journalism

journalism / links / Monday / Samford / things to read / Twitter — Comments Off on Ziggy’s not so sure
8
Apr 13

Ziggy’s not so sure

I watched one of the lesser Quantum Leaps late last night.

This is 8 1/2 Months, the one where Sam is about to deliver a baby with the help of a kindly old doctor. I don’t remember this episode. I’m trying to imagine the pitch at the creative table. “Let’s see what the imaging chamber does with vastly different biology. And spice it up with an Oklahoma dirt version of Steel Magnolias!”

There’s a poor man’s Susan Sarandon, a poor man’s Olympia Dukakis and more ’50s “I hear tell she ain’t got no horse sense” vernacular than you can shake a colorblind cat at. The best part is when Al, Sam’s faithful friend in the future who appears in the form of a hologram who serves as his guide, shows up. This is the actual dialog.

Sam: “I can’t have a baby!”

Al: “I know, but Ziggy’s not so sure.”

Computers.

Also, the baby, in utero in the 21st century, is bonding with Sam in 1955. Not everything in the third season was genius.

The great Anne Haney guest stars. Because this is the 1950s she is there trying to coax Sam into giving up the baby so that it can be sent off to some quiet home that is better suited for it than an 18-year-old girl, or a middle-aged, time-traveling, brilliant-scientist-with-an-amnesia problem. Haney’s character could not close the deal though, because Sam has been operating all this time that he’s leaping into these lives to put right what once went wrong. It wasn’t for a few more seasons that we realized he was dead. And these must just be really excitable neurons firing off at the end.

Imagine if there had been popular message boards around when this TV show was on the air. Or if JJ Abrams was involved.

If/when they re-launch this series, I’d watch this episode again. I’d sit through it, I’m saying, but only if JJ Abrams isn’t around to make the foggy mist from the trees turn into the evil alien that is ready to fell us all, and also, there is a massive conspiracy that only Al can uncover, if he doesn’t get unplugged.

I hate relaunches.

Anyway, Anne Haney would get her revenge. She showed up again eight months later (in realtime) as a different character set in Arkansas two years earlier (the drought episode). This made sense on Quantum Leap and quite possibly nowhere else.

And then, finally, after we’d met the father-to-be — he worked for Sam’s dad in the oil fields, but was going off to college in the fall, he was all “I’d want no baby!” — we have the moment of truth. At the pitch table with the writers this was great. “OK, then we’ll have Sam go through all seven stages of grief to acceptance. It’ll be a comical ride from the front door of the hospital into the delivery room. And we’ll show stirrups again! And then Sam, who is intent on keeping this baby, will finally be resistant about having the baby, because, you know, he’s got boy parts, except he’s a woman in this episode.”

And someone says “Wait. He — ”

And then the first guy again, says “They’re watching NBC. They’ll go along with it.

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

Now Al pops back into the delivery room to tell us that the baby has disappeared in the future. Sam is in stirrups in the past. Puuuuush!

The doctor, played by Parley Baer, who is a poor man’s Barnard Hughes, who played the curmudgeonly old doctor in Doc Hollywood, says “I see a head … ”

And Sam leaps.

I plugged Hughes, who has 101 titles on IMDB and Baer, who has 270 titles, into the Oracle of Bacon. They have at least five different one-step-removed connections from one another, including Coreys Haim and Feldman. Why either of them felt the need to work after that, I don’t know.

The gentleman that cuts my hair some times remembers me better than other times. He sees a lot of folks, of course. Today was one of those days where it all clicked. He remembered I taught journalism and wanted to know what I thought of “that Selena woman.” You know how you can change the subject when something like that comes up? “Fox News!”

So we talked about something going on in the Aurora shooting case, where a reporter is refusing a judge’s orders and may be going to jail. We did not have to talk about that Selena woman. Just as well.

(My answer would have been “I was never that strong of a creative writer, and so I am not really the best person to ask.” Because when everyone else is saying everything there is to say about a particular topic, what’s the point?)

So I left with a nice new hairstyle and we talked about photography in class this afternoon.

I have to pack a bag. Here, have some things to read.

How mobile has changed daily news consumption and why you need to understand it:

Mobile devices have extended the time frame during which publishers need to pay attention to the content they are putting in front of consumers, but it has also massively increased the complexity of news consumption throughout the day. That makes delivering the right content in the right way at the right time far more challenging.

If you are in the communication business and you aren’t by now paying attention to mobile growth I’m not sure what will convince you.

Journalism’s decline boosts j-schools

“There is something new to learn [at journalism schools] for the first time since the advent of broadcast journalism in the 1950s,” said Steve Shepard, founding dean of CUNY’s school, which enrolled its first class in 2006. “And it’s much harder to learn it on the job—if you can get a job—because there’s much less mentoring going on compared to my day.”

[…]

Professors acknowledge that they’re sending students out into a tough, unpredictable environment, but say that is part of their education.

Master a skill set, learn more about another one. Consider a double major. Redouble your best writing and editing efforts. Realize the first job probably isn’t going to be The Job. Show them what you have and demonstrate your potential. Work hard. Do good work. Build your portfolio.

That’s the way of it.

Press angry over Obama’s lack of access:

Newspapers and reporters are being left out of the equation, even such established publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Reider reports that Obama “has turned to regional reporters and TV celebrities who are less likely to challenge him.” Obama’s go-to interviewer is Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” who in January conducted an interview with Obama and Hilary Clinton. The interview was heavily criticized as being “soft.” This is the complaint of many of Obama’s interviews. He is effectively bypassing reporters who ask the tough questions.

First of all, that’s a poor headline. President Obama is accessing things just fine. He’s just not giving the press corps the time of day.

Second, not many people in that particular room are asking “tough questions” these days when they do have the opportunity.

You can look at that in one of two ways. You could scream “Libruhl meeeedia!” Or you might consider that these people are on edge because a.) they have a job to do and b.) when the time comes to talk to someone more important than poor Jay Carney they are chilled because they don’t want to be shut out in the future because c.) see part a.

Also, the president has his audience, he has an embarrassment of riches of media that aren’t in the White House press corps that are just thrilled to have him on the Morning Zoo. And the president also has a communication office that can these days speak directly to his constituency. He doesn’t need the media right now.

That’s the same thing I’ve been saying about athletic departments for four years now, by the way. If you have a devoted following and the tools to go directly to them, sans filter, you’re going to take advantage of that opportunity. The journalists tasked with covering that particular beat are going to be marginalized.

I don’t like it. (It is fraught with danger.) I just see it.

Peektures. Margaret Thatcher came to Samford during the university’s 150th anniversary. She’s here with then-president Thomas Corts.

They are standing in front of the library and Dr. Corts appears to be point out some feature of the administration building, Samford Hall.

I wonder what she was thinking.

How did we get into space and the moon? Really big ladders, of course. And, also, a tall chalkboard.

Alabama / Auburn / baseball / journalism / links / photo / things to read / Thursday — Comments Off on The baseball Iron Bowl
28
Mar 13

The baseball Iron Bowl

Alabama visited Auburn for a three game series, starting tonight. Things did not go well for the Tigers.

Ryan Tella was 1-of-5 with three strike outs:

Tella

Garrett Cooper had one hit in four at bats and struck out once:

Cooper

Between the two they stranded five of Auburn’s eight base runners as Alabama won 6-2.

In the major sports – football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball – Auburn is now 9-43 against the SEC since the 2012 SEC baseball tournament. I’m keeping count because someone has to.

Other things: Nineteen percent of Alabama are on food stamps.

Then there’s this most depressing lead:

In Hale County, Alabama, 1 in 4 working-age adults is on disability. On the day government checks come in every month, banks stay open late, Main Street fills up with cars, and anybody looking to unload an old TV or armchair has a yard sale.

[…]

As far as the federal government is concerned, you’re disabled if you have a medical condition that makes it impossible to work. In practice, it’s a judgment call made in doctors’ offices and courtrooms around the country. The health problems where there is most latitude for judgment — back pain, mental illness — are among the fastest growing causes of disability.

[…]

In Hale County, there was one guy whose name was mentioned in almost every story about becoming disabled: Dr. Perry Timberlake. I began to wonder if he was the reason so many people in Hale County are on disability. Maybe he was running some sort of disability scam, referring tons of people into the program.

After sitting in the waiting room of his clinic several mornings in a row, I met Dr. Timberlake. It turns out, there is nothing shifty about him. He is a doctor in a very poor place where pretty much every person who comes into his office tells him they are in pain.

“We talk about the pain and what it’s like,” he says. “I always ask them, ‘What grade did you finish?'”

What grade did you finish, of course, is not really a medical question. But Dr. Timberlake believes he needs this information in disability cases because people who have only a high school education aren’t going to be able to get a sit-down job.

It is an enlightening piece, and worth your read.

journalism / links / Tuesday / Tumblr / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Amateurish, unless the right person does it
26
Mar 13

Amateurish, unless the right person does it

Here’s something insulting:

Some journalists are starting to renew attention to an old storytelling form — “the one-shot” technique.

Rather than editing together dozens or even hundreds of shots to tell a video story, the one-shot story uses just one shot, sometimes a couple of minutes long, to tell a story. A reporter drops in sections of voiced-over track to fill in the gaps or explain information the viewer might not know. It sounds amateurish, even YouTube-ish, until you see a journalist like John Sharify use it.

Because the videos you make aren’t good. Unless you are a reporter.

This is the example that column uses. Be the judge:

It doesn’t do anything for me. It comes off like a reporter trying to walk up to a post, which is amateurish, unless a DJ does it. And he doesn’t have a lot to say, except for repetition, which maybe doubles for emotion. But that just feels like someone who is unprepared.

But at least a journalist did it, saving us from so much YouTube.

Here’s a story from Madison, Ala., where Easter is too … Eastery for one principal:

The power went out in Homewood tonight. So I ducked out for dinner, only the power was out. No intersections had lights. No restaurants could run their neon or their kitchens. People took it in stride. They knew it was coming back on eventually. So I went downtown and finally settled on a calzone at Mellow Mushroom. It was silly to say, but I ordered the Italian Stallion, and it was flavorful.

Then I was able to watch the soccer match:

Just the second point the Americans have ever earned at Azteca. Even if Mexico is playing bizarrely uncharacteristic soccer right now — nothing I saw made sense at least — you take the point toward World Cup qualifying.

Two of the weakest things I’ve put on Tumblr, here and here. There’s also a lot more of useful things on Twitter. Be sure to check that out.

That’s all for now. More tomorrow, have a great evening!

Auburn / baseball / iPhone / journalism / links / photo / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on The variability of weather, devised to furnish unfailing conversation*
20
Mar 13

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:

sunplay

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:

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

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

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