Weekly Wide Web

Way to Go, 'Star'

During my tenure here at the Tucson Weekly, it has been a point of some pride that we've consistently had more Facebook likes than the Arizona Daily Star.

Admittedly, this isn't exactly the most significant or meaningful thing to care about, and I am not accusing the Star of this, but likes can be engineered relatively easily, either through fake profiles or services that will add phantom profiles from semi-imaginary Bangladeshis. However, now the race is on, since the Star kicked off an initiative called, no joke, "Like-A-Palooza," which is somewhat embarrassing on its premise, but also in the fact that the (suffix)-palooza is still being used in 2012.

I don't hold the naïve belief that the Star is engaging in this scheme of running five consecutive contests, all of which require you to "like" their page, to compete with an alt-weekly located a few miles away on the southside, but it is a strange move to stack up numbers to please someone up the line at corporate. It's like someone at the Star said: "Hey, people want to help nonprofits, right? Let's give away a page of advertising in a future issue through some elaborate contest of sorts, getting those aforementioned nonprofits to funnel their fans to the Star's page." Plus, add a contest that gives away groceries, the classic monsoon photo contest, and some other stuff vaguely related to summertime and the Padres (although I wouldn't mind winning tickets to see the new Batman movie, so maybe I'll enter that one).

Good luck, Arizona Daily Star. Hope it's worth living with "Like-A-Palooza."


The week on The Range

We bought prints from an artist capturing the great (possibly imaginary) exploits of Ronald Reagan; shook our collective heads at the stupidity of Louisiana legislator Valarie Hodges; challenged TUSD school-board member Michael Hicks' assertion that he was assaulted; watched the money in the race to succeed Ann Day on the Pima County Board of Supervisors; read the report on Paul Cunningham's regrettable actions in San Diego; wished Jesse Kelly the best of luck in his new job (well, not really); and discussed the highlights of the week's political events with Carolyn Cox, Pete Hershberger and Jeff Rogers on Arizona Illustrated's Political Roundtable, with your host, Jim Nintzel.

We noted that we'll miss the deep-dish pizza at Zachary's, which is set to close at the end of the month; let you know you can get beer with your tamales in midtown now; drooled over the new menu at Noble Hops; and tipped you off to a forthcoming restaurant called Urban Belly.

We thought deeply about a Billy Ocean video; congratulated FC Tucson for making the PDL playoffs; wondered what will come next from the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon; appreciated the music of Bay Area rapper E-40 (and let you know that Tina Fey is getting into hip-hop now as well); watched a video by Giant Giant Sand; kept you in the loop on schedule changes at Tucson's NPR station; shared some of Bisbee's urban art; watched a bunch of fireworks go off at once; mourned the death of Andy Griffith; and made our plans to enjoy every moment of the Muppets film festival at the Loft.


Comment of the week

"Memo to Dan Gibson: Do a little research on what Islam is all about and you will be shocked. Your political correctness along with your worship of "diversity" blinds you ... to the real danger of Islam."

TucsonWeekly.com commenter Robert Folchi has some notes about our religion coverage ("Today in 'Other States Also Have Dumb Legislators News,' The Range, July 6).


Best of WWW

While we don't have a bunch of prizes to give away to persuade you to "like" our page on Facebook, we still appreciate it when people give us the opportunity to share our content with them. And, hopefully, the people who do "like" us feel like they're getting something from the transaction as well. Our plan is to offer our social-media followers the best of what's on our website each day, another place to comment on what we've written (and sometimes interact with our staff) and, yes, occasionally a few prizes. The same is true on Twitter. If you think there's something we can do better on either platform, or you think we should get our act together on Pinterest, let us know.