IN THIS ISSUE:
Introduction to 68Caliber 2.0
New Advertisers
Internal Happenings
Paintball Politics
68Caliber’s new blog – 68Caliber 2.0 – has been designed to serve the paintball community as a window into the daily operation of the 68Caliber website.
If you’ll look to the right (or up above) you’ll see links and tabs for the most important pieces of information about the website, the company and how we operate. These pages should give you the information you’re looking for – be it questions about submitting a story, advertising on the site, how we operate and more.
We’ll also be using this blog to let you know what’s happening behind the scenes; when a new advertiser signs on board, you’ll read about it here. When we get new product in for review, we’ll put up a list and let you know who’ll be reviewing it. And, when paintball politics rears its ugly head, you’ll read our take on the issue (if we have one) right here.
Questions? Lay them on us. You’ll have to ‘register’ the first time you post (no fees, no personal information), and you might have to wait for your first-ever post to be approved, but after that initial entry, you’ll be able to sail right in.
So, without further ado and after what we hope was a brief enough introduction, we’ll get right into it:
INTERNAL STUFF
During the past several months, the 68Caliber website has seen a number of denial-of-service and other types of cyber attacks. This resulted in a serious amount of down time on the site. After reviewing our relationship with the host company, we decided that we needed to move on. After a careful review of the opportunities out there, we have decided to go with a new provider, who will be transferring the all-important archives and everything else seamlessly within a short period of time. The new hosting company will be providing 24/7 technical backup, so we strongly believe that downtime will become a thing of the past.
And just so you all know – we’ve given a credit to our advertisers to compensate them for the loss of display of their ads during the downtime.
Once that move has been accomplished, 68Caliber will finally be rolling out its new incarnation, a CMS-based website. In addition to making the site load faster, CMS supports many of the other things that we plan on doing – embedded video, an easy-to-manage forum, user commentary, user blogs, photo sharing and a whole host of other ’social-networking’ style capabilities. We’re looking forward to opening the pages of 68Caliber up to the paintball playing public.
This blog is temporarily hosted on the wordpress website. Once the 68caliber site has been moved, the blog will also be hosted on that server; if you’re familiar with WordPress, you’ll already know that a self-hosted blog gives us greater capabilities to affect the look and feel of the blog.
NEW ADVERTISERS
We are pleased as punch to welcome both Sunday Paintball and Wayne Dollack 24 Hour Scenario Games on board as our newest advertisers!
We’ve got several others waiting for the ink to dry and will be announcing them soon.
POLITICS
It comes as no surprise to us that there’s been a little noise on the internet concerning our recent removal of Dale Ford as Editor-in-Chief.
As expected, the usual suspects are the most vocal ones. We challenged their one-sidedness with an editorial on the site here and have responded to their inquiries with the email reproduced below. There aren’t a lot of people questioning this issue, (count the number of inquiries for yourself) but we felt that it was important for anyone who was to be able to ask questions of us directly, rather than playing the usual paintball game of never talking to the subject but instead blathering on and on with fantasies that would probably make a good plot for a movie.
We are now ‘done’ with explaining ourselves to the blogs and the forums – we all know they’re going to say whatever they want to say, insinuate whatever they want to insinuate, and most likely continue to present a one-sided picture of what happened and what is going on. No surprise, that’s what they’re there for. We have more important things to do.
EMAIL INQUIRIES TO OUR EDITORIAL OFFER TO ANSWER QUESTIONS
12:48
From: scenariotb@hotmail.com
To: editor@68caliber.com
Subject: Per your ‘invitation’
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 12:47:16 -0600
Well since I wouldn’t really call myself a journalist, I am sure you probably will give me a no comment. But hey at least than you can’t say I didn’t ask.
My blogs have been about trying to piece together who or what transpired to remove Dale from something that he has undeniably been the face of for 5 years even while still being an owner. Maybe with the rash of anonymous blogs and such, 68 caliber feels that it can run the business without a ‘face’. However, what information will you give?
1) Can you confirm that Steve or Karen Davidson indeed own a portion of 68 caliber and if not a majority stockholder, they hold enough to make decisions?
2) Can you give an honest and unassailable position as to why Dale was ‘terminated’ from the position?
3) If not is this because you are currently seeking legal recourse against Mr. Ford?
4) Why not talk of this privately between the parties and do a stepping back vs a public ‘firing’?
5) Why were the previous incarnations of the Ford Report ok and now are verboten?
6) What about the connections between the Gnome and 68 Caliber?
7) Why are none of the stockholders listed on the SOS Corporate directory? Will this be updated in 2009 to reflect this?
Dale is still listed under all the contact information for 68 Caliber in the ICANN directories, will this change?
9) Why look to PB Nation and other ‘toads’ in this sport reaction as a positive aspect on your decision?
10) Anything else you would like to comment on?
Now, you guys certainly know how to get a hold of me and I haven’t been able to get much out of Dale. So let’s see how many of the 10 you ‘decide’ to answer. And hey, you know my number right?
Lawrence ‘TB’ Wright
Thunderstruck
3:02
I am $teven ¢. Price marketing director for pbuprising.com and what like your whole side of the story on the issue of dale ford so we can post it as a paintball news site we are and this is news to be shared. Also you might want to update your “contact us” and where e-mails can go to contact the correct people it is still going to editor@68cailber.com
SSGT Steven C. Price
379 ELRS/LGRMSP
ETDC Nights
There they are – all three of them.
Below is our response:
PBC Productions Inc.
11/5/08
Hillsboro, New Hampshire
To whom it may concern,
On the ownership issue questions: we respectfully decline to comment as
this information is considered to be of a confidential nature.
On the editorial staff: Steve Davidson has taken over the duties of
Editor-in-Chief and day-to-day operations. Steve has been involved with
paintball since 1983, is one of the founders of the NPPL, was voted a top 100 player of all time (for the first century
of paintball) by PGI magazine (his team was voted a top 50 team of all
time by Paintball 2Xtremes magazine), has published several books about
paintball, has written hundreds of articles for various paintball (and
mainstream) publications, served as Editor-in-Chief of Paintball
Retailer magazine, Sports Editor and East Coast Editor for Paintball
News, has hosted and promoted numerous paintball events, has an
English degree and numerous other writing and editing credits outside of
paintball. Karen Davidson, Steve’s wife, has taken over the duties of
publisher. Karen was for years the production manager for Paintball
News, the bi-weekly newspaper, and has numerous other publishing
credentials from outside of paintball.
Given this background, we feel that we possess more than enough
experience in both the paintball and publishing industries to more than
adequately handle the tasks involved.
Other staff will be added as time goes by; 68Caliber.com is currently
talking to several individuals for a variety of posts, including West
Coast Editor and Internet Editor.
On the removal of Dale Ford: Mr. Ford was removed as Editor-in-Chief and
relieved of the duties associated with that position for a variety of
reasons. The primary cause was repeated and on-going violation of his
non-compete agreement. Mr. Ford had negotiated permissions to write
articles for other paintball publications, but did not have permission
to establish a separate website. Mr. Ford is also violating the
corporate opportunity doctrine in numerous ways: Mr. Ford is a
shareholder in PBC Productions (which owns 68caliber) and has repeatedly
taken actions that could be detrimental to the value of that company
(and/or take its business with out proper compensation).
On Other Matters: 68Caliber has received its own share of congratulatory
emails and phone calls and a rash of advertiser requests following the
announcement of Mr. Fords removal. The tenor and tone of many of those responses echoes some concerns that
we have had for some time; while there has not been any overt bias on
the site and in the reporting on the site, there have been ’sins of
ommission’. One recent example which is verifiable by visiting the
archived articles at 68Caliber.com is the shift in coverage from Angel
Sports products to Planet Eclipse products. It was next to impossible
to get Mr. Ford to review high-end markers from companies other than
Angel Sports – until Angel Sports dropped their sponsorship of Mr. Ford.
Now that Mr. Ford is receiving some degree of compensation from Planet
Eclipse, all the love has shifted in their direction. The same can be
said for various promotion companies as well as other market segments in
the industry.
There have been repeated violations of other policies: reporters for
68Caliber.com are not supposed to receive any compensation (from the
person/party operating an event) for the coverage they provide. Doing
so turns the reporter into a promotions hack. Product received for
review is supposed to be accounted for and either sold or given away as
prizes at different events. No accounting of product received for
reviews has been provided by Mr. Ford for over a year. On numerous occassions there were opportunities to partner with various
other entities in the industry, many requiring nothing but a simple
phone call from Mr. Ford to make it happen. For whatever reason, Mr.
Ford chose not to follow through on those opportunities.
Given all of the preceding, it was decided that the best course of
action was to remove Mr. Ford from the day-to-day operation of the
business.
On Identities: Gnomes and Minions were a byline at 68Caliber well
before the arrival of Steve and Karen Davidson. Mr. Ford was fully complicit and
in agreement with the use of pseudonyms on the site. This practice
ceases forthwith – except for humorous content.
On control: The parties that own the majority share of the site own a
controlling interest. The other matters raised in this regard are
housekeeping details and are being taken care of.
On moving forward: the site is being transferred to a new host. Once
that has been completed (it is in the process now) a new version of
68Caliber.com will be released and work will commence on the
reorganization and improvement of the site.
On Publication: The entire contents of this text will be posted on 68Caliber.com’s new blog site – http://68caliber.wordpress.com, along with other relevant information concerning 68Caliber, advertising, ethical guidelines and other items of interest to the paintball community. The blogsite will be active later on this evening, 11/05/08
So there you go. Are YOU as done with paintball politics as we are?
Excellent! Looking forward to this new addition.