I haven’t ran through a day’s worth of links on the site in about two weeks. You’re welcome and/or I’m sorry. I’ve been saving them up for a rainy day. And while it is cold and sunny outside, today is that day.
For this mega-installment I’ve broken it up into segments. If you’re here for the journalism or the tech links, they’re down below. Beyond that you’ll also find a social media section and something I just named “deep reads.” That section holds a few pieces that defy excerpting and are important.
First, some nice or important stories of late.
Rankings: Auburn-Opelika fourth smartest metro area in America:
Not only is Auburn-Opelika the smartest metropolitan area in the state of Alabama, according to NewGeography.com, but it’s also the fourth-smartest metropolitan area in America — only behind St. George, Utah; Bloomington, Ind. and Ocean City, N.J.
“For the most part, the top 10 on our list of the 51 largest metro areas is dominated by places with large concentrations of colleges, and those that long ago made the transition from industrial to information-based economies,” survey authors Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill stated on NewGeography.com. (Other college towns in the top 10 include Bloomington, Ind., Hattiesburg, Miss. and Lawrence, Kan.)
Grew up watching this guy play. This is a hard story to read. Broke and broken:
Those closest to Darryl Talley are terrified. His wife, daughters and former teammates openly cry for him. They lament what has befallen him. They dread what his future might hold.
Talley’s life is in tatters. Loved ones say his mind is deteriorating. He’s begrudgingly starting to agree.
He’s 54, but his body is a wreck and continues to crumble. He suspects collisions from playing linebacker for 14 NFL seasons, a dozen with the Buffalo Bills, have damaged his brain. He’s often depressed beyond the point of tears.
He’s bitter at the National Football League for discarding him and denying that he’s too disabled to work anymore. He says the Bills have jilted him, too.
He learned after he retired that he’d played with a broken neck.
Shared this in class last week. We all agreed the video added a little something extra to the story. Family hears son’s heartbeat in another man’s chest:
Doctors say Matthew Heisler’s heart stopped beating twice. And soon after, there was no brain activity.
Turns out, Matthew Heisler signed up to be organ donor when he was 16 years old. After renewing his driver’s license, Matthew Heisler asked his father, Jared, what he had done by “checking the organ donor box.”
“He made the decision that if life ever slipped away from him, he would give life to someone else,” Jared Heisler said.
And that decision was no small feat. Tom, who waited nearly three years for a lifeline now lives with Matthew’s heart.
Eight month’s after Matthew’s death, his parents and younger sister, Casey, listened to Matt’s heart beat inside of Tom’s chest.
Rare cancer can’t keep Oxford teen out of 10K race:
Oxford High School ninth-grader Keyshon “K.J.” Lynch woke up at 6 a.m. Thanksgiving Day. He was nauseous, but didn’t tell his mother, Christeena.
He was afraid that if he told his mom he felt sick, she’d try to keep him from running in the annual Plucked Turkey 10K in Golden Springs. It would be his fourth time participating in the 6.2 mile, bragging-rights-only race, the proceeds of which go to the YMCA of Calhoun County.
Lynch is no stranger to an upset stomach. He finished his fourth round of chemotherapy Wednesday.
Yes, the VA story can get more shameful. Bad things happen to whistleblowers when watchdogs become attack dogs:
“It was a disappointment,” said Peterson, a Navy veteran who served with a Marine unit in the Persian Gulf in the late 1980s. “One of the core things you are taught in the military is to take care of your brother. That stays with you. How can I wear a uniform and then cower to the VA mentality?”
What happened to Peterson is not unusual, according to outside watchdogs, members of Congress and a review of recent media reports involving whistleblower retaliation at numerous federal agencies.
I don’t care if it is true. Nichelle Nichols deserves to have people loudly stand up for her. So I want the punchline here to be true:
Unfortunately, as is the case for many people her age, she has some mobility problems and was seated in a wheelchair as we approached the metal detector. With some difficulty, she got out of the chair to go through the machine, and the TSA Officer waiting on the other side ordered her to take off her shoes.
Wartime spy finally accepts she is a French heroine:
“It wasn’t until after my first round of training that they told me they wanted me to become a member of the SOE,” she said in a rare interview five years ago, “They said I could have three days to think about it. I told them I didn’t need three days to make a decision; I’d take the job now.”
A close family friend – her godmother’s father – had been shot by the Germans and her godmother had committed suicide after being taken prisoner by the Nazis. “I did it for revenge,” Mrs Doyle told the New Zealand Army News magazine in 2009.
In Britain, the SOE operatives were trained by a cat burglar, released from jail especially. “We learnt how to get in a high window, and down drain pipes, how to climb over roofs without being caught,” she recalled.
Couple marries at Harvest Thrift Super Center:
Takeia and Nelson Alvarez Lopez came with their daughter Royalle to Alabama from New York without realizing how their lives were going to be changed.
A wedding was held for the couple Thursday evening during Harvest Evangelism’s annual Christmas party at the Harvest Thrift Super Center. Pastor Rick Hagans officiated the wedding. The wedding dress came from the Harvest Thrift Super Center, and the bride’s ring was donated.
That’s an adorable story, though it is a bit disorganized. I hope those crazy kids make it, they’ve surely got a lot of people cheering them on now.
The journalism links:
Why Serial is important for journalism
How to handle fast-paced multimedia reporting
Note the word “former.” Former Sun deputy news editor: Inventing quotes to ’embellish’ stories is ‘standard journalistic practice’
Corrupt politicians suffer only when there’s local media to report on it
Miami Herald continues to treat some South Florida neighborhoods as though they don’t exist
Five steps for shooting the perfect sit-down interview
A new study looks at the interplay of journalism and PR in the digital age
Rolling Stone’s disastrous U-Va. story: A case of real media bias
Rolling Stone’s Rape Story: A bigger journalistic train wreck than we thought
Uh huh. This never works the way you want it to, senator. Defining ‘journalist’ may become necessary
Senate leader Del Marsh taking heat for advocating an official state definition of ‘journalist’
Google News: The biggest missed opportunity in media right now
How much of your news site’s search traffic comes from Google News? Probably 5 to 25 percent
How 5 media outlets are using Tumblr
The newsonomics of the newly quantified, gamified news reader
The social media links:
Tumblr Overtakes Instagram As Fastest-Growing Social Platform, Snapchat Is The Fastest-Growing App
Five companies doing social media right
Anheuser-Busch Is Plotting to Win the Super Bowl With Four Social Media Command Rooms
The tech links:
How the iPhone 6 Plus Impacts Where We Read & Watch
Netflix CEO: Broadcast TV Will Be Dead By 2030
NAB Labs: FM Capability in Smartphones Rises
56% of Digital Ads Served Are Never Seen, Says Google
Discarded Laptop Batteries Keep the Lights On
Older viewers also abandoning TV in favor of phone, computer
New cord cutting data spells trouble for traditional TV
Research Confirms the Crowd: Netflix and Others Are Upending the TV Business
Deep reads:
‘The most expensive regulation ever’
Cartelists’ conundrum: OPEC meets
Chief justice questions whether rights might be curtailed in Internet speech case.
Cost Still a Barrier Between Americans and Medical Care
Cycling over the Pyrenees with one leg
Love the A-10. America’s Toughest, Ugliest Warplane Is Going Back Into Battle
Pearl Harbor survivors reunite in Hawaii to mark 73rd anniversary of attack
There’s something for everyone in this post. Thanks for making it this far. Please bookmark it and come back for more of these links. If they are here, they are worth a quick look.
And come back tomorrow. There will be more pictures and, perhaps, things to read.
