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The day the sirens went off

My friend the great Ike Pigott came to speak to my class today.

Ike works at Alabama Power and he is a great idea man. His time at Red Cross and, before, that, ABC 33/40 make him a terrific pitch man. He talked to the class about public relations and social media and crisis communications.

He talked about the last series of tornadoes that passed through the state. It occurred to me that every pro we’ve talked to in that class this semester has told tornado war stories. I’m sure every student who is from some other place is wondering why they live here now.

With about a half-hour left in the class the fire alarm went off. Everyone in the room looked at me.

I’m supposed to know this answer.

Fortunately I remembered what we are supposed to do in a fire alarm. (It isn’t like this happens all the time.) So we got our things, felt the door to make sure it wasn’t hot, walked down the hall and exited the building to our exterior gathering space. Class continued as the fire truck pulled up:

It was cold and damp and we couldn’t see any smoke anywhere. Firefighters walked inside and, a few minutes later, walked back out. I walked over to them and said “I have a class full of journalism students wondering what is going on.”

Turns out someone in the kitchen in the cafeteria, which is in another wing of the same building, started cooking something without exhaust fans and that built up smoke for the sensors and so there we were, talking about crisis communication with a firetruck in the background.

That’s a Wednesday.

We went back inside and, at the end of the class, the fire alarm went off again. Turns out that we had gone long on our class, but the students were so caught up in what Ike was talking about that they didn’t mind. He’s just that good.

Also today was the first meeting with the incoming editor of the Crimson. I was up late last night putting together information for him. Want the job? Here are 27 pages of easy reading. Mark, set, go.

He’s been around the paper for the last two years as a section editor and is a smart guy, so I’m sure he’ll do well.

This year’s staff has done a fine job and I’m proud of a lot of things they’ve done. I always like that first new meeting though. It is one of my favorite parts of the year.

Usually it is warmer, mid-April and all. Tonight parts of the state are enjoying temperatures 30 degrees below their seasonal averages. Spring will arrive on a more permanent basis, eventually. Right?

Or maybe we’ll just go directly into summer.

Things to read: The War Eagle Reader was kind enough to reprint the thing I wrote the other day. It let me give it another edit and convinced me I still didn’t adequately make my point. There’s always next time.

Philip Lutzenkirchen wrote an open letter that’s worth reading:

Most importantly I need to thank the entire Auburn Family. You all are truly the best fans in the country. You’ve been on our side through thick and thin and that is appreciated way more than you think. I’ll never truly understand why you all love that goofy, embarrassing, silly, little dance that I did against ‘Bama but I appreciate the love that you have always showed me.

State senators have to be separated:

Alabama state senators and a Senate official stepped in between two of their colleagues during a shouting match between the two men that occurred after a controversial ruling by Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday night.

And this, the sweetest thing you’ll read all day:

Plastic wrappers and other pieces of litter rustled like tumbleweed across the empty space under the bridge yesterday afternoon.

Two hours later, enough chairs were set up to seat several hundred of Nashville’s homeless, enough chicken and baked beans cooked to feed them all.

And a few minutes later, while some were still finishing up their rainbow cake dessert, a cloth was rolled down the aisle and my friend Amanda walked through a crowd of her homeless friends to meet her fiancé at the altar under the overpass.

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17
Apr 13

Spring, finally

Big temperature shifts. Sun, amazingly enough. Cold in the mornings. Humidity at 74 percent in the evening. Finally spring showed up.

Patton Oswalt will guest star on Parks and Rec this week. The Yankee and I have been watching it recently. It is mindless, but the characters have charm. Ron Swanson being the best thing on network television, I’m pretty sure.

This performance won’t hurt anything, though:

I managed to read two things in The New Yorker today. So, you see, I have to look down upon a sitcom. This is an interesting read about the success of the Boston hospitals:

Something more significant occurred than professionals merely adhering to smart policies and procedures. What we saw unfold was the cultural legacy of the September 11th attacks and all that has followed in the decade-plus since. We are not innocents anymore.

[…]

Talking to people about that day, I was struck by how ready and almost rehearsed they were for this event. A decade earlier, nothing approaching their level of collaboration and efficiency would have occurred. We have, as one colleague put it to me, replaced our pre-9/11 naïveté with post-9/11 sobriety. Where before we’d have been struck dumb with shock about such events, now we are almost calculating about them.

[…]

We’ve learned, and we’ve absorbed. This is not cause for either celebration or satisfaction. That we have come to this state of existence is a great sadness. But it is our great fortune.

Several hospitals are clustered nearby. The medical tent was doing triage quickly. Lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan are being put into use. Stellar work meant people lived.

Here’s another New Yorker piece, about the things we say over and over:

I was in Iceland, talking with Stein, the eleven-year-old son of some friends. His English was dauntingly good—and all the more so given that he’d never spent any real time off the island. I’d just flown over in a packed plane, and I said that tourism seemed to be exploding, and he, deliberating, looking older than his years, replied, “Yes, they come from the hot countries.”

[…]

My grandfather was fond of the phrase “Now, I’m not lecturing you.” It sent a sinking feeling into the chests of his children and grandchildren alike, for it reliably heralded a lengthy and dour disquisition on the hardships of life. He came by his lessons honestly. A powerful and athletic figure in young manhood, he was laid low by emphysema in early middle age. Though he was a smoker, I suspect his illness was largely brought on by chemical exposure as a construction rigger back in pre-OSHA days. In any case, pulmonary problems were a grim motif in his life; he lost his first wife to tuberculosis while she was still in her teens.

Of all the helpful lessons he imparted to me, I recall nothing in any detail. No, after all these years, I can retrieve verbatim only one thing he ever said, and this didn’t originate in his dutiful tutoring. It was a spontaneous remark.

[…]

Similar catchphrases, in which casual comments are promoted into a sort of immortality, doubtless exist in nearly every family, every close friendship. I find this notion deeply heartening—that people are everywhere being quoted for lines they themselves have long forgotten. And of course each of us is left to wonder whether, right at this moment, we’re being quoted in some remote and unreckonable context.

What a charming notion.

We need some charm after what happened in West, Texas tonight:

What a terrible scene, hundreds of police and fire and EMT rigs. Triage on the high school football field. Dozens of homes feared destroyed and a casualty rate so high no one will even dare talk about it. (Finally, some sensibility.) All of that in a town of 2,800 people.

This is terrible anywhere, but it strikes a different cord in a place where everyone knows everyone.

So we’ll end on something uplifting from Boston, where people can’t maintain a moment of silence, but they will stir your very core:

More venues should do it that way.

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13
Apr 13

SSCA, Day Four

I presented a paper this morning titled “Hail to the Chief: Comparative Presidential Face-ism on Online News Sites.” The abstract reads:

Past research demonstrated that visual displays demonstrated varying facial prominence, known as face-ism, among varying subjects with respect to race, gender and prominence. This paper compares the face-ism score of President Barack Obama on prominent news web sites in the early days of both of his terms. The analysis is timely and relevant as the nation’s first African-American president comes to power and constitutes one of the few studies on face-ism online. Results indicated that facial prominence of the president yielded a moderately low score on the face-ism scale which suggests that the editorial choices are reflective of stereotypical scores with respect to race rather than his powerful and prominent position.

Or words to that effect, anyway.

There are numbers in that paper, which is a great way to start a Saturday morning.

In the very next session The Yankee and I presented a paper we creatively titled “Can You Tell Me How to Get to the Virtual Watercooler? An Analysis of Election Night Conversations on Twitter.” We looked at hashtags and what was going on under #Election. She discussed the theory, I talked about more numbers and then read some of the interesting examples from our case study.

These things happened over the course of the evening’s election coverage. In more than 11,000 tweets with #election in that period between the polls closing and the end of the immediate coverage we found:

52 #GOP
47 #Republican
80 #Democrats
45 #Dems

512 #Romney
1,095 #Obama
30 #Mitt
32 #Barack

147 #CNN
47 #NBC
47 #Fox
30 #ABC
2 #CBS

2,992 @ symbols (Conversations.)
205 RTs (Sharing others’ tweets.)
2,487 links (Sharing media.)
21,447 any # (Indexing attempt or punchline.)

120 #Florida or traditional abbreviations
157 #Ohio, or OH
67 #Pennsylvania or traditional abbreviations

All of which is to say that, with the framework of social identity theory — your self-conception realized through your perceived membership in a relevant social group — we can see how formerly passive television viewers and newspaper readers are now not only taking active roles in conversation, but they are using primary identifiers to organize themes, which suggests a fair amount of implications for audience fragmentation, political activation and raises questions about “unofficial” hashtags, harnessing those results and forced versus voluntary interactivity.

Mostly, I enjoyed reading the tweets that we captured for the study. Here are a few I shared with the audience. These are direct quotes:

Dear Todd Akin, I do believe you suffered a legitimate defeat #inyoface #Election #legitimaterape

I feel like you should have to be 21 to vote. Some people just vote for the coolest name #YouDontKnowAnything #Election

The tone of PBS’s election coverage is basically Suck it Romney — Big Bird wins! Hilarious! #Election

Who at #NBC decided to put an #Election results map on the ice rink? Was Jack Donaghy involved in this?

This whole #Election tracker business turned our civil governance process into the highest stakes Fantasy Football game ever played.

I don’t tweet much.. But I hope @JohnKingCNN shuts up… You are so annoying.

Damn this girl on ABC is too fine! #Election

i used to have faith in my countrymen. now that i know my countrymen can be bought w/ phones and biRTh control, not so sure…#Election

Interesting dichotomy: Obama strong in swing states, Romney strong in states that snap their fingers out of time. #Election #Dems #GOP

Romney of Massachusetts might have won this. Romney of Tea Party, 47%, Ayn Rand, Benghazi blather, false Jeep ads… Not so much. #Election

Tuned into Fox News and was surprised to see that they harnessed the power of time travel and brought in Ben Franklin to cover the #Election

But #Romney holds firm in Cayman Islands and Switzerland. #Election

Obama 2012 campaign just announced it will unleash drones over Pakistan to celebrate re-election. #Election

i want to create a burlesque number called “the exit pole.” #Election

Another panelist talked about the making of this ad for Dale Peterson, former candidate for agriculture commissioner of Alabama.

That’s a real commercial. It was produced for the web because Peterson didn’t have TV money, but it was an instant hit online and the money started rolling in. Before long he went from five percent in the polls to pushing 30 percent. But he did not win in the Republican primary, despite his huge online following. The entire case study is an interesting exercise in aggressive, low budget politics.

So we go through all of the presentations and then the respondent, our old friend Dr. Larry Powell stands to discuss each of the presentations. He talks about how each of these studies are important and offered his suggestions for where the research should go.

For each paper he also offered his fake gift. One rhetorician received a copy of Ronald Reagan’s RNC acceptance speech, so that he might give it to Mitt Romney, for example. The author of the Dale Peterson work received a can of cashews.

Everyone in the room from Alabama is now all but rolling on the floor for, you see, Peterson has recently been arrested for shoplifting, twice. The second time he was dining on cashews.

For our paper Dr. Powell pointed out that The Yankee and I met in his class. That he served as advisor on both of our comps committees and now we are married.

“I think I’ve done enough.”

In the afternoon The Yankee was a member of a panel titled “Political Entertainment Television and the Framing of Choices and Consequences in the 2012 Presidential Campaign.”

Here she is now:

She talked about The Daily Show’s Indecision 2012 which was, I feel, the presentation that really brought the panel together.

So after that it was time for another very late lunch. We learned that three of the four sandwich shops within walking distance were closed. You’re in the middle of the downtown entertainment district on a Saturday and all the small places lock up at 3 p.m. Some business model. Back to Potbelly Sandwiches, then, and then back to the conference so that I might run the political communication division meeting. It is my penultimate responsibility as the division chair.

All went according to plan. Things moved along, I printed too many agendas, made a joke no one thought was funny and we conducted the business of the division. The Yankee was elected as the vice chair-elect of the division. That means she’ll program two divisions of presentations in a row, mass comm next year and political communication the year after that. That’s service to academia, for you.

Dinner was just about the strangest, most surrealistic, hysterical thing possible. Also we sang along to Carly Rae Jepsen. And I played the drums. There were drums at dinner and that was the part that made the most sense of all.

So how was your Saturday?

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10
Apr 13

SSCA, Day One

We managed an early morning ride before heading into the conference this afternoon. Here are a few combined pictures:

We climbed out of the neighborhood, went down the side of the hill and turned into another, older neighborhood. We climbed up some easy little hills and I was thinking The Yankee would decide she didn’t like this route. We hit a four-way stop. Across from us two gentlemen were painting S-T-O-P on the asphalt under gray skies. We turned to the right. The road dropped out and then leveled off and we pedaled and pedaled and pedaled over a long stretch of flat ground until we found that Road Closed sign.

This was, I think, exactly how far the glaciers got during the last ice age. If there were any soil experts around I would have asked them. I’m sure there is some sort of evidence in the earth.

So we turned around and went back through the flat part, paced a post office truck and back up the first of the little hills and breezed through the intersection.

We discovered that the return part of that old neighborhood was an even easier ride going back and then climbed back toward where we started out. It was a short ride, but the air was pleasant and the roads were nice and it was good to be outside.

This was doubly nice since we checked in at our hotel, walked to the nearby conference hotel and committed ourselves to several days of indoors activities.

At the conference: My position this year as program chair of the political communication division requires that I also sit on the Southern States Communication Association’s executive council, so I had the good fortune to take part in that late-afternoon meeting. Felt like a faculty meeting in a lot of ways. People talked, they read, jokes were made, votes were had. Agenda items were dealt with in an executive fashion.

We adjourned and I found The Yankee and we met up with many of our friends. Brian from Texas was there, as were Barry and Melissa from Alabama and then Darrell from Texas, too. We talked down the street to a fairly upscale little restaurant called Quattro. The waiter somehow quickly ascertained that we were in town on business and politely announced he did not care. This was not his first day on the job.

We ordered. I picked the most common thing I could find. When the food came. Well, most of it. Mine did not. I made the international symbol for “I’m hungry too,” which is a pouty face. The waiter says “Oh crap!” He looks down at his pad, which instantly makes you wonder if your order was actually placed. He disappeared and returned with my plate. It was a plate of something. It could have been mine. This was a place with a slightly pretentious menu, so what I ordered might have been this, or perhaps something the next table got.

It was good, either way. No one else had complaints.

And, instantly, the jokes of the conference became “Kenny isn’t here” and “Too bad Kenny couldn’t see this.”

This will be a good joke. I just wish it didn’t happen two hours after we arrived.

Tomorrow the conference begins in earnest. I have another executive council meeting first thing and then a panel session to take part in. There will also be many sessions to hear and elbows to rub. It will be a busy day.

Here, then, are a few more pictures from our morning ride:

Things to read: Why paywalls are scary:

The case for paywalls would seem to be compelling: Stanch the decline in print circulation, get paid for producing valuable local content and tap into a fresh source of sorely needed revenue at a time advertising sales continue to shrink.

All good? Not necessarily. The reason to worry about paywalls is that they severely limit the prospects of developing a wider audience for newspapers at a time publishers need – more than ever – to attract readers among the digitally native generations that represent a growing proportion of the adult population.

Alan Mutter there is always thoughtful reading.

Study: Hyperlocal demand driven by mobile devices:

Demand for hyperlocal content is being driven by increased usage of mobile devices according to a study conducted by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) charitable foundation.

[…]

“Both the reach and the consumption of hyperlocal content has been accelerated by smartphones,” Jon Kingsbury, Nesta’s programme director for creative economy, told Journalism.co.uk.

Stop back by tomorrow. There will be more fun things thing, I’m sure.

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29
Mar 13

The baseball Iron Bowl, game two

Alabama’s second baseman, Kyle Overstreet who is really quite good, committed an error in the sixth inning tonight. Naturally the helpful fans at Plainsman Park pointed this out.

By then Auburn had the game under control. They found their first lead in conference play, which came in their 66th inning of conference play. The Tigers’ bats came alive again in the fifth, putting four more runs on the board and Auburn finally won one, 6-3.

Check out the highlights, particularly the gem in the ninth inning at the three minute mark:

So, now, Auburn is 10-43 against the SEC in the major sports – football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball – since the 2012 SEC baseball tournament. It has been the worst year ever since Title IX in terms of a cumulative conference record.

But a beautiful day otherwise. Got out for a quick ride on the bike and was about seven miles from home on a quite road that has been closed because the bridge two miles down was out for construction. I heard a nice ting!-ting!-ting! doppler off to the left and behind me.

It seemed important to stop, to see what had just fallen off my bicycle. And I was happy to realize that the brakes were still working and the wheels weren’t falling off.

Finally I realized it was the metal clamp that holds my bag to the seat post and saddle rails. So we spent a while looking for the parts. I’d hit a bump and something felt loose, so up and down the shoulders, stomping on plumes of grass and bending over to peer at ever dark piece of material near the roadway.

After about an hour I found the metallic piece, realized that was the only part I was missing, so that’s a win. I only have to replace two screws. And get home in time for the baseball game, managing only an impressive 10 miles for my troubles.

But I had a turkey burger for dinner, we closed down a restaurant with our friends Adam and Jessica and that somehow makes it all better.

It was a good afternoon as we head into a great weekend. Hope yours is even better!