Friday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Friday

The bike, the media, the music — pretty much everything you expect in one post

Today we learned that yesterday’s problems with my bike were all about the index shifting, and almost entirely human error. That last part is not surprising, but it allowed me to receive a free education today, and probably, when I left the bike shop, they talked for an hour about how they could sucker me into any deal at this point.

So I got to ride around a bit on one of what will surely be the last really warm days of the year. Tomorrow will be splendid, and rain will come in over the weekend, even if Karen is breaking up in the gulf. That’s fine. No big storms necessary, just the rain. And behind that some drier, cooler air. Soon after will be the time the maple leaves will abandon ship, pushing aside the women and the children to fall from their sturdy branches, only to look up and realize they could have stayed around three or four more weeks.

I’m of mixed emotions about the whole thing this year.

But it was sunny and warm and I saw one other person on a bike late this afternoon. That was a kid on the side of the road, straddling his 26er with his right foot propped up on the curb and looking back behind him. I asked if he was OK, he nodded, and I dodged more traffic at the light. From the bike store I decided to find out where this side road, Longleaf, goes — because neither asking nor consulting a map will do. And about halfway down the road I remembered where I’d once before noticed this street name: on some other hilly road I’d rather not think about. Curiously I recalled that just as I got to the one big hill on Longleaf.

Then back into civilization, carefully denoted by the Shell station in the middle of nowhere, then a trailer park and then a few odd and end service businesses. Back up to campus, past the vet school where people walk across the four lane road without a care in the world these days, and then beyond the frat houses and through the athletics side of the campus.

Now I’m in a weird part of the day where to be in the shade is to be in a spot too dark for sunglasses, but it is still fairly bright when there are no trees, so I had a lot of one-hand eye practice today. There was a small, slow climb, I discovered another road on which it isn’t the last roller, but the next-to-last one that really hurts. Finally, back down toward home, through the growing intersection, into the neighborhood and so on. It was an easy and quick 20 miles, except for that one hill.

The Yankee said she saw me. She was going to the grocery store from somewhere just as I passed through that area. Said I looked good. Didn’t want to honk at me. Everyone else does. Usually it is the “You’re going too slow!” variety.

Otherwise there was school work, reading papers, grading things, dreaming up class possibilities, following the news, and so on.

Speaking of which …

Things to read, which I found interesting today …

A year after daily publication ceased in Alabama and New Orleans, media market is ‘fractured’ is about Advance’s moves in New Orleans, Huntsville, Birmingham, Mobile and Pascagoula, Miss. New Orleans has seen a Baton Rouge paper move in to give some competition and a daily publication outlet, so that dynamic market is interesting in different ways. Along the I-65 corridor …

The past year has been “a black hole for news in this city,” says Doug Jones, a Birmingham attorney who rose to national prominence for reopening and successfully prosecuting the infamous 1963 16th Street Church bombing case while serving as U.S. Attorney for the Northern Alabama district.

Jones said he and his wife are contemplating dropping their Birmingham News subscription in favor of the still-daily Tuscaloosa News, based some 60 miles south, which is testing the competitive waters by offering subscriptions in some Birmingham neighborhoods.

[…]

Combined average Sunday circulation at Advance’s three Alabama newspapers declined about 8 percent during the same period, with then-nascent digital edition circulation having little effect there.

[…]

“What I’ve seen, at least in this first year, is because of the reduction in resources committed to local reporting, we’ve experienced a dramatic decrease in quality news available to the community,” said Jim Aucoin, professor and chair of the Communications Department at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. “Investigative and enterprise coverage just isn’t there anymore.”

Birmingham lawyer Jones specifically criticized al.com and what he characterized as its generally superficial coverage. “You go online and there are all these teasers, but when you click on them, there are just two or three paragraphs,” he said. “And there’s no decent national coverage. Hell, we can’t even get good coverage of University of Alabama football anymore.”

I’ve never known Doug Jones to lie to me, but that as an absolute twist, stretch and tearing of the truth. As they say, ‘Bama gonna Bama.’

If they don’t say that, they should. Anyway, one more blurb:

Readers in highly technologically savvy Huntsville may be less troubled. “I think al.com has responded reasonably well to the increased [digital] demand by providing convenient and free online access to the state’s major newspapers,” said Eletra Gilchrist-Petty, associate professor of Communication Studies at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. “Overall, there do appear to be more strengths than limitations associated with al.com.”

Disclosure: I used to work for Advance. It is a private company, so the financial figures quoted in the Poynter piece are more of a learned guess from industry analysts. I can say this, which is relevant to my time there which ended with my return to academia several years ago, Advance’s al.com property is an impressive financial performer — largely on behalf of all of that Alabama football coverage. They know their audience, even when they should know better. So the point about looking at last year’s move by Advance as “not something that was done for an immediate payoff” is a good one.

I have faith in their numbers and in their revenue stream. I’m concerned, as others noted in the excerpts above, the link in the previous paragraph and some other material that has previously landed in this space about some of the content quality. I hope, and suspect, that will get worked it in the near future.

In our state Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile, the three cities most directly effected by the shift last year, are the three biggest metros, boasting about half the state’s population. Clearly, there are a lot of people impacted by the daily miracle. (More than just the ones who read it, I’d argue.) Birmingham, if I recall correctly, is now the nation’s largest city without a daily newspaper. I’m not at all concerned about the medium. I’d rather we focused on the journalism. The more investigations and deep reporting, the better. The more people asking pointed questions of politicians, the better. The less time spent analyzing the quarterback and his girlfriend, the better. That’s not so much about the viability of the company as the company’s role in many communities.

Here’s a re-write from al.com, now: Alabama Theatre named one of America’s favorite vintage movie theaters by nostalgia magazine. (Back to the earlier point: It would be nice if they’d do some original reporting. Or got their own photograph. They are literally four blocks up and one block over from the theater.)

The Alabama is one of the great success stories of Birmingham. It is a beautiful and historic facility that went from near demolition to once again becoming an event destination. You can’t see enough movies or concerts there. The last one I watched was The Godfather, which was the first time a digital print was ever played in that now almost 90-year-old theater. Also, the famous marquee was once a background of my blog:

And if that isn’t something to celebrate, I don’t know what is.

WE INTERRUPT THIS POST FOR A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE FROM CNBC.

The president is … walking.

OK, then.

And, finally, Carlow University Student Kicked Out Of Class, Arrested For Dressing As ‘The Joker’. I’m assuming his crime was misreading the calendar as it pertains to Halloween?

He was charged with aggravated assault, resisting arrest, terroristic threats and disorderly conduct because someone got alarmed, called the police and then, according to police, got a little belligerent. (His lawyer says the cops have it wrong and went to the First Amendment in his public airing of grievances.) He was also suspended from campus. He’s due in court later this month. It should be an interesting one to watch.

And now, YouTube Cover Theater the sometimes occasional Friday feature which allows people using their cameras, computers and their musical instruments as a demonstration of how much talent is hiding out there in the world. We do this by picking one original artist and finding a small handful of people covering the (usually) popular tunes.

This week’s featured performers are Hall and Oates. I selected them because I saw this video, one of the van sessions, from Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers. What’s a van session? You’ll see. Press play:

Also, there is a kazoo. A kazoo, people.

They sound so nice, don’t you agree? That band is touring, which stretches the purposes of YouTube Cover Theater, but there’s something intriguingly hypnotic about watching a full band play in a moving van.

Here are the Miller Brothers, who could be playing in a Ramada Inn Airport near you with that sound:

Take two young guys, a Korg and some bad hairpieces and … well, these guys just need more views. Help ’em out:

Apparently they recorded that for Hall-Oates-Ween last year. Fitting.

You know that frame YouTube displays before you play the video? The one on this video doesn’t do the performance justice:

Hall and Oates are still out there rocking in America, this performance was from this spring:

And now you can feel old: She’s Gone was on an album released 40 years ago next month.

Hope you have a great weekend!

cycling / errands / Friday / I do not know what is happening. / links / photo / running / things to read — 2 Comments
27
Sep 13

I don’t say anything bad at all about the DMV

The guy at the local bike shop — I should say My Guy, since he’s always the one that draws the short straw and has to deal with me — says it isn’t an alignment problem that keeps me from shifting rings on the front of my bike. This explains why I could see no obvious problem. My front derailleur, tells me is frozen.

“Do you sweat a lot?”

Do you mean, do I ride in the heat of the day a lot? Yes.

Turns out all the sweat goes right there into the derailleur cage, where the hinge can rust out over time. Which is why, right now, I can only ride in the big ring. (Which is usually where I ride, anyway.)

Maybe I should stop riding in the rain so much, too then.

“No,” he said. “Just the sweat. The salt.”

Rust. Tastes like victory.

And the cost of a new derailleur. And not being able to ride until next week.

Because Amazon can ship you something from across the country in a day, but in a bike shop it will be Tuesday before your part comes in. No matter, I’ll miss one day of riding and, hopefully, it will be ready by next weekend.

On the upside, we did stand over a Trek time trial bike. And I picked up a carbon fiber Trek with state of the art electronic groupo just to feel what 15 pounds felt like. It felt like about $10,000. How anyone could ride something that expensive without fear in their eyes is beyond me.

And I coveted a Colnago. It was a beautiful machine. (It looked like this.) So beautiful, and significantly less than the Trek. We had a moment, me imagining slinging it left and right as I stood out of the saddle, the Colnago knowing I could never handle the ride. So beautiful.

Good thing my Felt was downstairs. It doesn’t need to get jealous. Can’t afford a new bike. It “only” cost two or three grand.

Also, upstairs was this poster:

That was for Bo Jackson’s Bo Bikes Bama tornado relief ride last year, and a shorter tour this year. He’s raised more than $600,000 in those six days in the saddle. Still sad I couldn’t talk any of my media friends into letting me cover it for them.

But Bo rides a Trek, and Trek loves Bo. And he signed his left thigh. In the reflection off the glass frame you can see part of another Trek in the background.

The Yankee rides a Trek, hence she knows Bo.

Also, the DMV this afternoon.

We have a satellite office, and the people there are nice and courteous and they know their business. Still, this late in the month, it took an hour to weave through the line. I was going to ask “How did we do this before smartphones?”

Then I remembered: I used to take a book.

But everyone was pleasant and in a good humor. Many folks took a friend. As good a time as any to catch up. A lot of people ran into people they knew. Medium-small towns have those advantages.

I’d rather go to our DMV than our post office — where I have also waited an hour in line.

Also, when you park in a parking space that is for employees only the DMV staff will run the tag and call you up to the desk to move your car. And you get your space back in line. Two people had this problem while I was there.

I might have been one of them.

We went for a run late this evening on the nearby bike and running trail. It is three miles, round trip. I got out a little ahead of The Yankee and, as it got dark I stopped and waited for her so I wouldn’t be shuffling along by myself in the twilight.

This was a mistake because it turned into an all out sprint at the end. I was not prepared for the last 200 yards. But I did break the tape. And by tape I mean spiderweb.

That wasn’t nearly as exciting as I thought it would be.

I’m concerned I’ll soon come to enjoy running.

I do not know what is happening.

Things to read which I thought were interesting while standing in line at the DMV today …

Three bears and one tough hiker

Special Space Camp graduation: 200 vision-impaired students from 25 states, 6 countries

The Economist rethinks ‘lean forward, lean back’ model

Got a great weekend planned?

Friday / journalism / links / things to read / video — Comments Off
20
Sep 13

These are things to read

The Lebanon Daily News received, and quoted, a complaint from a reader. The complaint touched on all of the bad news in the paper, as opposed to the good news of yore.

The newspaper’s reply is a thing of near beauty.

This is not the world as Aurentz remembers; we are not the company that Aurentz remembers. The Lebanon Daily News is not a newspaper company; it is an information-gathering and advertising vehicle that is multimedia in nature.

Once, the newspaper was our end product; our only product. Today, it is a product, one of many, and it carries both opportunities and limitations because of its static nature.

It addresses, in the specific, the complaints from the correspondent and takes the opportunity to brag on themselves, but the Lebanon Daily News also makes a good point:

At no time in our decades of existence has the Lebanon Daily News had such powerful tools and freedom of space to be what we have always been: The best source of news about the Lebanon Valley that exists anywhere.

Taken as a single unit, no one product can necessarily be said to do the full job of providing the Valley with all available information. But when all the products and platforms are seen and used, even a 48-page paper – even a 100-page paper – cannot contain and could not do what we now do as a matter of routine.

The easy thing to do is to take the generational judgment, “This reader is old. The newspaper … err ‘information-gathering and advertising vehicle that is multimedia in nature’ has passed her by and is moving on to other things, forsaking the elderly audience and the non-connected crowd.”

First, you’d like that description to be punched up. Imagine a newspaper being described that way. “An information gathering and advertising vehicle that disseminates news in a static format via low-cost, non-archival paper consisting mainly of wood pulp, typically on a daily or weekly basis.”

Second, we have to find the right ways to reach out to those audiences that are being necessarily and unfortunately marginalized.

We’re doing the same job we’ve always been doing; we’re doing it better than we’ve ever been able to do it before. But it takes more than looking at a 14-page print product to see the truth of that.

There is a third and fourth and fifth, but the second one is where you have to start.

The new number from Pew says that 91 percent of adult Americans own a cell phone. Sixty percent of us are using them to access the Internet. The number that might be overlooked in that survey is the video calling and chatting. That has tripled in the last two years, and is now up to 21 percent.

Most telling lead of the day is from the Wall Street Journal:

American incomes have tumbled over the last decade. But for many people in Washington, D.C., it’s been something of a party.

The income of the typical D.C. household rose 23.3% between 2000 and 2012 to an inflation-adjusted $66,583, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, its most comprehensive snapshot of America’s demographic, social and economic trends. During this period, median household incomes for the nation as a whole dropped 6.6% — from $55,030 to $51,371.

In Alabama the median household income has decreased more than six percent since 2000. Deep poverty, incomes 50% below the poverty line, sits at 8.5 percent, which is a 2.4 percent increase. Across the country 45 states saw an increase in that metric.

Here, meanwhile, is the best editorial I read today.

Closer to home, 50 of the state’s 67 counties are now eligible for natural disaster considerations. We’ve had so much rain — after three years plus of considerable drought — that a lot of farmers have had their crops damaged or ruined. Speaking of drought, look out west.

And now, Jon Stewart on the state of CNN.

Breaking news is hard. Live television is hard. Breaking news on live television is very hard. CNN is still bad.

Did you know about the time that we almost nuked North Carolina? Well, did you know all of the details?

A B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air over Goldsboro, N.C. and dropped two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs. The bombs’ trigger mechanisms started to engage but were stopped by one of the four low-voltage switches. The other three failed.

The bombs carried 4 megatons, or 4 million tons of explosives. They would have been 260 times more powerful than the bombing of Hiroshima. The near-catastrophic incident happened three days before President John F. Kennedy made his inauguration speech.

It isn’t a new story. Some of the details may be freshly fleshed out, but several versions of it — owing to a new book — are making the rounds again.

Some of the uranium was never recovered. Sleep tight!

Finally, I know how this story came about. It started at some other website’s content because someone insisted that the reporters each “file” a certain number of “stories” each day. And one of the accepted ways of doing that is finding something with a local hook and getting your byline over a rewrite.

And that’s regrettable, because you have legitimate news outlets writing things like this: Is it over? RadarOnline says Katherine Webb, AJ McCarron have split; Katherine says website is harassing her. The comments tell the tale.

Really AL.COM……this is the best story you can run. Leave them alone – it’s their business. Sad how you all hound people over nothing…. This would be the appropriate time to use Hillary Clinton’s famous response…… “What difference does it make!”

I don’t know if their relationship is over. However, seeing this “story” prominently featured on the landing page for al.com means journalism certainly is.

Why did you feature this? Did the Kardashians take the day off?

If Marshall Mcluhan were around today he’d say the medium is the message and the commenters are the validation.

collarbone / cycling / Friday / journalism / links / Samford / things to read — Comments Off
13
Sep 13

A brief one

Late in the day I got out for a little bike ride and found myself on a bad road. Six miles from home and everything in my shoulder locked up again. So, about that idea of a journal, one of the stimuli may be physical tension. I’d just spent a bit of time with my elbows locked, and my scapula pinched, after all.

In the last month or so I’ve just gotten mentally tired of the entire thing. I can’t explain it, but when it hurts it feels like it all hurts differently.

So I continue to do my exercises because I’m otherwise a healthy boy who should be able to overcome this.

All of this because of a big stick on a bike path. Funny, really. I’m almost never on a bike path. And I never run over sticks, nor do I ever intend to again. (This is also why I don’t ride a mountain bike.)

Things to read and listen to. This is what space sounds like, way, way out there. On the one hand Voyager has made it beyond the solar system. And this latest amazing achievement is another reminder that we have all but taken the people out of active space work. Robotics are interesting, but we should be out there taking steps to see and hear these things ourselves.

No doubt we’ll search each other when we do finally go. That’ll be all your fault. Ask this guy.

Well, fasten your flipping seatbelt because, according to a former DHS official, if you’ve been groped by TSA agents, you “can’t blame the TSA;” instead, he implied that you should blame privacy advocates.

[…]

“Unlike border officials, though, TSA ended up taking more time to inspect everyone, treating all travelers as potential terrorists, and subjecting many to whole-body imaging and enhanced pat-downs. We can’t blame TSA for this wrong turn, though. Privacy lobbies persuaded Congress that TSA couldn’t be trusted with data about the travelers it was screening. With no information about travelers, TSA had no choice but to treat them all alike, sending us down a long blind alley that has inconvenienced billions.”

What happens when the government tries to define journalists:

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., complained that the definition of a journalist was too broad. Pushing back, Feinstein said the intent was to set up a test to determine a bona fide journalist.

“I think journalism has a certain tradecraft. It’s a profession. I recognize that everyone can think they’re a journalist,” Feinstein said.

The government has no real place in saying who is a journalist.

These are people trying to define your freedoms. Think on that. Ed Morrissey, and then Matt Drudge, continue the thought:

“The entire approach is misguided. I think that journalism is an action, it’s not a status, it’s not a membership. And I think they’re treating it like a membership and they’re doing it in a way that is intended to be basically rent-seeking for the larger players in the field,” Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey told POLITICO. “It’s just a bad idea.”

[…]

“Gov’t declaring who qualifies for freedom of press in digital age is ridiculous! It belongs to anyone for any reason. No amendment necessary.”

Morrissey calls it a licensing law, which it may well be. Also, it is outrageous.

It will, as it always does, come down to control. And there’s plenty of control of journalists already.

Meanwhile, in a separate but related story:

The US FISA Court has ordered the government to declassify some aspects of its phone and internet surveillance program, the most recent of several disclosures in the past month. In the wake of leaks over the summer, the ACLU and many others have filed suit against the US government, looking for everything from more transparency to a way to take down a powerful surveillance program. The latter goal is still far from fruition, but the ACLU and Yahoo have both made progress in the former with a pair of recent court decisions.

The government would like to define and then restrict by shield law manipulation who can safely report on pressing issues of the day. What could go wrong?

Some nice news from Samford:

Samford University’s fall enrollment has reached an all-time high of 4,833 students, university officials announced today.

The total exceeds last year’s record-setting enrollment of 4,758 and marks the fifth consecutive year of record-setting enrollment for the university.

Explains the parking.

adventures / Friday / Samford — Comments Off
6
Sep 13

A Friday spent largely in the car

One of the few perks our paper’s editorial staff gets is a free lunch, which was today. These students work hard and they get a few meals and small checks and loads of experience and clips and a big resume builder out of the arrangement. Not a bad deal when you think about it.

So today was the lunch that the marketing and communication office arranges. They meet each other, students-journalists and PR pros, and each talks about what they do. In the case of our university almost all of the people who work in that office are Samford grads. Most of them were in the current students’ position some or several years ago. So there is a commonality.

There is also a lot of “This is what we do” and “This is how we can help you.” That’s mixed with “This is what we won’t do” and “We look at you like every other media outlet we work with.” And they do, by and large. We’re very lucky, as a newsroom, to have the circumstance that we do with the administration and the media relations folks and the department and all the dynamics that interact with students toiling away in their learning laboratory.

Also, at lunch there is variant of derby pie, and you don’t turn that down.

Because so many people joined us today we could not dine in the Rotunda Club, which is where this lunch is typically held and where the silverware is more shiny, the food more tasty and the linens more … lineny … than anywhere else on campus. (They also serve, in the Rotunda Club, the best fried chicken I have ever had. And, being from the South, I know from fried chicken.)

The Rotunda Club is the only place on campus that serves that particular pie, but our colleague who arranged the meal said “the pie must be brought to me,” and so it was. And it was good.

After that someone took promotional pictures. I found my way into a brief meeting. Then I had a long chat with the new editor, a sharp, hardworking and thoughtful type.

There was one other administrative conversation, another errand and then back in the car.

Because now we are in Georgia.

There is a race tomorrow. I am not racing as I have not felt right all week, but The Yankee will be taking part in the aquabike — the swim/ride race — in the morning. We will wake up before sunrise and we will be on the way from the hotel to the event before the sky gets bright. And she is going to have an amazing race.

I know this because she almost always does, and because we had Italian tonight. We visited La Trattoria, which was pretty good for small town Italian food. The hostess was the waitress. She might have also had to go out back and grow the vegetables that eventually made their way into the minestrone and in the lasagna. They offered a spicy marinara, but there are worse things. Like the wait. They thought they were serving in Rome, where the wait is part of the meal.

In Georgia? Well, you’re in Georgia, aren’t you?

Random observation: I’ve never been on a trip to central or northern Georgia in my adult life where they weren’t currently wrecking the roads. We know the work is orchestrated by Georgia Tech grads — engineers and all.

The shoddy condition can only be because they have to employ Georgia grads, right?

Ahh, the liberating season of football season jokes.

Have a great weekend! We’re going to race!