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journalism

21st century living

I’m thinking of adding a new category of pop culture criticism … and this is going to take more caffeine. Pardon me for a second.

There. A hot tea on a cool day should do the trick. Don’t drink coffee. Never touched the stuff. My grandparents, who drank it like water, were convinced that if you gave a baby a tablespoon of coffee they’d never want it. Or so the story goes. Don’t know how old I was, or if this actually happened, but I don’t even care to go down the coffee aisle at the grocery store. I don’t even like the smell. So it is tea, for me, then.

Anyway. I’m thinking of adding a new category of pop culture criticism which is really just another opportunity for me to creep more steadily into the Get Off My Lawn subculture. In this, the neo-post-post modern age, I will call this category 21st Century Living, in that it is simultaneously obvious, conversant, ironic and has a whiff of both despair and angst, but not in a way that suggests I care that much, as I am already dismissive of the entire enterprise.

See? I’m not into the Get Off My Lawn subculture just yet. I understand things, I simply recognize the unworthiness of the general condition.

Take this commercial, for instance. Watch the first five seconds, over and over again, until you figure it out:

Or this CNN “package” where Anderson Cooper tries, really hard, to make some sort of wry observation by cunningly asking non-questions to a giggly reporter.

So I guess they don’t drug test at CNN? This is simply life imitating art. Consider Anchorman 2 (which, hysterically gives Ron Burgundy credit for the sad state of modern broadcast news):

About the commercial in the first video: Someone thought, “The stations that we are buying airtime, have stupid, stupid audiences. Someone will go try to build a time machine. We should stop that with some fine print, so as to ameliorate any potential culpability we have if some kid does invent the flux capacitor.”

And that’s 21st Century Living.

Things to read … because this stuff is worth your attention, no matter what century you’re in.

I collected a few of the reactions on an in-state “story” today. This is all about the headline.

Anytime you curate replies you are liable to get some colorful retort. And if you publish them you are just as likely to get someone accusing you of cherry picking. Doesn’t mean you use the most off-color one as a headline if you are aspiring to be the premiere news outlet in the state.

Todd Stacey is a staffer for U.S. Rep Martha Roby in Washington D.C. He previously worked in Montgomery, hence Chuck Dean’s “you guys” swat. But see what Dean did there? “Hey, it isn’t my fault. What’s more, if you don’t like what I wrote, go do something about it. But it is just a heads up, really.” This entire piece provides little to no public service, which is still the publicly stated goal for news outlets, but it could also do as much with a more appropriate headline.

AP’s Carvin: News Battle Near For Twitter, FB

Twitter and Facebook are setting themselves up for a battle for news supremacy among social media networks. Twitter, though, holds the upper hand, according to Eric Carvin, social media editor at the Associated Press. Twitter has “come to realize the value that the news industry has in terms of what people want to consume on social,” Carvin says. In an interview with NetNewsCheck, Carvin discusses potential news moves from those social platforms, along with the sleeper potential of Google Plus.

Half of U.S. Counties Haven’t Recovered From Recession

About half of the nation’s 3,069 county economies are still short of their prerecession economic output, reflecting the uneven economic recovery, according to a new report from the National Association of Counties.

The overall U.S. economy had reached its prerecession level of gross domestic product three years ago, Commerce Department figures show.

National statistics “mask the reality on the ground.”

There is an interactive map. How is your county faring?

If graduation rates is your metric of choice, this is good news: Alabama public schools set state record with 80 percent graduation rate in 2013. Or, even if you take the skeptical — “school was just made easier” — perspective, you at least have a new state record. This is using the on-time method.
Doesn’t 80 still seem low, though?

The individual school breakdowns aren’t out yet, apparently, but we can look at some recent numbers. Here are the superlatives for the state in the 2011-2012 year. Charles Henderson High listed a 58 percent graduation rate, the lowest in the state. Coffee County boasted a 94 percent.

Must be the caffeine they have down there.

journalism / links / swimming / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
8
Jan 14

The cold, the pool and more

The freezing weather has broken. You may call it a polar vortex, the now popular, misused term found so often in the media. I just call it cold. We’re due two or three seriously cold days a year here, and, before today, we’ve endured about 36 hours of them.

It came in Monday night, when just before midnight the wind chill was -1.8. Early Tuesday morning it was -5.5 and the low was 9 degrees.

Have I mentioned we live in the Deep South?

Today the high was 45 degrees, so we’re on our way out of this. We may as well have a picnic.

During the cold snap we also had a fire warning. Things were dry. It was windy. Also cold. And fires sounded great. So we burned everything. It was terribly romantic, and now everything is covered in soot.

OK, we didn’t. But it was tempting.

Returned to the pool today. This was the first time there since October and that’s embarrassing. Did 1,000 yards.

This is a warmup for swimmers. But we’re talking about me here and 1,000 yards is a cause for celebration. I fought my goggles and complained almost the entire way.

And now I have tiny bruises on my maxilla bone, because I can never get the straps on my goggles right. They’re constantly squeezing and still letting in water and fogging up. All of which is silly. I can control that in a mask. I can fix all of that on a mask at 80 feet underwater.

Goggles? Total mystery, apparently.

Parks and Recreation, the quiet little show that could, is celebrating 100 episodes. That’s the magic syndication number, which is why you’ll soon see this show in the most inexplicable places. Here’s a 100 episode special, which starts with Perd Hapley, who would easily be my favorite character on the show if Ron Swanson wasn’t my spirit animal.

Things to read … I find ’em, I share ’em.

The Dominance of Loooooong in the Age of Short and, essentially, the opposite view, in The blog is dead, long live the blog.

We seemingly have an incessant need to call things dead in the media. Formats and a medium may change or even contract, but that doesn’t mean they are dead. (Newspapers aren’t dead, but they surely are different.) Tumblr and WordPress alone boast more than 164 million blogs. Even if half of those are stagnant, well, that’s hardly dead, or even on life support. Hyperbole, happily, is alive and well.

Two things going on in this story. One is the headline, the other is this nugget, “While it sits in the heart of San Francisco’s startup community in the SOMA district, the Chronicle has lagged in its coverage of technology and social media. Its circulation plummeted by 50% between 2009 and 2012. ” Newspaper to Put All Reporters Through Social Media Boot Camp

Still want a drone. Still window shopping and daydreaming. This doesn’t change that: FAA on drone recordings by journalists: ‘There is no gray area’. Mostly because it is 100 percent incorrect. Happily, the comments set this entire story upside down, which means it is right side up.

Finally, the much-anticipated rollout of the New York Times new site is upon us. Here’s a review. Also, here’s a TouchCast discussion about the redesign.

Love TouchCast. There is a lot of amazing stuff there, for your iPad and browser viewing. Make interactive, realtime video products with the swipe of your finger. What a world. I’ll be using it soon, too, I hope.

friends / journalism / links / movies / things to read / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
17
Dec 13

Smaug the Stupendous

Oh just a fine day. We caught a matinee of the new Hobbit movie:

Better than the first Hobbit movie, with fewer plot elements that were recycled from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But if the existence of them annoys you, sorry. (And don’t pretend like you didn’t notice.) There were drunken elves. Legolas and friends had a fine, running fight among the barrels. Loved the barrel chase. Hated the spiders.

The elvish love triangle is boring, and surely directive from some studio suit. Legolas seems like a different character. Older and harder, though it is the better part of a century before the other movies. This is another way prequels (let’s call the Hobbit a series of prequels) are difficult to swallow.

I’m sure it abandoned Tolkien — I don’t care; I read the Hobbit years ago and found it tedious and not worth my time, feel free to leave now if this is what you judge people against. — but it also gives you Martin Freeman, who is better than you realize. And Smaug is a grand visual thing. It takes a lot to visually impress us in movies these days, but the dragon should.

I wanted Smaug to be Benedict Cumberbatch, but this is a dragon, and they’ve modulated the voice so much that it isn’t Cumberbatch, which is fine. I’m ready to be free of the mercurial dwarves.

But a good movie. It cost $8 per ticket. This was a matinee. Back in my day, and get off my lawn.

We had Mexican with our friend Sara, whom we have not seen in a long while. We had cookies after that. We watched a comedian perform on Netflix after that. It was all a very fine day.

Things to read … These first few are submitted without comment or, simply put, have a nice day:

Capitol Hill Reacts to Judge’s NSA Phone Surveillance Ruling

Expanded Medicaid’s fine print holds surprise: ‘payback’ from estate after death

In Alabama, car insurance premiums jump an average of 22 percent after 1 claim, study finds

Sometimes I think the people in Washington over-complicate things. (Which is a naive way of suggesting that they’re actually doing things without grand and sweeping ulterior motives, but we all know better.) So allow me to simplify this. Let’s keep the obligations we have to those with whom we’ve obligated ourselves. Sen. Jeff Sessions: Leave military retiree pay alone, close tax loophole for illegal immigrants:

Sessions said lawmakers should “scour the federal budget for other available savings,” before cutting veterans benefits.

“America’s service members have already sacrificed so much on our behalf and Congress should not put additional burdens on them even as it spares federal civilian workers from the same treatment,” Sessions said. “Removing this unbalanced treatment of our military retirees ought to be one of the key actions we should take before this legislation moves forward.

Disregarding veterans is no way to run a government. You could put a lot of things in as the subject of that sentence. You’d be right. I feel like this is one of the important ones.

This is neat: The story of Bud, the Toomer’s Oak offspring that refuses to die.

Some of these I wouldn’t have put on such a list, but there are some real gems here: 54 Reasons to Love Photography in 2013. That will just make you want to click the shutter button a few hundred more times.

Speaking of photos, the next several days here, at least through Christmas, will likely be just that: snapshots. Come for the ornaments, and come back to see whatever surprises turn up.

cycling / journalism / links / Monday / movies / Samford / things to read / video — Comments Off
16
Dec 13

No title Monday

I’m thinking of using that headline every Monday. I don’t know what it is about the day, but they never lend themselves to anything insightful, curiosity-inducing, oblique or funny. TDoesn’t matter if they are busy days or quiet days or anything. They all seem to exist in the category of “They just are.”

And if that is the extent of your Monday problems, well, just try to keep it together, would ya, bub?

I took the opportunity for a quick ride this afternoon. I was going to go farther, but I started too late in the day. I was going to try a new route, but it seemed wise to get home in the daylight rather than the twilight.

Besides, I was just trying to stretch my legs and clear my head.

Which had a soda cup tossed at it. So that was charming.

That’s never happened before. But the best part was that I almost caught up with the guy in the white pickup, license plate redacted to protect the owner in case the truck was stolen for a joy ride by a guy with a taste for Sonic, at the next stop sign.

I’d decided I’d stop right by his window and nicely say “How awkward for you.”

But he got through the intersection before I could catch him. So that’s a good reason to get faster.

Things to read … Robot Writers and the Digital Age:

The printing press put a generation of scribes out of a job, and the telegraph sent couriers scurrying to find new employment.

Could software robots do the same for reporters?

That’s one of many questions raised by the emergence of Narrative Science and Automated Insights, two startups that have developed sophisticated computer programs that analyze large amounts of data and automatically generate news stories.

Someone told me once, when I was first starting out, this could never happen. She no longer works in news, but for different reasons. That story does a nice job identifying a lot of the interesting work done in automated/robotic/AI reporting. In the short and middle distance we’ll see a place where programs do some really awesome augmenting and complimenting the work of human reporters. In the long term? Don’t bet against this stuff. Or someone might refer to you vaguely, as I did to start this paragraph.

Once again, this was all foreseen by Back to the Future II. Though they’ve yet to deliver on the hover boards.

I wonder if robot reporters would accept so many “anonymous sources” as their human counterparts are doing as of late. Anonymous sources are increasing in news stories, along with rather curious explanations:

“Frankly, this kind of sourcing is ridiculous,” says Alicia Shepard, a journalist and NPR’s former ombudsman. She adds: “I get it that [news organizations] are trying to be transparent, but it doesn’t enhance the believability of the anonymous quote. The only thing worthwhile about the convoluted sourcing explainers is how funny they are.”

In fact, such descriptions can do more harm than good, says Matt Carlson, an associate professor at St. Louis University and the author of “On Condition of Anonymity: Unnamed Sources and the Battle for Journalism,” published in 2011. Rather than enhancing a reader’s understanding, the descriptions used by reporters can be disingenuous and misleading about a source’s affiliation or motives, Carlson says.

Using anonymity in reporting has a venerable place in the craft, but it is becoming a crutch.

I read some wire copy today that five times (five!) referred to unnamed sources. How many reporters, branded or generic, do you trust that you’ll, as a reader, allow five references to anonymity and no names on the record?

By the way, that was a sports story.

Related only in that these are stories and they are about sports: perhaps you’ve seen the Together We Make Football promos on television? Well, the finalists include some incredible tales.

Here’s a quote: “It took me a while to realize I was still alive. I thought, ‘This is what it feels like to be dead.'”

Now go read the story.

This video is of mom recording her son receiving his acceptance letter to Samford. Fun stuff:

In a somewhat similar vein, this reporter covered a story and then got involved personally. Two years later and the Boston Globe’s Billy Baker is updating the tale on Twitter, where it was a huge hit today. Now it is a story in the traditional format. Two critically poor kids. VIetnamese parents. Dad killed himself. Kids struggle. Reporter comes along and gives them a nudge here and there. They scrape and save, these kids. They worked hard:

In the fall, Johnny left for his freshman year at UMass Amherst.

As college application time rolled around for George a few months later, we knew he was in a good position. His grades were outstanding. He had a compelling story. And so he aimed high. Very high.

These boys are the nearest I’ve come to that thing we call the American Dream. But when George texted me on Monday evening …

Well, just go read the thing.

Take a tissue with you.

journalism / links / Samford / things to read / Thursday / video — Comments Off
12
Dec 13

Loan me your 3D printer

The grades are in. The grades are done. Here’s to another hope that I got them all correct. You always have a slight concern about that sort of thing. The paperwork, should you find yourself in error, would surely be immense.

Paperwork being one of those evolving terms. I’m sure the entire process is all contained on one of the three or four web-based forms we use for most everything. And, yet, there is still plenty of paperwork. Some of it changes with the seasons. It could be that someone in an office somewhere has found a more efficient use for line 42 on form R-163. It is possible there is a legal justification for such regular changes. Maybe the person In Charge of Forms is in cahoots with the Xerox toner guy.

“I need to sell 16 more units. Isn’t that form you printed 7,000 copies of last week outmoded?”

Of course forms aren’t printed like that. Almost every office in the country uses their computer and a printer as a small-scale analog of the PDQ distribution method.

Bet you never thought of your machine as Amazon, marketing 1s and 0s. I think of it as a site like Cafepress or Zazzle. You want that shirt or custom mug? Print. (Now run out and buy yourself a 3D printer and go wild.)

I thought of Cafepress because that’s where I order our ornaments from every year. We do custom pieces, photos from places we’ve been that year. This year’s shots include a scene from the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, London and after the Iron Bowl.

We have so many of the ornaments now that the project has outgrown the tabletop tree. Next year we’ll need another option. (Can I borrow your 3D printer?)

Things to read … First, two updates from yesterday. You remember the sign language story, no doubt. Here’s the latest. The story involves angels and perhaps some psychotic delusions.

The boy in Denver that was suspended for giving his girlfriend a peck on the cheek? The “educators” couldn’t back peddle fast enough. This story does have something from the point of view of the little girl’s mother, which is probably where this should have started and stopped anyway.

Now two cute kid stories. First, go ahead and time yourself on how long you can keep the “Awww” to yourself here:

And when you read this story you’ll want to hug everyone in it:

Over Thanksgiving weekend 2012, Slade, then 6-years-old, was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Lymphoma.

Doctors knew his young body was making too many immature white blood cells and would need chemotherapy immediately.

Without a minute to waste, an ambulance transported Slade and Emily over to St. Jude where he remained for eight steady weeks.

But that is just the beginning of a wonderful story. Go ahead and read it. We’ll be here when you get back.

Branded Video Sharing Almost 50 Times Higher Than 5 Years Ago:

According to The Unruly Viral Spiral, the sharing of video ads has increased almost 50 times over the last eight years. Unruly’s latest interactive infographic visualizes the explosive growth of video sharing since 2006, charting the extent to which many advertisers are using social video to amplify their brand.

[…]

According to the data, the top three ads in 2013 have so far attracted 11.6 million shares — 47.5 times more than the top three ads managed in 2006 (244,395 shares combined).

Video, stand-out video, is where we all need to be headed. And make sure you are thinking about mobile devices when you set out on that journey.

Aren’t you glad I mentioned Videolicious yesterday?