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The wedding of the year and serious journalism

Crimson meeting. Everyone is intently concentrating on something being said by a reporter out of the frame. They’re also wondering what I’m doing climbing up into a chair, I’m sure.

A newspaper editor friend of mine said “Everyone looks depressed. Great job preparing them for the real world of journalism!”

That only makes me wish I knew what they were talking about at the moment. This is a budget meeting, though, and I deliberately stay out of those. Immediately after the budget, though, is the critique, where we pore over the most recent issue. The short version: it is a remarkably good second issue. There are a few things to work on, there always will be. And we’re about to go on a great crusade of immediacy and urgency, but there is great potential in what this crew brings together. I’m very proud for them.

Meanwhile …

Things to read … the things to read were always destined to intersect with a “meanwhile.”

Trust in Mass Media Returns to All-Time Low:

After registering slightly higher trust last year, Americans’ confidence in the media’s ability to report “the news fully, accurately, and fairly” has returned to its previous all-time low of 40%. Americans’ trust in mass media has generally been edging downward from higher levels in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.

There are some cultural and societal issues at play here. We also benefit from a great many more voices now, too, and often those voices are critical of the media, or, more-to-the-point, illustrative of where “the media” is getting something wrong. Also, sometimes, you just get bad work. (And don’t forget comment sections of websites.)

For example … Everything you could ever want to know about AJ McCarron and Katherine Webb’s wedding. Let’s set the scene. Two months ago a young couple got married. Here is a FAQ. A reporter said to me:

@kennysmith @aldotcom I can't wait for the anniversary!

— Madison Underwood (@MadisonU) September 18, 2014

Wouldn’t it be weird to report on an anniversary? Or just stalk it?

In that FAQ there is this line: Wedding pictures FINALLY revealed.

It is an entertainment piece and there’s an audience for this stuff. Not my speed, but that’s fine, I get it. But if you write the above sentence you desperately need to gain some perspective.

I rather like interviews with thoughtful journalists. It is often inside baseball, but if you’re actually talking to a reporter about something they actually know about, it can be enlightening … Here’s Alison Gow, Editor of Digital Innovation at Trinity Mirror Regionals:

Paint us a picture: what does innovation in newsrooms look like to you?

It’s a newsroom where experimentation leading to some form of change happens all the time: it might be telling a story in a different way, or developing a new tool for news-gathering or collaboration. Personally, I think experimentation is the thing that keeps our journalism fresh and makes us relevant … but it will probably be a bit of a leap of faith and lead to an evolution of how we work, interact with audiences and present our journalism. It’s also a newsroom with a clear system for managing ideas, whether they benefit editorial, commercial, or other departments: one that understands anyone in the company may have a ‘Eureka!’ moment, and should know where to take it. You don’t get the monopoly on ideas because you’re a manager.

Often, I think, innovation is working backwards from the endpoint of an idea, refining the processes to make it happen, without ever losing sight of the final goal. Too often we compromise or give up on a final vision because operations/systems/culture won’t accommodate it. Never lose sight of what you’re aiming to achieve, and work over or through obstacles.

That’s why you often have to say yes in those newsroom meetings.

(Wedding pictures aren’t innovative.)

Who’s really to blame for ad fraud?:

Ad fraud is the ultimate case of who done it? Nobody argues there’s a problem, but as for who is to blame … well, that’s where things get dicey.

This much is for sure: ad fraud, and your definition of what constitutes it may vary, has gone from being viewed as a basic cost of doing business to becoming one of the biggest issues facing the online ad industry. The credibility of the medium is at risk.

This story is becoming an annual affair, and it is one of the best things going … Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle window washers amaze young patients at Children’s Hospital

I read paragraphs and paragraphs of this story on GoPro, the fad, the great videos, the IPO, the GoPro fails. Nothing of it was new. But I got to this part and I started thinking about Polaroid … We are a camera:

The company wants to capitalize on the mass-market home-video urge, the camera’s aptitude for capturing what GoPro’s president, Tony Bates, calls “life’s great moments,” and yet retain its reputation as a kind of philosopher’s stone, capable of transforming ordinary experience into magical footage. (Two tips: “Slow it down and you look like a pro.” “The closer the better.”)

And the next sentence mentions the Brownie and Polaroid and the democratization of video. The story continues:

But the analogy comes up short, because GoPro videos aspire to go viral. You’re sharing the photos of your ski trip not just with your family and a few friends but, if you’re any good, with thousands, if not millions, of people. The GoPro, by implication, asks its users to push a little harder, as both subjects and filmmakers. Be a Hero: The premise from the start has been that you, in every way an amateur, can go pro—on both sides of the lens. It’s karaoke, but with the full Marshall stack.

The short video synonymous with GoPro is a kind of post-literate diary, a stop on the way to a future in which everything will be filmed from every point of view. Humans have always recorded their experiences, in an array of media and for a variety of reasons. Not until very recently, with the advent of digital photography and video, and unlimited storage and distribution capacity, has it been conceivable to film everything. As we now more than ever communicate through pictures, either still or moving, perhaps our lives come closer to Susan Sontag’s imagined “anthology of images.” An obvious example is the people who film concerts on their smartphones. Will they ever watch the video? And if they do will it measure up to the concert, which they half missed? Of course not. They film the concert to certify their attendance and convey their good fortune. The frame corroborates.

Polaroid is coming into that market, as well. They’re looking at the truly democratized, less high adrenaline adventure segment of consumerism. They’ll compete with GoPro on one end and probably smartphones on the other.

Just imagine if someone was recording me when I took the photo above, on the odd chance that I fell out of my chair. Oh, the laughs they would have had at my expense. Serious journalism, indeed, undone.

cycling / history / iPhone / journalism / links / memories / Monday / photo / Samford / things to read / video — Comments Off
15
Sep 14

The man on the wall has no comment

It occurred to me that I’ve never noticed the bas-reliefs of any other governors in Alabama. Perhaps I’m overlooking them or am drawing a mental blank. Maybe this is a lasting affection for George Wallace. Perhaps part of it is that George Wallace was governor for so long, from 1963 to 1967 and then from 1971 until 1979 and again from 1983 to 1987.

Here he’s standing in front of the restroom door:

That rest area was built during the 1970s. Maybe it was a boom period.

A bit ambitious, wouldn’t you think?

I had a nice, easy 30-mile ride yesterday. It should have been longer. I climbed more than 1,200 feet and rode for under two hours. I topped out at 37.7 miles per hour. Twenty percent of the ride was over 20 miles per hour. (Which is slow for most, but pretty nice for me.) Most importantly, it didn’t all fall apart in the last few minutes. It reminds me that I should ride more.

Things to read … to remind you that I should ride more.

I’m always circumspect about a small thing, like a small sport, playing big social roles. But we all have our roles to play and we all have our spheres of influence, I suppose … Biking Toward Women’s Rights in Afghanistan:

The Women’s National Cycling Team of Afghanistan is only a few years old. Its 10 members, most between the ages of 17 and 22, have yet to finish a race. But they are determined to persevere in their chosen sport despite multiple barriers, and are aiming to ride in the 2020 Olympics.

Men driving by insult them. Boys along the road throw rocks at them. Sometimes they don’t have enough money to buy adequate food to fuel their rides. Every day, they are reminded that it is taboo in Afghan society for a woman to get on a bicycle. And still they ride.

“They tell us that it is not our right to ride our bikes in the streets and such,” says Marjan Sidiqqi, one of the young women on the team. “We tell them that this is our right and that they are taking our right away. Then we speed off.”

[…]

Galpin says that for the generation of girls coming of age in a post-Taliban Afghanistan, bicycling is another manifestation of the freedom to be an educated person in the society. “Young women who are in university and high school, young women who are educated, their families have promoted that and helped that happen,” she says. “These young women look at it very cut and dry: ‘My brother can ride a bike, why can’t I?’ They’re cognizant that they have this right.”

“We cannot become a hero by sitting at home,” she said.

This is called neuroplasticity, or the amazing things the human body can do … An adult woman was found to be missing her cerebellum:

So essentially, it took less than a decade of life for the rest of her brain to pick up the missing cerebellum’s slack. The fact that the patient is alive and thriving is incredible. This is only the ninth time that doctors have found someone to be missing a whole cerebellum, and most of the others have only been discovered after their early deaths.

She was given a photograph after 9/11. Every year at the anniversary she’s tried to find the people in the picture. This year, the mystery was solved … Mystery Solved: The People in the 9/11 Wedding Photo

I saw the first part of this story yesterday in the paper, and it is worth reading today … Beulah’s David Eastridge battling back from life-threatening accident:

Balance has been one of the toughest parts for David since the traumatic brain injury. His depth perception in his left eye is still affected, which in turn makes it difficult to maintain balance at times. It’s why he wears that soft helmet whenever he does anything that requires movement.

He climbs stairs, but only to show off. Sutlive has shifted focus away from that because of the progress David has made. Now
they spend time on the treadmill. David has to hold the railings, but he gradually begins to pick up the pace.

Sutlive asks him: “What’s the fastest you can go?”

“Let’s show them,” David enthusiastically responds.

He reaches 3.1 mph on a slight grade; a brisk jog. Five weeks earlier, he couldn’t walk on his own.

Tough kid, that.

If you watched the Georgia game this weekend you might have noticed when the announcers mentioned this story. It is a pretty nice, quick little news package:

And, finally, here’s a little feature on Birmingham’s historic Rickwood Field … Recapturing a Game and Days Gone By. The story is told through the eyes of the author’s 77-year-old mother-in-law and is understandably precious.

If you like baseball history, I did a decent podcast about Rickwood several years ago. I’ve also sold photos of the nation’s oldest active baseball part to ESPN.

The good old days. Today was different than all of that. All of my days are though, that was eight years ago, after all. Instead of interviewing David Brewer, I was discussing tips of interviewing with students in a classroom.

I always find myself bringing up the time I was asked to interview the congressman who’s best hunting dog had just died, or the times I annoyed governors, or that a newly elected (and still sitting) senator tried to insult me. Grieving interviews, funny interviews, boring interviews, the ones where you know the person is lying to you, and all of the different ways to get answers from your sources. Good stuff, good times.

I wonder what it was like to interview George Wallace. (He died in 1998, but I met his son once, in passing.) Maybe I should stop back by that bas-relief.

history / iPhone / journalism / links / photo / things to read / Thursday — Comments Off
11
Sep 14

A sign teaches us the history of veganism

Enjoying Catember? A photo of the cat every day, what a great gimmick, eh? Today’s features a recent night where she judged me worthy of a lap visit. I reached for my phone to try to take a picture and she leaned right in. She has never been phased by my DSLR. Point the phone at her, though, and she protests, moves or leaves. Or bonks the phone, ruining the shot. She’s uncanny that way.

And she’s as feisty as ever, too.

I did not realize we had such a think in the 1940s.

You would think our old family members, in the peak of life, would have thought “The war is over and I am alive. I am eating a steak. Later, I’ll have a pork chop, and possibly a meat soup. Tomorrow we’ll try that new Milo’s place.”

Actually, a 2008 Time article says the word was coined in 1944. Wikipedia says Englishman Donald Watson came up with it in Leicester. They were bombed in the Blitz in 1940 and more than 100 were killed, hundreds more injured and more than 250 homes destroyed, but they weren’t in the front lines otherwise and was considered something of a sanctuary for around 30,000 people. The area was important for air training and uniform production and, later holding Axis POWs. And, less famous for the man that was inspired by his time on the farm to become an animal rights activist.

Did you know there is a World Vegan Day? November first. Steak? Pork chop? Or meat soup?

I kid, I kid. I eat less meat than I used to, most of the time. But, occasionally you just need to use your canines.

Things to read … because reading puts meat on your bones.

Zach Brown is a former student of mine. He was the editor of The Samford Crimson. Now he’s a Fulbright scholar traveling in far-flung regions of the world bring English and pop culture coolness to people in different, dusty places. This is part of his journey: Mountain passes to Gharm, Khujand, and Panjakent.

Elsewhere in the wide world … The ongoing Damage to the Venezuelan Economy:

Venezuela’s annual inflation rate has risen to 63.4%, the highest in Latin America, according to official figures published on Tuesday.

The figures are the first released by the central bank since May, which has led critics to accuse the government of withholding data for political reasons.

This is going to be important, and I don’t want you to be caught unawares.

Also important … Ebola is ‘devouring everything in its path.’ Could it lead to Liberia’s collapse?

Here is a collection of Sept. 12, 2001 newspaper front pages. The thing I find interesting is how they are all different. With so many hub-and-spoke operations in place today that wouldn’t be the case with a huge national story today. There would be a great deal more homogeny.

Closer to home … Professional football returning to Birmingham:

The new North American Football League says the Birmingham Freedom will begin play next spring, along with franchises in Columbus (Flight), Hartford (Merchantmen), Kentucky (Thoroughbreds), Memphis (Kings), North Carolina (Redwolves), Orlando (Sentinels) and Virginia (Crusaders).

We’re number five! We’re number five! Alabama ranks as one of the most tax-friendly states in the U.S.

And now for some quick links on various media subjects of the day:

Is Virtual Reality The Future Of Journalism?
5 charts: The shifting landscape of digital video consumption
Seeking to bolster websites, TV stations hire newspaper journalists
Looking for new photo, video, audio, multimedia or FTP apps?
How to Setup the NPR App Template for You and Your News Org

Finally, there is this piece, which is pretty great … ESPN3 grows its offerings with student productions:

On Saturday, the Mercer Bears from Macon, Georgia, will play their first Southern Conference football game against Furman. Fans can watch it on the ESPN3 Web stream, even though the Bears football program is only one year old. Mercer decided to take advantage of an ESPN3 initiative that allows schools to join the network.

“We’re one of the first in football to pick that up and run with it and self-produce an event for ESPN,” said Mercer Athletic director Jim Cole.

It took an investment of $150,000 to upgrade the university’s TV production studio, get some high-grade cameras and pull fiber cable throughout campus. But, Cole says, joining the ESPN network is money well spent — even if it’s only their Web stream.

“I’m looking for name ID for Mercer,” Cole said, to showcase Mercer to potential students around the country. “Kids understand what ESPN means, so we view this as a recruiting advantage as well,” he said.

ESPN gets inexpensive programming, students get experience and exposure, teams get airtime, schools can use it to recruit. There’s a lot of win-win in that setup. I wonder about the details behind the line, “ESPN3 has different deals with each school,” but if that works out for a Mercer or whomever, more the better.

I do not know what is happening. / iPhone / journalism / links / swimming / things to read / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
9
Sep 14

Wherein I reference Carl Sagan

I showed off a neon sign in transition last week, without making too many philosophical references to the illuminating gases within us all that shine brightly into the evening sky. I stared at the distressed sign, full of rust and faded paint without wistfully wandering through paragraphs about age and history — OK, I talked history — and the way the elements shape the decay that shapes us.

I went back to check on the sign this evening. They’ve changed it:

We talked about generating story ideas in class yesterday, and will continue to do so tomorrow. Tonight the journalists produced their first issue of The Samford Crimson for the year.

Also, this evening, I taught myself how to do flip turns in the pool. They are bad, awkward, crooked, slow and hilariously off target. I can hit the lane line. I can push myself deep into the pool. (Good thing I was trying to figure all of this out in a deep pool.) My flip turns are also incredibly violent. I was here and then I pushed and now I’m waaaay over there, and it was fast.

It felt like this:

Watch a person who knows what they are doing and they are elegant. Watch me do a flip turn and it is like something out of the ACME catalog.

But I’m learning, and I swam 2,000 yards. I do not know what is happening.

Things to read … so you will know what is happening.

(When various of your gimmicks come together in an unplanned moment like that, it is kind of neat. And, perhaps, a signal to kill the gimmick.)

(Nahhh … )

Samford Is #3 in 2015 U.S. News Annual Rankings:

Samford University continues to be ranked 3rd in the South in the 2015 annual college rankings released Sept. 9 by U.S. News & World Report. Samford also was ranked third in last year’s U.S. News list.

Samford is the highest ranked university in Alabama in any peer group and continues a three-decade tradition of being ranked in the top tier of its peer group. Samford also recently was ranked the top university in Alabama by Forbes, Inc.

One of our students wrote this, and it is a neat read … Alabama’s first Miss America reflects on title more than 60 years later

Another lovely story … Finding a groove, giving a gift:

Darlene Werner suffered a stroke in 1994 and had not been out of the home where she lives with her husband, David, since Christmas.

Even with David’s support, she could no longer negotiate the four steps from the front porch to the patio or the three steps from the kitchen to the carport.

The couple tried, first with Darlene, 74, using a walker. For the past year, she has mostly been confined to a wheelchair. Returning some of her freedom was the goal of the eight men representing family-owned Contractors Service and Fabrication Inc., of Decatur, during United Way of Morgan County’s Day of Caring on Tuesday.

The crew, only two of whom had ever worked together on a ramp, created a way out down the house’s 29-inch high front porch with a ramp of three sections totaling 30 feet.

And this is quite interesting … 11 Bird’s-Eye Views That Show How NYC Has Grown Over 350 Years:

Exactly 350 years ago today, New York City became New York City. The city itself already existed, of course: As the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. But on September 8th, 1664, the British gave it its permanent moniker, which makes today its name-day.

We’ve seen all manner of maps illustrating how NYC has grown over the centuries, but one of the coolest—and least appreciated—is the bird’s eye view. These are images that are, loosely speaking, maps; but thanks to a little artful perspective, they give us much more of a sense of what the city was like in each case.

Tomorrow, there will be more interesting things to be found here. Do come back, won’t you? And have a lovely time until then.

adventures / cycling / Friday / iPhone / photo / Pie Day — Comments Off
5
Sep 14

You just go faster

Nothing like having your last event of the work week being a meeting, and then being stood up. I waited for half an hour, no word, and left.

I’d have rather had the meeting, and been done with it. Who knows when it will happen now. On the way home I had this view as a brief consolation:

But, hey, we got to talk about story ideas in class today — always a fun topic — and I still made it home in time to get an hour on my bike. I need more than one hour at a time, of course, but you take it where you can get it.

The Yankee and I set out together, but she said “See you at home,” which I took to mean, “Go have fun,” which really meant “Go hard.”

That was the plan, at least in two places. There were two courses I wanted to try to conquer today. One seemed easier than the other, but I had zeal for both of them. At least until my lungs gave out, which has a direct relationship to zeal. I was halfway up the long slow hill that marked the course I hoped to mark a new best time when everything seemed to give way. I pedaled harder, but it seemed I was going slower. I told my legs and lungs I wanted nothing to do with their protests, but they protested anyway.

And when I got home and checked the app I discovered that I had sliced 48 seconds off my best time on that course. That gave me the course lead over the next best time, by one whole second.

On the back half of my route today was the other course I wanted to master. And there it started to rain on me. Also, it was getting close to get dark. I ride on that particular stretch of road frequently, but this was only the second time I have timed myself on it. The course is designed for someone who can go all out for three straight miles. This isn’t my strength — I don’t really have a strength, I think — but we are all full of weaknesses and average talents of one sort or another. I dropped 1:38 off my last timed trip down the course and now I have the fast time on that segment, too.

On the last rode before the clouds came back again and I was rained on again. The twilight had turned to a full on flirt with the night. Two police cars passed me going the other direction and I expected one of them to turn around and give me some grief. But I pedaled furiously and made it home in the last embers of the day. The Yankee wasn’t very far behind me. I’d gone hard, and she did too.

Then we went out for Pie Day.