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27
Apr 23

Some notes from Franklin Hall

This evening was my last late night on campus this semester. Students were producing a comedy show. The main character had a psychotic break of some sort. There was hypnosis, which didn’t work, and so they proceeded directly to lobotomy.

This is how the universe provides inspiration. The lobotomy bit was a simple go-home gag. Someone had a first aid kit, and produced some gauze.

I was sitting in another part of the studio typing away on this or that and I heard someone say “If only we had some blood, or a blood-like substance.”

Well. Earlier that same day, there had been an end-of-the-semester party in the commons. Wings for sports bros. Someone did a halfhearted job cleaning up afterward and there was a table loaded down with those ketchup packets. Someone went to grab a few of those, and suddenly there were special effects and makeup.

I hope someone added that to their LinkedIn.

Earlier this week I went into what I think is the one public space of our building I’ve never visited. I had a chance encounter with a delivery man. He had a shipment of paper. On the paperwork was a name no one recognized. Someone assumed this mysterious man might somehow work with the Board of Trustees. On the top floor of our building the Board of Trustees have a small set of offices. So I went up there to ask if anyone there knew the name.

They did not know the name. But they did have a few nice photos of the building. This is the laying of the cornerstone of Franklin Hall, originally the campus library, circa 1906.

The university’s archives say John William Cravens is at center wearing a bow tie and skimmer. Cravens founded a newspaper at 20 years old. He moved to Bloomington at 21, became a school superintendent, clerk of the circuit court, founded and ran for 13 years, a local paper, The Bloomington World, which is the ancestor of the current struggling rag. While he was doing some of these things he was also going to college, and was named university Registrar, as a student. (Different times, I tell ya.) He stayed on as Registrar for 41 years. In the background, hatless and wearing a white shirt is famed classical historian Harold Whetstone Johnston. Six years later, he killed himself on a train. William Lowe Bryan is standing at the right corner of the building wearing a skimmer.

Bryan is important. He finished his bachelor degree in 1884 and named an English instructor. A few months later, he joined the faculty of the Greek Department. The next year, he was named an associate professor. (Different times, I tell ya.) In the next few years, he became renowned for his work on the study of children, and was a charter member of the American Psychological Association. He became a VP of the university and then, in 1902, just 18 years after graduating, he was named president of IU. He was at the helm for 35 years, boom times, when he oversaw the beginning of the schools of medicine, education, nursing, business, music, and dentistry, many graduate programs and several satellite campuses, and, of course, this building, the library.

The Board’s office also has this print on the wall. This is just before the original construction was completed, so 1907. The archives hold this photo as a donation from the photograph albums of Floy Underwood, which I believe is a woman named Flora Underwood. I can’t find out much more about her, though.

If you follow the building into the background you can see the area where my office would eventually appear. If you want to see more Franklin Hall, here are the archives, which features some of those early days, a mid-century renovation, the fire in the 1960s, a few postcards and background shots. And then, just at that moment in history when cameras became ubiquitous and digital photography got cheap … the collection ends in 2003. Nothing about this, the third version of Franklin Hall’s life, which is wild. If you want, then, to see the promotional video we produced at the beginning of this incarnation of the building, go here.

I’ll be back there tomorrow, the last day of classes of the spring term. I’ll have two different productions running in two different studios. One of them will wrap up a multi-year project. The other will wrap IUSTV’s production run for the year. Big Friday.

IU / journalism / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
25
Apr 23

One final night with the news team

Tonight we had the last newscasts of the year, which means we’re really sneaking up on the last IUSTV programs of the year, and we’re saying goodbye to a few more talented seniors.

That’s Anna Black, on the right. She’s been doing more job interviews than I can count. She’s interned at CNN and at WRDB in Louisville. On campus, she’s produced shows, directed, reported and, at IUSTV, has hosted What’s Up Weekly for the last two years.

She’s a member of two or three different honors programs on campus. I wasn’t previously aware you could find that much time in a day, or that anyone could even be eligible for more than one. She has the most kind and generous disposition, and makes friends quickly and everywhere. Whatever station ultimately is lucky enough to hire her will be getting a great asset.

Which leads me to Ella Rhoades. Ella has been passionate about the news and broadcasting from the beginning. She’s been at IUSTV for four years and she was news director for her junior and senior year. She helped produced some impressive collaborative journalism with the other student media outlets here, streaming an all-night election results newscast. She also held down an incredible day of breaking news on campus, reporting live with some of her reporters in the warm sun when we were on lockdown.

Whenever she’s doing these things, no matter what role she is playing, her eagerness to to do great work is palpable. She leans into the news with a great gusto.

Ella is a team player and all of those positive personal attributes are right there on her sleeve, for everyone to see. This year, in addition to her quality news work, she’s done a masterful job working with younger students, helping us get the freshmen started on the right foot, and pushed the sophomores and juniors to up their respective games. Their individual and collective successes show in the finished product, and how they’re talking about next year.

My friend Ella is taking her energy — and her enthusiasm to learn, to share and to report the news — to WFTX FOX 4 in Fort Myers, Florida. That Scripps shop is getting a great, talented, young reporter. She’s going to grow and grow and do some great things in Florida. I’m incredibly excited — almost as excited as she is! — to see what she does next.

The other woman, in both of those photos, is a rising senior. Carly Rasmussen has served as assistant news director, and she will take over a growing news division next year. She’ll run a young unit, there are a lot of rising sophomores who have been developing some great experience this year, and they’ll have great momentum. In a year, there will be a huge applause essay for her, I’ve no doubt.

After we left the studio, when I made it back to my office, this was the view.

Seemed fitting. Three more productions to go for the year.

IU / memories / Wednesday — Comments Off
19
Apr 23

Two days until spring

It was cloudy and 66 today. This is, apparently, the perfect seasonal average for the day according to the National Weather Service’s almanac. So we’re continuing apace to the official beginning of the locally recognized spring, the Little 500 bike races on Friday and Saturday. Tomorrow it will be much warmer, and sunny. Friday, it will be chilly, with rain all day. Saturday will be more of that.

This spring-at-the-race theory is something I seized on during our first “spring” in Bloomington. At the women’s bike race, that Friday, I took a rain coat to meet the forecast, but the rain stayed away. There was a moment during the Saturday race that I realized spring showed up. It was as demonstrable a moment as pleasant weather can offer, and it was discernible.

Every year since — the bike race was canceled in 2020, and thus not included in these observations, meteorologically speaking — the Little 500 bike races have marked the arrival of spring. This year looks to be the exception that proves the rule.

In a few weeks, Evan will graduate from IU. He’s been at IUSTV the whole of his four years on campus.

Most students come in quietly. It’s a lot: an organization that has its own rhythms, juniors and seniors to look up to, and what do all of these buttons do, anyway?

Before the end of his freshman year, everyone knew about Evan’s energy. Everyone understand the passion he carries. And we all quickly learned how infectious that was.

In those early years he worked his way through the ranks as a beat reporter, and ultimately became a co-director of the sports division as a junior and senior. He cheered on his peers and, as he advanced, he helped the younger students. It’s the way we’ve designed this model to work and, in many ways, Evan has personified that. He’s one of those people at the front of the room, one of those people with the loud, encouraging voice, one of those people with the sort of positive attitude you want to work alongside.

During the spring term of his sophomore year, he also began hosting the sports talk show, The Toss Up, which had been one of his longterm goals. He signed off this week after his 50th episode, his last time to sit in the big chair.

Evan and I recently had a great conversation in the studio. He laughed and pointed to another part of the room and said, “Three or four years ago, we stood right over there and talked about these same things.” That, too, is how we’ve designed this model, so that people who want to go into broadcasting can come through here, practice what they’re learning in class, sharpen their skills and go out and get the high quality internships and, ultimately, great jobs.

He will soon join KNWA-TV and Fox 24 News in Fayetteville, and also appear on KARK 4 in Little Rock, as a sports reporter and anchor. Those are great markets; viewers in The Natural State are getting an extremely talented young man full of great potential. I am excited to see him working in the SEC, and I can’t wait to watch him call the Hogs.

He will work hard, smile a lot, and he’ll soon become a pro’s pro. My friend Evan Kamikow will always be a big, big part of what we’re doing at IUSTV, and I’m incredibly proud to see him continue to grow.

As will these ladies. Between them, Brianna Ballog, Samantha Condra and Audrey Hausberger have covered just about every sport under the sun here, often in multiple capacities, in multiple outlets at IU. Most importantly, they’ve done no less than help create a lasting culture at IUSTV Sports.

They’re all graduating this term. They’ve all got broadcast jobs — not all of which have been publicly discussed yet, so let us stay circumspect for now — and I’ve no doubt that over the course of their careers they’re going to do more for women in sports media than I can possibly imagine. No doubt.

And then there’s Griffin Epstein, one of the hardest working, quietly humble people you could have the pleasure to work with. His achievements around here could, like the women above, go on for quite a while. He’s been the sports director at the radio station. He’s been a beat reporter, a member of the production crew and a longtime panelist at IUSTV. He’s calling one of the big bike races this weekend. He’s about ready to start his play-by-play career. We’re building out a pipeline for that, too.

Which brings me to Jack Edwards, seen here still getting taller than me. He probably walked onto campus as the expert in global soccer, and in four years no one has even come close to threatening him for the crown. He started for IUSTV as a beat reporter for soccer. In his college career, he’s risen through the ranks of all of the sports media outlets here.

Jack will soon be headed down to Florida to call soccer games, a full-time play-by-play man. It’s a perfect place for him to begin, and it’s just the beginning.

Two others are going to be graduating soon, too. One in the summer, a brilliant and kind young woman who will be much in demand for her incredible production skills, and a young man who will probably have a job about 15 minutes after an incredible vacation he’s presently planning.

I’m not sure what I’m more jealous of, the great futures ahead of all of them, or that vacation — it’s a great one. But, then, so are the talents and potential of all of these graduating seniors. They’re all bound for great things. That’s what we produce now, not sports or news or experiential opportunities, but people bound for great things.

IU / memories / music / photo / Re-Listening / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
18
Apr 23

Three days until spring

We’re counting down, because it seems a fun thing to do this week really, and I noticed an unusual thing today.

Everything went green. Bright, wavy green in a big, big way all of a sudden. This is a blurry view of the trees from my campus office. Blurry because, I don’t know why, but I like it.

And this is the same tree, just a few moments later, in focus, and from beneath it’s now bountiful limbs.

But that’s different. This is the same tree, roughly from the same angle as the blurry one, though the linear distance is different.

So that’s three photos of the same tree. Forgive me. It’s all so bright and new still, here in the third week of April, and it will take a few more days for the foliage to feel familiar. It’s like the shock of the seasons. There is that indistinct time where you stand at the door and mentally prepare yourself for one condition outside — hot, mild or cold — but then get something different. It is, in fact, the shock of the season.

Three days until the local, officially recognized beginning of spring. Since 2017 it has always arrived the weekend of the Little 500, the two big bike races.

Ha! I just looked at the weather. Friday, the day of the women’s race, the forecast calls for rain, with a high of 58 and a low of 44. The men’s race on Saturday will be under partly cloudy skies. The high is projected at 54, with a low of 34 degrees. Tomorrow, which has no bearing on this whole spring-arrives-with-the-bike-race phenomenon, the high is 82. Weird year.

Anyway, here’s another photo. A different tree. It just looked cool.

Cool, I say.

I was in the studio this evening with the news team, the penultimate news show of the year. It’s a wonderful feeling when a semester winds down, more so when it’s the end of an academic year, but bittersweetly so. For the news crew in particular, we’ll see a few key people graduate, but there’s a whole platoon of freshmen who have this year gained incredible experience for next year. The news side, I am happy to see, will continue to make good strides, having built a nice pipeline, evenly balanced between older and younger students. Now, they’re always growing and growing, helping each other grow, and I pitch in on the little things.

Tomorrow will be another night in the studio, with the sports gang, and that may be their last taping of the year. Bittersweetly so.

It seems we’re always playing catchup on the Re-Listening project, and that’s what we’re doing today. We’re doing that with Alanis Morissette’s “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.” The album was released in November of 1998, but I picked it up in early 1999. It was another freebie, and, through the Re-Listening project I have discerned a pattern. I didn’t always fall in love with the freebies I picked up way back when.

From this remove, my time with Alanis Morissette feels like a stream of consciousness ple goes like this: Jagged Little Pill has been everywhere for two years, no need to buy that. Also my roommate has a copy, so … Dave Coulier!? The next one, I’ll get the next one. Oh, there it is on the giveaway table (probably) so put that in the pile.

The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and set a record for the highest first-week sales by a female artist, a record she held for two years. It stayed on the Billboard 200 for a solid six months, and has moved millions of units … but, because it is the music industry, being triple platinum after “Jagged Little Pill” was 16-times platinum in the US, this was underwhelming. (The music industry is weird.) And I’m going to gloss over all of it.

I’ve listened to it. I tried to dive into it. I paid attention to every track this time through. There are 17 tracks here, the runtime is almost 72 minutes. It’s a long record, one which has never resonated with me. I find that odd, since we all watched her grow up. Grew up at the same time, whatever. The woman has lived her entire life in front of the public eye, all of the stages and phases a person goes through, we’ve seen them. For 1998, this was fine, but watching an artist’s march through life leaves a different sort of longitudinal vulnerability. Some of this feels dated now, though, that I finally figured out what always troubled me here. It’s the background tracks. There’s just too much nasally, head voice harmony on here.

Anyway, the stream of consciousness takes us far beyond this 1998 record, end with the best song, the best performance, I’ve ever heard Morissette do. This was July of 2020, just the right mood during that first Covid summer. Sadly, NBC has taken the original video down. Here’s a taste of it.

It was a perfect performance: a poignant song, a new record, eight years since the last and a full family in her orbit. This is the Alanis Morissette my stream of consciousness is most interested in now, not the 24-year-old from “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie” but the confident, multitasking woman at a new kind of peak of her powers. That’s the one worth re-listening to.

IU / journalism / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
12
Apr 23

If I jot down enough notes, I will most surely be correct

I’ve been working on my trauma interview syllabus. I have a small stack of books and, so far, a half dozen pages of notes and ideas, this first part all about the considerate efforts one should undertake in the interview approach and process, and it is all quite fascinating,.

There are a few industry pros holding workshops with their peers on this sort of thing now. Anyone that’s had to do enough interviews following death notifications, or asked by their editors or producers to sit down with abuse or attack survivors has the beginning of this insight. Right now, though, it is hard-won experience handed down from people who are, most often, not practiced in psychology.

I can almost quote, verbatim, what I was taught about this in J-school, because it was quite brief. A professor said. “You’ll be told to interview someone who’s just lost a loved one. Ask the family members politely if they’d be willing to talk to you. Some people will want to talk with you. Some people will think you’re horrible. Accept whichever response you get, and know it isn’t personal.”

And that was it. It was the nineties.

There’s a lot more to this, a lot more particulars that students should understand. (There was never anything said, nothing at all, about the trauma reporters face and self-care.) If you think of the stories that reporters chase. Think of the places they often find themselves, this stuff will come up for them, and in a hurry.

That’s why I’m cobbling notes and dreaming up a syllabus. It could be useful, and so I look forward to pitching it. I hope I get to teach it one day.

Anyway, the office all day. The studio all night. Sports night there, so there was a lot of baseball talk. It’s the changing of the guard portion of the year. The seniors are getting ready to fly the coop, and the younger students are getting all the heavy lifting. What’s always amazing to me is how, each year, the rising seniors are all just that much better prepared, just that much more comfortable, for their new, bigger roles than the people that came before them.

And while those graduating seniors are now going over details of their contracts or are engaged in in-depth interviews, we’ve got rising sophomores who are ready to take on the world, to say nothing of some rising juniors who are industry ready, right now.

The day-to-day stuff is fine enough, but watching and charting that progress of students, following them as their skills, and their confidence, grows, that’s gratifying stuff.

I always feel like this in the springtime, the bloom of pride in the observation of self-recognition. It’s probably something to do with the flowers.

I suppose it could be the pollen.