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journalism

journalism / links / Samford / Thursday / video — Comments Off
6
Oct 11

The descent into sickliness

In retrospect I should have known last night this was going to happen. I was ready for sleep by 10 p.m. And then this morning the scratchy throat begin. A workout was unsatisfying. The day slipped into, well let’s just call it existential decline.

Hey, it sounds good.

So there was work. Messing up a spreadsheet and recovering it by chance. Finishing slides for a lecture. Lecturing. Doing research. Tabbing through more spreadsheets. Making phone calls and so on.

As the afternoon slipped into evening the scratchiness in the back of my throat turned to a full-on sore throat. There was coughing. At the end of the day there was little breathing. Sinuses, then. My mortal enemy it seems. There will be little breathing or rest or happiness until this passes.

Links, then: Steve Yelvington has 10 things we (should) have learned about mobile and tablet news. Robert Rosenthal, meanwhile, offers lessons learned on reinventing journalism. About seven of these can apply to any industry, however.

And now the fun of new immigration law, writ large in Alabama’s fields. There is so much wrong here that deserves correction:

The farmers said the some of their workers may have been in the country illegally, but they were the only ones willing to do the work.

“This law will be in effect this entire growing season,” Beason told the farmers. He said he would talk to his congressman about the need for a federal temporary worker program that would help the farmers next season.

“There won’t be no next growing season,” farmer Wayne Smith said.

“Does America know how much this is going to affect them? They’ll find out when they go to the grocery store. Prices on produce will double,” he said.

Lana Boatwright said she and her husband had used the same crews for more than a decade, but only eight of the 48 workers they needed showed up after the law took effect.

“My husband and I take them to the grocery store at night and shop for them because they are afraid they will be arrested,” she said.

Tough situation with no obvious answers. It is already impacting Alabama’s agricultural industry, small farmers, the construction industry, schools, the DMV, large groups of people who are willing to endure thankless jobs at low or average pay to try and make a better life and who knows what else.

You can’t envy anyone in this circumstance, but we’re all about to learn the rule of unintended consequences. This is, however, a federal issue that has failed and the states — Arizona, Georgia and Alabama the first among them — to try to address the issue. There seems to be an overreach.

And now, for something more fun:

Come back tomorrow for ragged coughing and sneezing. And some other things too.

journalism / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
4
Oct 11

Venus Mars household habits

The Yankee is a great wife. She’s fun and silly. She appreciates my silliness. She is very smart. We exist together well and shuffle along in a reasonably efficient manner when such frivolous things as “work” or “other plans” interfere.

We had a pretend disagreement on Twitter last night about silverware in the dishwasher. Somehow this became a discussion about brownies — she threatened that I would not get a snack, I took a picture of them in defiance, she accused me of licking them. And then two other families became involved in the Twitter conversation. One took a very clinical and precise approach of efficiency and ergonomics. (They’re architects.) Other friends contributed, and their part of the conversation became about the proper use of the toothpaste tube. We all have our pet peeves. And for those particular friends, the debate rages on at the beginning, middle and end of the day.

Personally, I’m a wherever-the-thumb-falls-on-the-tube kind of guy. I assume most people, and particularly, most guys are. That his lovely wife, a photographer, disagrees with him, an editor, only speaks to the nature of the gender difference, organizational tendencies and the way they get along. Probably it also has something to do with their professional roles.

And this is my theory that will go precisely nowhere. Your formal training inspires what you do in the most minute way, which is really probably what started you down your professional or avocational path to begin with. I submit that the chicken came first, but in a calcium carbonate format. Take this, for example. About the only thing I’ve ever naturally done well is string a bunch of words together in a way as to seem almost credible.

But I digress.

My wife is a lovely lady. And about the only thing we disagree about is the preferred method of waking up. Her alarm goes off. She hits it and wakes up. She is one of those.

I maintain that the best treatment for an alarm, if you must have one, is to pound the plastic casing in a highly ritualistic manner in precisely timed increments. Sociologists, I believe, call this hitting the snooze button.

And I wore it out this morning.

Normally this is where I would delete all of that, write “I just wrote eight paragraphs on oversleeping” and move on with my day. But I’m rather proud of those eight paragraphs, so they’re staying in.

And this was a day of a one quick meeting and signing a bunch of things. It was a day of computer disorganization, class preparation and a teaching demonstration. There was another quick meeting, this time with bubble wrap and styrofoam peanuts.

Now, I am wrapping up the evening with the newspaper. There is apparently something in tomorrow’s edition that will stir conversation, and also many faces in the photographs. Every week is a little better than the issue before, so I’m eager to see what they’ll have tomorrow. No snooze button for me.

Lots more tomorrow.

Auburn / journalism / links / Samford / site / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
28
Sep 11

“I’m not that interesting”

And if you go outside in the right time of the evening, you’ll see a scene like that. Life is good.

Did a lot of writing today, finishing a project that needed finishing. A lot of rewriting had gone into it, none of it especially inspiring, so it just dragged on and on. The next time that project comes up, though, it will be much better.

Alan Mutter has a read on an important new Pew report on a disconnect between younger and older consumers in perceived newspaper value.

When asked by researchers to identify their preferred source for crime news, 44% of those in the 40-plus category named newspapers, as compared with just 23% for the younger cohort.

[…]

In what may be a sign of the desperation of the population in this time of high unemployment, the only area where young and old alike turned with equal frequency to newspapers is hunting for information about jobs. Even there, only 17% of each age group considered newspapers the first place to look.

Pew also found this sobering statistic: Fully 69% of respondents said it would not “have a major impact” on their ability to keep up with news about their community if their local paper no longer existed.

That last one is more of a perception than anything and, I suspect, a misplaced one. Yes, more news now stems from personal networks, word of mouth and social media than every before, but there is still a significant amount of that information that originates in traditional newsrooms. That indirect impact, I believe, often goes undetected.

A federal judge upholds most of Alabama’s controversial immigration law:

Section 11 (a), which makes it unlawful for a person who is an unauthorized alien to knowingly apply for work, solicit work in a public or private place, or perform work as an employee or independent contractor in this state.

Section 13, which prohibits concealing, harboring, transporting, etc., of unlawfully-present aliens.

Section 16, which concerns the taking of a state tax deduction for wages paid to an unauthorized alien employee.

Section 17, which creates a state “discrimination” cause of action based on the retention or hiring of an unauthorized alien.

I posted a little something about both of these stories on the journalism tip blog I write. I invite you to read it if you find these sorts of things mildly interesting.

Still here? Good. I also changed the URL of that blog, and fixed the links on this site. Speaking of the site: I haven’t mentioned it, but I added a rotating piece of code to the top and bottom images on the blog. Hit reload a bunch. Fancy, huh?

Speaking of journalism, check out the Crimson’s site for the latest news from campus. Included is this cute little profile of the famous Ms. Dot.

I saw her at lunch today, just another face in her long line of a day.

I read about you in the paper!

“You did?”

Yes. It was very good! I think you should be in the paper every week!

“I don’t. I’m not that interesting.”

I think there should be a little According to Ms. Dot section in each issue of the paper. Just a little box with some wise saying.

Need a scarf? The original Toomer’s Corner tradition is now a fine accessory. It only costs $17.16 for the neckwear which is made of “scarf like” material. Not sure what that is. As for the price:

I guess they thought $28.27 was over the natural scarf price point.

Ahh, football season jokes.

journalism / links / music / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
27
Sep 11

Four more minutes of the riff, please

My office is next door to the campus radio station. My desk is oriented in such a way that there is only the one wall between their primary studio and my computer. They play smooth jazz and broadcast Samford’s sports and news programming. Occasionally, when my office is quiet and they are inspired, I can hear their broadcast, or even the people inside laughing.

This evening, I heard:

In class today we discussed more language and grammar. You haven’t embraced your day without a hearty conversation about the precise and proper placement of commas.

That’s the circle of life, though I’m sure the students would disagree.

It is, in part, a class on copy editing, and so I think often of John E. McIntyre’s speech:

This is not a gut course. Writing is difficult enough to do. It does not come to us as naturally as speech, and we have to spend years learning it. Editing is even harder. We can write intuitively, by ear, but we have to edit analytically.

Before we even get to the analytical aspect, we will have to do some work on grammar and usage, because if you are like most of the five hundred students who have preceded you here, you will be shaky on some of the fundamentals. You will have to learn some things that you ought to have been taught, and you will have to unlearn some things that you ought not to have been taught.

I should also caution you from the outset that this course is appallingly dull. A student from last term complained in the course evaluation that “he just did the same thing over and over day after day.” So will you. Editing must be done word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and we will go over texts in class, word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. No one will hear you if you scream.

I’m going to turn my back for a minute so that anyone who wants to bolt can.

Now, if you are willing to stay—and work—I can show you how it is done.

Want a heat-seeking ground-to-air missile? Libya is the place for you, apparently. Thousands have gone missing from unguarded ammo dumps and now the chase is on to try to recover, or buy them back.

If this sounds familiar, it is. The Americans had to buy back missiles from the mujahideen after the Soviet Union’s adventures in Afghanistan. After having spent between $3 to $20 billion in outfitting the Afghanis, they had to go back and try to buy back the armaments, reportedly for as much to $100,000 a piece. But that’s just the monetary perspective. The security concerns are astounding.

Sen. Barbara Boxer calls it a nightmare. Have a nice day with these little factoids, just one more note that causes one to wonder why we got involved in Libya and, more to the point, if we had to, why didn’t we do it right?

Democracy? Not that necessary:

“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover … I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. You want people who don’t worry about the next election.”

Says the governor of North Carolina.

One of Gov. Bev Perdue’s staffers would later say she was speaking in hyperbole, which is code for “I wish my boss would shut up.”

Oh, look, newsobserver.com have posted an mp3 of the governor’s speech, so you can figure out her tone.

If you play it backward she’s clearly singing along with the Temptations.

journalism / links / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
21
Sep 11

Things to read

Jeff Sonderman finds too many apps behaving as modern day shovelware. And that should not be. Apps should solve a problem.

News organizations whose mobile apps only provide users with their articles or videos are missing a big opportunity.

An application, by definition, should be applied to perform a task, to solve a problem. Most news doesn’t do that.

Rather than just feed readers recent stories you wrote about their problems, apps can provide tools and data that enable users to actually solve their problems. When you solve problems, you get more loyal users and a chance to make more money.

I love this because it will become one of those points that is so obvious we’ll wonder why we overlooked it. Consider your favorite, most frequently used apps.

Flipping through my phone I clearly have many problems to solve as Sonderman puts it. There’s:

an alarm clock to wake me up;
weather apps (I have many radars) to keep me informed;
camera to document things;
photo/video editing apps which process what I record;
a QR reader, for when those things finally get popular here;
voice recorders, vital for interviews;
my indispensable RSS reader educates and entertains me;
social media apps to listen and talk;
reference apps like Wikipedia and Dictionary to help me learn;
What Was There gives me a sense of history in a specific place;
audio and video apps make sure I’m never bored;
food apps give me reviews and ideas;
shopping apps to buy things and
local apps to keep me in the know.

The things I use the most are apps that serve a function, beyond just saying “Here you go.”

No app should work without a social media component, and it should be more than “Tweet that you’re using this app” or “I’m here” or “I’m listening to…” all of which are appropriately pointless.

Apps should dream up ways to allow someone to upload something to contribute, which is my only complaint of the otherwise lovely What Was There mentioned above. I love that one, but you have to go to the site to upload things into the cloud, and into their conversation and others’ knowledge base.

Look, the simple truth is mobile is rapidly arriving, immediate future. Whatever tool the end user chooses — something in your pocket, purse or backpack or some fantastic thing not yet invented — apps, for as long as they exist as movers and shakers, are going to need to be a dynamic multi-lane stream of information.

If your app should help me solve my problem, wouldn’t it be nifty if another user of that app could too?

Things you heard on the playground that turn out to be true:

Research at Nanjing University has found that strands of RNA from vegetables make it into our bloodstream after we eat them, and can regulate the expression of our genes once they’re inside us.

MicroRNAs, or miRNAs, are little strands of RNA that selectively bind to matching sequences of messenger RNA, resulting in repression of those genes. Their role has only been understood in the last decade or so, but miRNAs are currently believed to take part in a vast number of processes in both plants and animals.

Turns out you are what you eat. Keep that in mind at the dinner table.