journalism

IU / journalism / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Some videos for you
25
Feb 20

Some videos for you

News! News! It was a night for the news! Campus news, anyway. It was a television night, as Tuesdays are all fall and winter terms. (It doesn’t seem right to call this a spring term, since we’re going to have snow tomorrow. But, by that metric a substantial portion of the fall term would also be a winter term.)

Oh good, he’s talking about the weather. Again.

Yes, it is a light day, and that is what I am allowed to complain about in late February, the weather. Plus, in four or five more weeks I won’t have that.

We all agree, that can’t happen soon enough around here.

You’ve no idea, gentle reader.

Anyway, to the studio! (Because the other seven-plus hours of my day were in a featureless office!)

They brought in a campus improv group for their second show. That episode should be out tomorrow. But here’s the gist of it. The woman in white left the room and the performers solicited a person, place and activity from the crew. When she came back in, the other member of the troupe had to guess all of that. She was a therapist, you see, and all of Sarah’s inner-characters were trying to give her clues. It was amusing.

Also, the studio audio will be better than my phone’s microphone from 12 feet away. That’s because they were wearing microphones.

Also, this is interesting:

IU / journalism / television / Thursday / video — Comments Off on There’s a lot to watch, only a little to read
6
Feb 20

There’s a lot to watch, only a little to read

I think these two items work together nicely.

That tweet is framed politely, the report spreads the condemnation a fair bit. Which is easy to do, there are many fingers to point in many directions. But, ultimately, everything seems to follow the rule of gravity, and point downward. Lowest common denominators being what they are.

Full day in the office, followed by several hours in the studio. So there’s not a lot here. (Initially I wrote lout, which was more typographical error than subliminal message, but I fortunately caught it just in time.) I do have some video from the studio, however. Tuesday night we watched the news:

And they made white chocolate strawberries, which may be the way to go there, it turns out:

Tonight was sports:

So many sports:

I hope that’ll keep you for now. We’ll try to do better next Thursday, and at least a few of the days in between. See you tomorrow, then, right?

Friday / journalism / links / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Winter snow on Friday
31
Jan 20

Winter snow on Friday

Just three short-long months ago I stood outside and shivered while pumping gas and watching the snow. It was notable because it was Halloween and three long-short months ago. And now, today …

To be fair and just, which we always are on the Internet, it has been a mild winter so far. You shouldn’t say things like that, because even with the qualifier “so far” you imply that it is over. It is not over. If you used the “… so far” formulation that’d look ominous, like you were going for drama or fright night. Which might be appropriate, or overwrought. It’s weather, so it is difficult to tell. And if there’s one thing that we know is not allowed on the Internet, it is the inappropriate jumping to conclusions or an overwrought and emotional reaction.

We’re going to have sunny skies (for a change) and the low 60s on Sunday. Winter will, no doubt, return in short order.

Anyway, cold, slow day today. I suppose the two might be correlated. Probably not, but it’s an easy connection to make, and that’s really what the Internet is for.

The following things aren’t related, but they are two signs of these times. Not all of the times, but, indeed some of them.

Somehow, I thought there’d be more of a ceremony, or at least done after hours. Anything to keep it from looking this pitiful.

Locally, the newspaper, which has been a part of two corporate transactions under recent moons, is losing it’s local printing operation.

This is how it continues. We’re well past how it begins. The printing will take place up in Indianapolis. It isn’t far, but it’ll mean a few professionals will lose their jobs locally. And this local paper will be put in a queue with the bigger Indianapolis Star, whatever other papers and contract jobs must be done. Then the design of the actual papers will be moved out. You’ll see, or perhaps you are already seeing where you are, formulaic layouts done by specialists who are trying to crank out two more front pages before their lunch break. It consolidates jobs, and the technology helps, but it compresses the work. We see papers that fall into formulas and a lot, a lot, gets lost along the way. A bit of institutional knowledge here, local history and importance there.

Perhaps it matters less these days. Newspapers, sad to say, have a reduced importance because they have a reduced readership. This isn’t pure nostalgia. Part of it is, sure, but there’s a lot to be said about the function that a truly healthy newspaper can provide to its community. I believe in that more fervently than I do in a newspaper. I’ve always been married more to the ideal of the service, the function, the role, than the medium. It just so happens that well-attended newspapers are, or were, the best medium we had for that. This isn’t chicken-or-the-egg stuff, but it feels like it. The economics of the industry are such that closing presses is the next step in trying to keep something solvent, for a time, before the inevitable selloffs take place. When Warren Buffett is getting out …

This is how it continues.

Indiana / journalism / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Show – show – show, here we go!
28
Jan 20

Show – show – show, here we go!

First night back in the studio since … a really long time ago. About six weeks, I guess. And of course one of the shows invited a bunch of kids into the studio. Because nothing says clock efficiency and good television like a dozen little kids on camera!

They were great. Except I’m thinking the scratchy throat I’m developing — Again? Again. — came from one of the cute little germ factories. Can it happen that fast? We’re talking hours. Of course it can happen fast.

I once boarded a plane feeling fine, caught the whole bug during the two hour flight and was the full spectrum of pitiful by the time I left the airport. Stayed in bed for two days.

I’m not doing that this week.

Here’s the other show the crew produced last tonight.

It was a good start back after a long break. And so we are off and running again. There are 35 more studio shoots on the schedule for this semester, plus whatever else comes our way. Something else always comes our way.

Take that, Koala Kai:

Martin Kove’s brilliant turn must be in an alternate universe:

There’s only two ways to explain it. He appears in the Cobra Kai series on YouTube, so Koala Kai is in another universe. Or, we have reached peak post-neo-postmodernism long before the singularity suggested we would, as we are now remixing the remixes (which have already been remixed twice, some version of which is now headed to the stage).

I suppose there could be a third explanation. Nostalgia is a bad trip. I’ll let you figure out which is at play here.

IU / journalism / television / Tuesday — Comments Off on And now, two quick television stories
10
Dec 19

And now, two quick television stories

When I got here smilin’ Joe Canter was a freshman. He was probably born good at this, but he’s gotten better at it. And someone here, no one seems to remember who now, has given him a franchise he can carry for years: Banter With Canter.

This was the last Banter With Canter on the last show of his college career. He’s graduating in a few days. It’s been a pleasure to work with him, to watch him grow and develop a very steady confidence. Plus, he’s just an all around pleasant guy. Some newsroom is going to get a good one with him.

And of course we took the “So I can say I knew him when” photo.

He told us tonight — it is a bit of a tradition now, I guess, sharing this news with the crew at our last productions — the stations he’s been interviewing with recently. It is exciting to see the notice our crew gets right out of the gate. I’m eager to see where he lands. Of course you can follow people pretty closely these days, but there will come a day, in two or four years, when he will make a market change. And maybe then, or in the year or two after that, he’ll make a big market change. And I’m excited to see what that’s like for him.

Speaking of sports, which is what Joe does, my old be-ready-at-every-moment anecdote around here used to be about sports, but now it is about weather. The old story was that the sports guy didn’t turn up one night. He’d taken ill, apparently, and we only realized this at the last minute. So a producer stepped in. And she’s was, and remains, one of these people that does everything well. She wasn’t a close follower of sports, she said, but you wouldn’t know it by how she just did the job that night. And they chose her to fill-in because she was awesome anyway, but also because she was camera-ready. It’s a good story. (And today, she is a producer in a top 35-market, which is a nice place to land in your second job still freshly out of school.)

Well now I can update that story to weather. My friend Charlee is a pop culture show host, but when the student who is actually training to be a meteorologist couldn’t make it this evening, Charlee stepped in. And, being another one of these people that does everything well, she also drilled it.

She won’t be a meteorologist anytime soon — that takes some science and know how — but if she isn’t updating her LinkedIn account this week and figuring out how to parlay that into a job interview anecdote then I didn’t sell her hard enough on how she should be updating her LinkedIn account and figuring out how to parlay that into a job interview anecdote.

And with that, the calendar year and another semester of television wraps. A tweet-sized summary:

More details fleshing out the numbers at some later date.

More on Twitter and please check me out on Instagram as well.

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