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journalism

journalism / memories / Monday / Samford / video — Comments Off
16
Apr 12

Meanwhile, in the classroom

I taught about false light in two media law classes today.

The three criteria required for a false light case:

1. Publication of material must put an individual in a false light.
2. The false light would be offensive to a reasonable person.
3. The publisher was at fault.

Two anecdotes from the lecture:

The Sun ran a picture of Nellie Mitchell, a 96-year-old Arkansas woman, in a fabricated story about a 101-year-old female news carrier who had to give up her job because she was pregnant. The Sun’s editors needed a photo for their false story. They assumed Nellie was dead and pulled her picture from a previous true story. She was alive and, by then, feeling litigious. She sued. She won $1.5 million in 1991. (That’s $2.5 million today)

In the 1980s WJLA in Washington, D.C., did a story on genital herpes. The reporter shot b roll on a busy D.C. street. The videographer zoomed in on a woman who was easily recognized. In the 11 p.m. broadcast the anchor read the script “For the 20 million Americans who have herpes, it’s not a cure” as tape rolled with the woman’s image. She won her case and was awarded $750.

I like media law, but I think you have to have an anticipation of enjoyment of it before you take it as a class. I imagine that students who don’t have some inkling of that beforehand find themselves miserable. But it is a vitally important topic.

I think I enjoyed it, in part, was because the first media law case I ever read about was Carol Burnett v. National Enquirer, Inc. I loved Carol Burnett as a comedienne, even if her sketch comedy show (which I caught it in syndication) was for an older audience. It always felt like I was getting away with something to be able to watch it late at night, but I remember thinking that Burnett’s case, while important, probably felt ancient to most of my peers. It had happened almost 15 years before we studied it, an eternity to undergrads. (I did not talk about it in class today.)

And so I vowed to give contemporary examples in a media law context. Need to brush up on the dockets a bit.

To know the more than a name makes a case history more interesting. To see this makes it all stick in your head:

I actually remember that bit, which is remarkable with my memory. I suppose it speaks to the impression those talents could leave upon you. To this day my favorite stylings are physical comedy and the famous loss of composure. I blame Harvey Korman for that:

Had a guest in my Mass Media Practices class today. My old friend Napo Monasterio came over from The Birmingham News to talk about that happy, curious, more-flexible-than-ever place where journalist, coder and designer meet. Napo is from Auburn, though he was a year or two behind me. Now I see his work all the time.

Here are some of his page layouts and the online package that went with it. Now he’s developing apps.

He was formally trained as a print journalist and designer, but his desire to learn new things keeps opening doors for him. I hope students pick up on that.

“Just like a firecracker going off in the air — kabuuuuum.”

journalism / links / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
3
Apr 12

Things to read

Just a bunch of links today, I’m afraid. But good links. So do check some of them, and the selected excerpts, out.

LinkedIn: Online publishing up 24%, newspapers down 28%

How has our economy evolved in the past five years? Which industries are shrinking or growing through these challenging economic times? These are some of the questions that the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) delves into each February in the “Economic Report of the President” (ERP). This year, the CEA worked with us to glean further insights into industry trends both during the recent recession and after its end in June 2009.

[…]

The fastest-growing industries include renewables (+49.2%), internet (+24.6%), online publishing (+24.3%), and e-learning (+15.9%). Fastest-shrinking industries were newspapers (-28.4%), retail (-15.5%), building materials (-14.2%), and automotive (-12.8%).

Since this great economic sorting out isn’t yet settled, I’m sure some of the industries in that terrific chart are still moving around.

Meanwhile.

C.S. Lewis, replying a letter to a young fan, on the what really matters in the craft of writing:

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

[…]

4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

You should read the full letter, which is full of masterful advice.

Steve Yelvington says “adaptive HTML5 layouts on the “everything just works” principle will eclipse smartphone, tablet apps.”

Two First Amendment stories.

My boss once observed that I was something of a First Amendment guy. As a journalist himself, he understands, though all of us should. Those stories are more than a little abhorrent. But if anyone needs to have that explained: the Founders thought it kind of important. They put it first.

Sports: Auburn hired a new women’s basketball coach, Terri Williams-Flournoy, late of Georgetown. On her first day in the new job she said “We want to cause havoc as much as we can.

Like the sound of that. Before she took the job she called Nell Fortner, who just resigned from the position. Fortner is the best. Flournoy, or others, might be better coaches, but the athletic department will never find anyone that loves the place as much as she does. This is what she said when the new coach called: “She knew that it would be a great place for me to bring my family and she just kept going on and on and on about the community.”

The new NFL uniforms, in poor photographs. I’m not sure if it is the imagery or the new gear that is underwhelming. And “fast is faster”? Ugh.

cycling / iPhone / journalism / links / memories / Samford / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
28
Mar 12

Oh snap!

We are so very fortunate those words did not define our generation. You’ll see why at the bottom of the post.

Riding through the neighborhood the other evening I found I’d picked the neighborhood time for bicycles. Usually I see the ladies walking, or a mixture of people taking their dogs for a stroll. I often find kids out in their yards, but never anyone riding a bike.

But on this particular weekend evening I found four of them. I caught up with two at the stop sign that leads to the creek. At least one of them was even greener than I am. He was struggling with something at the intersection and his friend had turned and was waiting for him up ahead, his thigh across his crossbar.

The second pair I met soon after. The first I passed easily enough, he was just out for a ride. His partner wanted a race. And so surged up the hill after the creek. He was pedaling furiously, constantly looking over his shoulder. I pedaled furiously, clicking down through the gears and tapping out a rhythm I’ve never tried on that little hill. At the top he turned right and I turned left, but I had him. I was no good for the next few miles after that, but I would have had him.

It would be better if I didn’t get competitive about this sort of thing, as I am a bad cyclist.

But today, when I sat in my office doing office things, I thought about that hill. I thought about that little attempt at rushing up it. I thought about how my legs weren’t burning. That was a nice thought, for sitting in the office.

In class one group of students did a presentation and part of that was asking the question “Is print dead?” What followed was the best conversation of the entire semester. There were many different stances. Some said yes, some no. Others took the middle ground and wondered why we don’t simply say that print is changing. There were strong opinions. It was so great we’re turning it into an assignment.

Maybe I should have started the semester asking that question.

Things to read from my journalism blog: The interactive infographic uses a fancy ProPublica design as an example.

The increasingly useful Internet radio where I realize how many streaming apps I have on my phone, and we are teased with next month’s announcement of even more surprising smartphone penetration.

Two prisms, two news brands pulls together two stories, one on Al Jazeera English and the other on the growing Patch network. Both good reads of successfully growing (in different directions) projects.

From my evening drive:

family / journalism / links / memories / photo / site / things to read / Thursday — Comments Off
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:

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.

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.

history / iPhone / journalism / links / photo / Samford / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
14
Mar 12

A random assemblage of stuff and things

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

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:

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: