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journalism / links / photo / podcast / Wednesday — Comments Off
16
Sep 15

Things I’ve found and things I’d forgotten I’d found

Today I was eating one of those fruit bowls, the sort you get pre-cut and ready to eat from the produce section. Munching away in the office and I come across this:

That’s one big grape.

Things I’ve also come across recently include the announcement that Esquire has gone completist with their Classic site. Eight decades of content are now online. Here’s some heart-rending media, the boyfriend of murdered TV reporter makes emotional return to anchor chair. Here’s something I wrote earlier this week. It is a review of a documentary. It was not good.

And a podcastI recorded with the editor of The Anniston Star:

cycling / links / Monday / photo — Comments Off
14
Sep 15

Chasing the Trek

This weekend I chased The Yankee for 42 miles. She started before me and I had to catch her. I knew the route and I knew she had a big head start. That was the game we played. A game we used to play when I could catch her more often. It took me about 31 miles to find her.

I’m not sure which I liked more, the mile where I averaged 22.6 or the earlier mile where I paced 23 miles per hour. I can do that on the right terrain, just long enough, for about two-and-a-half-minutes, to wonder what it would be like to do that over an entire ride, no matter the terrain. Terrain and topography being relative terms for where we ride. My app says I climbed only 1,700 feet during that ride.

I know people at Delta State. That campus had already had a weird and tough enough year before a senseless tragedy such as this. Later in the day we learned those particular people were safe.

A review, something I wrote:

Unless you are a Ricardo Louis or Chris Davis completist, you probably can skip the new “Miracles on the Plains,” which does not fit into the group of excellent documentaries. There are several reasons.

It goes on like that for about 635 more words.

I do not know what is happening. / links / podcast / running / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
2
Sep 15

All of our meanwhiles

Here is a podcast I recorded today with Trussville Tribune publisher Scott Buttram. He tells us about a sparsely attended secession rally in Montgomery. We wind up touching on whether things like this should be covered and the art of providing your audience with an even-handed report. It is a good conversation, check it out:

Meanwhile, I saw this video over lunch, and immediately identified with the kid:

Meanwhile, here’s your “educators” story of the day. New York School Wants to Block Student With Down Syndrome on 1st Day:

The president of the Westhampton Beach Board of Education did not responded to ABC News’ request for comment. But in a letter sent to The Southampton Press by school board member Suzanne M. Mensch and obtained by ABC News, Mensch wrote she was “extremely disheartened by the Killoran family’s repeated public efforts to bully the Westhampton Beach School District into developing an educational program for their son” and that “Westhampton Beach has not been a party to this discussion” regarding Aiden’s placement.

I think that stands all by itself. Mean ol’ family bullies.

Meanwhile, these stories about cutting-edge technology solving archeological problems keep cropping up. If it didn’t have some extremely expensive laboratory equipment involved you’d think they were just making things up as they go. Mostly because they are. And why not? Silver scans solve mystery of Jamestown graves:

The coffins were long gone, victims of decay, but the coffin nails remained. The scientists knew of the tradition of burying important people in the chancel—and two important clues clarified the mystery further.

One was a small, sealed silver box that had been placed on top of one of the coffins, as evidenced by wood fibers preserved on the bottom of the box. The other was silver thread found in one of the graves.

But the team from the Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological project was left with a conundrum: how to use these valuable clues to reveal the identities of the people in the graves without destroying the artifacts?

Meanwhile, from the Department of Things Change, Obviously: Millennial Travel Habits Force Tourism Bureaus to Shift Strategy:

Millennials at destination marketing organizations are pushing senior leadership to develop more innovative digital communications and more experiential sales efforts targeting both the leisure travel and meetings sectors.

Especially on the digital side, many of these younger professionals feel that their youth and social media expertise can be better leveraged to create more compelling social media and content marketing outreach for their organizations.

[…]

“I think it’s important for Millennials to point out to their senior leadership that the intent behind these campaigns is not just to do something fun,” says Spencer. “Of course, it was fun, but there was a strategy behind it and a lot of ROI. We wanted to get folks excited about Cleveland as a great place to visit, and we achieved that with a great outcome.”

Stack dimes.

After I’d had all the fun I could with class and podcasts and emails and reading and directing the typical traffic of a Wednesday I went for a run. I had a nice seven-mile jog, and I clocked my final mile at 8:26. That’s not fast, not even for me, but I’d like to stress, again, that it was mile seven.

I do not know what is happening.

journalism / links / Monday / things to read — Comments Off
31
Aug 15

Things to read

We are back in full stride with the Monday post of fun links to check out. A little something for a lot of people here. So just scroll until you find something that sings out to you.

This highly anticipated museum is set to open. I can’t wait to see it. This is a photo gallery, but don’t expect much in the way of captions, but the photos look promising. A look inside Birmingham’s new Negro Southern League Museum.

Google’s self-driving cars can’t handle bicycle track stands:

Ever performed a track stand, where you keep your bike upright at a stop without taking your feet off the pedals? If you have, you’ll want to avoid trying that around Google’s self-driving cars, at least for a while. One Austin-based cyclist reports an encounter where one of the autonomous cars was comically unsure of what to do when it spotted him doing a track stand at an intersection. Every time his bike moved even slightly, the car would lurch forward and promptly hit the brakes. Nothing happened beyond some good laughs, but it was clear that Google’s self-driving code didn’t know how to handle a not-quite-stationary bike.

Humans can’t handle that either, in my experience.

Poor headline aside — why read the story after this? — they’ve buried the real story. Netflix will not renew its Epix deal at the end of September, Hulu signs up for Epix content starting October 1:

The company explains that “while many of these movies are popular, they are also widely available on cable and other subscription platforms at the same time as they are on Netflix and subject to the same drawn out licensing periods.” Netflix instead wants to focus on original films and “some innovative licensing arrangements with the movie studios” that will result in “a better movie experience” for its members.

Also, “Starting next year, we will be the exclusive U.S. pay TV home of the latest theatrical movies from the The Walt Disney Company, including Pixar, Lucasfilm and Marvel movies.”

Huge signings.

You know, when you read these pieces all together … it is pretty obvious why no one wants to talk about it. China and Russia are using hacked data to target U.S. spies, officials say:

Foreign spy services, especially in China and Russia, are aggressively aggregating and cross-indexing hacked U.S. computer databases — including security clearance applications, airline records and medical insurance forms — to identify U.S. intelligence officers and agents, U.S. officials said.

At least one clandestine network of American engineers and scientists who provide technical assistance to U.S. undercover operatives and agents overseas has been compromised as a result, according to two U.S. officials.

The Obama administration has scrambled to boost cyberdefenses for federal agencies and crucial infrastructure as foreign-based attacks have penetrated government websites and email systems, social media accounts and, most important, vast data troves containing Social Security numbers, financial information, medical records and other personal data on millions of Americans.

Counterintelligence officials say their adversaries combine those immense data files and then employ sophisticated software to try to isolate disparate clues that can be used to identify and track — or worse, blackmail and recruit — U.S. intelligence operatives.

TV Remains King in Political Ad Spending:

There is an adage in American politics: Campaigns don’t start until the first commercial appears on television. Despite the enormous growth of online campaigning, that half-century of tradition is proving a difficult habit to break.

Candidates and outside groups are expected to spend $1.1 billion on digital advertising in 2016, up almost 700% from $162 million in the 2012 elections.

That this would happen is no surprise. That it is happening so quickly caught me off guard. Live Sports No Longer TV’s Holy Grail in U.S. as Ratings Peak:

“Everyone thought sports rights were the Holy Grail,” said Brandon Ross, an analyst at BTIG Research. “But if your revenues are not as high as you expected and you’ve signed long-term, high-priced agreements, that makes things tough.”

Live sporting events are a top reason people still pay for cable, so media companies battle each other for rights to broadcast athletic events. Sports traditionally have boosted ratings coveted by advertisers and driven up the fees paid by pay-TV operators such as Comcast Corp. to carry channels.

Yet sports haven’t shielded TV networks from subscriber casualties. ESPN has lost 3 million subscribers in the past year and Disney cut its profit forecast earlier this month, sparking a massive selloff in U.S. media stocks. TNT and TBS, which carry basketball, baseball and golf, each shed more than 2 million, and Fox Sports 1 lost 440,000, according to Nielsen data.

12 basics of interviewing, listening and note-taking:

Not long ago, I taught a workshop on these topics to the young men of Poynter’s Write Field program, about 40 minority students attending middle school and high school. They found my lessons useful, so I thought I would pass them on to a larger audience.

I realize these dozen strategies constitute the basics. But when I am struggling with a craft – golf, music, writing – I find it helpful to remind myself of those basics, to climb down from the penthouse and visit the ground floor.

There are terrific extras in the comments covering most of the additions I’d suggest. So I’ll just add two more. First, pay attention to the subject’s nonverbals. More often than not, they won’t give you much. But when they do, they’ll make the interview. Second, if you’re in that person’s “home field” pay attention to the surroundings. Those details are often gold.

cycling / Friday / iPhone / journalism / links / photo / Twitter — Comments Off
28
Aug 15

And then you really wonder

Department witticisms:

You wonder if you’re making a difference, and then you see things like that.

Then and now … Aerial images show the slow return of the Lower Ninth Ward:

The following images show the evolution of one block in the Lower Ninth Ward that was situated directly in front of a levee that breached along the Industrial Canal ten years ago.

A decade into the Katrina diaspora:

Some stayed to rebuild their lives. Others chose to move on. Some had to let loved ones go, while others are no longer here themselves. Along the Gulf Coast, the hurricane’s punishing winds pushed people in directions they never imagined. Here is where some of those people stood in the early months after the disaster, and where they stand now.

Clearly it was the fault of the president’s weather machine. Stop Blaming Me for Hurricane Katrina:

I’m often asked, as the person who was running FEMA when Hurricane Katrina hit, why I didn’t evacuate New Orleans. My response is simple—FEMA had no authority to do that under the Constitution, which clearly establishes a system of federalism in which state and local governments are autonomous governmental entities. We call first responders “first” for a reason. When you dial 9-1-1 your call isn’t answered by an operator at 500 C Street SW, Washington, D.C., 20472. Your call is answered by a local government entity that has first and primary responsibility for a disaster.

Could FEMA have ordered the evacuation of New Orleans? Yes, had it waived posse comitatus and invoked the Insurrection Act, which Congress ultimately amended in 2006 to permit deployment of troops in response to natural disasters. That unprecedented action was actually contemplated days after landfall aboard Air Force One—and I advocated for it. After I advised the president to federalize the response, he sat with Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Air Force One and outlined his plan. We immediately started drafting the federalization documents for the president’s signature, but Governor Blanco requested time to think it over and the president acquiesced. While the governor considered her options, the city became more and more dysfunctional. Blanco ultimately rejected the president’s plan, and political considerations eventually pushed the idea aside.

By the time federalization was seriously considered, the biggest mistake had already been made: evacuation began too late. And even if FEMA had been given the power to order citizens out of New Orleans days earlier, it didn’t own the helicopters, military transport planes and amphibious armored personnel carriers necessary to carry out the evacuation of a major American city.

As the storm neared New Orleans, all I could do—and did do even before the federalization debate got underway—was go on television, radio and any media outlet my press team could find—and encourage people to “literally get your butts out of New Orleans before the storm hits.”

Can’t wait for the rebuttal to Michael Brown’s essay.

Got weekend plans? You are not late:

In terms of the internet, nothing has happened yet. The internet is still at the beginning of its beginning. If we could climb into a time machine and journey 30 years into the future, and from that vantage look back to today, we’d realize that most of the greatest products running the lives of citizens in 2044 were not invented until after 2014. People in the future will look at their holodecks, and wearable virtual reality contact lenses, and downloadable avatars, and AI interfaces, and say, oh, you didn’t really have the internet (or whatever they’ll call it) back then.

And they’d be right. Because from our perspective now, the greatest online things of the first half of this century are all before us. All these miraculous inventions are waiting for that crazy, no-one-told-me-it-was-impossible visionary to start grabbing the low-hanging fruit — the equivalent of the dot com names of 1984.

Because here is the other thing the greybeards in 2044 will tell you: Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an entrepreneur in 2014? It was a wide-open frontier! You could pick almost any category X and add some AI to it, put it on the cloud. Few devices had more than one or two sensors in them, unlike the hundreds now. Expectations and barriers were low. It was easy to be the first. And then they would sigh, “Oh, if only we realized how possible everything was back then!”

So, the truth: Right now, today, in 2014 is the best time to start something on the internet.

I got home and plopped down and didn’t want to move. I wanted a nap, but forced myself outside.

This was the better choice.

It was just a 15 mile ride, but it was better than a nap.