journalism « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

journalism

The variability of weather, devised to furnish unfailing conversation*

At the baseball stadium last night, before it turned cold again, Auburn hosted Alabama State. The hecklers were giving ASU’s third baseman a good-natured hard time. He had the misfortune to execute a poor slide in the early innings and then the good humor to laugh about it with the crowd later.

Late in the game, with ASU in the field, their short stop shifted far to his right. Someone pointed out how close the guy at short was to the third baseman. And then there was a weak ball up the line to third and the two guys ran into one another. Here is a dramatic reenactment:

Thereafter the Alabama State short stop was everyone’s hero, and he could do everything. Those guys were such great sports. The ASU third base coach offered free tickets to the Auburn students for their series this weekend. Auburn won 10-2.

We had dinner at Mellow Mushroom, which meant leftovers for lunch today.

It turned cold about that time. I debated turning on the electric blanket. No, I thought, spring is here. The windows were open earlier.

And then this morning it felt even colder somehow, which is to say the low 50s. We’ve been in the upper 70s, so there is a bit of chill again when you hit 54 at the high point of the day. Particularly when the sun is playing shy behind three or four layers of cloud cover.

Never could get warm today. I stayed curled up under a blanket with the space heater on. Spring is here, after all.

Sometime in the late afternoon, though, the sun finally came out. It was nice and bright and warmer, though the space heater stayed on all day, into the evening and night.

But we did get sunlight at the right time, my favorite time of day in our house, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned here before:

Those 25 minutes or so just feel magical. Anything is possible. The most ludicrous movie plots could become reality for those few moments. You revel in them, you wonder how they manage to escape so suddenly. And you reaffirm an incontrovertible truth; every house should have clear sight lines and plenty of windows facing west.

Tonight The Yankee made chicken tikka masala and naan, which is a new dish at home. It was good. Now, we’ve decided, we just want authentic Indian food.

Things to read: Usually videos like this are news simply because there is video. And usually it is some bad news, or something that barely qualifies as news. This, however, is awesome:

In an amazing rescue in Perth, Australia, a man administered CPR on a young girl who stopped breathing as her panicked and thankful father looked on.

Voyager is leaving the heliosphere, or may be leaving the heliosphere. It might be coming back, because it thinks it left the stove eye on. Or it could already be Vger. Whichever. Humanity is now interstellar:

What’s not in dispute among any of the scientists is that the spacecraft is now, undeniably, in a new and unexplored region—pushing the reach of humanity farther than it’s ever gone before. What we call that place is, in many respects, less important than the fact that we’re there at all.

According to new scientific findings set for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Voyager I has pushed into the great unknown.

NASA, however, remains skeptical about these new conclusions. “Consensus of the mission team is that NASA’s Voyager spacecraft has not left the solar system,” a NASA social media specialist told TIME via e-mail. “Statement soon from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.”

For years, scientists have speculated as to when Voyager would finally leave all traces of our sun behind — officially exiting the heliosphere, and entering the great undiscovered country beyond.

Here’s, perhaps, the dumbest story of the day:

Every suspect is entitled to his day in court, but for accused Auburn shooting suspect Desmonte Leonard, Wednesday’s hearing had to be postponed because no one thought to bring him.

[…]

(H)e was never transported the 50 or so miles from Montgomery to the Lee County Detention Facility.

Don’t make any attic jokes.

The best writing of the day is at Rapha:

Your brain can’t remember pain. Of that I am glad. I don’t miss the pain. I’ll tell you what I miss though, I miss the weather.

Did I ever tell you about when I used to train in Italy in the winter? In the mountains the snow would fall for days, and the hillsides would be covered in thick blankets of white, their peaks looking like the hunched shoulders of giant beasts, faces bowed in shame. Those giant mounds of rock were too scared to face me and too cold to move, and so I rode up them, and made heat of my own. I would catch fire; burning in my layers of clothes, cutting through the cold like an electric heater. Sweat would drip from my nose onto the white road, snow tingling as it melted on my exposed skin. The world was frozen, but I was roaring in flames, as if I was driving an open-top-car with the heater on full blast. I was my own nature. I was defiance.

That piece, about bicycle racing, just gets better and better. Penance for complaining about the cold this morning.

(*The title? Emily Post.)

journalism / links / things to read / Tuesday / Twitter — 2 Comments
19
Mar 13

1,032 words on a slice of the Steubenville story

There was a high profile rape trial in Ohio you might have noticed. You might have watched some media coverage that was sympathetic to the attackers. Perhaps you saw some of the news media shared the victim’s name — likely an honest error which nevertheless breaks an unwritten rule of this type of coverage.

I doubt you read this:

It’s a misplaced anger that will do nothing but further confuse the public about issues of rape and sexual assault, particularly as the crime affects children and teenagers, who make up 44 percent of rape victims.

[…]

Here’s the problem: Rape and other forms of sexual assault are incredibly common. (For more information and statistics go here or here.) Researchers estimate that one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually assaulted before age 18.

That means there are a lot of rapists out there. Sure, some rapists are responsible for multiple attacks and some are dangerous predators. But that many victims suggests profound confusion about rape on the part of both men and women, boys and girls.

Portraying all rapists as monsters and refusing them any sympathy creates a dynamic in which it’s impossible to acknowledge how many ordinary and common rapists live among us. (According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, “approximately 2/3 of assaults are committed by someone known to the victim,” and “38 percent of rapists are a friend or acquaintance.)

To media ethicist and Poynter Institute faculty member Kelly McBride, it seems we can’t characterize the familiar types as monsters. Just the strangers, one supposes.

When your premise starts out as “Railing against CNN’s Steubenville coverage is a waste of time” and moves to shakier ground from there you should reconsider your point. Otherwise you’ll conclude there are plenty of ordinary rapists right there in your hometown. Maybe on your city council! Or church or street! You know, just folks.

Maybe we should treat that as an extraordinary thing.

McBride sees this as “an opportunity to have an honest conversation about the sexual assault of children and teenagers, and about misguided perceptions of healthy sexuality and the role of sports culture.”

So sports turned the young men into rapists. Or maybe it was just that good old fashioned healthy American sexuality.

Poynter, which is a school “dedicated to teaching and inspiring journalists and media leaders” does fine work. This might be one of the most highly trafficked pieces they’ve published for some time, and you should read the comments. There McBride attempts to answer some of the criticisms:

I wish that some of the news orgs that are spending so much space on the CNN controversy would find some survivors to tell their stories.

This is a huge huge international problem. Yet, I think we will be more successful convincing the men who hold these views to see women as fully embodied humans and endowed with clear rights that should not be violated by approaching them as humans, not monsters. Tell someone he’s a monster and he’s not likely to hear you out.

I don’t believe having sympathy for an offender precludes me from being shocked at their sentences, especially when I compare them to the sentences that some teens receive for drug offenders.

(W)hat I would love to see is more news orgs taking the opportunity to explore how confused people are about consent.

Alternately, “You’re doing the wrong story, media” or “You aren’t seeing the right forest because of the wrong trees, society” or “They shouldn’t go to jail for too long because they aren’t monsters and many former victims are able to lead fruitful lives. Also, look at drug sentences.” or “People don’t understand.”

Gotcha.

If I may: Life is choices and consequences, with each meaning something. One choice can make you a gentleman or a braggart or a person who preys on other human beings.

It is troubling that there are so many in that latter group. Being critical of our media doesn’t diminish that. Praising our media for good coverage doesn’t either. Finding shades of gray within that group — as McBride seems to do — is problematic.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of opportunity to discuss both culture and media because, so often, media effects culture. McBride is missing that.

Her last graph:

Railing against missteps or an imbalance in coverage makes us less likely to take up powerful stories that will change the way we as a society understand the extent of the rape problem and the power we have to change it.

Do not share your indignation about “missteps or an imbalance in coverage.” That will … do something or other and you won’t like it.

It has to mean something when the media talks about cultural issues, preferably the right things, in the modern cultural context — yes, your mileage will occasionally vary. When the media strays they deserve a public course correction.

McBride is a media ethicist, a field where right and wrong would, occasionally, be a good thing. But this isn’t about the media for her, rather about some poor put upon teenagers. Did they get the proper messages? Did they know right from wrong? Who taught them that? Could the jocks with the promising grades and a modicum of athletic potential know any better? Or were they mired in some larger, dumber, ignorant problem? Just how backwards is your typical Steubenville teen scene anyway? Maybe it was their coaches? Teammates? Anything, anything but created, complimented or exacerbated by media, except that the larger problem was nurtured by media, which doesn’t deserve criticism, but should, in fact, change “the way we as a society understand the extent of the rape problem and the power we have to change it.”

The circular distraction is maddening.

Kelly McBride on Twitter:

@michaelsmith thank you.As a parent of teenagers, both boys and girls, I see the mixed messages they get on this topic. And I worry.

— Kelly McBride (@kellymcb) March 19, 2013

But it isn’t the parents’ problem, apparently:

@michaelsmithNow is when it counts. By the time they get to be teenagers, you can no longer influence them.

— Kelly McBride (@kellymcb) March 19, 2013

One wonders who she’s willing to blame. Maybe that’s the problem.

Friday / journalism / links / things to read — Comments Off
15
Mar 13

Journalism topics to get us through Friday

Google Reader is shutting down. Google is killing off a power tool used by their power users, citing low traffic and growth.

So, naturally, in everyone’s attempts to find suitable replacements other reader services are crashing under the strain. This is a low traffic tool to Google now, though they haven’t seemed to entertained the idea of just letting the thing live without their touch — which wouldn’t be much different than the way they’ve treated Reader anyway.

Jeff Jarvis, who literally wrote the book on Google:

This is the problem of handing over one’s digital life to one company, which can fail or unilaterally kill a service users depend on. Google has the right to kill a shrinking service. But it also has a responsibility to those who depended on it and in this case to the principle of RSS and how it has opened up the web and media. I agree with Tim O’Reilly that at the minimum, Google should open-source Reader.

The killing of Reader sends an unfortunate signal about whether we can count on Google to continue other services we come to need.

In the end the old saying is true. You get what you pay for, even if you are the service yourself.

Lifehacker has some alternatives. Digg is counting down, and building their own reader.

And now journalism things from various other places. From PR Daily, 6 ways to run a media room reporters will love:

“Organization is key,” said Eileen Melnick McCarthy, senior communications specialist at the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement in Ottawa. “Remember the reporter is your client, so do what it takes to ensure they get what they need.”

There are six tips, including pre-plan, notifying the media, being prepared and more.

Poynter has tips on How journalists can become better interviewers:

How do you walk up to strangers and ask them questions? How do you get people — tight-lipped cops, jargon-spouting experts, everyday folks who aren’t accustomed to being interviewed — to give you useful answers? How do you use quotes effectively in your stories?

That one also has several helpful tips including, you guessed it, be prepared.

Salon takes a negative view of the media ecosystem. It defies excerption, but here’s the final ‘graph:

There is probably no better evidence that journalism is a public good than the fact that none of America’s financial geniuses can figure out how to make money off it. The comparison to education is striking. When managers apply market logic to schools, it fails, because education is a cooperative public service, not a business. Corporatized schools throw underachieving, hard-to-teach kids overboard, discontinue expensive programs, bombard students with endless tests, and then attack teacher salaries and unions as the main impediment to “success.” No one has ever made profits doing quality education—for-profit education companies seize public funds and make their money by not teaching. In digital news, the same dynamic is producing the same results, and leads to the same conclusion.

Meanwhile, Conde Nast is going to video:

The move is part of a broader expansion the company is making into television and digital

[…]

For magazine publishers, many of whom are struggling with shrinking readership, building an online portfolio is seen as crucial as both a promotional platform and a new revenue stream.

And speaking of revenues, Alan Mutter discusses why publishers should be worried about retail apps:

From Best Buy to CVS and from Kroger to Macy’s, the biggest buyers of newspaper advertising have launched sophisticated smartphone apps to establish increasingly direct and profitable relationships with individual customers.

These efforts should give publishers the shivers, because this new channel represents a major threat to the retail lineage that constitutes half of what’s left of the advertising sold by newspapers – an industry, lest we forget, whose collective print and digital ad sales are less than half the record $49.4 billion achieved in 2005.

Smartphone apps appeal to retailers, for starters, because they are far cheaper than buying full-page ads and preprint inserts in newspapers. Perhaps even more compelling to merchants is that apps enable them to precisely target offers to individuals, thus achieving not only happier customers but also fatter tickets at the checkout line.

And a new site called FOIA Shaming.

Lastly, stuff from my campus blog:

New York Times sneak peek

When good journalism and good business intertwine

Don’t mistake comedy for the truth

That’s plenty to read over as you head into the weekend. Hope yours is grand!

iPhone / journalism / links / photo / Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
6
Mar 13

A day in the multimedia life, in pictures

This was my day, in four pictures.

The Samford Crimson launched a new look this week for the last quarter of their academic year’s publication run. Looks pretty sharp:

Also there’s a new Target now open just down the street.

Here are two more quick shot of the inside layout. They worked hard, had extra meetings, were excited and it shows. This section is designed by our Society of Professional Journalists award-winner features editor Megan Thomspon:

The sports section is designed by SEJC award winner and sports editor Clayton Hurdle

I tinkered with that page in InDesign last night after they’d finished it. It is solid.

I left a meeting discussing the Crimson to drive over to a television station. CBS 42’s Bill Payer was giving my class a tour. Here he is showing off their mobile production unit:

They built that from the ground up two years ago. They didn’t copy anyone, just built what they thought they needed. They got everything right, except they forgot a kitchen and restroom. Payer tells me that the station could burn down around them and they could go on the air from this truck and cover the news.

Being at CBS meant a chance to see the always welcoming Mark Prater. We sat in the studio and pitched around ideas while, downstairs in the studio, the students were hearing a bit of breaking news. Seems some officers were out serving a warrant on a woman and she sliced them up with a box cutter.

Three officers were taken to the hospital for treatment. Another was treated on the scene. Samford grad Kaitlin McCulley reports:

And so what started out as serving a robbery warrant will now likely become four counts of attempted murder.

There was also a big fire leading the news cast, and as I told the news director, the days I really miss it are the days when I am watching a newsroom buzz. He invited me to join in, but I figured they had it covered. Kaitlin was reporting, after all.

journalism / links / Monday / things to read — Comments Off
4
Mar 13

You can’t make these up

A nurse who doesn’t save lives, state land without flags, dangerous breakfast treats and it all starts … now.

Do not get ill, destabilize your vitals or otherwise threaten to die in this place:

The executive director of a senior living facility in Bakersfield defended its policies that apparently prohibited a nurse last week from giving CPR to an elderly woman who was said to be barely breathing and later died.

“In the event of a health emergency at this independent living community our practice is to immediately call emergency medical personnel for assistance and to wait with the individual needing attention until such personnel arrives,” Jeffrey Toomer, director of the facility, said in a statement on behalf of Glenwood Gardens.

“That is the protocol we followed,” he said. “As with any incident involving a resident, we will conduct a thorough internal review of this matter, but we have no further comments at this time.”

Bakersfield fire dispatcher Tracey Halvorson pleaded with the nurse on the phone, begging her to start CPR on the elderly resident, according to the 911 tape released by the Bakersfield Fire Department.

“It’s a human being,” Halvorson said, speaking quickly.

“Is there anybody that’s willing to help this lady and not let her die?”

The woman paused.

“Um, not at this time.”

We’ve maybe, possibly, lost our way.

But the poor nurse, who was then having a really bad, no good unfortunate day, managed to be heard on the 911 recording. “She’s yelling at me,” she said of Halvorson, “and saying we have to have one of our residents perform CPR. I’m feeling stressed, and I’m not going to do that, make that call.”

(Here’s an update where the family speaks and the firm says things and I don’t care.)

That’s some kind of nurse, some kind of medical care mitigated by absolutely nothing.

Also in California: Caltrans policy stymies a proposed veterans monument.

Small-town folks struggling to put up a monument to veterans: It sounds like something straight out of “Mayberry R.F.D.,” but for residents of this Central Coast town, it feels more like “Catch-22.”

After three years, the privately funded $60,000 monument, which is sponsored by the American Legion and would be placed on a sliver of land owned by the California Department of Transportation, is still unbuilt. The sticking point has been opposition from Caltrans to the monument’s use of the American flag and the agency’s apparent reluctance to allow the display of words — such as “United States” — on the monument’s military emblems.

[…]

In an interview, Peter Adam, the supervisor representing Orcutt, was unequivocal about the idea of striking the flag from a veterans monument: “That’s a degree of crazy we shouldn’t allow.”

The policy stems from a First Amendment case where the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Caltrans should not have allowed removal of activists’ antiwar banners from a highway overpass while U.S. flags were allowed to fly. Caltrans, then, decided to bar all flags from state roads. The plaintiff in that suit, by the way, is quoted in this story. And they are as mystified by it all as you are right now.

Our great-grandparents would be ashamed of all of us. Bureaucracy in general, however, is thrilled.

And we haven’t even discussed pastries yet. But we will.

A seven-year-old Maryland boy has been suspended from school after biting his breakfast pastry into a shape that his teacher thought looked like a gun.

Josh Welch, a second-grader at Park Elementary School in Baltimore, said he was trying to nibble his strawberry Pop Tart into a mountain.

“It was already a rectangle and I just kept on biting it and biting it and tore off the top and it kinda looked like a gun but it wasn’t,” Josh said. “All I was trying to do was turn it into a mountain but it didn’t look like a mountain really and it turned out to be a gun kinda.”

But when his teacher saw what he had done, the boy says she got “pretty mad” and he knew he was “in big trouble.”

Josh is in the second grade. He should know the difference between mountains and firearms, even if his school doesn’t. Here’s the letter home to concerned parents.

Assault pastries! That sucrose-laden confectionary treat is a loaded weapon! Suspended for two days, young Josh and his friends will no doubt realize how silly the authority figures in their school are behaving.

When I was in high school one of our teachers built and demonstrated a potato gun that fired off rubbing alcohol. She would run through the halls, burst open doors and shoot — wait for it — a tiny nerf basketball at people. It was hysterical. It was also the 1990s, so get off my lawn, I guess, with your “nurses” and your flags and your Pop Tarts.