Step Sing, “Samford University’s most time-honored tradition. Since 1951, students” have been preoccupied from their classes while producing this song and dance revue show. It takes place this weekend. There are 14 teams competing for top honors. Thousands of people (tickets sell out in about an hour) will come onto campus to see the shows, which donate large sums to their annual philanthropy benefactor — this year it is Cornerstone Schools of Alabama.
The shows are great fun, very clever, inventive and entertaining. But the banners may be my favorite part.
And, yes, I went to lunch early, which is why the tables are empty in the photograph. There were things to do. There was a trip to take. I had to travel to Tuscaloosa to get a piece of paper filled out. One piece of paper, five signatures, or, more precisely, initials. This can’t be done electronically or by fax, because it has always been done the old fashioned way, I guess. I figured I wouldn’t get all five people, and I did not.
That was a three hour round trip for two sets of initials.
At least I got to see this:
Classic.
Late night for the student-journalists at the Crimson. Step Sing has an effect on everything. When I left sometime after 10 p.m. most of the staffers were still working on their dance steps. So they won’t sleep much. The things you can do when you’re young, right?
A new study of advertising in news by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that, currently, even the top news websites in the country have had little success getting advertisers from traditional platforms to move online. The digital advertising they do get appears to be standard ads that are available across many websites. And with only a handful of exceptions, the ads on news sites tend not to be targeted based on the interests of users, the strategy that many experts consider key to the future of digital revenue.
Of the 22 news operations studied for this report, only three showed significant levels of targeting. A follow-up evaluation six months later found that two more sites had shown some movement in this direction, but only some, from virtually no targeting to a limited amount on inside pages. By contrast, highly targeted advertising is already a key component of the business model of operations such as Google and Facebook.
[…]
Overall, the analysis finds that while news organizations have tried to persuade their advertisers to buy space across multiple platforms, there was little evidence that they had succeeded. The kinds of products and services being advertised online were quite different than in legacy platforms, and often were seen across multiple websites.
Interesting findings, but they were only looking at the front page of sites. A lot of traffic comes from search engines, directly into interior pages. Indeed, many front pages aren’t built for the human aesthetic, but rather for the search engine spiders.
Sites selling specific ad space, or clients buying ads exclusively on sports pages or on automotive stories, don’t seem to figure into this. That’s worth studying (or practicing) but it would be incredibly labor intensive.
3. By “revamping the liveblog template” and turning it into a “second screen”
Heron recognises she is “lucky to count on about a dozen interactive developers as colleagues” on her team, “which is kind of a dream come true for a journalism nerd like me”.
She told the news:rewired conference that the “team of developer-journalists has rebuilt our traditional liveblog and transformed it into more of a second screen, social media-heavy experience – a one-stop-shop for reporting, analysis, newsworthy tweets, reader engagement, and interactive election results”.
4. By creating a “liveblog about liveblogs”
The New York Times team decided it should provide its “own coverage and analysis” for the “aforementioned media cacophony”.
Media reporters Brian Stelter and David Carr have been using Storify to collect the “news media’s tweets, videos and Facebook posts on primary nights”. They have been adding their own analysis as narrative within the Storify.
(T)his disruption has been even worse for AP and its ilk because they are primarily distributors, and the web has fundamentally democratized content distribution. Instead of trying to find ways to adapt to this new reality, however, the AP seems determined to fight it with everything it has, including lawsuits: On Tuesday, the service launched a lawsuit in New York against a digital news-aggregation service called Meltwater, accusing the service of copyright infringement and “free riding” on its content. The AP says it isn’t going after news aggregators as a whole, but this is clearly meant as a show of force.
The AP may try to charge me for linking to their release. (If they do, let’s all laugh at them together.)
Finally, one of the best Valentine’s tales you’ll read today. It is told through Twitter, making it unique in a way, but it has great pictures and a lovely story, making it traditional. The best work always stems from great stories.
Those aren’t new leaves. That’s a species of oak which stays green. Everything is still sticks and and twigs — everything except the Bradfords, at least. Some of the maples are starting to get those crisp red buds of future promises, and all of that seems a bit early, perhaps. But we’re still looking at too much brown and not enough green.
I love what is to come, that week or 10 day period where you are overwhelmed by just how verdant everything has suddenly become.
Still, the dreary sticks and twigs of winter have an appeal. You can see things that would be hidden the rest of the year. Leaving campus this evening I had a great view of the steeple on Reid Chapel. It seemed to be lit in such a way that dramatically lit the side closest to you, with the rest in shadow for effect. It was an optical illusion of course, but what a neat trick it would be. When the leaves return you won’t be able to see it from there.
At the mall:
They’ve closed this parking deck. If you walk around inside it you see they’re painting. First the columns. Perhaps they’re re-doing the ceiling as well. It is colder in the parking deck than normal, no exhaust. But it also smells a bit better. More importantly you have to park somewhere else.
Which I did, about 50 feet away. A parking deck closed and still plenty of spaces. That has to trouble the mall managers, right?
The center forecasts gross domestic product growth of 2.5 percent in 2012, compared to 2.2 percent in 2011. They also expect employment to increase 1.1 percent in 2012, compared to 0.8 percent last year.
That’s one of the two new crosswalk warnings — because nothing says pedestrian safety like a “LOOK AT ME!” sign high above the road — on Magnolia in Auburn. AUltered was kind enough to hack the sign with his magical Photoshop skills. I will only turn the sign on when there are no cars coming. Wouldn’t want to cause any traffic problems.
Two tech stories that fell neatly side-by-side: E&P says some newspapers still unsure how to use the iPad for publishing. Alan Mutter writes:
Two years after the debut of the iPad, most newspaper publishers still are fretting and fumbling over what to do about it.
Even though the iPad 2 was one of the most popular items last Christmas and the third-generation version of the product is likely to turn up well before Santa returns this year, many newspapers have yet to develop their very first app. Of the publishers who took the plunge, most were so unclear on their concept that they shouldn’t have bothered.
Mutter says it is all a big flub at this point.
Meanwhile, the app that keeps you from contacting your ex. ” It allows users to block text messages, emails, and phone calls to thier (sic) ex. It even tracks the number of days you go without contacting your ex.”
If you download that, you are co-dependent on technology. And, also, we’re going to laugh at you. (Though we will remain sad about your broken heart. Truly.)
Finally, this: Auburn great Ben Tamburello’s, Ben Jr., was all set to attend school and play football at Samford. And then the Naval Academy called. at Samford. Now he’s going to be a Middie. (Go Navy! Beat Army!) Samford’s coach, Pat Sullivan:
“I’ve known that family forever,” Sullivan said. “I helped recruit his dad, I sold insurance to his grandfather. But whether it’s Ben or (Shelby County signee) Denzel Williams, I really want what’s best for these kids.
“Am I disappointed I won’t coach Ben? Yes. But, in the end, this is what’s best for the young man, and that’s what we’re all about.”
Can’t say enough good things about Sullivan. Though I used 2,000 words to try last year.
What else? Two brief things on the journalism blog. One on FOI help. The other has a checklist for breaking online news.
About 30 employees of the former New York Times Regional Media Group were notified Friday that their new employer, Halifax Media Group, has decided to lay them off and offer severance packages. The other 20 were offered positions, but only if they relocated to Daytona Beach, Fla., where Halifax is headquartered.
A letter accompanying documents distributed Friday said Halifax “has reviewed the company’s Tampa operations to see where additional efficiencies can be achieved by eliminating or consolidating certain job functions and operations.”
Employees “who were offered a package were told that they wouldn’t be given severance if they speak to the media or publicly discuss the situation,” said one source. A second source confirmed the confidentiality clause …
There are more cuts on the way:
Those local news organizations also have their own journalism and sales staffs, who can expect to hear more lay off news over the next month or so.
By the terms of the sale, Halifax could only lay off a maximum 10 percent of the 2,000-person staff, but that requirement applied only to layoffs that occurred at the time of closing.
Selling those properties to Halifax only did so much good for the New York Times. While their paywall has been somewhat successful GigaOM says it doesn’t come close to closing the gap. “Print ad revenue fell by almost 8 percent, which helped push the NYT’s fourth-quarter profit down by more than 12 percent, and for the full year the company reported a loss of $40 million.”
And now that I’ve found three stories to slow down your Saturday, here’s this reason I love the Internet: Jedi Betty White.
I watch Golden Girls from time to time, I’ll admit it. I can’t stand the theme song, but if I can jump into an episode after that I’ll be hooked for the duration. White’s character is really the only one I never especially liked, but watching the actress is a different thing. Estelle Getty’s character has always been my favorite. Rue McClanahan was always on the periphery to me, Betty White played the comic relief. Bea Arthur held it all together, and sometimes tore up the room. Here’s the end of a great speech at the end of the fifth season premiere. She’d been blown off by her doctor and then saw him out at a fancy restaurant where she confronted him:
It is the sort of thing you think about when someone you care about talks about their doctor and whether they like him or her. The camera pulls and Dorothy goes back to her table and there’s Dorothy setting up the comic relief, and Sophia stealing the show, as she often did.
I’m certain that clip has made its way around to restaurant managers, however. You might need to find your own solution when you get stuck in that spot.
Visited the local bike shop today, which I do believe is about two steps down from going to a coffee house. A few less chairs, a few more expensive products, but everything else is the same.
The Yankee is two-thirds of the way through a bike fitting — centimeters matter, particularly when you’re talking about long rides and various stresses and strains on the body. This is a multi-step gets the process, a by-feel mixture of what the bike expert thinks looks right, and then several rides where you go back and tell him what this infernal device is doing to your back or your shoulders or what have you. Once you get things well fit you can feel like a rocket. Until then you’re just tinkering and trying to find something that doesn’t make you miserable.
I did mine myself last summer. She said my knees were spread out all over the place so I moved the seat post about eight microns over the course of a weekend until I found just the right height. When I found a place that didn’t strain my knees or over-burden my upper body I wanted to launch fireworks and mark that spot in a paint that the world’s worst CSI agent couldn’t miss: Place Seat Here. Mine probably isn’t perfect — my bike is a little small for my build, after all — but nothing especially hurts.
And, as I told the owner of the bike shop today, lately it feels like I’m not riding my bike so much as going along for the ride. I’m holding on more than propelling the thing. It is a nice feeling, silly as the explanation sounds. Bill Strickland calls it the flow:
a discussion of the merits of such a route will ensue, incorporating concepts such as traffic, slope, wind, sun, gravel and the ever-ethereal and thus impregnable defense of “flow.”
I’m the “flow” guy, by the way.
This is inane behavior, I know. But it is important in the way that things that are absolutely without importance are important.
I think Strickland and I are on the same page, at least. If you find Strickland’s flow — which sounds like a submariner’s geographic map notation — maybe you can get to what Jean Bobet called la volupte:
The divine surprise comes when you discover that beyond enjoyment lies the thrill of la volupte. The voluptuous pleasure you get from cycling is something else. It does exist, because I have experienced it. Its magic lies in its unexpectedness, its value in its rarity. It is more than a sensation because one’s emotions are involved as well as one’s actions. At the risk of raising eyebrows, I would maintain that the delight of cycling is not to be found in the arena of competition. In racing the threat of failure or the excitement of success generates euphoria at best, which seems vulgar in comparison with la volupte.
The voluptuous pleasure that cycling can give you is delicate, intimate and ephemeral. It arrives, it takes hold of you, sweeps you up and then leaves you again. It is for you alone. It is a combination of speed and ease, force and grace. It is pure happiness.
I wonder if the guys in the local bike shop have read all the great French philosophy on cycling and — oh, he’s going to answer my question now.
I had two, actually. One about chain maintenance, to which he whipped out a tool from the sky above and told me how to build a clock that runs on bike chains. You can’t help but like this guy. He’s just so passionate and giving with everything he knows, and he knows plenty. My other question was also about the chain and how mine seems to have a “Shift, Dummy” signal. He pulls that tool out again, a silver boomerang shaped thing that is not unlike a dipstick and shows me another function. He tells me what I’m describing could be one of three things, or just me being in the wrong gear.
I’m not a very good cyclist, I keep telling you this.
The Yankee, meanwhile, has her bike attached to a trainer. The back wheel is slightly elevated so that she can pedal and work the gears and the front wheel is in a giant plastic contraption designed to keep her in one place rather than crashing through a handsome wall of ultimately vital, expensive brand name accessories.
They adjust, tinker, reset, and we’re all just chatting away about geometry and ergonomics and you’d not believe how many different terms they bring into cycling just to mystify the casual listener, or how many ways I will analogize the things he is saying just to make sure I have it all right in my head.
We talk about warm ups and routes and races. He races. He has more than one pair of cycling shoes. I do too, they are called the tennis shoes I ride in and the the tennis shoes I learned very early hurt my feet when I try to ride in them. (Those are now simply my gym shoes.) The Yankee builds a good pace and pronounces the fit worth trying. She picks up a few accessories. Her bike is now once again fancier than mine.
Back at home, as the day is beginning the long slow sigh into evening, we decide to go for a short ride. We have about an hour of daylight and she wants to try her new clipless pedals. We do a few laps on the empty street in our neighborhood. We pass the little boy who lives next to us, intently focused under his Incredible Hulk helmet and pounding away on his training wheels. I cruise by him quickly, hoping he likes speed, and chuckling that it might concern his mother.
The Yankee and I decide we will ride our bikes through the neighborhood and back up one of the more popular routes in town to the local grocery store. We need charcoal. If we both go one person can stay outside and watch the bikes. I pull out one of those ridiculous drawstring backpacks that we picked up as a promotional gift at a swim meet figuring it might hold the charcoal on the way home. One day those backpacks might hold extra water if I find myself making a really long ride in the summer. A quick visit to the store will be a good test.
We head through the neighborhood, down the hill, through the stop sign and out through the entire subdivision, two people on bicycles laughing like crazed people on bicycles. We can’t do this ride leisurely, because The Yankee has new equipment and wants to test it. Also, we are competitive.
Around the part where all of the old ladies live, the ones you can unfortunately startle if you pass by their house when they’re out to get the mail, we’re streaking along at what is, for us, a good pace. Sprints are relative, dear reader. She has an extra gear in her bike, and perhaps an extra something else when it comes to short distances. I do well to stay on her wheel. But when the hills come — we have moderately sloping hills, nothing massive at all — I can create some distance between us.
I settle in at a nice pace and beat her to the grocery store, but I know I won’t for long. Her new equipment, the bike shop guy said, is going to give her another mile per hour on her average. The gear is a great equalizer. (I, suddenly, need new gear.)
She stays with the bikes. I go inside and find a seven-pound bag of charcoal. I think the 12-pounder might fight this drawstring backpack, but let’s work up to that. I pay. I’m in my full cycling kit and no one at the store even blinks.
“Can I bag this for you?” one of the employees asks.
“Can you put it in this one?” I pull off the blaze orange backpack and he doesn’t hesitate. What do you have to do to give these people pause?
We head back home. In this direction that popular road is more like a drag strip, which is why it is so popular in that part of town. I put my mass forward, which is now even greater with seven pounds of briquettes strapped on my shoulders and cruise down the road. This is a straight path, the first feature being the turn back into the intersection, a 90-degree right-hander that is never a problem.
Unless you’ve changed your weight distribution. What I can normally do from my bike lane into the right-hand car lane now takes up every inch of asphalt. There was no diving into that corner. It was more like watching a big glop of something sliding down the back of a spoon. Not especially viscous, not in any way pretty. Then more sprinting, the last of it really, for soon the remaining route turns into an uphill push back home, which sits up higher than everything else in the ZIP code, apparently. At least it feels that way on my bike.
Just before the bottom of that last sprint is a roundabout, which offers the most technical aspect of this particular ride. You have to swing to the right to get into it, even from the bike lane, but then swing back to the left to avoid someone’s well manicured lawn. But you can’t do that too early, because there are potholes and bent bike wheels waiting for you if you do. Also, I have charcoal on my back. It doesn’t interfere with my riding — I didn’t even notice it on inclines — but it is certainly impacting my swooping.
And I like swooping.
I make it home with no more difficulties and feeling confident I can carry a small amount of dead weight on my back while riding. The Yankee rides up soon after. I note the times on our computers, just in case it is the last time I get back before she does. I’ll want to remember this moment, because it was a great day.
How great? I didn’t even mention the morning yard work, which could not diminish it, with all of its attendant scratches and scrapes and cuts from the flower bed. That’s how great.
Best story I read today, Robert Johnson spent a night in a homeless shelter. Johnson is a journalism grad student at NYU. He tried to get into a shelter in New York, but was turned away. Wondering what they had to hide he found his way into an Atlantic City facility.
The pictures alone are worth seeing.
Seven PR tips from the Komen experience. We’ve been talking a lot about this and the more I listen and learn the more it seems to me that the public relations problem has been the biggest error in the ordeal.
Also, Poynter ran a piece on how the reporter got the scoop on Komen reversing course. It seems that the Dallas Morning News called a PR practitioner at Komen and that person sent him a press release. Riveting stuff, there.
Defense lawyer Mike Shores said his client had taken great pains that night to shield the children from the fact he had just killed their mother. That showed Johnson has redeeming qualities deserving of a sentence just above the 20-year minimum in this case, Shores argued.
The judge didn’t buy it and sentenced the defendant to life in prison.
So. The car. You might remember the recent fun. Took it late today to a shop as the first mechanic recommended. Remember, I’d already been there once, so that’s two people I’ve seen about this.
I bought aftermarket parts because the factory stuff is an incredibly expensive, cost-prohibitive and officially sanctioned rip off.
Dropped off the car, returned home. We’d made it inside and done precisely one chore — cleaning up the snowmen since spring is temporarily here — when the phone rang. Seems the part I’d purchased was wrong, despite it being right. (The site had a search function which verified the model!)
Jerry, the man at the body shop was great, though. He took me back, explained it all. We discussed it again. He’d appraised it on the first visit, but apparently something about saying exactly the same thing clicked differently today. All of this, the aftermarket stuff, the expensive parts, the third visit to see a mechanic, remember, is for a headlight. Nissan deserves my thanks. And you deserve this tip: When you shop for cars, investigate the headlights.
So Jhe decides, over the course of a detailed conversation about chemistry, electronics, standing water and the importance of being earnest, that we should just plug in one of the new headlights and see what happens. I agree. Jerry goes back to speak with the actual guy who’s doing the work — this process has involved dropping the bumper, which he’s done, reattached and now must remove again, poor guy — and has the bulb installed.
A bit later he comes back and says “This just isn’t your day.” Seems the new bulb doesn’t work either. So it is either the new bulb, which is pristine, or the headlight ballast module.
Jerry can’t tell for certain, though. He suggests I go back to see Rick, who sent me to him. Rick, Jerry says, can test the ballast module in much the same way you might take a voltmeter to test something around the house. I called Rick, because it was past closing time. He happened to be in the office and so I explained all of this to him. We set up an appointment for next week.
Making the fourth different attempt to try and resolve the issue. A headlight.
(To be fair, they could have fixed it that first day if I was willing to pay almost $900 for it. Even the guys working in the service centers agree this is obscene and have been very decent about trying to find some cheaper resolution.)
You want to have a scintillating class? You give a very detailed view of the art of resume building. Oh the kids always love that class. I get to tell them how long I’ve been writing those things, and give tips and tricks and ideas. I tell war stories and share the advice of others. I show off great resumes and let them make fun at mine. We talk about what not to put on this important piece of paper. Oh, it is riveting.
Did that today. And if that reads sarcastic it shouldn’t, I actually enjoy the day we talk about resumes. I get to think fondly back upon all the people that have helped me write and edit them over the years. Those were big favors. I’m glad to be able to do it for others as part of a class.
Also scheduled a lot of field trips today. Scheduled some guest speakers. Signed a lot of paperwork. Met a new section editor. Wrote a lot. Read a great deal. Had too much lunch, two good class sessions and got rained on a fair amount. Or drizzled on, at least.
A cold drizzle is the worst liquid precipitation when it comes to morale. It could just rain, which is something you can be in for a moment and then laugh about. It could sprinkle, and those drops you can avoid. The heavens could open and a monsoon descend into the small pond you didn’t realize you were standing in — at least we have the good sense to stay inside when that happens. But drizzle? A drizzle you feel like you can just walk through without consequence. Then you get back inside and see the impact on your slacks and think at least I’m not wearing cashmere.
Drizzle is the fog form with a fear of commitment, the undercooked and runny part of a day’s weather. Who needs drizzle?
At TWER Jeremy asked me to rewrite my most famous open letter on National Signing Day. I am no fan of recruitment or signing day in general, but I believe in the promise of what it should be, which is the spirit from which that letter originates. It is the easiest thing to do. I’ve written it three years in a row now and I’m not smart enough to know how to improve upon it. So I polish it and move a few things around. I try to remove unnecessary words, but this time four or five extras made their way into it. It manages to stir the alumni set, though, so that’s good. Maybe it’ll drift into the intended hands one day, too. It does good traffic, he says.
Maybe some of them have surfed back this way. Did you? Thanks for visiting!
