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journalism

journalism / Monday / photo — Comments Off
5
Oct 15

How long does it take you to ride up Everest, anyway?

Here is my social media practices class. They’re pretending to like me, I’m sure. Also, I was using this for an app demonstration, so they were interested in that a little. It is a fun group, and will hopefully be even better as the term goes along:

Things to read: They call it “Everesting.” You climb to the elevation of Mt. Everest. On our state’s highest mountain you’re going to have a 190-mile day in the saddle:

The cyclists returned to the base at about 35-minute intervals, after completing 9-mile laps around a segment of the mountain. For energy boosts, they took shots of maple syrup.

Hard. Core.

Here are two stories from Oregon that need to be read. These are the sorts that would sort of be diminished by excerpts, but give them a look.

‘Heroic’ Veteran Chris Mintz Was Shot 7 Times

Oregon shooting hero tells gunman, ‘It’s my son’s birthday today’

This is an interesting read for those interested in the craft of journalism, How a reporter captured the moment a fifth grader found out she was HIV positive:

THE MOMENT 10-YEAR-OLD JJ learned she has HIV had been carefully orchestrated for months. But for reporter John Woodrow Cox, documenting this moment and the events leading up to it were an exercise in not telling: not writing crucial details that would reveal JJ’s identity to the public, not attending events where his own identity as a reporter could compromise JJ’s privacy. “Our priority was not to expose her,” Cox says.

JJ, a fifth-grader, is one of the many children who have been born with HIV since the AIDS crisis started in the 1980s. She nearly died from pneumonia at birth. She struggled to take the medications necessary to manage her illness, along with ADHD and, later, depression. During all of this, her doctors at Children’s National Medical Center and her adoptive mother, Lee, worried over the appropriate time to tell her about her manageable but stigmatized disease.

Finally, this is said to be every photograph an astronaut has taken on the moon. You’ll like that.

journalism / links / podcast / Samford / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
30
Sep 15

Window tape

It is that time of year again, when the art students are covering the windows in the university center with … tape. This is one of my favorite projects of the year. I don’t see them all, of course, but let’s just go with it. This is one of my favorite projects. Check out a few of the examples:

I’ll share a few more of them tomorrow, before they take them all down. (Window art is ephemeral.)

The only story you really need today:

The walk home after the Mississippi State game was kind of surreal. People were pointing at him, smiling at him, shouting his name—or rather his new name.

Lucas Tribble is … the Mustache Guy. Well, sometimes Jumbotron Guy. But mostly the Mustache Guy, which the Mustache Guy prefers. And the Mustache Guy is kind of a big deal. People know him. Which is kind of funny considering the whole mustache thing was a Ron Burgundy inspired, month-to-grow joke for Fiji picture day a week or so back.

“I kept it (the mustache) throughout the week just to heckle my family when I saw them.”

But, if you need other stories, here’s a super creepy one:

The federal government found a clever way to make a little extra money last summer.

Some vendors who provide federal agencies with goods and services as varied as paper clips and translators were given a slightly different version of the form used to report rebates they owe the government.

The only difference: The signature box was at the beginning of the form rather than the end. The result: a rash of honesty. Companies using the new form acknowledged they owed an extra $1.59 million in rebates during the three-month experiment, apparently because promising to be truthful at the outset actually caused them to answer more truthfully.

And just to get your mind off the behavioral engineering, the weirdest, saddest, grossest story you will need today:

A Madison County family slain this summer was shot and stabbed before their home was allegedly burned to the ground by the husband and father of two of the victims.

Details of the bloody Aug. 4 slayings in New Market came out Tuesday afternoon during a preliminary hearing for Christopher Matthew Henderson, an alleged bigamist facing seven counts of capital murder. Henderson, 40, and the first of his wives, 42-year-old Rhonda Carlson, are each charged with multiple counts of capital murder in the slayings of his other wife and several members of her family.

And, finally, a story you can listen to, with Trussville Tribune editor Scott Buttram as my guest:

journalism / links / photo / podcast / Wednesday — Comments Off
16
Sep 15

Things I’ve found and things I’d forgotten I’d found

Today I was eating one of those fruit bowls, the sort you get pre-cut and ready to eat from the produce section. Munching away in the office and I come across this:

That’s one big grape.

Things I’ve also come across recently include the announcement that Esquire has gone completist with their Classic site. Eight decades of content are now online. Here’s some heart-rending media, the boyfriend of murdered TV reporter makes emotional return to anchor chair. Here’s something I wrote earlier this week. It is a review of a documentary. It was not good.

And a podcastI recorded with the editor of The Anniston Star:

journalism / links / Monday / things to read — Comments Off
31
Aug 15

Things to read

We are back in full stride with the Monday post of fun links to check out. A little something for a lot of people here. So just scroll until you find something that sings out to you.

This highly anticipated museum is set to open. I can’t wait to see it. This is a photo gallery, but don’t expect much in the way of captions, but the photos look promising. A look inside Birmingham’s new Negro Southern League Museum.

Google’s self-driving cars can’t handle bicycle track stands:

Ever performed a track stand, where you keep your bike upright at a stop without taking your feet off the pedals? If you have, you’ll want to avoid trying that around Google’s self-driving cars, at least for a while. One Austin-based cyclist reports an encounter where one of the autonomous cars was comically unsure of what to do when it spotted him doing a track stand at an intersection. Every time his bike moved even slightly, the car would lurch forward and promptly hit the brakes. Nothing happened beyond some good laughs, but it was clear that Google’s self-driving code didn’t know how to handle a not-quite-stationary bike.

Humans can’t handle that either, in my experience.

Poor headline aside — why read the story after this? — they’ve buried the real story. Netflix will not renew its Epix deal at the end of September, Hulu signs up for Epix content starting October 1:

The company explains that “while many of these movies are popular, they are also widely available on cable and other subscription platforms at the same time as they are on Netflix and subject to the same drawn out licensing periods.” Netflix instead wants to focus on original films and “some innovative licensing arrangements with the movie studios” that will result in “a better movie experience” for its members.

Also, “Starting next year, we will be the exclusive U.S. pay TV home of the latest theatrical movies from the The Walt Disney Company, including Pixar, Lucasfilm and Marvel movies.”

Huge signings.

You know, when you read these pieces all together … it is pretty obvious why no one wants to talk about it. China and Russia are using hacked data to target U.S. spies, officials say:

Foreign spy services, especially in China and Russia, are aggressively aggregating and cross-indexing hacked U.S. computer databases — including security clearance applications, airline records and medical insurance forms — to identify U.S. intelligence officers and agents, U.S. officials said.

At least one clandestine network of American engineers and scientists who provide technical assistance to U.S. undercover operatives and agents overseas has been compromised as a result, according to two U.S. officials.

The Obama administration has scrambled to boost cyberdefenses for federal agencies and crucial infrastructure as foreign-based attacks have penetrated government websites and email systems, social media accounts and, most important, vast data troves containing Social Security numbers, financial information, medical records and other personal data on millions of Americans.

Counterintelligence officials say their adversaries combine those immense data files and then employ sophisticated software to try to isolate disparate clues that can be used to identify and track — or worse, blackmail and recruit — U.S. intelligence operatives.

TV Remains King in Political Ad Spending:

There is an adage in American politics: Campaigns don’t start until the first commercial appears on television. Despite the enormous growth of online campaigning, that half-century of tradition is proving a difficult habit to break.

Candidates and outside groups are expected to spend $1.1 billion on digital advertising in 2016, up almost 700% from $162 million in the 2012 elections.

That this would happen is no surprise. That it is happening so quickly caught me off guard. Live Sports No Longer TV’s Holy Grail in U.S. as Ratings Peak:

“Everyone thought sports rights were the Holy Grail,” said Brandon Ross, an analyst at BTIG Research. “But if your revenues are not as high as you expected and you’ve signed long-term, high-priced agreements, that makes things tough.”

Live sporting events are a top reason people still pay for cable, so media companies battle each other for rights to broadcast athletic events. Sports traditionally have boosted ratings coveted by advertisers and driven up the fees paid by pay-TV operators such as Comcast Corp. to carry channels.

Yet sports haven’t shielded TV networks from subscriber casualties. ESPN has lost 3 million subscribers in the past year and Disney cut its profit forecast earlier this month, sparking a massive selloff in U.S. media stocks. TNT and TBS, which carry basketball, baseball and golf, each shed more than 2 million, and Fox Sports 1 lost 440,000, according to Nielsen data.

12 basics of interviewing, listening and note-taking:

Not long ago, I taught a workshop on these topics to the young men of Poynter’s Write Field program, about 40 minority students attending middle school and high school. They found my lessons useful, so I thought I would pass them on to a larger audience.

I realize these dozen strategies constitute the basics. But when I am struggling with a craft – golf, music, writing – I find it helpful to remind myself of those basics, to climb down from the penthouse and visit the ground floor.

There are terrific extras in the comments covering most of the additions I’d suggest. So I’ll just add two more. First, pay attention to the subject’s nonverbals. More often than not, they won’t give you much. But when they do, they’ll make the interview. Second, if you’re in that person’s “home field” pay attention to the surroundings. Those details are often gold.

cycling / Friday / iPhone / journalism / links / photo / Twitter — Comments Off
28
Aug 15

And then you really wonder

Department witticisms:

You wonder if you’re making a difference, and then you see things like that.

Then and now … Aerial images show the slow return of the Lower Ninth Ward:

The following images show the evolution of one block in the Lower Ninth Ward that was situated directly in front of a levee that breached along the Industrial Canal ten years ago.

A decade into the Katrina diaspora:

Some stayed to rebuild their lives. Others chose to move on. Some had to let loved ones go, while others are no longer here themselves. Along the Gulf Coast, the hurricane’s punishing winds pushed people in directions they never imagined. Here is where some of those people stood in the early months after the disaster, and where they stand now.

Clearly it was the fault of the president’s weather machine. Stop Blaming Me for Hurricane Katrina:

I’m often asked, as the person who was running FEMA when Hurricane Katrina hit, why I didn’t evacuate New Orleans. My response is simple—FEMA had no authority to do that under the Constitution, which clearly establishes a system of federalism in which state and local governments are autonomous governmental entities. We call first responders “first” for a reason. When you dial 9-1-1 your call isn’t answered by an operator at 500 C Street SW, Washington, D.C., 20472. Your call is answered by a local government entity that has first and primary responsibility for a disaster.

Could FEMA have ordered the evacuation of New Orleans? Yes, had it waived posse comitatus and invoked the Insurrection Act, which Congress ultimately amended in 2006 to permit deployment of troops in response to natural disasters. That unprecedented action was actually contemplated days after landfall aboard Air Force One—and I advocated for it. After I advised the president to federalize the response, he sat with Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Air Force One and outlined his plan. We immediately started drafting the federalization documents for the president’s signature, but Governor Blanco requested time to think it over and the president acquiesced. While the governor considered her options, the city became more and more dysfunctional. Blanco ultimately rejected the president’s plan, and political considerations eventually pushed the idea aside.

By the time federalization was seriously considered, the biggest mistake had already been made: evacuation began too late. And even if FEMA had been given the power to order citizens out of New Orleans days earlier, it didn’t own the helicopters, military transport planes and amphibious armored personnel carriers necessary to carry out the evacuation of a major American city.

As the storm neared New Orleans, all I could do—and did do even before the federalization debate got underway—was go on television, radio and any media outlet my press team could find—and encourage people to “literally get your butts out of New Orleans before the storm hits.”

Can’t wait for the rebuttal to Michael Brown’s essay.

Got weekend plans? You are not late:

In terms of the internet, nothing has happened yet. The internet is still at the beginning of its beginning. If we could climb into a time machine and journey 30 years into the future, and from that vantage look back to today, we’d realize that most of the greatest products running the lives of citizens in 2044 were not invented until after 2014. People in the future will look at their holodecks, and wearable virtual reality contact lenses, and downloadable avatars, and AI interfaces, and say, oh, you didn’t really have the internet (or whatever they’ll call it) back then.

And they’d be right. Because from our perspective now, the greatest online things of the first half of this century are all before us. All these miraculous inventions are waiting for that crazy, no-one-told-me-it-was-impossible visionary to start grabbing the low-hanging fruit — the equivalent of the dot com names of 1984.

Because here is the other thing the greybeards in 2044 will tell you: Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an entrepreneur in 2014? It was a wide-open frontier! You could pick almost any category X and add some AI to it, put it on the cloud. Few devices had more than one or two sensors in them, unlike the hundreds now. Expectations and barriers were low. It was easy to be the first. And then they would sigh, “Oh, if only we realized how possible everything was back then!”

So, the truth: Right now, today, in 2014 is the best time to start something on the internet.

I got home and plopped down and didn’t want to move. I wanted a nap, but forced myself outside.

This was the better choice.

It was just a 15 mile ride, but it was better than a nap.