KERO reaches out to the far corners of the county

Anyone else out there enjoying ABC23's (KERO) coverage of Kern County lately? I love it when Julie Flannery reports about Tehachapi in front of what looks like a poster or mural of mountains. And the Web site makes it easy to click on a map and get that area's local news.

What a great idea. No other Bakersfield news source now cares as much about outlying communities than KERO seems to. I was sucked into Delano week – and was thoroughly entertained as Rusty Shoop reported the weather to the tune of Delano High School's band while holding an umbrella in the rain. I also dug Taft week, and one particular story of an old-timer remembering the days of the oil gushers.

This seems pretty novel to me that a local TV station is taking advantage of niche reporting. And what a great revenue model! Every advertisement during the broadcast is for a local business of that town. Now I want to drive to Delano just to try 3 D's Grill, featuring Filipino and Japanese cuisine.

Dream jobs for journalists

We've all heard about the British dude who landed the sweet gig getting paid $111,000 to live in a private villa on an island off the coast of Australia, snorkel, relax and write a blog about the experience.

Since the rest of us missed the boat on that one, would we settle for a mere $60,000 to live in a guest house on a vineyard, drink wine, play football with the winery's owners and blog about that experience?

The folks at Murphy-Goode Winery in Sonoma County are looking for someone “who really knows how to use Web 2.0 and Facebook and blogs and social media and YouTube and all sorts of good stuff like that — to tell the world about our wines and the place where we live.”

Um, I know how to do all that stuff! And I drink wine! And I love Sonoma County! And I know how to make a YouTube video, which is the only way they accept applications for this job!

Oh, but drats. I have a family, a 6-month-old son, a house, a dog and a cat to take care of. I can't just run away to wine country for six months.

So I relinquish this job opportunity to the rest of you unemployed journalists out there. The application is due June 5. Go forth and make your fame and fortune. And send me a case of wine.

Face Bakersfield shutting down?

Since my last blog about Nick Belardes' community news Web site, FaceBakersfield.com, he's faced some tough issues. First, Bakersfield's D-league basketball team, the Jam, folded due to it losing too much money. The team seemed to be one of Nick's major advertisers. When I asked him what he was going to do, he answered that he'd continue moving forward with the site.

But now, about a month after the site was down previously due to a hack job, the site has been deemed a security threat. When I tried to open the site today, my Firefox browser posted this warning: “Reported Hack Site! This web site at facebakersfield.com has been reported as an attack site and has been blocked based on your security preferences.”

Here are a couple of Nick's Twitter posts (nlbelardes) about it:

-- “FACE NEWS DOWN "AGAIN": I have taken site down again until this "flagging of site as harmful" message disappears in browsers.”

-- “It might be time to find a new content management system or new template that doesn't have so many security holes. Wordpress, blah.”

-- “I love writing the news, but the Face News site is a headache. Maybe it's time to go back to a blog.”

I asked Nick what he's going to do now? He wrote that he just ate ice cream. His site may be down, but he's not.

He wrote: “Lots of great things going on. I have a book coming out and a possible 2 more book deals. Why would I be down?”