Tom Petty Appreciation Band Interview and Show Preview, plus Preview of Tom Petty & Heartbreakers Live Anthology – Weekender, Nov. 4

Photo from Weekender, Nov. 4, 2009

The November 4, 2009 edition of the The Weekender featured two articles my me. I’ve been a fan, thanks to @SheliTwits, of the Tom Petty Appreciation Band for some time. A life-long Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers fan, I was secretly waiting for a tribute band to pop up locally (I actually have a name for one that I’ve never been able to use because my only musical talent is listening, so instead I turned it into a collection of short stories I want to write), so when I saw a Twitter update in March that Sheli was going to see a Tom Petty Appreciation Band in Scranton, I was like, “What? Where?” I didn’t get to see them that day, but have seen most of their shows since.

When I heard that Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers was coming out with a massive collection of live music called the Live Anthology, I thought it’d be perfect timing to cover the local and national angle. I pitched the idea to my editor at The Weekender, and we found out the next Tom Petty Appreciation Band show was going to be at the River Street Jazz Cafe in Plains (basically Wilkes-Barre) on November 6, so he scheduled both my stories for the Wednesday before.

Pat Finnerty, lead singer of the band, was very fun to talk to. I think the story turned out well. It seemd to help draw a huge crowd to the Jazz Cafe also.

Check out the article here: NEPA’s Southern Accents…  (But of course, I love how the page looks in print.

Also, there’s the article on the Tom Petty collection.

eBiz Insider- Fall 2009 – Cover story & three articles

The Fall issue of eBiz Insider was just sent out last week. Now that I am in the corporate marketing department at Solid Cactus, which publishes this bi-monthly eCommerce magazine, my role as a writer for eBiz has changed to being a copy-editor and being more involved to now, being the managing editor. This issue has lots of great stuff, and is the second issue I’ve been involved in from the production end. While the magazine always looks better in print, it can be read online as well at ebizinsider.com.

I have four articles in this issue as well:

Cover Story – The Power of a Fresh Set of Eyes: Site Deconstruction Session a Hit at Solid Cactus Boot Camp

Capture More Sales and Create Buzz with Scratch & Save

The Power in Relevancy Ranking

Don’t Publish Yet – 6 Common Oversights: Filling in the Blanks

Removed Post

I had a post here yesterday about Talented People I Know- didn’t realize it was still here, in draft form. (That’s the downfall of managing multiple blogs from one place!) You can read the post about Kaylie Jones at www.dailydoseodonna.com. I’m slightly embarrassed that the unfinished post was shown here. Thought it was draft form before I moved it to the right blog.

Weekender: Music Story on local teenage classic rock group, Gentlemen

In the 8/18/09 issue of the Weekender, I interviewed the manager (and father of two of its members) of a local classic rock group made up of local high school students. The interview was prior to their first bigger gig on their own– previously they were opening acts for other bands.

Here’s the scoop on Gentlemen from Mountaintop:

Stevie Ray Vaughn. The Rolling Stones. Led Zeppelin. Not artists you’d first associate with a modern-day teenage basement band, right? Wrong. That’s a typical setlist for a quartet of young men from Mountaintop. Make that Gentlemen.

Check out the whole story on these talented boys here.

eBiz Insider – Holiday Issue & First Issue I Helped Produce

The new issue of the eBiz Insider hit the mail this week, and it features my story “5 Must-Have Features to Woo Holiday Shoppers: Forget Sleigh Bells – Get Those Cash Registers Ringing.” But, this issue also has special meaning to me since I am now part of the Solid Cactus corporate marketing team. As an account manager, I just contributed to the magazine. But my new role allows me to be hands-on with the entire production of the magazine along with the rest of the marketing team and copy-editors. It was great fun to be involved from assignment to publication!

I’m in the masthead now, baby!

Times Leader ‘At Home’ Feature- Illuminating Innovation

This is one of my favorite stories to date. Very, very proud of this one.

The moment I saw that my friend Matt Hinton made these unique lighting fixtures from old musical instruments, I knew there was a story in it. The world just had to know about his amazing work!

I pitched the story to the Times Leader for their At Home section, which runs each Saturday. The story ran today and it’s beautiful! There’s nothing like seeing the layout and photos in the paper. Good stuff. What I think was also cool, and that I am very proud of, is that this feature story got the teaser in the front page of the paper!  The upper right, above the masthead, gives a peek at the story and a great closeup shot of the saxophone lamp.

We talked about how his hobby started, the types of lamps he has made already, and what he’d like to make in the future. We talked a little about his play The Quiet Cowboy and his other domestic, artistic creations like a pot rack made from a shopping cart.

Matt, of course, was a great interview. This was a fun story to write. And, if anyone has any old brass or woodwind instruments they’d like to part with, Matt can turn them into something really cool…

The Times Leader unfortunately archives their stories after seven days, but here is the link anyway.

Weekender Cover Story 7/29: Medical Makeovers

Had the cover story in this week’s Weekender: Medical Makeovers: Turning Back Time With Surgery. Wrote about cosmetic surgery trends (for instance, more men are having procedures done, and the economy is changing the industry, too) and had some really fantastic interviews – used a service I just heard about through Twitter caller Reporter’s Source (on Twitter: @reporterssource) and got hooked up with three great plastic surgeons. Also found a local girl to interview, as well as a young man from San Francisco who has quite the story to tell.. learn more about Nick Starr here.

At any rate, this was a story I had a lot of fun writing and think it turned out well. Also learned a lot. It was one of those stories that I ended up with an overload of information, but for the sake of room had to hold back. : )And of course, this makes me want liposuction.

Kudos to these docs for talking to me:
Dr. Yaremchuck – based in Boston, and also teaches at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Glunk – based near Philadelphia, in King of Prussia
Dr. Mayl – based in Ft. Lauderdale , FL

The Power of Twitter: A simple photo leads to “front” page news in Wilkes-Barre – Scranton news

This is a blog post about a cool Twitter thingy that happened Friday evening.  This would be a perfect example to use in a class or workshop on social media on how news can travel fast… of course this is not as cool as what happened with the Hudson Plane Crash and my client Janis Krums who took the first picture of the crash… (read about his cool story, here in the NY Daily News and also an article I wrote about Twitter and Janis, here.)

Some of my favorite cohorts and I were relaxing in the dorm before getting ready for the Wilkes University Creative Writing banquet/graduation when the thunder clouds rolled in. The wind started to blow. We ran from one side of the Ten East South Street Apartments to the other, checking out the view on either side of the building. The clouds were incredible. I took a picture with my iPhone and Twitpic’d it right away, as did my friend Jon. I took a bunch more with my regular camera as well.

A few moments later,I get a direct message from a fellow NEPA tweeter who works for Times-Shamrock (publisher of The Scranton Times, Citizen’s Voice, among others) asking for permission to use the picture.  Of course I agreed.

Meanwhile, people were retweeting my picture.  The pics of the storm were spreading as fast as the storm itself. The news organizations Twitter accounts, as well as people I follow were sending the picture around.

Then, while at the Wilkes banquet, I checked Twitter through my Tweetie app and saw the the Scranton Times website had posted its story or the wicked weather.  An early version just had my picture, then they later updated the story with reports on the damage.

This is a testament to news being tweeted as it happens, as well as gathering photos and eye-witness accounts to help research the story– and then for more in-depth stories- users can later check-out the news outlets websites, publications and broadcasts.

I just this was cool to share.  And yes… it stopped storming before we headed to campus so our hair and outfits were all good.

To read the whole story in the Scranton Times, go here.

Crime in Wilkes-Barre – Weekender Cover Story, June 3

I had the cover story in the June 3, 2009 issue of The Weekender, focusing on the recent increase of violent crime in Wilkes-Barre.  For the story, I interviewed Mayor Tom Leighton, Police Chief Gerard Dessoye, a sociology professor, a business owner and a city resident to get all views.  Despite the tough subject matter (I mean, it’s about death), I enjoyed this story because it was one that needed to be told!  Thanks, Weekender for asking me to tackle this current event story!

Here’s a snippet:

Anywhere but Wilkes-Barre. That’s the job search criteria for one local young professional.

Steve Moyer, 25, of Wilkes-Barre’s North End is looking beyond the local classifieds because he said the city isn’t as safe as it once was.

“[Deciding to leave] the area did not originate because of the violence, however, that is slowly becoming a reason. …,” he said. “The recent escalation has me looking for greener pastures.”

In 2009, there have been seven homicides in Luzerne County. Four of them have been in Wilkes-Barre — fourth most in the state. Wilkes-Barre, with an estimated 41,069 residents, is the 22nd largest city in Pennsylvania, according to the 2000 U.S. census. In murders, however, Wilkes-Barre has a much higher ranking, trailing only Philadelphia (1.5 million residents), Pittsburgh (311,218) and Harrisburg (47,196).

You can read the entire story here.

KISS ALIVE! interview in the Weekender, April 1

Just realized that I never posted this story here on my blog.  I had the opportunity to interview the lead singer (the “Gene”), Tom Pressano of a New York-based KISS tribute band, KISS ALIVE! for a Weekender story a few months ago.  He was great fun to talk to!  He’s an English teacher by day and by night, rocks out to some of the greatest rock and roll ever made.  The story ran in the April 1, 2009 issue of the Weekender, promoting the band’s show that weekend.

Here is a snippet:

Shakespeare by day. Simmons by night.

Tom Pressano spends his weekdays teaching English in New York City, but as his students tell him, he’s a freak on the weekends. Pressano, or “The Demon,” on bass and vocals, is one-quarter of the Kiss tribute band KISS ALIVE! He impersonates fellow (former) teacher, Gene Simmons.

The NYC-based KISS ALIVE! will bring the makeup, the costumes and the setlist that made KISS rock n’ roll icons to Nightcaps in Edwardsville this Saturday, April 4. It seems as if Kiss and other legendary bands from that era are still insanely popular today, and Pressano offered that perhaps it’s because they were the first big entertainers in the genre.

To read the entire story, you can visit the archived Weekender story here:  KISS ALIVE! to Rock and Roll All Night.