Presented our paper today on the media participation hypothesis, which suggests that, as political involvement grows reliant on new media formats and technologies, use of interactive public affairs media will produce more satisfaction and efficacy over time as media become more interactive. The concern with this hypothesis, we argue in the paper is one reflected in current research which struggles with logistical challenges that the Internet presents.
That’s what this paper is about: this doesn’t exactly work, that doesn’t exactly work, we need a model to help with understanding new dynamics, and so on.
There were nodding heads during the presentation, which is always a good sign at these sorts of things.
We had a pizza lunch with two of our friends from Mississippi schools and another from Texas. After more sessions and meetings in the afternoon we had dinner with our colleagues at The Flying Fish.
This place was new in Little Rock when I lived here. (Almost a decade ago!) It is delicious. I went to the Flying Fish because it was one of the few places in a re-developing downtown back then; now Riverwalk is a bustling, thriving area once again, thanks to years of development and the Clinton Library. I was glad to see the place was still around. It is, I believe, the best catfish I eat — and there’s a catfish joint in my family.
And apparently it is a regional chain, so the next time I’m in Memphis it’ll be ribs and fish.
Part of the decor:
Outside they light the building with lamps made of outboard motors.
Anyway, the company was the best part. We had dinner with four exceedingly bright and funny people, two old friends and two of them new. Shame we’ll only see them at conferences, it has been a while since I’ve laughed that much, that hard.
So that’s the day: the presentation, the conference and the food. Tomorrow is the drive back home. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.
We walked into the conference this morning just in time for this session where The Yankee was chairing and I was responding to the papers being presented. The presenters were graduate students, their scholarship quality.
One wrote a piece on the rhetoric of Photovoice, which is a particular photographic methodology. I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with the paper until I heard the author present. She’d written her master’s thesis with this method, but had now changed her mind on it. And that made a lot of sense.
Another was a look at the rhetoric of Blaxploitation films. The paper was good, though it isn’t anything I’d ever consider doing myself. But I did find myself quoting some of the movies he mentioned for the rest of the day.
A third paper on the panel was an analysis of some of the political segments on Saturday Night Live.
Somehow I managed to give my response without referencing this segment:
This one did come up:
I love those bits.
Which made the schema-relational-media theory paper look smarter than all of us, really. Always nice to learn new things, and that’s what happened for me in that paper.
We took in a session featuring some of the great political academics of the region, including our old professor Dr. Larry Powell. I love to hear him hold forth. He’ll sit back, cross his arms and tell you how this most recent campaign was like something Goldwater did. And how it was different, too. He’s just a walking education and a very nice man.
I dropped in on an undergrad presentation because one panelist was talking about the rhetoric of World War II posters, an art form I really admire. She talked about this one — essentially women were hard at work, but being “protected” or “held back” by their husbands. Note, too, the form-fitting overalls. On this poster she discussed the rhetoric of mid-century race relations. More gender roles and race rhetoric is found in this poster, she argued.
And then a young woman stood up to deliver her paper on the rhetorical analysis of photojournalism on Katrina coverage. It was more gripping when she discussed how she was an evacuee of that storm.
Later in the afternoon The Yankee delivered her paper on the Kay Hagan-Elizabeth Dole North Carolina senate race. She won top paper honors for this research. (She’s very good.) And then she took a picture of me taking a picture. (She’s so meta.)
We had dinner at Famous Dave’s, a barbecue place from whom we’ve been holding onto a gift card for years. We walked in and Ray Charles started playing on the speakers, so everything was just right. Good food, we just don’t have one around us. Being Friday, which is Pie Day, we had the pecan. (I like everything about pecan pie except for the pecans.)
I drove her past my old apartment, showed off a few things in town — but not my former station because, really, when you’ve seen one building you’ve seen them all.
And then back across the river to our hotel room, where I must prepare for tomorrow’s presentation.
Field trip day today. My students visited Hoffman Media, who publish 11 magazines from a cozy little office space here in town. During our visit the students met Phyllis Hoffman DePiano, the founder and her sons who help her run the place. We heard from advertising people, designers and an editor.
We also learned that the next big food thing is going to be chocolate-covered bacon. You’re welcome.
The students enjoyed their visit and learned a great deal about cover design and magazine publishing and when that was done we hit the road. The Yankee and I have a conference in Little Rock this weekend, and so we made the drive, tucked ourselves into a hotel just across the river.
Tomorrow we’ll attend sessions. She’ll chair one and I’ll be the respondent in a session. My job is to provide some unity among the papers and offer some constructive criticism on where the papers are. I’ve never done this before, should be fun.
Tonight I had my first banana pudding milkshake in Tupelo, which sounds a lot better than saying “We stopped off the interstate and had a sandwich at Chick-fil-A.”
We stopped off the interstate and had a sandwich at Chick-fil-A.
The ubiquity of fast food places is a blessing when you’re hungry, and a curse when you’re trying to say something about the South, or your travels or your general condition. But, on the other, other hand everyone can relate to Chick-fil-A, I guess.
So the milkshake was terrific. So good, in fact, that I didn’t even mind that I spilled a bit of it on myself.
OK, that’s a lie. Of course I minded. Spills are the worst part of gravity, but at least I was covered in something delicious.
* The first time I ever visited Arkansas, as a senior in high school we were driving across the Mississippi River, the state line when we heard Alan Jackson, who sounded like he was about three days into a two-day all-nighter say that in the most disconnected tone you could imagine. One of the only other things I remember about that particular drive was seeing the “Welcome to Arkansas — Home of President William Jefferson Clinton” full of birdshot. I’d make that drive a few dozen times in my year working in Little Rock. Tonight I remembered: central Arkansas is flat. I’m sure I’ll recall more in the daylight.
A few people actually asked for this on Twitter — can you believe it? — and so I’ve compiled this list in Storify. It is found elsewhere on the site, but that just isn’t good enough. Your requested material should be everywhere. It started on Twitter, of course, but the biggest problem is that Twitter has a very temporary nature. Storify will, presumably, be more permanent. And I can edit it for later. So, then, here is the famous Twilight Twitter commentaries:
The Yankee tells me the next movie is set to underwhelm everyone 17-years-and-older this fall. I’m sure she’ll go. If so, I’ll go along to make fun of the thing on Twitter (I do it for you, Internet) and then put it there.
I’m beginning to like Storify. It makes sense, though I wish it would do a few more things, which would also make sense given what it is trying to be. But that’s the nature of things. I’ll take my mile now, you charming little free service.
Follow ups to things mentioned recently: The New York Times has have no interest in competing for digital-only dollars. Did I mention that in it’s present form the paywall is hardly daunting? I get my Times from Twitter, so it is free to me under this odd scheme. Meanwhile, USA Today is revamping. There’s promise and trouble there, I’d think. Their online presence will be the best part of their recently unveiled strategies.
The story here is that a guy stills a laptop from a young computer whiz. The guy then apparently recorded this video of himself and the victim tracked it all down through the power of cheese technology.
And finally, a guy I worked with in Little Rock years ago put this on Twitter today. Apparently that’s his great-uncle cutting Elvis’ hair. He says his grandfather swept it up. No word, yet, on whether anyone stashed it for the eventual creation of e-bay.
So, there, I have three degrees of separation from Elvis and my friend Grant Merrill has a really cool family story he’s probably heard all of his life. And Elvis hair, lots of Elvis hair. He’s just waiting until his daughter goes off to college, and then he’ll sell it off for tuition money. Grant’s a multimedia mogul now. Very impressive.
One day, when I need a loan, I’ll remind him of that time he crashed on my sofa.
This got me looking for an aircheck from the late, great Ray Lincoln who was simply one of the best people any of us ever worked with in radio. I only knew him at the end of his career when his health was failing, but his mind was razor sharp. In his prime he did a show where he performed two people, Ray and Ram, at once. And he did it well, I’ve heard snippets and the thing was amazing. Later I wrote a little copy for him and pitched to him as he did horse track picks. Lincoln was one of those guys who could do a lot of things well, and he was regarded as one of the best handicappers in the country. As was typical, he did that as a character, too. Sport Jackson was a no-nonsense personality and it was just inside the man. He was a method actor without a stage.
KTHV, when Lincoln died a few years back, did the best obit piece you’ve ever read, mostly because the man was one of those people you could imagine has existed anyway:
In January of 2000, deteriorating health forced Lincoln to quit full-time radio. His condition would worsen until he was forced to enter a Dallas hospital in 2003. “They cut me open and did six bypasses. They were gonna do five and I found out if they do six, you get the cell phone and the Internet and the dish.” His condition would deteriorate until he was forced to enter a Dallas hospital in 2003. He suffered six strokes which left him incapacitated and he was in dire need of a heart transplant. Lincoln was kept alive by a machine called an l-Vad. Eventually though, his family was faced with a decision. Lincoln explained in 2005, “It was not looking good. So, we had decided on Thursday, come Sunday, we’ll just turn this machine off.” Suddenly, there was a donor heart available that was a match for Lincoln. “This kid, his name was Dwayne Compton, 26 years old. He was killed in an automobile accident December 11th and the next day, I got his heart,” Lincoln says. “And his heart is in my chest right now.”
And they included quotes that probably are more in keeping with the character Ray Lincoln conveyed on air:
“The radio business is a cruel and shallow money trench. A long, plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
“Do I get credit for using those words? Look at my contract. I get a 50 cent bonus for large polysyllabic words that are obscure and seldom used except for people who are erudite and urbane.”
I didn’t know him especially well, but he was always a decent guy and a great talent. Sadly, there isn’t any audio of his to be found on the Internet. This is an oversight.
We’re going to Little Rock this weekend for a conference. I must resist the urge to try and remember stories to tell. I was only there for a year, after all. But I certainly met some characters.
Wrote a big long policy memo today. It was suggested we needed a new policy for a particular thing. The task fell to me. I eschewed the urge to write the thing in bullet points. Sometimes bullet points work very well. The aesthetic of bullet points is ruined, however, when the explanation that goes with the bullet runs onto a second line. And the problem with writing a policy on something or other is that they often run longer than one line.
So I started “Thou shalt not.”
Or I would have if I’d thought of it at the time.
Had lunch with Brian, where we enjoyed barbecue at Moe’s. We talked of home repair, website work and company trips. For example, did you know the new New York Times paywall, which is in effect in Canada and will soon go into effect in the United States with all of it’s many tiers — You want to talk about policy memos, how many did this plan take? — but the workaround has already been found.
They say there’s $40 or $50 million invested in this paywall, and it can be defeated by four lines of javascript:
That last bit gets at the issue: You can afford to let nerds game your system. You probably want them to game your system, because they (a) are unlikely to pay, (b) generate ad revenue, and (c) are more likely to share your content than most.
The danger is when it becomes easy for non-nerds to do it. And that’s the risk of any leaky paywall — the risk that you might calibrate the holes incorrectly and let too many of your would-be subscribers through. Something like NYTClean — or the many tools that will soon follow it — could be the kind of thing that tips the balance in a way that hurts the Times.
There are pluses and minuses to this system the New York Times is putting in place, as is the case with most anything. The more I read about it, though, the more I wonder where the $40-50 million went:
The full text of the article is still visible in the page source. And as I mentioned in responding to a commenter — and as is evident to anyone who can right-click on a page and choose “Inspect Element” — the overlay is nothing more than a little CSS and Javascript.
There has to be more to this, somewhere, or that just sounds borderline criminal.
So let’s review: you can use an applet, see a small amount per month for free or surf right in from Facebook or Twitter (@nytimes is an enabler) and the paper feels as if your eyes-to-ads will be worthwhile. You can simply click View–>Source and read it directly in the code. If you are the most faithful consumers, customers of the paper, you’ll be charged.
You couldn’t write that memo in bullet points. And it has the feel of a lot of memoists working through lots of drafts.
In the comments people are leaving even more suggested hacks. Information wants to be free. The readers seem to want it that way, too.
Today I learned that big moments in journalism include Jessica Simpson photographed in her underwear for a magazine cover, Brittney Spears pregnant and the Miley Cyrus photo shoot of ill-repute and Charlie Sheen’s contrived craziness.
I interjected with Watergate and the Pentagon papers, but was rebuffed by “Those things happened before we were born.” That’s the case for me too, of course, but apparently if it is older than you it doesn’t matter. And so with this as the platform for perspective, I chose the somewhat journalism-related death of Diana (the headline was hanging on the wall nearby), the introduction of color in the New York Times and so on.
So that was fun.
And then more office work and emails and phone calls and meetings and still more emails. It doesn’t seem like it should take the full day, but somehow it does. All good, gratifying, hopefully productive and hopefully useful. That’s what we all want out of a Tuesday, no?
