I have not posted here since Thanksgiving, and that is a serious sin in Bloggerland.

I’ve been busy. Very busy. Happily busy. Yes, that’s my excuse.

Among other projects, I’ve been working on the successful relaunch of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s website (it’s up now, although the tweaking continues).

Of course, I’m in the market for new challenges — if you have one, let’s touch base. I’m happy to consider opportunities near and far (meaning they can be local to New York, or based in Iowa and beyond).

BTW, it’s not as though I’ve disappeared from Cyberville. I’ve been working the tweet streams pretty steadily — follow me on Twitter @ConeyMedia (for my media-centric spin) and @BrooklynToday (for local spin). Also on Facebook and (not quite as much) on LinkedIn.

The other day, The Brooklyn Paper ‘s first editor, Beverly Cheuvront, uploaded to Facebook the photo that tops this post, from around 1980; a more recent colleague, Eric Ross Tiplitz, quickly updated the image, replacing The Brooklyn Paper in my hand with an iPad. Ah, the joys of Photoshop.

Now, back to work!

Enjoy it!

Photos from today’s Macy’s parade via NBC: http://ow.ly/fvicd

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Which brings us to this “Where the Hell is Matt” dancing video, a guaranteed smile-maker—

After Matt Harding became a YouTube star in 2008, he went back around the world to continue dancing with people, releasing this 2012 edition—

For more about Matt and his dancing world, including how his videos began and evolved, click here.

Not only couldn’t you dine outside Fairway this morning — you couldn’t get anywhere near the store!

Photo at right, which shows Fairway in far right background, is from Carroll Gardens Patch, which also posted many more great Red Hoot flood shots.

Below the art is an Associated Press report from BrooklynEagle.com on the Red Hook floods.

AP:

Residents in Red Hook who ignored the mandatory evacuation awoke to debris-strewn streets and a continuing blackout.

The floodwaters that rose at least 12 blocks inland had receded by dawn Tuesday.

It left cars strewn like leaves on the streets. Planters were deposited in intersections. Green metal Dumpsters were tossed on their sides.

Power lines were down.

Streets were covered with about 2 inches of muck and leaves.

The doors of the Fairway grocery store were blown out. Several cars left in the parking lot were shifted by flood waters overnight and were left crammed door to door.

Faye Schwartz and her husband rode out the storm in a third-floor apartment. She said white-capped flood waters reached at least three feet around the building.

Apiary enthusiast Tim O’Neal pictured in The Brooklyn Paper in March.

Here’s another example of The Brooklyn Paper’s outstanding hyperlocal coverage of Hurricane Sandy: This was just posted in the newspaper’s liveblog—

A million bees living on the banks of the East River met a horrible end last night when Hurricane Sandy tore their hives apart.

With all the talk about hyperlocal imperatives, the most local of New York’s traditional media mostly slept through one of the city’s greatest stories.

The websites of New York’s dailies (NYTimes.com, NYPost.com, NYDailyNews.com) were all over it, as were nearly all of the city’s TV, cable TV — including NY1 and News12 — and radio outlets.

But with one exception among local newspapers and at least two among pure plays, the hyperlocals didn’t even bother to phone it in.

• • •

When a resident or expat of the Rockaways — among the areas hardest hit by the storm, where a mid-flood blaze engulfed more than 50 homes — turned to Rockawave.com, the payroll-protected website of the 129-year-old Wave newspaper, they might have expected at least SOME coverage. They’d have been disappointed. What the Wave delivered: Nada.

In Brooklyn, kudos to BrooklynPaper.com for liveblogging the storm throughout Monday, and continuing on Tuesday. Excellent job!

The Brooklyn Paper’s sister site, BrooklynDaily.com, mirrored Brooklyn Paper coverage on Monday — but on Tuesday morning it was leading with a high school sports event from last Saturday. Its shoreline neighborhoods were the wrost hit in Brooklyn. Insensitive at best.

Except for an early post by its star reporter Mary Frost, BrooklynEagle.com took Monday off. On Tuesday morning, the site posted a brief update by Frost and an Associated Press report on the fire in Breezy Point.

Brooklyn’s Patch sites were generally lame and not worth a click, but DNAinfo.com — the 800-pound guerrilla in the room — proved what a hyperlocal site can do when it has unlimited financial resources [ie, editorial and technical staff]. Meanwhile, Ned Berke’s SheepsheadBites.com showed what Brooklyn moxie can do on the hyperlocal front even without a whole lot of money. Congrats, Ned.

“The Moral Paper Route” won a $40,000 prize from the American Enterprise Institute. Here’s a look behind the video’s creation: http://ow.ly/eHuhv

And here’s “Freedom’s Price,” the video which placed second, winning a $7,500 prize —

For other videos in the AEI competition, link here.

Unlike this SEO‘d homepage teaser, the story itself does not include “Jehovah’s Witness” in its headline; the term comes up only briefly mid-article — at which point the newspaper reports that the “Kingdom Hall in Gresham [Oregon] described him as an ‘irregular’ church-goer” [emphasis added].

The suspect is also reported to have cared for cats [HEADLINE: Cat lover sexually assaults and pumps bullets into a Starbucks barista] and he’s said to have been employed at Burger King [HEADLINE: Burger King worker has it his way with Starbucks barista, then pumps her with lead].

Daily News Publisher Mortimer Zuckerman, hang your head in shame! It’s no wonder that when Zuckerman, who’s a regular on the Sunday TV talk show circuit, is introduced, it’s as publisher of U.S. News — a magazine that barely exists — rather than as publisher of the still fairly large-circulation New York Daily News.

Meanwhile, the Daily News‘ website, under Zuckerman’s ailing eye, is all alone in its race to the bottom. Yuch!

Meanwhile, in Middle America … the Des Moines Register gave its most prominent play to the presidential rivals and STILL managed to squeeze in a headline referencing sex and gore!