NBC TV station in Columbus, Ohio, on Cleveland at No. 2 on list.

CNBC at least provided some good links back to original story.

Gawker story gets plenty of comments.

The Detroit News has a blurb about it.

Mlive.com, which owns newspapers in Michigan, is pleased that Detroit isn’t as bad as Cleveland.

New York Daily News is happy New York City isn’t on the list.

LA Weekly takes the low road and says AOL is a website for geezers, all while misspelling website.

New Jersey Newsroom cites story as “intelligent commentary.” Thank you.

The website ivpressonline in El Centro — which tops the list — speaks up.

The blog Miami New Times admits how bad it is there.

Indy Posted, a news website for busy people, linked to story but left a word out in its introductory paragraph.

Opposing Views likes all caps.

It turns out I’m not the only person who thought Stein went too far with his commentary dissing the unemployed as lazy.  Media Matters for America was critical of Stein. ThinkProgress.org points out that unemployment didn’t double during the recession because of lazy workers, but because of a bad economy.

The American Prospect takes it a step further, pointing out Stein’s ethical lapse by shilling for a credit company that tricked people into thinking they were getting a free credit report. Labor demand, not supply, is causing high unemployment, the website says.

Read Stein’s commentary in the American Spectator and at AOL News, and then read my story at WalletPop, and tell me what you think.

It was a lot of fun and my first appearance on TV.  I also got to meet Sheila E as she left the green room to go to the set.

We shook hands and I told her how big of a fan I was for all of these years (mostly during the 1980s, although I didn’t tell her that), and how much I enjoyed her music.  Unfortunately, our handshake wasn’t taped for the audience to see, but here’s a video of her interview for the show:

Listen to the interview on generics to buy by clicking on this link:

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Aaron/My%20Documents/Downloads/071910%20aaron%20crowe.mp3

I was also interviewed on WBAL in Baltimore. Listen here:

http://tiny.cc/y74cn

I’m available for more radio and TV interviews. I still can’t get my TV interview on kids’ finances online yet; it’s not working on the ABC San Francisco website.

I know that the day I was laid off is one I’ll never forget. The Lemonade documentary, however, focuses on much more than that and is an enlightening story.

I’ll post the WalletPop link here when my story runs, hopefully within a few days or early next week.

I wrote a story for WalletPop today about an Internet hoax that Russell Crowe (no relation) was dead. He’s not. He’s fine.

And so am I, although I used the same website that someone used to create the Russell Crowe hoax to come up with the same headlines if I were an actor:

• Luxury yacht sinks off coast of St. Tropez France, Actor Aaron Crowe reported missing
• Actor – Aaron Crowe Falls To His Death In Austria
• Actor Aaron Crowe hospitalized after traffic altercation
• Actor – Aaron Crowe Falls To His Death In New Zealand

All in good fun, and I’m safe. I haven’t even been to any of those places, although I may have driven through Fullerton, CA, where the traffic accident supposedly happened. And that’s not Emma and I in Austria in the photo above.

It’s all a hoax that the linked website lets anyone create with a template it has set up. While it’s tempting to fake your own death, don’t set up a celebrity for such headaches.

I was on one of the segments, at about 10:30 a.m., but his segment on the KCBS Web site cut me out as a source.  I heard the live version and was happy for my seven seconds of fame and being described as a financial reporter.

To be cut out of the online version is a reminder of the many sources I’ve had to cut from many news stories over the years because they didn’t fit the final draft for some reason.  It was interesting to be on the other side.

Like many journalists, I get a lot of pitches from public relations people. Most are good, but some are bad.  I edit and write about these topics at WalletPop, a personal finance Web site run by Aol: recession, career, technology, sports & money.

I get plenty of story pitches each week, and I’m glad to get them. Many are filled with good ideas.

For those PR people interested in what makes a good pitch, here are a few things I look for:

1. Succinct pitch. Keep it short and to the point.

2. Enough information, but not too much, to give me the gist of what your story idea is and how it relates to your product. Attach a press release and give me a link to your Web site for more info. Photos or video links also welcomed.

3. Relate it to my beats and my audience. WalletPop is a personal finance Web site, so it must have a personal finance angle, hopefully one to help readers save money. Also keep it to my beats: recession, career, technology, sports & money. Those are broad beats, so you should be able to fit in somewhere.

4. Timely. Embargoes, such as in the video above, are fine, and it’s best to give me your pitch in a timely fashion if it has a news peg. If your company is doing something on the earthquake in Chile that relates to my beats and audience, then pitch it now and not three weeks from now.

5.  Sources. Other than a company representative to talk with, provide sources who use your product to talk about it, along with their photos.  I use Tungle to schedule interviews, so feel free to take a look at it and think of some times that are compatible if I accept the pitch and want to go forward.

6.  Responses. I only respond to e-mails on weekdays, so if I get your e-mail and want to move forward, I’ll respond within 24 hours on a weekday. If you don’t hear back from me within that time, it means I won’t be doing the story. So no need to send me another request, unless you want clarification why or want to rework the pitch. When will the story run, you ask? Usually within a week of the interview, usually much sooner. I always send links to the stories to anyone who has made a successful pitch to me, and any sources who request it.

If you’re looking for what I’m looking to cover on a day-to-day basis, follow me on Twitter: @aaroncrowe

I’ve thought this for a long time, but it really struck me today in two separate events: Every business should hire a journalist if it wants to be successful.

What would a journalist do for a company? Many things, which I’ll get to in a bit, but up high on that list is checking for errors that would upset customers.

Again, two things brought this to mind today. The first was a call I got at 8 this morning from a PR person telling me that their company had changed its mind on charging poor or low-income people double what it does other users of its product.

The second was reading a PoynterOnline column by Jill Geisler on 10 reasons to hire a journalist. I’ll get to Geisler’s column soon, and will expand on it a bit, but first to the issue of a company calling me minutes after waking up to change a program that I had questioned a week earlier in a story I did for WalletPop.

The company, Assurance Wireless, a division of Sprint and Virgin Mobile, was giving free cellphones to poor people. The phones included 200 free minutes of talk time, and users could buy more airtime in a prepaid plan at 20 cents a minute.

Boost Mobile, which Virgin Mobile owns, sells a prepaid phone plan at 10 cents a minute.  Why, I asked a marketing guy, does the service for low income people charge double? His answer was that the company is evaluating that.

So I wrote the story and less than a week later, ta-da, Assurance Wireless drops the cost to 10 cents a minute.  I wrote an updated story today.

This isn’t world-changing journalism, although I’m glad it does help the people who were to pay the higher cost as the program is rolled out across the country.  What might have saved Assurance Wireless, and thus Virgin Mobile and Sprint, all of the headache of this was to first have a journalist check their press release for holes. If they did, they could have gone to the lower rate much earlier and saved themselves some embarassment.

As it is, I pointed out in today’s story that the company’s move still leaves its text message fees at 15 cents a minute, which puts it in the odd place of having text messages, instant messages and e-mails costing more than making a domestic phone call. Most phone plans charge less for text messages; mine charges a nickel. Maybe they’ll change that in a week and give me another early morning call.

I’m sure the cellphone company’s public relations staff proofread the press release, but logic somehow didn’t make it all the way to the final review. A journalist would have caught the price difference. It was the first thing that stood out to me and one of my most significant questions to the marketing person when we talked on the phone.

And I only looked at that press release for two minutes or less. It’s these types of critical thinking, fast-thinking skills that journalists have that all businesses need.

Geisler points out a lot of these in her column. They include clear writing, working well on deadline, multitasking, being quick studies who process information fast and with clarity, can do research fast, know how to use the Web, a great work ethic and loyalty.

They all are excellent qualities that every business could find if it hired a journalist.

Just what America needs, another excuse to dress like a slob and wear pajamas outside of the house.

As someone who works out of his home as a freelance writer/editor and works most of the day in sweatpants, I realize I don’t have much room to talk here. But come on, pajamas disguised as jeans? Why?

I’m writing about this for WalletPop. It’s a rant worth reading.