Jessica Chapel / Railbird v2 http://jessicachapel.com Notes on thoroughbred racing, media, technology, etc. Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:42:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Links for 2010-03-05 http://jessicachapel.com/2010/03/05/links-for-2010-03-05/ http://jessicachapel.com/2010/03/05/links-for-2010-03-05/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:00:53 +0000 Delicious http://jessicachapel.com/2010/03/05/links-for-2010-03-05/
  • How a gift horse revived Falkland Islands race
    "Quite why the Emir was so generous is unclear, but some say that as the ruler of a small state surrounded by big and powerful neighbours, he was an admirer of the plucky Falklanders and their refusal to be cowed by Argentina." The Sheikh and a sire named Thyer.
    (tags: horseracing international falklands dubai)
  • Books in the age of the iPad
    How the physical and digital will coexist going forward. "Goodbye, disposable books. Hello, new canvases."
    (tags: books publishing ipad design)
  • Eight key terms for determining legitimacy in journalism
    "I'd start with the will to veracity, also known as truthtelling. Truthtelling even when it hurts or causes problems for your friends. Real journalists tell us what happened because it actually happened that way, and not some other way. All forms of legitimacy derive from this one."
    (tags: journalism credentials ethics media)
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  • Road to the Triple Crown: Richer routes
    … explain so well the emphasis on 3YOs. "Even without the UAE Derby, purses for graded prep races in the U.S. will be worth $11-million this year, a 32.3% increase from a decade ago. Deflated total purses in North America declined 13.6 % from 2000 to '09."
    (tags: horseracing kentucky-derby prep-schedule purses)
  • Rachel Alexandra's owners hedge bets on showdown
    The gamesmanship continues.
    (tags: horseracing rachel-alexandra zenyatta apple-blossom)
  • Alex Payne: On hiatus
    "Lately, I’ve found the cathartic returns from blog-format writing to be diminishing." A problem with blogging unlike any other form.
    (tags: writing blogging hiatus)
  • Creation or aggregation: What is the real added value?
    Key point: "… we must first stop demonizing aggregation." Learn from what online start-ups/aggregators are doing to help re-invent the newsroom. "The specific model that you employ will be as unique as the particular community that you [cover]."
    (tags: media publishing journalism online-journalism aggregation)
    • ]]>     http://jessicachapel.com/2010/03/04/links-for-2010-03-04/feed/ 0     Sounds Familiar http://jessicachapel.com/2010/03/02/sounds-familiar/ http://jessicachapel.com/2010/03/02/sounds-familiar/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:08:16 +0000 Jessica http://jessicachapel.com/?p=6699 I wonder where the Blood-Horse got this idea?

    In the issue of June 7, 1980, The Blood-Horse began a news section titled “Dispatches.” Beginning in this issue that section of the magazine has been renamed “The Wire” and will contain shorter news items, but more analysis and commentary.

    It reminds me of a web site …

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  • Running 'Blind'
    "None of this is meant to conclude that Blind Luck would win the Kentucky Derby. In what is always a very tough, very demanding race, she well could get trounced. Yet, doesn't she deserve a chance to show what she can do? Whether it's Blind Luck or any other star female, fillies ought to run against colts more often than they do."
    (tags: horseracing kentucky-derby kentucky-oaks blind-luck)
  • Tangled web
    CJR surveys 665 magazines about web site practices. Selected findings: "Magazine Web sites are most likely to be profitable when budget decisions are made by the publisher or an independent Web editor." (In other words, when sites are overseen by people without a vested interest in maintaining print dominance.) "Despite the fact that two-thirds of respondents’ staff are expected to work on the Web at least some of the time, only 26 percent of those staffers were hired with Web experience." (That's just depressing.) Much handwringing about "traditional standards" in decline, but it seems a fundamental error to assume print practices are best practices online.
    (tags: media magazines journalism standards publishing)
  • My Roger Ebert story
    "We were all so, so stupid…. The thesis of the piece was that Ebert's work was suffering because he was on television all the time, but that's not really what it was about: It was me lashing out at Daddy, trying to make my own name, trying to feed off his. That's not what I thought I was doing at the time. But that's absolutely what it was."
    (tags: roger-ebert will-leitch writing reminiscence regret ironminds)
    • ]]>     http://jessicachapel.com/2010/03/02/links-for-2010-03-02/feed/ 1     Links for 2010-02-27 http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/27/links-for-2010-02-27/ http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/27/links-for-2010-02-27/#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:01:13 +0000 Delicious http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/27/links-for-2010-02-27/
  • Eskendereya soars, but Zayat stumbles
    Hm … "Zayat freely acknowledges that he is a big bettor, but he says that the $605,000 is not owed to him from wagering. He said he had lent money to the Jelinksys because he had known their father."
    (tags: horseracing wagering zayat-stables)
  • Streams of content, limited attention
    "… the key is not going to be to create distinct destinations organized around topics, but to find ways in which content can be surfaced in context, regardless of where it resides." Danah Boyd on production, consumption, and flow in the networked era.
    (tags: publishing curation content content-strategy social-network social-media)
  • Digging beneath the surface
    "Although there is no perfect statistical measurement for evaluating sires, I believe I've come up with a short list of stallions who are better at consistently siring the most successful synthetic performers than those who top the progeny earnings list for synthetic runners." Useful!
    (tags: horseracing handicapping breeding synthetic-surfaces sire-lists reference)
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  • New Dubai track a closer's special (DRF+)
    Of the 38 races run over Meydan's Tapeta track, only three have been won by front-runners, four by pressers, nine by trackers, etc. Add it up and, "… 58 percent of this season's Meydan synthetic winners — 22 of 38 — have been closers." Quite different from what one jockey expected prior to Meydan's opening: "Horses coming up from behind will find it very difficult so it’s going to suit horses that like racing up in the first five."
    (tags: horseracing dubai meydan track-trends dubai-world-cup)
  • Introducing thoroMotion at thorobase
    Very interesting app for visualizing chart data (API to come).
    (tags: horseracing data info-viz information)
  • Paul Corio at 210 Gallery
    Exhibit review: “As are many of Corio’s paintings, this one is named for a thoroughbred race horse, and according to gallery information the arrangement of colors is derived from the artist’s analysis of results at the Belmont and Aqueduct tracks. Whatever. All you really need to know is right before your eyes.” Racing rendered in geometric abstraction: View all the paintings on the artist’s site. The piece titled “Casino Drive” draws the gaze as much as the horse himself did during the 2008 Triple Crown season.
    (tags: horseracing painting abstract-art)
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  • Has Gold Cup bout lost vital punch?
    On Denman and Kauto Star at Cheltenham. "As with all seductions, however, the more pulsating the anticipation, the greater the potential for disillusion. It's no good for racing to hitch up its skirts so provocatively, if it turns out that a couple of oranges have been tucked into its bra."
    (tags: horseracing british jump-racing cheltenham)
  • The NYT’s blogs are set to be paywalled
    Bright side: Less competition from the Rail during the Triple Crown season.
    (tags: media blogging paywalls business-media new-york-times)
  • Twitter Spectrum
    Compare any two terms used on Twitter, such as Zenyatta (legendary, beautiful), Rachel Alexandra (fast, perfect). [View spectrum graphic.]
    (tags: social-media research tools twitter)
    • ]]>     http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/20/links-for-2010-02-20/feed/ 2     Links for 2010-02-13 http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/13/links-for-2010-02-13/ http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/13/links-for-2010-02-13/#comments Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:00:56 +0000 Delicious http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/13/links-for-2010-02-13/
  • Zeljko Ranogajec believed to be Australia's biggest punter
    "Once the overseas betting turnover of his 24-hour, seven-day operation is taken into account, his total annual betting spend globally is believed to be well over $1 billion." More from a related article on Ranogajec: "Advantages like the sophisticated information and rebates stack the deck in favour of professionals like Mr. Ranogajec and other internationally renowned punters like American Bill Benter, over average punters."
    (tags: horseracing wagering australia)
  • Computerised attack on horseracing
    Article from 2000 about bettor Bill Benter, an early adopter of computer wagering. "If we do make money, the money has to come from somewhere. Well, yes, the general public loses a somewhat higher ratio." See also: This 2003 Wired piece on Hong Kong computer teams. "Working from mathematical models that are calculated to deliver a 24 percent return on investments, Hong Kong's most sophisticated computer-assisted bettors operate with long-term certainty of what their profits should be."
    (tags: horseracing wagering hong-kong)
  • What's the one skill journos need right now?
    Hustle. Passion. Subject knowledge.
    (tags: journalism entrepreneurship)
    • ]]>     http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/13/links-for-2010-02-13/feed/ 0     Reading Palmer http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/04/reading-palmer/ http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/04/reading-palmer/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:30:07 +0000 Jessica http://jessicachapel.com/?p=6155 On the Second Pass, John Williams resurrects Joe Palmer for a new audience:

    I don’t want to give the impression that an interest in the sport, or a knowledge of its history, is entirely unnecessary to an enjoyment of This Was Racing. But it’s easy enough to skim any confounding details and focus on the more universal sentiments. Like many great writers and conversationalists, Palmer mostly circled his ostensible subject, rarely landing on it. The most memorable stretches of the book aren’t about racing at all. They’re about recipes for jellied whiskey or the Australian hobby of “kangaroo chasing” or listening to a band torture “My Old Kentucky Home.” (”I could have played it better on a comb.”)

    More than half a century removed from his work, it is good to be reminded of what a master turf writer Palmer was. Read the complete review (and then, if you haven’t, “This Was Racing”).

    From the archives: An excerpt from “This Was Racing” about trainers Duval and Hal Price Headley, Menow, and the 1938 MassCap.

    See also: One of Palmer’s most recognized pieces is “Common Folks,” a near-perfect report of the recently-retired Stymie’s appearance at Jamaica.

    ]]>     http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/04/reading-palmer/feed/ 0     That’s Not a Mint Julep http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/04/thats-not-a-mint-julep/ http://jessicachapel.com/2010/02/04/thats-not-a-mint-julep/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:26:29 +0000 Jessica http://jessicachapel.com/?p=6198 … Mad Men character Peggy Olsen is holding in the video still below, found on the official Churchill Downs’ “Plan Your Derby Party” page:

    Video still from Mad Men, season three, episode three

    At least it’s not Roger Sterling in blackface singing “My Old Kentucky Home.” That really could have been embarrassing.

    From the Twitterverse: Says o_crunk, “@EJXD2 solid marketing. Ganja goes down better than a mint julep. Untapped potential in couch potato potheads waiting to get hooked on TVG.” Of course! Churchill is wisely reaching out.

    2/8/10 Update: So, it wasn’t subversive marketing, after all. The Derby Party page is now free of all mentions of Mad Men and the episode three video clip.

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