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The wedding of the year and serious journalism

Crimson meeting. Everyone is intently concentrating on something being said by a reporter out of the frame. They’re also wondering what I’m doing climbing up into a chair, I’m sure.

A newspaper editor friend of mine said “Everyone looks depressed. Great job preparing them for the real world of journalism!”

That only makes me wish I knew what they were talking about at the moment. This is a budget meeting, though, and I deliberately stay out of those. Immediately after the budget, though, is the critique, where we pore over the most recent issue. The short version: it is a remarkably good second issue. There are a few things to work on, there always will be. And we’re about to go on a great crusade of immediacy and urgency, but there is great potential in what this crew brings together. I’m very proud for them.

Meanwhile …

Things to read … the things to read were always destined to intersect with a “meanwhile.”

Trust in Mass Media Returns to All-Time Low:

After registering slightly higher trust last year, Americans’ confidence in the media’s ability to report “the news fully, accurately, and fairly” has returned to its previous all-time low of 40%. Americans’ trust in mass media has generally been edging downward from higher levels in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.

There are some cultural and societal issues at play here. We also benefit from a great many more voices now, too, and often those voices are critical of the media, or, more-to-the-point, illustrative of where “the media” is getting something wrong. Also, sometimes, you just get bad work. (And don’t forget comment sections of websites.)

For example … Everything you could ever want to know about AJ McCarron and Katherine Webb’s wedding. Let’s set the scene. Two months ago a young couple got married. Here is a FAQ. A reporter said to me:

@kennysmith @aldotcom I can't wait for the anniversary!

— Madison Underwood (@MadisonU) September 18, 2014

Wouldn’t it be weird to report on an anniversary? Or just stalk it?

In that FAQ there is this line: Wedding pictures FINALLY revealed.

It is an entertainment piece and there’s an audience for this stuff. Not my speed, but that’s fine, I get it. But if you write the above sentence you desperately need to gain some perspective.

I rather like interviews with thoughtful journalists. It is often inside baseball, but if you’re actually talking to a reporter about something they actually know about, it can be enlightening … Here’s Alison Gow, Editor of Digital Innovation at Trinity Mirror Regionals:

Paint us a picture: what does innovation in newsrooms look like to you?

It’s a newsroom where experimentation leading to some form of change happens all the time: it might be telling a story in a different way, or developing a new tool for news-gathering or collaboration. Personally, I think experimentation is the thing that keeps our journalism fresh and makes us relevant … but it will probably be a bit of a leap of faith and lead to an evolution of how we work, interact with audiences and present our journalism. It’s also a newsroom with a clear system for managing ideas, whether they benefit editorial, commercial, or other departments: one that understands anyone in the company may have a ‘Eureka!’ moment, and should know where to take it. You don’t get the monopoly on ideas because you’re a manager.

Often, I think, innovation is working backwards from the endpoint of an idea, refining the processes to make it happen, without ever losing sight of the final goal. Too often we compromise or give up on a final vision because operations/systems/culture won’t accommodate it. Never lose sight of what you’re aiming to achieve, and work over or through obstacles.

That’s why you often have to say yes in those newsroom meetings.

(Wedding pictures aren’t innovative.)

Who’s really to blame for ad fraud?:

Ad fraud is the ultimate case of who done it? Nobody argues there’s a problem, but as for who is to blame … well, that’s where things get dicey.

This much is for sure: ad fraud, and your definition of what constitutes it may vary, has gone from being viewed as a basic cost of doing business to becoming one of the biggest issues facing the online ad industry. The credibility of the medium is at risk.

This story is becoming an annual affair, and it is one of the best things going … Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle window washers amaze young patients at Children’s Hospital

I read paragraphs and paragraphs of this story on GoPro, the fad, the great videos, the IPO, the GoPro fails. Nothing of it was new. But I got to this part and I started thinking about Polaroid … We are a camera:

The company wants to capitalize on the mass-market home-video urge, the camera’s aptitude for capturing what GoPro’s president, Tony Bates, calls “life’s great moments,” and yet retain its reputation as a kind of philosopher’s stone, capable of transforming ordinary experience into magical footage. (Two tips: “Slow it down and you look like a pro.” “The closer the better.”)

And the next sentence mentions the Brownie and Polaroid and the democratization of video. The story continues:

But the analogy comes up short, because GoPro videos aspire to go viral. You’re sharing the photos of your ski trip not just with your family and a few friends but, if you’re any good, with thousands, if not millions, of people. The GoPro, by implication, asks its users to push a little harder, as both subjects and filmmakers. Be a Hero: The premise from the start has been that you, in every way an amateur, can go pro—on both sides of the lens. It’s karaoke, but with the full Marshall stack.

The short video synonymous with GoPro is a kind of post-literate diary, a stop on the way to a future in which everything will be filmed from every point of view. Humans have always recorded their experiences, in an array of media and for a variety of reasons. Not until very recently, with the advent of digital photography and video, and unlimited storage and distribution capacity, has it been conceivable to film everything. As we now more than ever communicate through pictures, either still or moving, perhaps our lives come closer to Susan Sontag’s imagined “anthology of images.” An obvious example is the people who film concerts on their smartphones. Will they ever watch the video? And if they do will it measure up to the concert, which they half missed? Of course not. They film the concert to certify their attendance and convey their good fortune. The frame corroborates.

Polaroid is coming into that market, as well. They’re looking at the truly democratized, less high adrenaline adventure segment of consumerism. They’ll compete with GoPro on one end and probably smartphones on the other.

Just imagine if someone was recording me when I took the photo above, on the odd chance that I fell out of my chair. Oh, the laughs they would have had at my expense. Serious journalism, indeed, undone.

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16
Sep 14

It takes practice to appear like Lincoln

So the coach hits the ball and the player just passes them, over and over, toward a netted basket.

I played volleyball, recreationally, and it was a lot of fun. I think the reason I wasn’t especially good at it was that even though I played with talented and fun people, my technique was lousy. And, also, I stopped growing. But mostly the technique. “Let this ball hit you on your forearms over and over for hours on end,” has limited appeal. And so I stopped growing and stopped improving and I never could set. But I could serve. I would have done that all day if the referee let me.

Anyway, the basketball/volleyball court is overlooked on one side by the gym at Samford. I ran on a treadmill there and then had some water and watched the passing going on below. The more I looked at the photo the more I liked it. The angle is such, and the lighting and floor just so, that all of the volleyballs can look like they’re floating. Samford volleyball is good, but maybe not that good.

Things to read … because reading makes us all look good.

Ten years ago today, Hurricane Ivan hit us. Talked about that in class the other day. I had been at al.com for just a few months by then, and we did some great work covering the storm. Here are some of the archives, looking very 2004-ish. We did something like 4 million views that day, which was easily a record for the time.

Apparently, older folks are in a boom period for narcotics use … Someday, kids are going to tell us to shut up.

Opelika’s Willie Fuller face of Johnny Ray bike ride to combat Parkinson’s:

Willie Fuller can’t tell you how many miles he has logged on a bicycle since he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease about 12 years ago.

But every mile – whether it was a 440-mile trek on the Natchez Trace, the numerous round-trip rides from Opelika to Auburn or 45 minutes on his back porch exercise bike – inspires many who also live with the disease, along with those fortunate to know him.

Fuller’s love of bicycling has helped him live with Parkinson’s. He said he hasn’t had to increase his medicine dosage in 12 years.

Smartphone Experiment Shows How Your Metadata Tells Your Story:

For one short week, a Dutch volunteer named Ton Siedsma with the digital rights group Bits of Freedom agreed to allow researchers to have full access to all his smartphone metadata. This is the information the National Security Agency (NSA) and other governments have been collecting from its own citizens while insisting the information did not violate our privacy.

Few actually believe the government’s arguments, but how much can somebody figure out just from smartphone data? Thus, the experiment with Siedsma. It turns out, as has been growing increasingly clear, you can figure out a lot. According to an article subsequently published in Dutch media, researchers (from a university and a separate security firm) gathered 15,000 records in a week, complete with timestamps. Each time he did pretty much anything on the cell phone they were able to determine physically where he was. And they were able to figure out a lot about both his personal and professional life.

A few quick media links:

Is it original? An editor’s guide to identifying plagiarism

The business of building on tweets

When breaking news happens, reporters and police try to keep up with social media

There’s carrying someone’s water up the hill, and then there’s going up that hill, looking down and realize you are carrying a very leaky bucket … Obama Channels Lincoln in Campaign Against Islamic State:

Abraham Lincoln did it when he inspected troops on Civil War battlefields. Lyndon Johnson flew to Vietnam to stand with soldiers. And George W. Bush donned a flight jacket during the Iraq war and landed on a U.S. carrier to declare “Mission Accomplished.”

Projecting a sense of command has always been an important ingredient of presidential leadership, particularly during military missions. The images don’t guarantee success; they do convey grit.

President Barack Obama, with a visit to the military’s central command today after going to the nation’s disease-control center yesterday, is trying to demonstrate his resolve in fighting two international scourges: Islamic State terrorists and the spreading Ebola virus.

The man flew to Atlanta. And then Tampa.

The stops show Obama adopting a more muscular posture on foreign affairs, reversing the cautious and introspective style that has mostly defined his administration until now.

And he didn’t even pick up the visitor’s guide.

When was the last time you picked up a visitor’s guide? Been awhile, I’d bet. Did you feel like Lincoln when you did it? Me either.

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15
Sep 14

The man on the wall has no comment

It occurred to me that I’ve never noticed the bas-reliefs of any other governors in Alabama. Perhaps I’m overlooking them or am drawing a mental blank. Maybe this is a lasting affection for George Wallace. Perhaps part of it is that George Wallace was governor for so long, from 1963 to 1967 and then from 1971 until 1979 and again from 1983 to 1987.

Here he’s standing in front of the restroom door:

That rest area was built during the 1970s. Maybe it was a boom period.

A bit ambitious, wouldn’t you think?

I had a nice, easy 30-mile ride yesterday. It should have been longer. I climbed more than 1,200 feet and rode for under two hours. I topped out at 37.7 miles per hour. Twenty percent of the ride was over 20 miles per hour. (Which is slow for most, but pretty nice for me.) Most importantly, it didn’t all fall apart in the last few minutes. It reminds me that I should ride more.

Things to read … to remind you that I should ride more.

I’m always circumspect about a small thing, like a small sport, playing big social roles. But we all have our roles to play and we all have our spheres of influence, I suppose … Biking Toward Women’s Rights in Afghanistan:

The Women’s National Cycling Team of Afghanistan is only a few years old. Its 10 members, most between the ages of 17 and 22, have yet to finish a race. But they are determined to persevere in their chosen sport despite multiple barriers, and are aiming to ride in the 2020 Olympics.

Men driving by insult them. Boys along the road throw rocks at them. Sometimes they don’t have enough money to buy adequate food to fuel their rides. Every day, they are reminded that it is taboo in Afghan society for a woman to get on a bicycle. And still they ride.

“They tell us that it is not our right to ride our bikes in the streets and such,” says Marjan Sidiqqi, one of the young women on the team. “We tell them that this is our right and that they are taking our right away. Then we speed off.”

[…]

Galpin says that for the generation of girls coming of age in a post-Taliban Afghanistan, bicycling is another manifestation of the freedom to be an educated person in the society. “Young women who are in university and high school, young women who are educated, their families have promoted that and helped that happen,” she says. “These young women look at it very cut and dry: ‘My brother can ride a bike, why can’t I?’ They’re cognizant that they have this right.”

“We cannot become a hero by sitting at home,” she said.

This is called neuroplasticity, or the amazing things the human body can do … An adult woman was found to be missing her cerebellum:

So essentially, it took less than a decade of life for the rest of her brain to pick up the missing cerebellum’s slack. The fact that the patient is alive and thriving is incredible. This is only the ninth time that doctors have found someone to be missing a whole cerebellum, and most of the others have only been discovered after their early deaths.

She was given a photograph after 9/11. Every year at the anniversary she’s tried to find the people in the picture. This year, the mystery was solved … Mystery Solved: The People in the 9/11 Wedding Photo

I saw the first part of this story yesterday in the paper, and it is worth reading today … Beulah’s David Eastridge battling back from life-threatening accident:

Balance has been one of the toughest parts for David since the traumatic brain injury. His depth perception in his left eye is still affected, which in turn makes it difficult to maintain balance at times. It’s why he wears that soft helmet whenever he does anything that requires movement.

He climbs stairs, but only to show off. Sutlive has shifted focus away from that because of the progress David has made. Now
they spend time on the treadmill. David has to hold the railings, but he gradually begins to pick up the pace.

Sutlive asks him: “What’s the fastest you can go?”

“Let’s show them,” David enthusiastically responds.

He reaches 3.1 mph on a slight grade; a brisk jog. Five weeks earlier, he couldn’t walk on his own.

Tough kid, that.

If you watched the Georgia game this weekend you might have noticed when the announcers mentioned this story. It is a pretty nice, quick little news package:

And, finally, here’s a little feature on Birmingham’s historic Rickwood Field … Recapturing a Game and Days Gone By. The story is told through the eyes of the author’s 77-year-old mother-in-law and is understandably precious.

If you like baseball history, I did a decent podcast about Rickwood several years ago. I’ve also sold photos of the nation’s oldest active baseball part to ESPN.

The good old days. Today was different than all of that. All of my days are though, that was eight years ago, after all. Instead of interviewing David Brewer, I was discussing tips of interviewing with students in a classroom.

I always find myself bringing up the time I was asked to interview the congressman who’s best hunting dog had just died, or the times I annoyed governors, or that a newly elected (and still sitting) senator tried to insult me. Grieving interviews, funny interviews, boring interviews, the ones where you know the person is lying to you, and all of the different ways to get answers from your sources. Good stuff, good times.

I wonder what it was like to interview George Wallace. (He died in 1998, but I met his son once, in passing.) Maybe I should stop back by that bas-relief.

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13
Sep 14

On the sofa

I thought an early morning bike ride would have some romance: sleepy, empty roads, mystic lighting. So I set an alarm and almost got up right away. The Yankee was asleep. The town was asleep. I was asleep. I, like the roads, was also empty.

It was just a bit over an hour in the saddle, and I worked through five timed segments, doing neither particularly well or particularly poorly on any of it. I worked my way through downtown and into the western outskirts. The sun turned from yellow to bright — and there is a difference if you’re awake early enough.

Early enough being a relative term, granted.

Later in the morning, at home, The Yankee read me this story:

After working with a fraternity brother to design her engagement ring, Clayton turned to another friend, an Alabama grad, to brainstorm the perfect proposal.

In the end, only one place in the world made sense for Clayton to ask the most important question of his life.

Nick Saban’s office.

He hid in the bathroom. His fiancee, a hostess, was sent in to polish up bling for some visitors. He comes out with a ring of his own, from the bathroom, where there are apparently snacks and he had some and … people do curious things, don’t they?

She read me the story and showed me the video — of course there is video — and I am chagrined I didn’t think to use Gene Chizik’s office. Of course, he’d only been on the job for just a few days when we got engaged, though, so Chizik’s bathroom snack basket might not have been stocked up yet.

“So I sprang out of the john and said ‘Would you — ‘ and she interrupted and said ‘Does Coach use Lysol or Clorox toilet bowl cleaner?'”

People do curious things.

Football! Auburn was off, and the slate looked uninspiring, but there was a day in front of televisions and, like all of the days that include college football, it turned into something thrilling.

And punting!

And still more punting!

Those two plays happened within moments of one another in the same game. How could you not love college football?

There was a weather day of the Georgia at South Carolina game. So CBS re-played part of the Iron Bowl. Some of the more casual fans found themselves wondering why Alabama and Auburn were playing so early in the year and why it was night in the middle of the day. Everyone else had a nice laugh.

The last item in that list is from someone familiar …

Things to read … because if you read enough anything can become familiar.

Tax credits are a marvelous thing … Alabama named one of the top states for doing business.

Digital First Media’s York Daily Record shuts off power mid-afternoon to save money

Terrible all the way around … James Foley’s Parents Warned Of Prosecution For Ransom Fundraising

And now back to late-night football.

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12
Sep 14

The dangers of barbecue

We spent Monday and Wednesday talking about story ideas in my writing and editing class. Today we shifted to research tools. The conversation was all about primary sources. So I got a state accident report form from the police folks. I showed off health department forms from the restaurant inspectors. I downloaded the university’s Form 990 from Guidestar. The form is an annual reporting return that has to be filed with the government, listing programs and finances.

I started out asking “Who wants to know what the president of the university makes?”

People always want to know about the boss, don’t they?

This may be my favorite stretch of classes. Next week we’ll talk about online sources and research. It isn’t for everyone, but I’m going to try and make it interesting in the “yes, you have access to this sort of thing and there are millions of stories that can come from it” vein. We’ll see how many people are intrigued.

I got in a short ride before darkness fell, about an hour’s worth. I wimped out, taking a standard, easy route with only 700 feet of climbing. I topped out at 38.1 miles per hour. There’s a section of my cycling app that allows me to add notes about the ride. This evening I typed in “Perfectly forgettable.”

Sometimes those are the best rides. Nothing remarkable on the two little climbs, nor the one long sprint. The hills close to home slow and manageable. I caught all the lights and worked back through the neighborhood just in time to see the headlights shining. It was mindless and a great wind down from the week. It also wasn’t long enough. But, I’ll ride again in the morning and we’ll find out if I like morning rides. There might be an appeal there. But will it be more appealing than the snooze bar?

This is the best story you’ll read today. It defies excerpting, but we’ll try. This young woman found herself homeless when her lost her job. They bounced from shelter to shelter before things turned back around a bit …

‘I didn’t want to just be average.’

Koen’s family got back on its feet and found a new house her senior year of high school, but she was living in homeless shelters for most of her high school education, which made school work a little difficult.

“At the shelter you have to work and take hours and have to do chores,” she said. “Or if volunteers come to hold events or programs, it would be rude to not go. I studied when I could. I didn’t want to just be average. I had made it a goal my freshman year I wanted to be in the Top 20 every year.”

And that’s exactly where she finished—as one of about 20 students who had such high GPAs the computers named them all No. 1. She graduated high school with honors and an advanced academic diploma.

Koen just started her first year at the University of Montevallo, where she plans to join the honors program and continue to volunteer.

She is one of five young people in a scholarship competition. She’s local and remarkable, so I’m voting for Rebecca Koen.

They’re all moving stories, should you feel the need to be moved this lovely day.

Things to read … because reading makes every day more lovely.

Birmingham exports down 20 percent from 2011:

According to numbers from the U.S. Department of Commerce, in 2013 Birmingham exported $1.8 billion in goods from industries such as transportation equipment, machinery and primary metals. But that number is down 20 percent from 2011, when the city exported $2.3 billion.

That dovetails nicely with certain economic events.

You can’t see it and you can’t know why … Court won’t release costs of Gitmo camp:

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Pentagon need not make public a document detailing the costs associated with a Guantanamo Bay prison camp used to house so-called high-value detainees.

In a ten-page opinion (posted here), U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell rejected the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg brought seeking records of the costs of creating or maintaining the camp.

The Defense Department said it found only one record, a single page, responsive to Rosenberg’s request. That page was classified in its entirety.

The court filing describing the reason for the classification and level of classification is itself classified

Don’t you just want to know why you can’t know how much it cost?

This happened to me in Birmingham … Visitor’s barbecue from Joe’s Kansas City gets confiscated at KCI:

Bob Porter wasn’t about to leave Kansas City without tasting our world famous barbecue.

Porter, a government affairs consultant from Washington, D.C., flew in over the weekend to attend the Chiefs game with a group of friends. Before catching his return flight at Kansas City International Airport, he stopped by the Leawood Joe’s Kansas City for a pound of brisket, a pound of smoked sausage and a small condiment cup of sauce.

Porter says he assumed the barbecue would be fine in his checked suitcase because it was wrapped in butcher paper and, for good measure, a plastic laundry bag from his hotel room. But when he arrived home in D.C. Monday and opened his suitcase, the barbecue was gone. In its place, he says, was an empty plastic laundry bag and a note from the Transportation Security Administration that said it had gone through his luggage.

“Really? That’s what you’re taking? My barbecue?” Porter says. “I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve never had anything like this happen before.”

I had some very dangerous banana pudding confiscated by the heroic blue shirts at the Birmingham airport. It all came down to an idiotic argument about whether it was a solid or a gel. The hungry TSA worker thought it was a gel. If it was frozen, he said, that wouldn’t be a problem. Consider that. If it were a solid quart I’d have a brick, much more dangerous than your regular batch of bananas, pudding and vanilla wafers. Porter, meanwhile, was trying to smuggle dangerous brisket from here to there. Or maybe it was the artery clogging sauce.

So you can now feel much safer the next time you fly.