Thank you all very much for following NIT over the years! Signing off from Studio A @WKRN.

Nashville is Talking was a bold step into media 2.0 by WKRN way back when.

I say way back when because if digital technology is teaching us anything it is that specific platforms, unique technologies and the next cool thing all are born reach maturity and fade or evolve in what feels like a nanosecond of time.

NIT in its infancy introduced individual blogging to our mass media vehicle. The site generated buzz, a fair amount of regular readers and a provocative discussion about what role new media might play in the future of mainstream media. It was fun and it was messy. Our community’s level of sophistication with social media has taken off. NIT is a quaint reminder of how we all got started. Now, we find ourselves using Twitter, Facebook and live streaming to enhance our connections with our viewers in ways that blogs do less and less. It’s time to move on.

As of this Friday, NIT will go dark.

Thank you to all who helped pioneer NIT.

Gwen Kinsey
General Manager, WKRN

The fight pitted black college students and a few of their white peers against the city’s white power structure and its downtown merchants over the right to sit down and eat lunch. At the time, blacks could spend money in those stores but couldn’t eat at the stores’ lunch counters.

The lunch counter of 1960 was the equivalent of fast-food restaurants today. Hamburger chains were just beginning to appear on the American landscape. Ray Kroc had opened his first McDonald’s about five years earlier; Burger King had gone national just the year before. People wanting a sandwich or a hamburger popped over to the lunch counter of department stores, drugstores and five-and-dime stores to have a bite.

Except black people.

State and local ordinances known as Jim Crow laws in at least 11 Southern states prohibited interracial interaction in most areas of public life — restaurants, schools, courtrooms, buses and trains, movie theaters, even reform schools.

Starting 50 years ago Monday, students across the South decided to change that.

According to my sources, Erik said that I am a paid employee of the Tennessee Democratic Party (TNDP). Truth is, the TNDP paid the media company that I own with Freddie a $500.00 per month fee for services from September until December 2009. But I guess our business isn’t allowed to have separate departments like the traditional media are allowed to have – especially when our business never claimed impartiality in the first place.

The revocation of the press pass comes after intense focus by Liberadio(!) on Sec. of State Tre Hargett’s handling of a new law requiring paper ballots be used in statewide elections this year. The law was eventually overturned by state Republicans after a failed attempt last year and a lawsuit against the Department of State.

This move by the Capitol Hill press corps raises interesting questions in the wake of the latest United States Supreme Court decision on campaign finance law. The majority ruling allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of political money advocating the election or defeat of candidates or to fund issue ads.

Many outlets represented by the Capitol Hill press corps will certainly receive far more in political checks per month than Liberadio(!).

Aside from the constitutionality of corporate media deciding who can access state government proceedings, it will be interesting to see through the course of the 2010 elections how much political money is received by each media outlet represented in the Capitol Hill press corps  and whether or not checks greater than $500 a month from either party will equally cause others to lose their press access to cover the governance of our state.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has officially withdrawn from speaking at next week’s First National Tea Party Convention in Nashville.

Rep. Blackburn’s office cited campaign finance laws as her reason for canceling her scheduled role in the national convention.

After consulting with the Committee on Standards, Congressman Blackburn has decided not to participate in the Tea Party Nation Convention next week.  Standards advised Congressman Blackburn not to participate in the event due to uncertainty about how any proceeds from the event may be used.  Convention organizers have not been clear about how those funds will be put to use.  We have every indication that any profit could be put to work to advance grass roots causes and some of those uses could make the Congressman’s participation improper after the fact.

Rep. Blackburn, who was also scheduled to introduce former Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, said Tea Party convention organizers put her and others in an “awkward position.”

“I spoke to Judson Phillips this morning and let him know that I could not participate in the convention. I told him frankly that Tea Party Nation’s for-profit status has put many of his speakers in an awkward position.”

Rep. Blackburn is still listed as a speaker on the Tea Party convention website.  Rep. Blackburn has several photos on her website showing her speaking to Tea Party gatherings in early 2009.

The Congresswoman also spoke to the 9-12 March on Washington in September 2009 and later sponsored a resolution praising the “1.7 million” patriots who gathered to hear her speak.

The national gathering of Tea Party supporters takes place here in Nashville Feb. 4 - 6 at Gaylord Opryland Hotel & Convention Center.

Sgt. Ballz is scheduled to land in Nashville at 4 p.m. today. Straight from the press release:

‘Sgt. Ballz’, a loveable yellow cat rescued by the 1/230th Air Cavalry Squadron, Tennessee Army National Guard, currently deployed in Iraq, will land at the Nashville Airport (BNA) today at 4 p.m.

Members of the unit have worked with the SPCA International to bring the feline to the United States and save him from being euthanized in Iraq due to the Tala Far Base, where he lived, being closed.

Sgt. Ballz was quarantined in Washington D.C. for the last two weeks, since his arrival from Iraq.

Staff Sgt. Michael Wall, Troop D, 1/230th ACS, will be taking care of the cat when he returns home to Smyrna, Tenn. in a few months. For now, Sgt. Ballz will be cared for by Wall’s acquaintance, Kerri Conner.

CW2 Cheryl Anderson, Troop D, 1/230th ACS, created a Web site to raise money to bring the cat home. She also donated $1,000 of her own money to see him return safely. She was responsible for coordinating ‘Sgt. Ballz’ to the United States.

The money the Web site continues to raise goes to SPCA International to help rescue other animals and bring them to the U.S.

Nashville’s Mitch Canter (@studionashvegas) published some art work yesterday in response to NBC’s cancellation of Conan O’Brien.

Click the image to the right to see the full graphic at TwitPic. As of this posting the image has been seen 2,100 times.

The art captured popular resentment of NBC’s decision by parodying the “fail whale,” an image seen by users of Twitter when the popular social media site has crashed.

Canter’s image was picked up by Mashable.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was in town this week for the Nashville Technology Council’s annual meeting. A student at Trevecca Nazarene University got Ballmer to autograph his Mac.

While meeting with a group of students, one of them asked the multi-billionaire: “Mr. Ballmer, would you sign my laptop?” The inquiry earned laughs from the group, as well as as the Microsoft executive. “It’s got Windows on it,” the student said, “I promise.”

“Oh yeah,” Ballmer said sarcastically, before taking the MacBook Pro and signing it with a marker. The autograph came with a note: “Need a new one?”

“It’s all yours,” Ballmer said as he handed the Apple machine back to the student.

City of La Vergne’s spokesperson Angie Mays would not confirm or deny anything regarding Payne’s resignation or word that City Administrator Mark Moshea had also resigned.

This Is LaVergne reported earlier today that the city plans a “closed executive session” following tonight’s meeting to discuss a settlement in ongoing EEOC lawsuits against city employees as well as disciplining an unnamed city employee.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen will also hold a special called meeting on Wednesday, January 20, 2010, immediately following the closed executive session that begins at 4:00 p.m. at La Vergne City Hall, 5093 Murfreesboro Road, La Vergne, TN. This special meeting is being held to consider the following items: 1.) Motion to Enter into Conciliation and Settlement Discussions with the EEOC regarding the EEOC charge filed by Gary Dooley and 2.) Motion to Discipline a City Employee. This special meeting is open to the public. All Citizens and News Media are invited to attend.

UPDATE 2:06PM: La Vergne Mayor Ronnie Erwin told NIT that City Administrator Mark Moshea has not resigned. Moshea is one of two city employees the Mayor needs approval from the council before taking disciplinary action. The Mayor would not confirm on record whether Moshea is the employee facing discipline action this evening.

Mayor Erwin also said EEOC charges filed by Gary Dooley against the city were first brought to his attention last week. Tonight’s meeting will begin the process of bringing in outside help to revamp the city’s HR policies. The Mayor will also seek authority to negotiate an offered settlement in Dooley’s EEOC case.

The program, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s response to President Obama’s call to increase civic service, began in April and includes nearly 200 AmeriCorps Vista volunteers who have fanned out across the city as a kind of consulting force, helping nonprofit agencies fine-tune their programs and recruit and deploy even more volunteers. Their work, city officials say, has resulted in 18,000 new volunteers serving 67,000 New Yorkers.

Now, that effort is going national. In Chicago on Monday, Mr. Bloomberg, Mayor Richard M. Daley and a coalition of mayors plan to announce 10 cities — Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Nashville, Newark, Omaha, Philadelphia, Sacramento, Seattle and Savannah, Ga. — that will receive grants to finance programs of their own design.

“We see this as an urban innovation,” said Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, which is providing the grants. “It really brings the mayors and the city leadership together with the volunteers in a much more organized way that, we think, has the opportunity for much greater leverage and much greater impact.”

A total of 615,086 guests visited Nashville Zoo in 2009, a record-breaking 16 percent increase from 2008 and an all-time high attendance for the Zoo. Zoo memberships increased by nine percent from 2008 to 24,155 households representing approximately 115,000 people. Last year’s attendance increase is the result of several factors, including new animal additions, great weather and an economy that kept families close to home.

“The addition of some new animals definitely helped jump-start our 2009 season,” states Zoo President Rick Schwartz. “In March we introduced white tiger cubs, eight zebras and a pair of giant anteaters over a three-week period leading up to and including spring break. We were successful with the birth of three clouded leopard cubs over the summer and were able to present those to our guests through the fall.”

The Zoo’s new animals and cooler summer weather helped with record-breaking monthly attendance in April, June, July and August. Warmer temperatures helped with a record attendance month in November. The Zoo’s attendance figures also show the economy playing a key role.