First paper of the new semester is out today. We have a weird schedule such that we are now three weeks into the term by the time the paper comes out. I wish I had a way to remedy that, but at the moment I do not. This morning, we got this:
So it was a long night last night as they got back into the swing of things. That was followed by class today, two critiques today and various other work-related fun. It was enough to keep me busy in the office. The phone does not ring, but the email does constantly ding.
There are big plans in the first 45 seconds of this video have been pretty influential the last few days:
I showed it to a class. It is going into a big presentation on Friday. It figures pretty highly into conversations like this, as well: How to Advertise to the Millennial Who Hates Advertising. Everybody wants millennials, he said. And you found yourself shaking your head, knowing he was right.
The nation’s top nutrition advisory panel has decided to drop its caution about eating cholesterol-laden food, a move that could undo almost 40 years of government warnings about its consumption.
The group’s finding that cholesterol in the diet need no longer be considered a “nutrient of concern” stands in contrast to the committee’s findings five years ago, the last time it convened. During those proceedings, as in previous years, the panel deemed the issue of excess cholesterol in the American diet a public health concern.
The finding follows an evolution of thinking among many nutritionists who now believe that, for healthy adults, eating foods high in cholesterol may not significantly affect the level of cholesterol in the blood or increase the risk of heart disease.
I wonder how many people are celebrating with breakfast for dinner tonight.
Two more police forces have been caught asking British newsagents which sold copies of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for details of the customers who bought it.
Officers from Wales and Cheshire police have approached shopkeepers and demanded personal information on readers of the magazine, according to reports.
It comes after police in Wiltshire caused outrage by demanding similar details be handed over in the wake of the Paris attacks.
A video from campus. You should check out the Christenberry Planetarium, which is awesome and too often overlooked:
Samford University’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communication (JMC) has earned impressive honors in a new ranking of national journalism education programs. Samford debuted at number 43 out of the 187 programs ranked by the College Factual website.
The site, which provides rankings and other customized information to help students find the college most likely to lead to their future success, also revealed that Samford’s journalism program is:
• A top-25 “major value” in journalism education nationally.
• The top journalism program in Alabama.
• One of the top journalism programs among U.S. private universities.
• One of the top journalism programs in the South
Great students, great alumni, hardworking faculty, big rankings.
Owing to the details of life, today I took my second bike ride of the year. This makes me sad to even consider, which is something, I suppose. But travel interferes. Weather, other plans, the comfortable chair I’m sitting in at the time, whatever.
So, today, we ride. The Yankee got all set up and started her ride and I got all my various things together — shoes and helmet and water bottles and stretchy clothes — and chased off after her. She texted me just as I was leaving, so I knew where to follow. She had two miles on me and I wanted to get there. She made me work for it, too, but eight miles later — through the neighborhood, over the time trial and by the stores and up and over two hills and then through more shopping — I finally caught up to her.
Which meant I had to ride harder. But it all felt nice, through the old POW grounds and then up a slow, easy little mile-and-a-half hill where I actually increased my average pace. Then through a downhill segment where I kept the tempo high. Through there I increased my speed, but knew in every way — empirically and by feel and the sound of the wind and the hum of my tires — knew it was a pretty slow effort over familiar roads.
And finally those two last little molehills, those two slow rollers to get back home, something to grind and gasp over and feel your legs burning and “Why did I come home this way? Because I’m tired and I’m tired over a one hour ride. I really need to ride much, much more. I’ll ride tomorrow. It’ll rain tomorrow.”
You can think up a lot of things when you’re slowly, slowly making your way up a small hill.
The new SportsCenter set is the crown jewel of the building: 9,700 square feet of space that will be used to broadcast the show on ESPN’s mass of channels. The revamped set was designed to make SportsCenter more personal, to show anchors moving around and interacting, but also to help the show move at the speed of the internet. ESPN has long been criticized for allowing news to break overnight while it ran repeats of the previous day’s shows; now the premier show in sports can update and broadcast in real time.
TV still matters at ESPN, and in every way DC-2 is wired for the future of TV. It’s capable of broadcasting in 4K and 8K, and if by some miracle 3D actually takes off, ESPN will be ready for that, too. TV is still where the network makes most of its money, and it will be for the foreseeable future. But when – not if, but when — that changes, ESPN says it will be ready. It has moved staff, built buildings, and overhauled how the company operates to make sure of that.
The strategy to keep ESPN on top breaks down along two broad lines. The first is an adjustment in how ESPN sees itself: the company has reorganized to promote more sharing across platforms, even launching the buzzword-friendly Content Sharing Initiative. ESPN the TV network, ESPN the radio provider, ESPN the magazine, ESPN the Instagram account, and ESPN the app maker are all becoming one.
The keys, for all of us, are to understand which of our audience needs what story, ascertain where those stakeholders are, give them that story in the best way possible in the format or with the tool they are using and then to ensure that you’re keeping the thematic elements in tune with your larger branding.
From time to time an aspect of this topic comes up: being poor means different things across time. When Bread Bags Weren’t Funny:
I liked what Ernst said because it was real. And it reminded me of the old days.
There are a lot of Americans, and most of them seem to be on social media, who do not know some essentials about their country, but this is the way it was in America once, only 40 and 50 years ago:
America had less then. Americans had less.
If you were from a family that was barely or not quite getting by, you really had one pair of shoes. If your family was doing OK you had one pair of shoes for school and also a pair of what were called Sunday shoes — black leather or patent leather shoes. If you were really comfortable you had a pair of shoes for school, Sunday shoes, a pair of play shoes and even boots, which where I spent my childhood (Brooklyn, and Massapequa, Long Island) were called galoshes or rubbers.
Removing the prisoners — American, British, Canadian and others, who had dubbed themselves “Ghost Soldiers” — was an unexpected obstacle.
Conditioned by captivity, many POWs thought the raid a trick to kill them as they fled. Few recognized the green Ranger uniforms that evolved from blue or khaki uniforms during their years in captivity.
[…]
Rangers literally booted and shoved some POWs out. Rangers also removed their shirts to make stretchers to carry away sick and wounded prisoners and gave their clothes and boots to the emaciated, threadbare, barefoot men.
[…]
In the end, Allied casualties counted two Rangers dead and several wounded. No Filipinos died. More than 500 Japanese soldiers were killed or wounded. All 512 prisoners survived.
Everything is original — from the gas pumps and retro Saco signs to the fake brown owl in the rafters used to scare off birds.
Even tall blue posts to the right of the station still extend into the sky, holding up a blue bell that previous owner Dick Salmon would ring after every Auburn football win.
After being vacant for nine years after Salmon was shot and killed inside the station’s lobby in 2005, the Saco station, on the corner of Dean Road and Opelika Road, is being revived.
Mike Woodham, owner of Woodham’s Full Service, which will operate in the Saco building, will open his business Monday, hoping to carry on Salmon’s legacy.
Craig Biggio takes the kind of tour we all want, or, if you want to tour the archives, all you have to do is get voted in, Biggio like a kid in the Hall of Fame:
Craig Biggio giggled and shook his head in disbelief. The Astros’ first Hall of Famer grabbed Babe Ruth’s bat and gripped it tightly, locking his hands on a handle that he quickly realized was much thicker than today’s models.
“No way! Babe Ruth’s bat,” Biggio said with a chuckle that served as a soundtrack for most of his tour through the National Baseball Hall of Fame. “Man, it feels good.”
The gritty, determined look Biggio carried to the plate during 20 years with the Astros was softened by a fan’s child-like giddiness Friday morning as he toured the Hall of Fame for the first time since he was elected to the Hall’s 2015 class earlier this month.
He chuckled with enthusiasm often, but he really cherished his visit to the climate-controlled collections area where he got to hold bats that once were used by Yankees legends Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
You just don’t see a big mound of large bags of cereal every day. And, given the lunch the last few days, this was looking pretty good. They brought in this new vendor last fall — because food is definitely a place you seek out the lowest bidder. Meanwhile …
A group of more than 100 Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts and Filipino guerrillas traveled 30 miles behind Japanese lines to reach the camp. Along the route, other guerrillas in the villages muzzled dogs and put chickens in cages lest they alert the Japanese.
The 30-minute raid liberated 513 POWs.
Some of them weighed so little the Rangers could carry two men on their backs. At a rendezvous point, trucks and 26 carabao carts — local wooden carts — waited to carry them to safety. Villagers along the way contributed more carts because the Americans had little or no clothing and shoes, and it became increasingly difficult for them to walk. By the time they reached American lines, 106 carts were being used.
Audacious things are done by audacious individuals.
“It’s like ‘Where’d this thing come from?'” said Lee Shook, who’s making a documentary about the car. “It’s a time capsule. It’s amazing.”
The 1971 Ford Thunderbird is labeled the “Rescue Ship,” and three decades ago that’s exactly what it was.
In the early 1980s, Willie J. Perry drove the car around Birmingham looking for people who ran out of gas, had a flat tire or otherwise needed a helping hand. The Rescue Ship was an icon, covered with flashing lights and a flashy paint job, and equipped with a record player, toaster oven, and more inside.
Daniel Okrent, who served as The New York Times’ first public editor, made reference to a “downgrading” of the position, based mostly on financial constraints.
“At a time when newsrooms are shrinking and news holes are shrinking, the idea of paying someone to criticize a newspaper is perceived by management as more and more obtuse,” he said.
The position is often the first to go when news executives are trying to trim their budgets.
“Do we really want to be spending scarce resources on an in-house critic?” New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen asked, hypothetically. “There’s the sense that media criticism rains down on us from all sides. Isn’t it better to let outsiders handle it?”
Buzzfeed editor in chief Ben Smith has often said as much—that the instant Twitter critics make a formal ombudsman unneccessary for the company.
Maybe I’m alone in this, but it seems that this is exactly the reason we need public editors right now. There’s such a thing as getting in front of an issue.
A policy instituted by Principal Nichole Davis Williams in the fall states that “Students should not receive a grade lower than 50.” This means that students at the school can fail to turn in work, and still receive some credit for the work.
[…]
The policy, which is not a district-wide policy, was implemented after a parent questioned her child’s low score on a progress report, the teachers said. Some students who are aware of the policy aren’t doing classwork and projects, and just taking 50s. The teachers said they have noticed behavioral problems they believe to be connected to that policy.
“Students aren’t learning because we can’t get them to do the work,” one of the teachers told AL.com. “When do we hold the students accountable?”
Can’t imagine what that does to the culture of the campus.
And, ladies, wear your swim caps. I love the coloring on that sign, which probably was installed and hasn’t been reconsidered in years. I love the way the light falls across it and the tile behind it. The building was built in 1961, so the sign went in sometime since then.
There are going to be some thorny ethical issues here. I refer you to item five under the “Rights” section of Instagram’s terms of service, “You will not remove, alter or conceal any copyright, trademark, service mark or other proprietary rights notices incorporated in or accompanying the Instagram Content and you will not reproduce, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works based on, perform, display, publish, distribute, transmit, broadcast, sell, license or otherwise exploit the Instagram Content.” There’s also a “We will not rent or sell your information to third parties outside Instagram” passage elsewhere in their terms.
Here, then, is a recent eyetracking study that says “Study participants were able to tell whether a photograph was made by a professional or an amateur 90 percent of the time.” The findings there also suggest professional photographs were twice as likely as user-generated photographs to be shared, that more time was spent with professionally generated photographs than with user-generated images and respondents rated shots for their memorability, the top 20 were done by pros.
So go on with Instagram, newsrooms.
I’m a fan of user generated content. I have a presentation on just this topic in a few weeks at the Alabama Press Association. UGC now has a valuable and, at times, vital role in the work of a news outlet. There are caveats and concerns: quality, accessibility, accuracy and, as above, issues of legality. Once you get beyond all of that — and that will take some doing — you get down to today’s example. Used in bulk like the Times did above it comes across as either a novelty (“We’re hip”) or a concession (“We couldn’t get our light painters outside to shoot the snow”).
