why? Two reasons. First, the writers of those blogs don’t give a shit about the Olympics. Second, because nobody that reads Blast seems to give a shit about the Olympics.

Our readers seem to care about the men’s basketball team, the soccer teams, how many medals we won, and hot men and women. (Chicks LOVE Phelps)

Maybe we’re totally wrong. Yes, we’ll definitely cover anything big that happens or any further tragedy. But, for serious coverage, we put a big banner on the top of our sports page, linking to The Boston Globe’s absolutely awesome Olympics coverage.

And if I had that kind of web design talent, an Associated Press membership and a dozen or so reporters abroad … I’d still probably not have Blast cover the olympics. I’d have us go the Salon.com route and cover hard international news, like Dan Peleschuk did for Blast Sunday.

The game’s developer, SilverBirch Studios, put out a press release thanking us and GamingExcellence, which gave N+ an award for best PSP game.

“This is obviously a great honor for us,” said Wojtek Kawczynski, Senior Vice President, SilverBirch Studios. “Winning two awards at E3 further validates the quality of N+ and is a reflection of the passion that went into the making of the game.”