David: Hello, hello welcome to Fun Fact Friday Fun Fact Friday,
where weekly podcast we discuss topics running in different we
did we discussed facts surrounding a different topic
each week. If we make a mistake, let us know mela
FunFactFriday.com If you got your own facts, your own topics,
let us know mail from February accom. Or Fun Fact Friday one on
x.com or Fun Fact Friday nope sorry at Fun Fact Friday at
social medias media.com on Mastodon so today Leila, what
are we talking about?
Leila: The News,
David: the news and we have a special guest. We have a guest
named Andrew Stevens. Andrew,
Andrew: thanks for having me on. This is this is really cool. For
to seeing where this goes.
Leila: All right.
David: Andrew is even if I get this wrong, let me know, news
director for Goldsboro, daily news.com, which is our local one
of our local news websites. And that's Curtis Media Group,
correct? That is correct. And Curtis Media Group does some
also does some radio stations around here, you know, kind of
got a local, real good local presence. And I gotta say, I was
so glad when Goldsboro Daily News came around, because the
only other website, news source for local news was another one
that is just everything's paywalled. And you couldn't even
like look at the first two words of an article. I was just like,
I just want to know what the weather's gonna be. But we won't
name we won't name that other one. So, Andrew, what, what do
you what exactly does being a news director entail?
Andrew: That's a great question, especially since I have only
been in news since June, the middle of June of this year. My
background is Yeah, so my background is in sports
journalism. And I did that from the end of 2005. And well,
that's when I got out of college. But I also did some
sports journalism in college. And then I did that up until
about March of 2014. So not quite a decade, and I moved to
Goldsboro, to be a sports writer for that other publication that
you mentioned earlier, I did that for about did that for
about six years. And then my wife and I started having
children. And the thing about sports writers is, they're never
home. And because sports, ultimately is a form of
entertainment, right? It's like going to the movies or a concert
or anything else. If you want to sell tickets, you need to have
these ballgames when people are not at work. And so I was never
home. So I made the decision to walk away from sports
journalism. And I spent nine years in sales, including six
years with Curtis Media Group, selling radio, digital
advertising, selling advertising on goals for daily, daily news,
ironically. And then, we had this thing called COVID. Wait,
so it's very difficult when I lost, that fulfills jobs in
three years. And including one in February of this year, and
one in May of this year. And after the I lost the one in May,
I kind of didn't know what was next, but I knew it wasn't going
to be sales. And because when you lose four sales jobs in
three years, God is kind of telling you, you need to look in
a different
David: direction. And this was what we call a
Andrew: media group called. Yeah, that's, that's when Curtis
media group called and said, Hey, we we heard that you might
be looking for a job. And I said, maybe, and they brought me
in. They brought me in and took a chance on me as not only
someone that had no experience in news, but someone that hadn't
done journalism in nine years. And you know, when you haven't
done anything for nine years, there's going to be some very,
very real, very expected rust. And so I'm very grateful for
them that they gave me this opportunity. And they also gave
me a chance to go back and do something I had done with him
when I worked before which was to do high school football, the
radio on Friday nights, with one of my very best friends who
still works still works there. And that is, along with writing
that is also where my passion is because it allows me to still be
connected to the sport side, right and to be on the air. But
also, I'm learning a lot about you know, being what it means to
cover them. It was on a daily basis. And I think local
journalism is tremendously important. Yeah. Because you
know, when you're in between when you're in between large
markets like Raleigh and Granville, like Goldsboro is
it's kind of easy to, to get sort of left out, right?
Sometimes, and all of the all of the news coverage is about this
larger markets and not what's going on here in our backyard.
And so I think local journalism, especially in an election year,
like we're in right now, is super important. From from an
accountability standpoint, but also, you know, Wayne County
gets this reputation of there's a lot of bad things that happen
here in crime, and there is a responsibility to report those
things, right. But also, I've taken very seriously the
responsibility to go out and find the positive things that
happened here. Because if you look hard enough, and you know
where to look, and you know, people who can help you find
positive stories, then you can find all of the positive things
that are going on here. And as a journalist, there's a very, very
real responsibility to find that balance between here's the
unfortunate things that happened today. But here's all of the
other here's all of the really good things happening that make
Wayne County a great place to live. Yeah, we try
David: and we try and stick to when we do our we like to set we
do good news, because we started the show in mid early to mid May
May of 2020. So you know, it was going on back then. Just just
the best of times. So we felt folks might want a little bit of
good news, along with just a fun show. Father, daughter show we
have a good time. And we just we kind of keep away from anything
real serious. And now and I feel like Yeah, there's definitely,
definitely a need for the positive uplifting stuff.
Speaking of which, I've got good news. Good news. I do. Hello,
and welcome to Fun Fact Friday news with your lead anchor.
Leila: Me Leila.
David: We always decide on the moment who's gonna actually go
first. So why don't you tell us your good news for this episode.
Leila,
Leila: my good news. So you know concrete?
David: Not personally, but I'm aware of concrete.
Leila: You know how they're sand inside of it. Keep it all
together. Sure. Well, the sand is you can replace it with
coffee grounds, like waste coffee grounds people have
already used
David: Oh, I got a story for that after your new segment.
Isn't that neat? Yeah. Oh, you do? Yeah, I do. I'll tell you
about. So that's is that are they doing it? Or is it just
something that can happen?
Leila: I think they are. Do you think they are? I read like a
part of
David: it. So everybody. Leila was unprepared for this episode.
Leila: And it's stronger than using sand.
David: Oh, so the coffee grounds are stronger than sand. I would
think that they're since they're organic. They would break down
Leila: with sands we're getting to sand his rocks. Yeah, it's
organic. Because when the earth
David: but that's not what it is. Notice no. All right. Well,
we'll find out. I'm gonna look it up. I'll write that down. I
want
Leila: 30% stronger by adding waste coffee grounds. Cool.
David: That's, that's exciting. Yeah. So is that. That's your
new story.
Leila: Yeah, okay.
David: My new story actually comes from Goldsboro Daily News.
I'm very excited about they are opening up. Oh, wow. They are
opening up a pickle factory. So down the road from our area is a
place called Mount all of Mount Olive makes pickles. We don't
eat any other kinds of pickles in our household. Not all
Andrew: pickles. That's right.
David: And the pickle the pickle conglomerate that is Mount Olive
pickles as is expanding into the Goldsboro area, which is about
20 miles from from Mount Olive into a new huge facility that
I've been wondering what they were going to do with 168,000
square foot facility. And the really good news about this is
it's right next to the fairgrounds. So that means the
fair's gonna smell like pickles. Wow. Vinegar. So yeah, this
Okay, so real quick, real quick. I got a coffee ground story.
When I used to work it out back million years ago, we had this
thing called the chocolate Thunder from Down Under the
chocolate Thunder from Down Under was a brownie, big old
brownie nice and hot. And then they would put a scoop of ice
cream on top of it. And then they would put some whipped
cream on top of it and then they would drizzle chocolate on top
of it. Right? Yeah, chocolate Thunder from Down Under was
amazing. When I worked there, what we would do for like a kind
of a hazing the new people is we would we would make a chocolate
Thunder from Down Under. But except instead of a brownie, we
would take used coffee grounds, just a brick of them and make a
fake brownie out of used coffee grounds. Drizzle chocolate on
it, so it looked more like a brownie. Then we'd take a scoop
of lard, like crispy white, clean lard, scoop it, so it
looked like ice cream, put it on top of the coffee grounds. Then
put some whipped cream, drizzle some chocolate on top of the
whole thing, right? And then we would knock it over because we
weren't allowed to serve a chocolate Thunder from Down
Under that wasn't like stacked properly. If it fell over while
they were making it. They would just, you know, push it on the
table and say Alright, everybody have everybody gotta buy it.
Let's go. Let's make a new one. Well, then we took the lard,
chocolate fake brownie thing. And we put it out for the new
people and they'd all run over and grab it and eat two or three
bites real quick before they even like tasted it. Well, they
got me and I got a second bite in my mouth before I realized
the ice cream wasn't cold. And it was super, super greasy. And
the brownie was very gritty. See, we couldn't make concrete
out of that they were wasting they were wasting concrete
filler. Wasted sand wasted sand. Okay. So that's our little good,
good news segment. We do we don't we don't dive real deep
into the stories. We're just kind of like something that that
we liked out of the week basically. So we had a few
questions for you, Andrew. Nothing hard hitting or hard or,
or anything like that. Just just a few questions. Did you want to
start Leila? Or did you did you pull up any questions?
Leila: I forgot my question.
David: I forgot your question. Oh, okay. All right. You're
quiet. You're I'll do a question. Okay. So since you've
been doing the news and journalism, what story was just
like the funniest one that came across the desk? That just you
were just like, Oh my gosh.
Andrew: Oh, wow. Okay, so we're talking about Mount Olive off.
We have a part time photographer who I've known for a very long
time. His name is Bobby Williams. He is phenomenal at
what he does, I am convinced that he personally knows 98.7%
of Wayne County on a first name on a first name basis. And I
will stand by that to my to my dying day. But he always is the
best for getting random pictures. And if you go to our
website, the story is up there. Last Saturday, so not this past
weekend, but the weekend before he sent me some pictures from a
child that climbed on top of a toy vending machine, and a
laundry mat and mount all the one with the claw from like Toy
Story. And the child fell into the vending machine. The fire
department had to be called and the pictures especially one in
particular. It's only funny because the kid is okay. But
like the picture of the kid inside the vending machine as if
he's a prize. I'm looking I'm digging in this had like off to
the side with like his his arms folded across like I'm so mad
this happened and the bears. Like he can't decide if he's
more mad or more embarrassed. Parts of
David: both hours. If it was if it was a bit like you need to
figure your own way out and I'm gonna record the whole thing for
Internet posterity. So when did this happen? I started looking
on the site trying to find it this weekend, but the weekend
before. Okay, so that would be fairly recent. Okay, so I've
gone way too far back. So that's funny. That's real funny. I
think Leila, you're going to ask something about, you're going to
ask about like, because I had a question sources. Like, how do
you get the story?
Leila: Oh, yeah. How do you get your stories? For the news?
Andrew: That's a great question. Um, so a couple of different
ways. A fair amount of them can be press releases. That's from
the city of Goldsboro, from the county from when county places
like Mount Olive pickles, places like first responders, different
businesses. Like for example, this past weekend, we had the
cute the angry All cures for the colors are on it's put on by se
in cancer care, a huge fundraiser for them. So those
those send things out. But also it just comes with
relationships. journalism can be a lot like sales and that
relationships and knowing the right people is super important.
So podcasting to my time was, still helps me, but also having
been in sales, and then just knowing a lot of people in the
area, or working with people that know a lot of people is
helpful as well.
David: Yeah, cool. So like, do y'all have any, like
investigative journalists that are out there looking for stuff
or digging into stuff or anything like that.
Andrew: Um, so the unique thing with goals for daily news is we
are a news website owned by a radio company, which is a little
bit different than working at like a traditional newspaper,
right Curtis Media Group, our corporate offices in Raleigh,
and so they own radio stations all across the state of North
Carolina. So I think sometimes people assume that goes for
Daily News is like this staff of journalists and in a perfect
world. And unfortunately, most of the time, when it comes to
goals for Daily News, you're looking at it and speaking with
him, Oh, wow. I can ask for help. I can ask for help when I
need it. I try not to focus on like, the wide, I guess, width
of trying as one person to put your arms around link counting,
cover everything because that's impossible. And so for me, that
helps me not to get caught up in the competitive side of news,
right? Yeah. Because I think it can be easy to do that even on
the local level. And that's really counter if you're really
just trying to serve the community. That's
counterproductive to what you're trying to do. Because other news
outlets are different than us. Like we don't have a we don't
have a print publication. So the older generation that does not
prefer to read their news online that still wants to hold the
newspaper in their hand. I can never compete with them old
people or do I have a desire to. But like, for example, this past
week, there was a situation in in Mount Olive says we're
talking about mount off, someone stole a car and then fled on
foot and the university and the middle school out there were
locked down for a little while. But because we're online, only,
we're able to distribute accurate information. And I
stressed the word accurate because there was a lot of
unfortunate rumors going around that day, about things happening
in Mount Olive that were not true and active shooters and
things like that that weren't true. So we were able to get
that information out on our website and on our Facebook
immediately and put to rest a lot of those a lot of those
rumors. So that's why don't get caught up in, in like the
competitive side of things because everyone's different.
And we have the radio stations that we can that we can use at
our disposal, as well. So even though I'm only one person, I
try not get caught up in like what we can or cannot do,
because we're just Oh, yeah.
Leila: Yeah. And how hard is it to stop the misinformation?
Andrew: Um, you know, so that was on. That was last Thursday,
on Friday morning, when I actually got a chance to speak
to the MT, our Chief of Police on the phone. It wasn't just us,
but he was very appreciative of the of the media in general, for
helping to dispel some of those rumors, this past Thursday. So I
think the combination of our website and then social media,
and I don't think it was just us, but the media in general. I
guess to answer your question about how hard is it to stop the
rumors? I guess it's up to each individual person and where they
go for what they consider to be facts. Right, like, right, yeah.
You gotta use your own discretion on on where you go.
And I guess that's the blessing and the curse of the internet.
Yeah, look in the wrong places. You're not going to find the
truth.
David: It's the thing the thing about the being a news source is
that you have to make sure that what you're saying is Yeah,
absolutely thing the tap because I know a lot of times when
something's going on, like you said rumors, they just they just
start wow and all over the place and even see news news channels
putting out information that's not vetted yet. And, and you're
getting bad information from the news. And, you know, if it's
across the country, it's whatever, but if it's if it's
local, you know, you got to make sure you gotta get the right
news out there. Make sure you're double checking everything.
Absolutely.
Andrew: And fortunately for us, our photographer was in that
area that day, and he knows a lot of the he knows a lot of law
enforcement personnel. Hey, Bobby, so he was able to get us
some factual things. Yes, Bobby. So we can confirm some of those
things because because that day, you know, as those things are
happening live, it was really difficult to get anyone from the
university or anyone with a ton of my knowledge on the phone.
David: Yeah, I got I think I got about a couple buddies work out
there. What was the what was the other question we were gonna
get? That we have? Do you remember? I think so. One of the
things we're doing with guests is we're typing in to jet jet
jet GPD. I found the picture of the kid and the the toy taxi
grabber game thing. And his dad says just like he's got his arms
crossed, and it's hilarious. That'll be in the I'll make sure
Dred Scott gets this image to put in the chapter files booth
is this picture needs to be showing up on the screen. So we
ask chat GPT to write some questions for us. Sometimes
they're sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're super, like,
standard boring. So you want to read one of the chat GBT view?
Leila: Let's see. What do you guys these are here. Yeah. In a
fast paced world of news, what's the most memorable or
challenging story you've ever covered?
Andrew: I'm almost tempted to answer with some of the stories.
Between my few months in news and few months, well, several,
many years in sports, the things that you hear that you want to
print, but can't write. As much as I could. Not to get too far
off topic. But
David: that's what we do here.
Andrew: Yeah, six or so years that I spent six or so years
that I spent in in Wayne County as a as a sports writer. I could
write a book about things that they knew were true. These
aren't like unconfirmed stories very much confirmed stories that
we just could not print in the newspaper. But we're definitely
1,000% True, whether it's baseball teams on the verge of
winning state championships, doing things off the field that
were very much not okay, and coaches saying, you know, I
don't have time to discipline that right now. We're on the
verge of a championship or a private school in Wayne County
that very much recruits, specifically basketball players.
And it's not a secret. Like it's this pretty much open, right?
There's, you know, a basketball player at another school in
Wayne County, that they think would help them when they
suddenly come up with the money to help that that kid afford to
go to that school.
David: What, what's crazy is for them, thanks. Thanks. All right,
they could just make it a scholarship. You know, they
wouldn't have to do anything untoward.
Andrew: It is scholarship and air quotes,
David: right. Yeah. So yeah, we it. There's there's a lot of
stuff, but I think probably it's probably everywhere. You hear
about Florida man in the news, and how I was talking to
somebody about Florida man. The reason that Florida man has a
thing is because all of the police reports in Florida are
open to the press. Yeah. And that's why everybody hears about
what everybody's doing in Florida. The same stuff is
happening here. There's an Ohio man. There's a North Carolina
man. There's every like a Nebraska. There's probably a
Nebraska man that all of New Jersey is New Jersey, man. Love
you New Jersey, the. But yeah, so like, that's why you hear
about all of it, because the news has access to like
everything that happens at the police department. So I'm sure
like, they've got people just scouring all those records every
day looking for the funniest or most outrageous Florida man
story, which this, there's some good ones, and you just don't
get that. You just don't get that elsewhere. One of the
interesting things and then like I said, we just get off topic
here. That's all we do. One of the interesting things, my older
brother used to have a buddy up in Raleigh, that would pay
somebody 50 bucks to go down to the courthouse every day and go
through the records and get pictures of all of the mug shots
that were taken. Because that's public record. And he would find
either the most messed up looking people or just goofy
looking people or ugly people and he would take the his
pictures and print them in the newspaper and sell them at gas
stations for a buck 50 apiece, for a mug shot for it was a
newspaper full of mug shots he publishes twice a month. And he
said that it cost him basically 50 bucks a day to get the
pictures, you just had some teenager go up and do, you know,
do the work. Yeah, and teenagers happy spent three hours at a
courthouse, you know, getting copies of pictures, and then
give them to the guy who gets 50 bucks for three hours of work.
It cost him like 20 cents of paper to print them or I can't
remember the numbers. But he was making like a buck on each one.
And he would sell 10s of 1000s of these things all across the
state. And I'm like, that's, that's, you know, using publicly
available media to create to create an empire of, of mugshot
money. I used to see him I used to see his papers on the gas
station. But not anymore. I don't know if he's just done
with it or, but my brother was telling me that that guy was he
just had an idea. He's like, I'm gonna do it. And he started out
just printing them himself on his like, you know, Canon laser
printer or whatever. And, and then found a place that would
print them on newspaper stock for a cheaper per page. But, um,
so What are y'all like? Do you have to do like you said, you do
most of the, you know, the stories keep up with the site
yourself? Mostly? Correct. Are you like 24/7? Like, if you get
a text in the middle of the night, you jump up and log in
and post the story? Or do you have time for that? Or do you
have set hours or
Andrew: I'm not typically, and that's the beauty of being
online only is that I can I can work at my house. But we also
have an office in the rosewood area that I can go to because we
have reduced sessions. So I have an office there where I can go
to, to work as you know, as well, if I want to work in our
office, but you know, being online, only I had the freedom
really to work, you know, work from anywhere, I could be out of
town if I had to go out of town for some reason. And as long as
I have access to the internet, and have my cell phone with me
in case I need to make phone calls or whatever, I can pretty
much work working anywhere. There hasn't been a ton outside
of last week, obviously with a lockdown and mount all of it all
of the misinformation that was spreading around so quickly.
There hasn't been a ton of what I would consider to be breaking
news in the couple of months that I've been on the job. Now,
there's been some things that have happened with the sheriff's
department here in Wayne County, if anyone's been keeping up with
that story. And some of the unfortunate, we can just call it
what it is corruption that has gone on. And some of that is
what I would consider to be breaking news. And that goes
back to a little bit earlier, you guys were asking about
sources and crazy stories and things like that. And that that
one definitely falls under the what you can print and what you
can't because it's not necessarily confirmed. There's a
lot of things that we've been able to print since all of this
began that have been confirmed. And then there's a lot of things
that that you hear from people, different sources. People that
you know, that have their own connections in various ways to
the sheriff's department inside and out. Right. As far as that
story is concerned, and some of it, you know, we're aware of,
but because we can't get anyone to go on the record for a
million different reasons as far as that, you know, jobs and
things like that. We have been able to print. So there's been
some breaking news as far as the sheriff's department goes, but
not a ton. To answer your question. But I'm sure I'm sure
it's coming at some point.
David: Right. Yeah, I think it's good that you're not printing
things that you don't have good confirmations of because I said
earlier I've I've seen news reports and on from big, huge
outlets that are just wrong. They're just completely wrong.
And then they they have a correction four or five days
later like one sentence and you're like, you know, do make
sure you got all your ducks in a row before you print it. But you
know, it's it's entering the web news business so you understand
you do want to you want to have those facts nailed down as quick
as possible because you want to be the first one telling the
story. So you do get the clicks because the clicks matter. If
you're you know if your ad based, which I'm assuming that's
probably how you all, you know, keep things go on with the site.
Andrew: Absolutely. And so you know, we sell, we sell ads that
will link to a business's website or social media. And so
that's how we, we find the website. And we're able to use
Google Analytics to go into businesses and show the traffic
on both of our site, and the clicks and the click throughs on
a on a specific ad on Google's news, as well. So when I was on
the sales side of that, that's incredible. That's incredibly
powerful. And I can speak from firsthand experience of having
sold goals, real news in the past to walk into a business
because you get a lot of questions on the radio side, you
know, how do I know this is financially benefiting my
business? And that's, that's a more difficult question to
answer for, for radio, on the web, you know, like for goals,
or daily news, I think right now we're in the neighborhood of
about 80,000. Readers, right, which is pretty strong in Wayne
County. So we're able to take those numbers into a business
and put those in front of them. And it pretty much speaks for So
yeah, that's there's also a lot of responsibility that comes
with that, too. That's such a large number, like you've got
to, you got to make sure that, like you said, that you're fact
checking everything. And, you know, sometimes we because we do
take new submissions, we get people that reach out to us, and
they want us to look into things, but they also want to
remain anonymous. And I understand that from from their
standpoint. But you just have to be really, really careful when
it comes to that and make sure that if they're especially if
they're submitting a complaint about something I got one right
now that someone wants me to investigate. Now just say it
involves,
David: I'll just say healthcare. Gotcha. I
Andrew: mean, super important. But like, as a journalist, you
have to take everything that they give you. And then you also
have to go to that organization, and give them a chance to speak
on their behalf on everything that they're being accused of.
Absolutely. Yeah, both sides of the story take a lot long of
your time. As a journalist, you can't just turn that around in
like 24 hours, that's gonna take sometimes weeks or months to get
to verify everything.
David: Yeah, yeah, I imagine. Yeah, we, we went a different
route with funding. We, we do what's called value for value.
We decided to not ever do any ads. And just basically say,
Hey, if you enjoy our show, we put it out for free for
everybody. The whole thing, we don't put anything behind a
paywall. If you enjoy our show, and you get some kind of value
out of it, if you could return that value. In whatever way you
see fit. monetarily, send us facts, and US corrections and
arts and us music, anything, anything you can do to help out
go to our merch store store at FunFactFriday.com store dot
FunFactFriday.com. And we just asked for, you know, whatever
folks want to want to help us out with and one of the cool
things that we do is we accept Bitcoin payments through the new
podcast apps that support the Lightning Network network. So
basically, as people listen, they can donate money for every
minute they listen, we get a little bit of Bitcoin. So it's
like, awesome, yeah. And then you can also do what's called a
boost or booster gram, where they can send us a message and
attach money to that message. And we say anything that you
boost to us. We're gonna read on the air. We you know, we tell
people that because all the booster grams are on the
blockchain, or they're all They're all on the network. So
it's, you can't really hide them anyway. So we're gonna go ahead
and actually, we're gonna go through we got a couple of
boosts this week. We're recording on Monday night. So if
you send us a boost after Monday, we will get you on that
we will mention you on the next episode. But let's see we got
Kevin Hallisey. Three days ago, for episode 155 mechanical
keyboards with Emily and Kayla from QBO. 4321 Satoshis says
counting down to my Saturday morning listen, I miss Car Talk.
Yes, yes. Car Talk was was a great show. Leila that was an
old day. They talked about like fixing cars and whatnot, but I'm
not huge into that but they were just really entertaining. Yeah,
those guys click and clack Yes, they were fantastic. Listen to
even if you're not into cars. Then Kevin says, How about
episodes about glaciers or the Ice Age? Or, or the Great Lakes.
Fun facts about the Great Lakes. Life is much more fun listening
to Fun Fact Friday calm Are you in the keeper and living up and
down world all good people providing good value for value?
Thank you, Kevin 4321, Satoshi, and then bareness love and light
comes in. It comes in with with her 333 sets. And that was from
the Antarctica episode. Nap science is something that I can
get behind smiling
Leila: about how napping is good for you. Yeah,
David: nap for humanity. So yeah, so that was our our
support for this week, we definitely appreciate that. I
also see all of the people who are streaming sets per minute,
we see all of those transactions. And we definitely
appreciate that too. Especially since we've been doing longer
episodes recently. So, you know, every minute we're talking,
we're just we're just racking up those Satoshis. But, but yeah,
it's a really neat system the way it works. We didn't really,
ever want to do ads, because we're just, we didn't like we
don't like the idea of like, contracts and owing people
things. And, you know, maybe somebody coming up with, let's
say, a company we're doing an ad for does something we don't
like, you know, you know, things can can get crazy when
especially when you got a minor as one of the hosts of the show.
One of the funny things Spotify messed up. And they put what was
it wild turkey? Yeah, yeah, wild turkey liquor ads on our show,
like, display ads on a kid show. And I'm like, Huh. And what was
really bad was that they put that same ad for alcohol, on
shows about being sober. So they just across the board, just
through an ad buy out there and just bought, I don't care what
the show is, we want to advertise on it. And it just
went through like there was no discretion whatsoever. And if,
if it was not a dark pattern to get off of Spotify, once your
show is on it, we would have less we wouldn't be on Spotify
anymore. It was it really made me angry. It makes me angry that
they're putting ads display ads on our show anyway. Because we
didn't agree to that. Technically, I guess we did when
we when I allowed them to ingest the show. But yeah, not gonna
get in the weeds with all that. But yeah, it's it's a neat
system. And we always like to thank our folks who come in
with, with donations, we appreciate that. Did you have
any questions for us about anything, anything at all? It
doesn't have to be about the show or news or anything. You
can ask us you know, what's the best serial mascot or?
Andrew: Um, no, you guys sort of touched on it earlier about you
know what? Getting started during COVID. But I would love
to know if there's like more to that or you know how you guys
worked out the kinks or you know, the the equipment and just
kind of the backstory to your podcast. It's actually
interesting. For those that don't know, it's actually
David: been more than 50 episodes, we've our viewers are
live viewership or listenership has actually been going up about
10% A week here for the last three months. It's been really
good. So we started, they started the show for fun just
goofing around. I wanted to get all my old equipment back hooked
up. I used to have a podcast, I still have the podcast, meet us
pod. And I've got two new episodes in the works, folks.
But I hadn't released an episode in five years because I we moved
so I had to tear down my studio. And anyway, long story short, we
were in the car. We were every Friday when I pick her up from
school. We would do like okay, fun fact time. Let's do a fun
fact. Fun Fact, Friday, Fun Fact, Friday and we goofed
around with it. I was like, let's just do a show. Why not?
It'll be fun. And we did. And probably what 1520s episodes and
we got mentioned on no agenda? Probably, yeah. 15 or 20
episodes, and there's a podcast named no agenda. And it is
massive. It's around a million listeners an episode. And both
of the hosts are fans of our show. So they played like a
three minute clip from our show on their show, which they, you
know, I mean, that's, that's a big deal. So we kind of just
took off and they made fun of us, which is fine. That's, you
know, that's what we're here for. We were being really super
serious at the beginning. Like everything was scripted, and
everything was very NPR. Hello, and welcome to Fun Fact Friday.
My name is David. I'm Leila's dad, you know, everything was
very like that. And we had a little criticism that we Are two
NPR free. And but we got a lot of listeners that way. And then
we just slowly we started off with a couple of what were they
the Behringer, XM, 8500 mics into a Behringer, we had about
80 bucks worth of equipment, just a couple of cheap mics
cheap interface. We recorded the episodes, I spent hours editing
them, and cleaning everything up and blah, blah, blah, right?
Well over time, we started getting more and more support.
And the support, numbers started getting a lot bigger. Money
wise, and we just slowly as time went on, we bought better mics.
And then we get more donations and we bought better cables. And
then I bought a road caster Pro two. And then you know, we just
slowly as the money comes in, we get new equipment. And then
recently, we actually just had an anonymous anonymous
supporter, just send us a couple of new laptops, because ours
were getting old. So we have we have folks out there that we
provide enough value for them, for them to help us out in big
ways. So we you know, it and that's when it's kind of become
we're kind of trying to build a little community. And we do get
a lot of help from people. We get a light and you know, we
meet different people throughout the community. So like Bandra
Scott, he was a he's a real real big. He's like the microphone
guy on YouTube. We kind of traveled in the same circles.
And he's like, yeah, yeah, come on. Fun Fact, Friday, and then
he came on and that brought us some borrow some viewers. And
then we get a hold of people around other people. And like we
just had Mimi Smith DeVore, AK on, she wrote the book on eggs
to a 750 page book called too many eggs. And it has it's just
a million recipes and stories about eggs and egg art, and just
everything having to do with eggs. And we're like, oh, cool.
Let's talk about eggs. So So yeah, it's just been awesome.
It's just been a very progressive and actually
starting what was about February, I started on the
studio. Yeah, I took the tour. That's where we're at right now.
I took the tool shed in the backyard. Little 16 by 10. Just
standard shed that you'd buy. Shed store on side of the road.
And I put up insulation, wired it dry walled it, ran Ethernet
out to it. Just got it all loaded down, put some sound,
sound treatment on the walls. I've got it all wired up, as I
mean, you can see us we're not this isn't a video podcast, but
you can see us and we just kind of set it all up little, little
studio. And like you were saying earlier with being able to go
into an office, like you said, you can go to that office out in
Rosewood being able to go out to somewhere that is dedicated to
work is something about that, to me that beats working at home.
Because you just you're in a different mindset. Absolutely.
So but yeah, that's that's Fun Fact, Friday in a nutshell. And
we just, we have fun. We are actually in the we're in the
Goldsboro Christmas parade. And 2022. Yeah, 2021 Yeah, we had a
float in the Christmas parade. That was really fun. And then we
actually did a live broadcast from the float. Like, while we
were on the float, we were doing an episode. So that was
interesting. That was interesting. It was and it was,
that was the year that it was 2021 and 2021. So everybody was
kind of coming out of the lockdown mode. And so like that
was like the biggest, biggest version of the Goldsboro
Christmas parade. There had been a long time. Once they they
estimated What 2015 20,000 people there. And that was
really neat for us to have that. That exposure. But yeah, that's
that's us in a nutshell, folks who are new to the show. That's
kind of how it kind of how it all got going and how it's been.
Yeah, and how value for value can really work for a show.
Because it's so exciting. Yeah, it's gotten us all of our just
gotta be able to provide value back to the listener. So they
stopped valuing what you're doing. They'll let you know by
not supporting you. So it's a it's a good system. Let's see.
Let's see, I think I'm gonna check these chat GBT questions
again, see if there's anything else. You know what? Oh my gosh.
We didn't even say who invented the news.
Leila: Who invented the news?
David: It was the news was invented in 1978 by Joseph news.
Every time when something when something new happened. He told
somebody about it.
If you go back and listen to our shows, yeah, if you go back and
listen to our show, we always we always Joseph invented
everything in 1978. But now the first first widely circulated
newspaper was a handwritten new sheet. And it was in Venice in
1566. Weekly new sheets full of information about wars and
politics in Italy in Europe. The first printed newspapers were
published weekly in Germany in 1605. Typically, they were
censored by the government oh and conquer that doesn't happen
these days, especially in France. Reported mostly for news
and current prices. After English government relaxed
censorship in 1695 newspapers flourished in London, and a few
other cities including Boston and Philadelphia, by the 1830s.
High speed presses can print 1000s of papers cheaply allowing
low daily costs. And nowadays, you can run a an entire new site
from your cell phone if you've got the the thumb typing speeds,
or a really good speech to text program so Yeah, as long as you
got an internet connection these days like you like you were
saying, you can you can hammer out a article hit post right
from your phone. Yeah, if we wanted to, since we do self
hosting and and all we'd write our own RSS feed and all that
stuff. We could do every anything from my cell phone to
we don't ever do that. We just like we're not doing an episode
this week, y'all. We're out of town. Next week. Yeah. But yeah.
If you didn't have anything else, Leila Andrew, did you have
anything else you wanted to say? Do you want to plug anything?
Or? No, I've got some links to put in your show notes for you.
Well, first of all, thank you
Andrew: guys for having me on. This
David: is fun. Thanks for coming in. I
Andrew: definitely will check out check out more more
episodes, as well. And if you guys are ever in the David and
Leila are ever in the rosewood area, please stop by and check
out our office and love to show you our studios. Oh yeah. That
would be fun radio studio. But no, I would just encourage
everyone to check out goals for daily news.com. We are also on
on Facebook. And if you enjoy listening to to friends talk
about high school football. And sometimes other things while
football is going on. Then you can find our our broadcast on W
GBR. Not 8.3 FM on Friday nights beginning at 630. And we also
stream our broadcasts live on goals for daily news.com. So you
can find us there as well.
David: The DL release that as a podcast or
Andrew: um, we we have had more and more community members reach
out to us for clips of of the games, especially if their child
or someone that they know has a good game on a Friday night,
right. So we are able to go into this is a radio term but go into
the logger and send them clips of the game on request. But I
don't think it's available online just for the public in
general. Okay. Like on demand, but the broadcasts are available
online. Like live.
David: Okay, cool. Yeah, we like we like live live because we
have stuff when we do live shows, which we're doing less
often now because Leila's school schedule. But when we do live
shows, we always have a chat room. And you know, we've got
folks chiming in and talking to us while we're going and we'll
get live boosts like the donations, we'll get those live
and there's something something magical about doing a live you
know, there's an energy to it. But yeah, thank you for coming
on. It was very nice to meet you. We will definitely come
check out the studio. Yeah, since we're both I'm more of one
but we're both audio nerds. So yeah, thank you for coming on
Andrew and everybody.
Andrew: Just looking at Oh, when you just let me know when you
want to come by and we'll just make that happen.
David: Great. That's fantastic. All right, everybody, we will
see you next week. Be sure and hit us up mail FunFactFriday.com
or his on our socials. Have a good one.
Leila: Bye.
David: Did Kyle show up this week? Totally. He's here. Hey,
Kyle.
Kyle Hebert: Fun Fact Friday with Leila and David is a Mitas
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