The SEJC’s Best of the South awards banquet was tonight. This featured the Troy Jazz ensemble, a wonderful story by our organizer who stole the show with a dance with his wife, a First Amendment keynote speech by Student Press Law Center director Frank LoMonte, turkey, brisket and perfectly acceptable peach cobbler.
(Hint: Almost all peach cobbler is perfectly acceptable.)
Also, there were the Best of the South award presentations.
These are awards for which we submit in the fall. We send off a bunch of nominees covering a wide range of specialties across the print discipline, television, online and radio. This year we did not send as many as we normally do because of time constraints, but nevertheless we had an excellent night.
Out of 331 entries covering 24 categories with submissions from 29 schools, Samford students claimed seven honors in categories like best magazine writer, best press photographer, best radio journalist, best research paper and best magazine page layout designer. Exodus placed third in the magazine contest. The Crimson placed eighth in a talented field.
On the night Samford’s name was called as much as any other school in the state. Our students are doing something right.
We celebrated with Dairy Queen. And then I went back to my room to iron and work.
Tomorrow we’ll find out how we did in the on-site competitions and return to campus.
Which means on-the-road differences, discoveries and frustrations.
Like this:
Meet the only iron in the free world that refuses to heat up. I’ll be a little more wrinkled tomorrow for it.
Anyway, we’re in Troy at the Southeastern Journalism Conference. This is the 25th meeting of that august group, an annual gathering meant to promote journalism among aspiring students.
Samford has five nice, excited and thoughtful students on this trip. They’ll pick up awards the school has earned over the last year and compete for more honors in various on-site competitions.
Today the contest was in just getting down here. This trip is supposed to take two-and-a-half hours. We drove through an accident. We drove through one of those improbably slowdowns where nothing was going on at the front of the thing — it was mystifying, no merging, no stalls, cops or wrecks, everything just ground down to nothing for a while. I hate those things, even though I’ve read somewhere that it comes down to inattention. Someone jams on the brakes unexpectedly in a high volume situation and it can impact the road’s behavior for miles.
Anyway, then there was stopping to get gas because the rental car people didn’t give me enough. Then there was dinner – Chick-fil-A, my third visit there in as many days. Then we got turned around, but only for about two minutes.
Finally we made it to the conference hotel. We registered and then moved down the road to our hotel. When I got in my room it was 10 p.m., even. We left at 5 p.m.
Which is when the fun began. No Internet connection. My computer could see the local router, but could not get on. Observation: do not go ask the people at the front desk about this. That young lady wanted it to work really badly, but she had no idea.
Finally I found a phone number of the third-party contractor that provides the Internet service. We changed a few settings and she had me surfing in a few minutes.
Which is when I discovered the iron doesn’t heat up. And, yes, I surf while I iron. You don’t?
So tomorrow I’ll get that replaced.
Also, I’m not sure how the shower controls work. I think someone put that cover plate with the temperature guide onto the wall backwards.
But the soaps smell lovely. I have a huge television and a clean bed. And, despite this place being packed with college students in Troy for the conference, it seems quiet enough.
Tomorrow there will be workshop sessions, the on-site competitions, picking up a few awards, meeting nice people and more.
Took my class to CBS-42, where the news director let the students sit in master control and the studio during a newscast and gave us a tour of the station. This, of course, being sweeps. It was my first time in that particular studio. One of Samford’s recent graduates is there. A few other alumni work there as well. They were all very nice, and very gracious hosts at CBS.
And now back to other pressing things. Here are The Lemonheads:
I pulled out my box of CDs and am listening through really old stuff, like this, right now. Hard to believe that’s almost 20 years ago.
The original tune, which is just incredible by the way, is now 21. It features a guitar and chimes, and is sung by Robyn St. Clare of the Australian indie jangle pop band The Hummingbirds. Nine people in the U.S. heard this when it was released. Now anyone can find their way to it with YouTube.
I have a new gimmick for this space on Mondays. Since the day is spent pinned beneath the computer — picture it, the machine has fallen on top of me, on the monitor is a vaguely human expression of determination, I am feebly trying to crawl out from under it — I’m just going to make this the day of a great dumping of links.
Oh there’s still Monday history, for the 1.4 people who come here to find out what I find interesting. That’s been transmorgified (Now there’s a wonderful word. It means something, but as yet has not been defined. We just know it is something about a mutation, but that G sound in there just makes it sound … unpleasant.) into a little elaboration on what I put on Twitter in the morning.
And I do that every morning on Twitter. There the habit seems to be recent history, mostly American or culturally impactful things that I find in a daily history app. I’d do more meaningful tidbits, but it is hard to explain 16th Century context in such a small forum. So I limit it to the baby boomer set when I can. From there and the two following generations people just know stuff. Right? That’s why President Obama talked about Sputnik, because it has seeped into the public consciousness, even if it was someone else’s actual event. Everyone knows what “we” did with Sputnik. And certainly the recitation of that storied tale was accurately told in the brief news packages the next day. Sputnik, when Russia launched us into space! It was Sputnik that put us on the moon!
This isn’t a new phenomenon, actually. There’s a great quote by John Adams after Benjamin Franklin died, where in his most bitter, paranoid way imagined the way the story of the American Revolution would be:
The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical rod smote the earth and out sprung General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod and thence forward these two conducted all the policy, negotiation, legislation, and war.
The word insecure, in the psychological sense, only dates back to the early 20th Century (make your jokes here). But if they’d had that concept at Philadelphia, New York and Washington, they might have used it to describe Adams.
Stories change, is the point. Maybe it is enough that people remember Sputnik with fear and wonder, or bemusement, and tell their kids. And then one of those children grows up to inject it into a speech that his boss, the president, gives before a joint session of Congress and the nation. Anything is possible when that kid grew up with a father who used Old Spice.
Did you know there’s a new Old Spice commercial?
I wildly digress, but that’s OK because Monday, in the original Latin, means Stream of Consciousness.
If you’re really suddenly very curious about what recently historical things I’m trying to condense into 140 characters, then by all means, follow me.
From that storied feed of valuable historical information we remembered that today:
In 1990, the Soviet Union collapsed. This is oversimplified, of course. It took about two years, but on this particular day the Central Committee let loose of it’s power. They’d finally gotten around to watching Rocky IV and saw the writing on the wall.
I remember watching television when the Berlin Wall fell, but not this day in particular. So let’s make it up. This day in 1990 was a Wednesday. I was in class. I was in the seventh grade. So let’s say I was in … Coach Tucker’s social studies class. Why not?
This was before my time, but I remember reading about it on the 40th anniversary. In 1967, at a rooftop fine dining restaurant in Montgomery, Ala. a fire broke out in a cloakroom. The flames quickly spread, blocking access to the elevator and stairs. When they finally put out the flames they pulled out 25 bodies, including a prominent former state official, the wife of a newspaper editor and one of Jimmy Hoffa’s chief lobbyists. Here are two contemporary accounts, including one from a reporter who had dined there the night before, and considered returning that night.
Here are the recollections of survivors and firefighters:
In 1964 the Beatles invaded. In 1962 the United States stopped trade with Cuba. If I could have lived in the sixties I would have stopped just after the British invasion began. After that it was a long time to sit around for something fun. Sure, there was Apollo and the moon in ’69, but that would mean wading through five more years of that decade.
My mother asked me once, I’m sure I’ve written of this here, if the moon landing meant us much to my generation as it did her’s. From the exploration and science standpoint, sure, it is incredible. But, on the other hand to my age bracket we’ve always been on the moon. The previous generation got the experience of seeing it happen.
Of course, they didn’t have Google Moon. Come to think of it, they might have won this round.
Other links of varied merit: AOL is paying $315 million for Huffington Post, approximately 10 times HuffPo’s reported last year. From a financial point of view they overpaid. From an intangible point of view, it is anyone’s guess. I’m siding with Alan Mutter:
If HuffPo’s revenues triple this year to $90 million, then Armstrong can tell his shareholders he paid “only” 3.5x more for HuffPo than its sales are worth. If HuffPo sales triple again to $270 million in 2012, then the value of the deal is likely to be about 1x HuffPo’s revenues at that point and Armstrong, assuming he remains on the job, can tell the skeptics he was right.
The question to ask yourself in evaluating the long-term financial benefit of the acquisition to AOL is whether you think HuffPo is capable of bringing in a $270 million in annual sales within a couple of years.
Poynter’s Damon Kiesow finds some problems with Rupert Murdoch’s newest venture, The Daily:
I have been reading The Daily regularly since it launched on Wednesday, and almost every time I open the app, I’ve been confused to see a message telling me that “a new issue” is being delivered.
The Daily is published every morning, but Editor Jesse Angelo also said that it wouldn’t be “static” and would be updated as events warranted.
He’s quite forgiving of the experience, which is a better reception than The Daily has received in many corners. Of course there will be problems to overcome, this is a new enterprise, after all. These things must be done in full view of your audience, which is tough, but familiar to news types.
If only they’d announced it as a beta, everyone would be more willing to accept the learning curve.
Finished up a social media presentation for tomorrow. Three dozen slides should just about do it, right?
Try to make sense of that if you like, but it is mostly images and not too much text. The places with text will be, I suspect, where notes get taken. More to the point, though, I’m hoping to demonstrate the virtue of a PowerPoint presentation where every word isn’t read from the screen. This is an entry-level class and this is meant as something of a not-quite-vague overview.
Sadly I won’t be talking about cool stuff like this, where Coke is looking to move into SMS as a mobile priority:
“If you want to reach every consumer on the planet, texting is the way to do that,” said Daly, speaking Friday at MediaPost’s Mobile Summit conference in Miami. To underscore his point, he noted that 2.3 trillion text messages were sent worldwide last year. And as one of the world’s most pervasive consumer brands, Coca-Cola is always interested in reaching as wide an audience as possible.
Texting has even helped the beverage giant sell more Cokes through vending machines equipped to handle mobile short codes and cashless payments. The unlikely combination of traditional and newer technologies has given vending sales a 14% lift where the specialized machines have been rolled out, said Daly.
That’s just fascinating. You don’t often see Coke making bad marketing moves, so if Coke says they’re concentrating on SMS, you should be the next group.
Did you know our accents are changing in the South? Seems that way. Language is a fluid thing and it is always changing, everywhere. There’s a lot of neat stuff in this story as researchers ponder how and why this happens. I’m surprised no one is thinking of mediated influence. Naturally that wouldn’t be the only cause, but certainly it could be a significant contributor in modern times. Television and radio shape and influence patters, too.
But then I’m a media effects scholar. Here’s my hammer, there’s a nail.
This week Dr. Oz is unveiling his choice of Unhealthiest Cook in America. And Paula Deen’s boys are somehow involved in the promotional aspect of this, but it isn’t Paula. That’s odd. There are less healthy cooks than Paula Deen and her sons — it’s good, food, sure, but your doc would be displeased. Would you eat this:
Place burger patties on English muffins or buns, and if desired, on glazed donuts, as the buns. Top each burger with 2 pieces of bacon and a fried egg.
I made fun of this on Twitter, just as The Yankee uploaded a picture of the cupcakes we bought this evening for dessert. The secret to comedy is timing.
Also, it was National Signing Day. I (re-)wrote this piece for The War Eagle Reader and received a few nice comments.
I must be doing something right, even the spam comments that come into this site are complimentary. I guess the plan of attack has changed: kill ’em with kindness. Better than ads for pills and bank notices. Not as good as the fake Rolex ones, though.
Lots of meetings today. Had a long sit-down about our website. I wrote a two page memo on all of the changes we’re about to make. And then there was a newspaper meeting, where we marked up pages of newsprint. This is the first paper of the new semester, which is always a difficult thing. How does one write about things that happened days or even weeks ago with a new angle?
The next two weeks of the paper will surround Step Sing, the song and dance revue that features about 20 percent of the student population. At least they know what they’ll be writing about.
Met with the boss, did a little reading and a little writing. A lot of grading.
The students in the class I’m teaching refine their resume over the course of the semester and I’ve been compiling notes to help with the task. Resumes are both tedious and important, of course. I talk about clarity, brevity, accuracy, consistency.
Many of the resumes I looked through tonight were quite good. Now the drum beat will grow louder. “Get involved. Work at the campus paper, the campus television station, or the magazines or radio.”
This is an introductory class in our curriculum, of course, but it is fun watching students realize the importance of that idea. Journalism and public relations and broadcasting are careers built on examples of quality, so we encourage students to get involved early and keep working on campus until they graduate and move into the professional realm.
Which is why I graded resumes until almost midnight.
The groundhog says there are 13 more weeks of that.
