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IU / memories / podcast / Thursday / Wednesday — Comments Off
24
Sep 20

A political campaign ‘listen to this’

When I was in graduate school I took a class on political communication. The professor was a famous and renowned pollster. And after a day or two the professor would ask the class a question and the class just looked at me.

I was conscientious of that. I didn’t want to be that guy, but they were pretty clear that I should be that guy. The professor would later become my committee chair, did me a few solid favors in the program and later took credit for introducing me to my wife.

He was only slightly wrong about that, but he’d earned the literacy license with me.

So esteemed was Dr. Powell in our eyes that, despite him asking us for years to address him by his first name, “Because we are colleagues,” we all still refer to him as Dr. Powell. He’s a good man.

And I was thinking of him while I was interviewing Dr. Gerald Wright, who is in the political science department at IU. We talked about the upcoming presidential debates. So I was very happy for the opportunity, because this is the part of politic campaigns that I like: the message construction, the real body work.

On Topic with IU · On Topic with IU — Discussing the presidential debates with Dr. Gerald Wright

The debates, probably not as much. They’re important, but they’re not. You know what you know about the candidates. You like who you like. And not much that can happen at a debate, or even a series of them, will move people who have made up their minds.

They’re debates, but they’re not. The formats aren’t really debates anymore. We don’t know all of the details about this debate cycle, yet, but there’s little to suggest the previous sentence will be wrong. It has been written that they’re basically press conferences in their current form, and that’s not exactly wrong.

They’re entertaining and informative, but they’re not. You have to follow and know politics to be entertained by them. If that describes you, you won’t learn much that’s continually informative for you. If you’re apathetic to the process in general — and far, far too many are — then you’re probably not watching, or paying only scant attention anyway.

They’re a part of the process, but they’re mostly just a tradition at this point. It’d be terrific, from the perspective of civics, if they were more than an academic study. I’m sure Dr. Powell will have a great deal to discuss with his classes during and after the debates. And I bet Dr. Wright will, as well. You get the impression, from the interview above, that he’ll have a lot to say to his students’ benefit.

He asked, before I could remind him, if I wanted the soundbite answers or the professorial answers. You’ve no idea how much I wanted to insist on the really in-depth stuff.

IU / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
10
Sep 20

Just a teevee thing

Back in the studio this evening. The sports gang had another two shows to shoot. The highlight show is a little thin just now, IU sports aren’t back yet, but any day now it would seem. The talk show is operating at 100 percent, however. This is how it will look when it is released later this week:

Haley is telling the guys how it is at the beginning of the NFL season. She’s taking Kansas City to repeat. She and Jevan are filling the role of football beat reporters this year. They’re going to do a great job if they get the chance. It’s an open question if Big Ten football will start (it will) when it begins (next month sometime) and how the media will get to work (total mystery).

Jevan is the one on the right. Drew is the host of this show. This is his second year running The Toss Up. Last year there were four chairs on that set. The three-chair arrangement is a concession to social distancing, but I think it is going to wind up creating more interesting camera shots. Drew already thinks it might be better in terms of working in his guests.

Drew came to IUSTV three or four years ago. He learned how the audio booth worked and locked down the A1 role. One night he showed up in a coat and tie, monologue in hand. We had some extra time and he delivered his script. Over time, he used those occasional spare minutes to improve his writing and his presentation.

He got stronger and stronger and those bits became social media extras and then regular features. Two years ago we graduated the last absolute star. (He’s working on the Gulf Coast these days, making me jealous all of the time.) And that meant auditions. Drew got the job and, today, he’s hosting this show, learning about producing and is a co-sports director.

Haley has been an almost-natural from day one, and she’s creating mountains of great clips for her reel. Jevan started out enthusiastic and a little nervous, but each time he’s on camera, you can see him growing more and more comfortable every time the lights come on.

My favorite thing about student media is that it’s so experiential, which is absolutely critical for students studying this stuff. The most important part of it is how easy it is to take advantage of the opportunity. The neatest part is watching students do it.

IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
8
Sep 20

Cluck cluck, tree, cluck cluck

Maples. Rubbing it in. “We’re going away!” Right in front of me, literally, the tree under which I parked today.

Which is the real story here. I went into the office a bit late today because I knew I’d be on campus until about 7:30 — which wound up being actually 8 or so. And even despite rolling onto campus in the middle of the day I parked right next to the building.

You can’t legally park any closer to our building than I did today, just before noon. That’s how many people aren’t on campus right now.

Our building has classes, but only the smaller ones. Anything over 50 students is automatically online. Faculty were able to decided, in a dizzying and disjointed system, whether they would teach in-person or online. One week, faculty could decide. The next, they couldn’t. It was all a part of a summer spent finding our sea legs. There was also a hybridized model, with rotating students on various days of the week and that seemed like it would have too many moving parts for anyone to keep straight. Ultimately, though, whatever got decided at an individual level, or got decided for them from above, has led to a quiet building so far.

With most classes apparently taking place on line, that means few students and very, very few faculty in the building. About 90 percent of the staff is working from home. And that means that, because I have to go in, I can get a parking spot right up front.

Just means I didn’t have to walk too far to my car at the end of the evening after a practice session in the television studio.

Except, after watching some practice shows get produced in anticipation of next week’s season premier episodes from the new news team, I walked to the parking deck. I hadn’t parked in the deck, but right beside that maple tree. It took me a block to realize it, and a block to walk back.

Which, for a Tuesday, isn’t the worst setback.

I’m more disappointed in the maple tree. If you see me out there sometime later this week, staring it down with a look of disappointment on my face, you’ll know why.

Friday / IU / photo — Comments Off
4
Sep 20

Approved sidewalk painting

Well, you presume it was approved. A good stencil lends an air of legitimacy and authority.

These two were on sidewalk slabs near one another, just outside our building on campus. I wonder how many different bits of sloganeering that the Office of Sidewalk Painting created. It’s a big campus.

The #LocaleStrong thing is a bit tired. We should have retired that one with Boston. Let them keep it, they did it well. Now it’s a Beantown thing, and we all need our own hashtags. I just counted the mentions on Twitter. There’s been 62 uses of that hashtag since the beginning of the term two weeks ago. Most of them from official accounts. A few of the individual usages have been tongue-in-cheek. One was showing off a picture of the stencil work.

Just down the way, on the same block, some of the other signs were destroyed, and thrown into the creek.

I guess they didn’t see the stenciled, approved, graffiti.

IU / photo / television / Thursday — Comments Off
3
Sep 20

Show – show – show, here we go!‬

‪In the spring, IUSTV’s production run was cut short by the university’s coronavirus shutdown. The last recording was with the sports crew, it was a March Thursday night. The outgoing sports director recorded a little monologue and then held a really touching meeting and he walked into the last weeks of his senior year and the first weeks of professional uncertainty. He, and every other senior, had such a scary, unenvious position just then. Some of them were starting to sign their first TV contracts at that moment. Others were doing job interviews. As far as I know and can tell, all of them, including that outgoing sports director, are working today. Almost all of them seem to be in jobs in their chosen flight path (including that departing sports director, who’s on-air at a hometown station) which is remarkable.

You couldn’t help but feel for those seniors, and all the underclassmen. When would we come back? What would that be like? And for our students in particular, you can’t thrive in Zoom meetings alone, which is what so much of those last weeks of spring became. The curriculum is so experiential, how would we deliver that?

Which brings us to the fall. We didn’t know, in March, what September and October and November would be like. We didn’t even know what April would look like. Maybe it’s still an open question, how the fall turns out, but I hope not. For all of the promise of technology, it brings some unique challenges, and pedagogical habits don’t, in fact, change overnight.

But, tonight — even amidst the unusual nature of these first few weeks, even as we don’t know how the semester will wind up — it’s developing in a familiar way for the TV crowd. The last show they recorded in the spring was sports, and so it’s fitting that the sports gang returned to the studio for the semester’s first production.‬

They don’t even have local sports, right now, but they were ready to be together, eager to be in a group, happy to do something. And, for a first production night, with new leadership (a solid, solid set) and some new members, and after an almost-six-month layoff, they did a fine job.

And it looks like the Big Ten may wind up reversing course to give them some sports content sometime in the next week or so, besides. Twenty, as the kids say, twenty.

When I left the building this evening:

This is the sunset view of choice around here. I’m not sure why. It is west. The fake ancient gates are behind me, but you’re just looking toward the downtown area. It seems like we could do better than this.

But we didn’t have to tonight. We didn’t have to tonight.