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On a Friday night, a bunch of college students chose to spend several hours in a new television studio:
On a Friday night, on homecoming weekend, they could have been anywhere. But there they were.
And, for a moment, I sat at the news desk:
Felt like old times, even if it was a simple microphone check.
While we followed the horrible news from Paris last night our news editor learned that 11 Samford people were in the City of Light. (All are safe and accounted for.)
Naturally, she went to work, writing about that story. This made me read copy on a Friday night and fire off a few salvos of emails. And then they interviewed one of those people Saturday and wrote more. So I had to read that and write another few emails, praising our staff, advising them, giving them (hopefully) helpful ideas for their coverage. And now they’ll go talk to more of them, and all of this will no doubt repeat itself. Because a news editor, an English major who wants to work in museums, cares an awful lot about doing it right.
This happened on their Friday night and over the course of their weekend. This was in addition to their regular school week and the other jobs some of them have. It happened after they were in the newsroom until 2 a.m. on Wednesday morning putting together a newspaper and then spent three hours with me, until 9 p.m. on Wednesday night, talking about that issue. And they’ll do it all again tomorrow and Wednesday.
You have to be dedicated to work with student-journalists, because they are incredibly dedicated to their jobs. They care about their community and their pursuit of good journalism. Sometimes that means they work every day. Would that more did. Student-journalists don’t often get the credit for it that their output deserves, but it is gratifying to work with students so invested in the work they are doing, beyond the normal scope and scale in which they work.
The park, the crack of the bat, umps making bad calls, managers doing their best to make the umpires look good. (Seriously, you don’t make the last out at third.) Ahh, baseball. It is a communal sport to me at this point. I’ve long since stopped watching it on television. I don’t follow standings or stats or side stories of any league at any level. But I will go to the park to watch a game. And I’m always pleased to do it if there are people around I know a little bit.
Mostly, though, I go for the peanuts. Peanuts are usually a springtime food for me. But I had a few today, and that seemed like something to take a picture with.
This is the other side of having a camera in your phone. It sometimes creates the opportunity for an uninspired pic. I would have never brought my Canon to my eye, let alone changed the aperture or adjusted the shutter speed for that snapshot. But, it allowed me to get a few sentences on sport and legumes, so there’s that.
Here’s the podcast I recorded yesterday. This is with one of my students, and the features editor of the Crimson. He’s my first student guest on this program. Hopefully the first of many. Jimmy did a great job and this episode shows how easy it could be for others interested in such a conversation. If you like movies, you’ll find this a very interesting chat. And, he said, his mother was proud to hear it. Hi, Jimmy’s mom! Check it out.
It occurs to me now that I should have pulled out the phone to take a picture of him in action. I bet his mom would have liked that even more. Except the background would have been pretty flat. So I could dress up the room. At which point I would be inclined to take that shot with my DSLR …
In a mostly-unrelated story, this is at least the third television outlet to give this a try:
Swiss TV station @lemanbleutv replaces cameras with iPhones and selfie sticks/ http://t.co/5AFbK10PQc pic.twitter.com/NtrDex6J2u
— LIQUID NEWSROOM (@LiquidNewsroom) October 8, 2015
It is in play at a Scandinavian station. It underwhelmed in an American news shop. But I’m sure it’ll be tried again. We already have the technology to do this sort of thing from our homes on the cheap. I’m shopping for green screens right now. Someone, in their den or an extra bedroom or basement, is going to resurrect the phrase “When news breaks, we fix it!”
It’ll be all downhill from there.
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.
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:
