journalism « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

journalism

You still have to lick envelopes?

I sent letters today. Actual correspondence. With stamps and everything!

Now I’m exhausted.

I also had to prepare new copies of my transcripts for the dean at Samford. Once upon a time you walked into an office or made a phone call and started the process. These days, of course, it is all online. Also, this costs money. I have three colleges to send away to, so it costs a few bucks.

Interestingly the price varies. It seems my grades at one school are more valuable than the other two.

So, to review, you pay tuition to have the privilege to go to classes. You earn your grades. You pay to graduate. Years later, you must pay again, to retrieve the grades you earned.

Terrific scam.

One of my schools charged $11. Another $12. Another $15. The third-party firms will ship an electronic version of your grades, a PDF, which will self-destruct after three views. Printed “allowed.” Copying? Not allowed.

Linky things: Somebody had to do it, may as well be John Archibald, writing the “if only everything else were as important here as football” column:

And never, ever, accept mistakes you could correct.

Alabamians — Alabama and Auburn fans alike — accept no less from their football teams. It’s amazing what they accept off the field.

Alabama was fourth-worst in the nation last year in robberies, and fifth-worst in murders, according to CQ Press.

It ranked in the bottom five in overall health last year, according to the United Health Foundation. It was 49th in obesity, infant mortality and premature deaths.

The state was 47th in teaching math and science, according to the American Institute of Physics.

It was in the bottom 10 in traffic fatalities per vehicle mile, in poverty rates and energy consumption per person, according to the census.

Alabama is not No. 1. Unless you count our highest-in-the-country rate of diabetes.

If life in Alabama were football, somebody would be fired.

Alabama’s last daughter of the confederacy has died. Someone in the comments of the last daughter story says that her father was 81 when she was born. Apparently they have pictures, too. One presumes of sometime after her birth. She is survived by, among others, her brother, who is the last surviving son of the confederacy.

That’s a lot to wrap your mind around, but then the last Civil War widow died just eight years ago.

State of the Media: This is from Vocus, a media software firm:

152 papers ceased operations in 2011. Of the papers that closed, not one major daily went under—the first year since 2009 that a top-tier paper didn’t shut down.

[…]

(T)here were a total of 195 magazine launches in 2011 with the unveiling of new consumer titles taking a modest hit.

[…]

(O)nline streaming of television shows and newscasts continued to increase.

[…]

(T)raditional radio continued to prove it’s a survivor, despite evidence that the majority of people prefer to get their news elsewhere. In all four quarters, reports showed growth in radio listenership.

Vocus’ full, optimistic, report will be out later this month.

Auburn / cycling / football / Friday / history / journalism — Comments Off
6
Jan 12

An ode to some pickles

Updated and edited my vita, which was a job that was past due.

Rode 25 miles on my bike, enjoying the beautiful January afternoon. The afternoon was the best part about it. It’s going to take three or five good long rides to start getting my form back. My only complaint about riding is that just when I hit my stride events overcome me. Something will come up to preoccupy me for too long and all that hard work is undone.

Around finals I had a nice 45 mile ride and just started to get back into a good pace and comfort level. Then I got sick for a week and change, and then there were 10 days of holiday travels.

So this week has been a return to square one. (I’m not a very good cyclist.)

Visited the library this evening. Thought I’d do a little historical research. This is an issue of the 1914 Orange and Blue, Auburn’s student paper that preceded The Plainsman:

Note the championship-wining football team’s headline. The story included this argument for facemasks:

Babe Taylor, Auburn warrior, and by the way, Birmingham-bred, displayed a vast amount of gameness yesterday afternoon. In the early part of the first quarter someone, unthoughtedly of course, kicked in the upper section of Babe’s face, in the neighborhood of the left eye. Babe’s face wore an expression of agony and the blood trickled down his features in doublequick time, but he stood by the fort and played a grand game of football.

Sixty percent of the front page is devoted to football, which happened pretty regularly, even in 1914. Note, also, that the band played Touchdown Auburn, which was a tune that pre-dated Jim Fyffe’s famous call by many decades. There’s a note that students from Alabama telegraphed their congratulations on the championship — you have to wonder what their angle was.

There’s a poem on the right hand side, a dream of a beautiful young woman, and “An Ode to some Pickles.”

Upon a night long ago
Three fellows sat at ease
And tried to soothe their inner man
With pickles and with cheese.

The cheese, by nature yellow,
Met quick and sure defeat;
But the unassuming pickles
Were very green and sweet.

The eats were good and everything
Seemed lovely for a while —
Till a feaster’s flesh, turned wan and pale
In the middle of a smile.

His face began to shudder,
A twitch and then a jerk;
We looked at him and realized
The pickles were at work!

A private, and not especially good, joke 97 years ago was published in a newspaper. And you’re reading it today. None of this would have been conceivable to the poet who wrote those lines.

Didn’t find what I was looking for — though I have a feeling I’m getting close — so I’ll have to go back. No problem there, the old microfilms are great fun.

journalism / links / Thursday / Twitter / video — Comments Off
5
Jan 12

Free political, visual advice

I noted on Twitter that it should be no surprise that a soap called “Dancing Waters” from Bath & Body Works doesn’t remove chain grease. Someone observed that is “kind of like saying the aromatherapy candles don’t get rid of the exhaust smell from your Harley.”

Great line, but only because he’s never heard of the exceptionally strong soy scented candles.

The Internet can’t describe the smell, which is a failure of the human olfactory cortex — linked to the hippocampus, but not to the thalamus.

The U.S. broadcast media says “SOPA? What’s that?”

Controversial legislation that the co-founder of Google has warned “would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world” has received virtually no coverage from major American television news outlets during their evening newscasts and opinion programming. The parent companies of most of these networks, as well as two of the networks themselves, are listed as official “supporters” of this legislation on the U.S. House of Representatives’ website.

As the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) makes its way through Congress, most major television news outlets — MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC — have ignored the bill during their evening broadcasts. One network, CNN, devoted a single evening segment to it.

I get it. They have corporate bosses who have bosses who have properties that think this will protect them. Also, broadcasters aren’t carrying a torch for online entities — since they are so often being torched by online entities. (Though Poynter is finally telling journalists they should be concerned about all this. How any advocate of the First Amendment could read this legislation and not be troubled is beyond me.) We’re moving a significant way down the slippery slope.

God bless America, we need the help.

Speaking of politics, Dale Peterson is back. Remember this guy?

His wife is now running for office. Or, as he says, is “after the republican nomination …”

It isn’t the rifle, or even the pace of the thing, but the air quotes. They’re just reaching out of your monitor, trying to drag you to your polling place … it is an unsettling gesture. If you must do air quotes on video, do them parallel to your ears.

journalism / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
21
Dec 11

News at 10

I feel disconnected here, because my computer time is drastically cut short compared to work and home. That’s fine, and as it should be, but this makes news junkies twitchy.

There might be news! Someone could write a compelling essay and link to it on Twitter! What if I miss a really great joke? Or what if there’s a brand new meme!?

Life is hard, I know.

I read the local paper this afternoon. The Times Daily‘s lead story today has to do with a lack of funding for the local landfill:

With a depleted Solid Waste Fund temporarily carrying the load for garbage disposal, the City Council must find another source of money to meet state and federal requirements for the eventual closing and monitoring of its landfill.

Dan Barger, city treasurer/chief accountant, told the council Tuesday that more than $2 million is needed to satisfy requirements for landfill closure. He said it probably will have to come from the General Fund.

The Environmental Protection Agency requires owners and operators of municipal solid waste landfills to show proof they have adequate funds earmarked for closure costs and monitoring the landfill for 30 years after closure, Barger said.

Because the Solid Waste Fund has operated with losses of more than 5 percent the past two years, he said that fund no longer satisfies the financial tests necessary to guarantee closure operations.

The print version had to do with only two weeks worth of space remaining in the current landfill cell. The council has been split for some times, it seems, along a 3-3 vote, on whether to add to the existing space or ship off trash to a third-party site. The mayor, the story said, had had enough and last night started naming names.

My grandparents have taken to watching the city council meetings on television. They don’t even live within the city limits. That’s how entertaining these meetings can be. And you’ve been shirking your civic duty.

Also watched the local 5 p.m. news. The lead story on the B-block was the traditional Better Business Bureau story warning you of e-card scams. Someone had to write a tease for that piece. But it was a relatively slow news day. There was a fatal car accident and two men were caught in a check stealing scheme.

Shame they didn’t have this footage of a dog terrorizing the local stuffed citizenry:

Finished the Christmas shopping today with a whimper. The last thing I picked up was a gift card.

journalism / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
8
Dec 11

The last class of the semester

I ended my last class of the fall not dissimilar from the way I began it. I think most of my classes will start and end with words to this effect from now on:

Challenge every word. Walk out of here today with that in your mind. Challenge every word. The bulk of our mistakes can be corrected by vigorous copy editing. This isn’t the sexiest thing in the world, I know, but it is so, so important to the work you do.

It is hard to edit your own work, but it is vital that you do so. Walk away from your story. Read it again after you’ve worked on something else, or eaten dinner or done something fun. Have someone you trust read it. Trade copy editing favors with a classmate. Challenge every word.

The simple truth is that there’s not a person in this room or alive that can’t benefit from a good dose of proofreading. It is tough, often it is particularly for young writers, to admit it, but we all must. Every writer is made better by good editing. Put aside your ego. Realize that the first words you wrote likely aren’t your best words. The AP style mistakes, the grammar, typos, misspelling, you think these are small things, but those small things add up so quickly. Ours is a craft that we display in public, so you must challenge every word.

‘Is that the best word? Is the subject-verb agreement correct? Is this in an active voice? Am I showing rather than telling? Can I tell this in a better way?’ These questions and more are what you should be asking yourself.

Don’t stop writing, even over the break. Writer’s write. If you stop practicing this craft your skills can atrophy. And remember, it shouldn’t be in there, and you aren’t done with the piece, until you challenge every word.

It is my goal to give that speech enough to make eyes roll. But, one day, someone will be sitting at their desk thinking ‘challenge every word …’ and that will make the eye rolls worth it.