journalism


22
Mar 12

Much better now, thanks

I woke up hungry this morning, which is how I knew things were looking up. Let’s call whatever moved in on Tuesday night and dominated Wednesday a minor, temporary inconvenience and move on.

There is this, though:

cups

When I was in the third grade I came down with chicken pox during my spring break. I was at my grandparents. They were out in the country enough that a trip into town to see the pharmacist was good enough to verify the pox unto me. The druggist suggested I not travel. I was staying with my grandparents for a few days longer.

This would ordinarily not be a problem, but I’d had perfect attendance in the second grade and made it all the way to spring break in the third grade without missing any school. This was upsetting.

And then the itching really began.

After a while it all became miserable, one of the more painful being a spot right on a biceps tendon, irritated each time I walked. But I was fairly well covered in the horrible little blotches.

The only thing that made me feel better was the custom-ordered and custom-heated chicken noodle soup with crumbled up crackers and tea in the red plastic cup.

My grandmother has always been amused by me, and she’s spoiled me with all of her precious heart. (I was her first grandchild.) And so this silly, pathetic little request was honored for almost every meal for the week or so I fought off the chicken pox. My grandmother has a very giving spirit.

smiths

That picture is probably a few years before they realized they’d have to buy me that nasty, soothing lotion.

Some years later, probably when I was in undergrad, I asked my grandmother if she could spare one of those cups. Because I’ve always amused her, and because I am her favorite (and only!) grandson, and because she is very giving, she offered me two of her red plastic cups, which secret a cure-all elixir from their pores when you are feeling bad. They’ve always held a place of honor in my cabinets.

What, your cabinets don’t have places of honor?

They’ve been in use around here the last few days. I still can’t make chicken soup like she can, even though she just pours it out of a can as I do. Also, she is a better cracker crumbler than I. That’s even more absurd sounding, I know, but it is a truth of life: your grandmother is way better than you are at a lot of things. It’s science.

These days a similar cup is called a Koziol Rio Tumbler. I doubt that’s what these cups are. That name suggests a carefully calibrated focus group that was meant to impart sophistication. My grandparents were hardworking country people. My grandfather was a truck driver, my grandmother worked in the textiles. Their red plastic cups have no name or logo on them. Who knows how long they’ve had them, but it is an easy 30 years at least. They probably bought them because they needed cups, and red brings out her eyes. Or maybe they were a gift from an aunt or someone. What matters is that the magic curative powers within these cups are still working.

(And now, some several decades later, during another spring break, this bit of unpleasantness caught up with me. Parallels!)

Elsewhere: I did a few small things around the house to feel productive. I read a bit and wrote about nine pages worth of things. There’s also the new marker entry.

I’ve recently added some posts to the work blog:

The age of mobile has been here awhile, actually

Lots of links — visual edition

The 1940 Census infographic

Changes in advertising trends

Publishing with WordPress?

That last one, even if you aren’t interested in anything to do with the general journalism theme on the other blog, could be useful.

Finally, I’ve tweaked the front page to the section on my grandfather’s textbooks. That portion of the site is complete, but it was missing something. And then I found that something — a photograph, the one I have of him as a school boy, even if it is a transfer and his bright young face is in a bit of shadow — tonight while working through a box of things in the office closet.

Yes. As midnight approached I was cleaning off a desktop and working through a box of photographs. I am feeling better, thanks. The red plastic cups do the trick.


14
Mar 12

A random assemblage of stuff and things

My favorite meme of all time has become a campus group’s poster:

DuCreux

That, of course, is Joseph Ducreux, who was a French portrait painter at the court of Louis XVI and after the French Revolution. He liked physiognomy, assessing one’s personality by their facial expressions, hence his unorthodox portraiture, like this self-portait and, of course, the very famous Internet joke. You can’t even find the original set anymore, so buried are they amongst everyone’s contribution.

Two students showed this video in class today during a demonstration about advertising. The gasps from the rest of the class were great. See if you can figure out where this is going:

Happy birthday to The Birmingham News, which turned 124 today. This is the June 20, 1900, front page:

BirminghamNews

So the paper was 12 years old at the time. I haven’t seen any of the first volume’s front pages.

Things to read: Ad execs bullish on digital, marketers on social: Data reveals ‘disconnect’ with agencies:

Advertising executives -– both marketers and their agency representatives -– continue to increase their optimism toward digital media options, and are beginning to swing toward it as more of a “branding” than a performance “option,” but there are some significant disconnects between the way they look at various digital media silos. While agency executives tend to be far more bullish on the overall use of digital media, marketers are much more optimistic about budgeting for social media.

The findings, which are part of new, detailed analysis coming out of Advertiser Perceptions’ Fall 2011 survey on ad executive attitudes and optimism about media, show the overall index for digital -– including online display, search and video advertising –- trending upward, but the sentiment appears to be driven primarily by agencies. That insight is interesting, because the bottom line of big agencies appears to be benefitting from their continuing shift toward a greater reliance on digital media, according to a Pivotal Research analysis released Monday (OMD, March 13).

“But there is a discrepancy in the way marketers and agencies are seeing it,” says Randy Cohen, a partner in AP — which produces an ongoing series of ad industry tracking studies under its Advertiser Intelligence Reports banner, including this one. “It’s a disconnect,” he says, adding, “But agencies tend to do what marketers want them to.”

If that’s the case, social media should be the primary beneficiary, according to Cohen, because marketer sentiment is building much more favorably toward social networks versus the rest of the digital mix.

Things to read from my Samford blog:


10
Mar 12

Birds, baseball and bad navigation

birds

Sat inside and watched the birds. Sneaked outside to watch the birds. Finally shook off the tired, not-quite-my-usual-self feeling.

It was a beautiful day. A great day for baseball. Auburn hosted Belmont for the second game of a three-game series this afternoon. The Tigers scored in the bottom of the first inning, and again in the third and fourth innings. Belmont touched the plate twice in the fifth inning and rallied in the top of the ninth. Auburn got out of a jam, and won the game 3-2 on a crisp double play.

Auburn only stranded four runners on base, a season low. I looked this up: The Tigers are getting on base, but not getting all the way around. They’re leaving 9.93 runners on base per game on the short season, including several 14 or 15 LOB games.

birds

Things to read: Will “indecent proposals” soon be a crime in Kentucky? “Anti-harassment” bills reach cinematic heights:

A Kentucky legislator is proposing to greatly expand the meaning of unlawful harassment, to include sending anyone a “comment, request, suggestion, or proposal” that is “filthy” or “indecent.”

[…]

Sending someone a “filthy” message with the intent to “annoy” is impolite, to be sure. But “good manners” has never been the standard for constitutional protection. If Kentucky were to pass HB 129 in anything like its current form, a court would surely strike it down as unconstitutionally over-broad.

Not to be outdone, Alabama lawmakers are proposing to criminalize a broad range of conduct (for adults as well as for kids) under the umbrella of “cyberbullying.” The prohibition would include sending or posting material with the intent to “annoy” or “alarm” someone, if it causes “substantial embarrassment or humiliation” in professional or academic circles. Conviction would carry misdemeanor criminal sanctions.

The bill contains no protective language for editorial commentary, nor does it afford any greater latitude for criticism of the performance of public officials. If House Bill 400 [sponsored by Rep. Paul DeMarco (R – Homewood)]or its Senate counterpart, SB 356 [sponsored by Sen. Cam Ward (R – Alabaster) and Sen. Phil Williams (R – Gadsden)], were to become law as introduced, a political candidate whose “substantially embarrassing” personal behavior was truthfully exposed on a news blog could seek criminal charges against the author. (That is, until a court threw out the law as unconstitutional, as undoubtedly would happen if a political commentator was prosecuted for disclosing “embarrassing” facts.)

Also, the bill seems to be lacking some key definitions which should give one pause.

One-third of U.S. adults will own a tablet by 2016, says report:

Tablet fever will grip more than a third of all U.S. adults by 2016, according to Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps.

In a report released yesterday, Forrester upped its estimates for U.S. tablet ownership, now forecasting that 112.5 million adults, or 34 percent of the population, will own a tablet in another four years. If that prediction proves correct, it means the industry will sell almost 293 million tablets in the six years from 2010 to 2016.

The price point needs to come down, or a lot of those people will have vastly inferior tablets giving longing looks to people holding iPads.

How thick is your bubble?:

This quiz is inspired by American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray’s new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” which explores the unprecedented, class-based cultural gap in America. How culturally isolated are you? Answer these 20 questions to find out.

I happily answered enough questions to land right in the middle of everyone.

I question the methodology.

@TitanicRealTime:

That should be a great Twitter account, until mid-April.


7
Mar 12

Where I brag on CBS-42

I like to poke fun at television news, but it is all in good fun. I have a great respect for the hard work they do and the service they can provide. And I’m not just saying that because my wife is a former (Emmy-nominated) producer. Birmingham, despite its relative small size, is a great television market. This is the place for sports, the hardest weather market in the country and has as much, and more, news as the next place. (And as of this year and the county’s bankruptcy — the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the country — they’ll have plenty of stories for a long, long time.) Because of all of that they pull in great talent.

And that talent is very gracious, across the local industry really, but specifically I must point out the nice folks at WIAT CBS-42.

CBS

Here’s why. One of our classes takes field trips to learn about the various aspects of the media industry, and between the four (or five) sections of that class we hit all the stations in town. I visit WIAT when I teach the class and we went there today. Today also happened to be the day that the bingo trial, the biggest criminal trial of the year where defends were accused of using campaign contributions to buy and sell votes on state gambling legislation, came down with their verdicts: not guilty.

So it was a busy day in their newsroom, but we had a great tour. The students enjoyed themselves, learned about the business first hand and met some of the local experts, talking with reporters furiously working in their edit bays, meeting people like the assignment editor in the newsroom, watching the producer make his sausage in his booth and talking with nice, engaging and talented people like meteorologist Mark Prater:

CBS

It was a great tour. They all are. The local media is very kind to our program at Samford.


6
Mar 12

There is a bad pun at the end of this post

Now this was a beautiful day. High of 67, clear, sunny. This is the kind of pre-spring that would make the rest of the country jealous. Sure, our autumn is fairly well abbreviated. And you may keep your winter if you operate under the idea that you need snow to feel complete. But everyone that loves snow is tired of it by March. Everyone that has a fondness for sweaters and layers would love to have a day like this to enjoy just now.

Pretty much everyone below the 38th parallel is enjoying it. Sorry Midwest and New England.

This is an office day, and an office night, so I have no anecdotes. But I have links.

Things to read: The “Dangerous” Veteran: An Inaccurate Media Narrative Takes Hold:

If you’ve read the news lately, you may have seen one of several stories describing recent Veterans as “ticking time bombs” or as “dangerous” on account of post-traumatic stress. It’s a narrative that has persisted for decades, but a handful of recent high-profile incidents have resulted in headlines like these:

Police get help with vets who are ticking bombs (USA TODAY)

Experts: Vets’ PTSD, violence a growing problem (CNN)

Veteran charged with homeless murders: Hint of larger problem for US military? (Christian Science Monitor)

While these stories highlight horrific killings, the connection between disturbed murderers like Benjamin Barnes and Itzcoatl Ocampo and their service in combat is weak—despite what media reports and popular culture would have many believe. And such rhetoric, when solidified in the public consciousness, can have negative consequences for both Veterans and society—like causing Veterans to avoid seeking help or employers to avoid hiring them.

“This is a huge misrepresentation of Veterans,” said Rich Blake, an Iraq War Veteran and psychology doctoral student at Loyola University Maryland. “Crazed? That’s even more extreme.”

That’s a great perspective. A few years ago I did some consulting for a PTSD organization, met a lot of great people from all walks of life — the Vietnam veteran who walked across an entire state every year as a personal awareness campaign, the woman who’d been abused as a child who had to tell everyone she met that PTSD isn’t exclusive to members of the military — and ultimately found the misperceptions easy to understand. But they’re almost always misperceptions. There’s a quote in this piece that makes a great shark attack analogy, for example.

Facebook’s US User Growth Slows but Twitter Sees Double-Digit Gains:

As recently as 2010, growth in US Facebook usage was well into the double digits, at 38.6%, eMarketer estimates. But with 116.8 million US internet users already logging on to the site at least once monthly that year, growth rates were bound to plateau.

By 2011 Facebook user growth rose a comparatively small 13.4%, and this year will be the first when growth rates drop to the single digits. Rates of change in the US will continue to decline throughout eMarketer’s forecast period.

On Twitter, by contrast, growth is stronger. Last year’s 31.9% increase in users outpaced that of 2010, when growth was at 23.5%. Similar to Facebook’s trajectory, Twitter’s growth rate will also fall in the coming years, but still remain nearly four times higher than Facebook’s growth rate in 2014.

Twitter is smaller, so there’s the issue of scale, but what I’d like to see is abandonment rates and existing customer use rates.

Some papers see Q1 sales rise – first since 2006:

In a series of informal conversations, some publishers counted it as a victory that their numbers in the first two months of 2012 were equal to those of the prior year. Others reported that their sales met or surpassed conservative budgets that forecast single-digit declines between this year and last.

“It looks like the cycle finally has turned,” said an executive who could not discuss specifics of his company’s sales because it is publicly traded. “People counting out newspapers have not taken into account the effect of the weak economy. It won’t take much of an improvement [in the economy] for us to see real increases in profitability after the cost-cutting we have be doing for the last several years.”

While a turn in the economy is bound to be helpful, it must be noted that every other medium has long since rebounded from the Great Recession, which technically ended by mid-2010 (though it is of little consolation to those continuing to suffer from foreclosure, unemployment and financially challenged retirement).

The comments paint a different picture, and the most recent Pew research paints a different picture, but any good news for the newspaper business would be welcome. Hopefully such good news wouldn’t be a signal to publishers that they’ve weathered some sort of storm and return to their traditional business-as-usual models. Inertia is a problem.

And is often the case, I’ll leave you with a little something to make you smile.

What do you call the sum of the diagonal elements of the tensor of inertia?

The spur of the moment.

And they say physicists have no fun.