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journalism / links / Monday / Samford / things to read / Twitter — Comments Off on Ziggy’s not so sure
8
Apr 13

Ziggy’s not so sure

I watched one of the lesser Quantum Leaps late last night.

This is 8 1/2 Months, the one where Sam is about to deliver a baby with the help of a kindly old doctor. I don’t remember this episode. I’m trying to imagine the pitch at the creative table. “Let’s see what the imaging chamber does with vastly different biology. And spice it up with an Oklahoma dirt version of Steel Magnolias!”

There’s a poor man’s Susan Sarandon, a poor man’s Olympia Dukakis and more ’50s “I hear tell she ain’t got no horse sense” vernacular than you can shake a colorblind cat at. The best part is when Al, Sam’s faithful friend in the future who appears in the form of a hologram who serves as his guide, shows up. This is the actual dialog.

Sam: “I can’t have a baby!”

Al: “I know, but Ziggy’s not so sure.”

Computers.

Also, the baby, in utero in the 21st century, is bonding with Sam in 1955. Not everything in the third season was genius.

The great Anne Haney guest stars. Because this is the 1950s she is there trying to coax Sam into giving up the baby so that it can be sent off to some quiet home that is better suited for it than an 18-year-old girl, or a middle-aged, time-traveling, brilliant-scientist-with-an-amnesia problem. Haney’s character could not close the deal though, because Sam has been operating all this time that he’s leaping into these lives to put right what once went wrong. It wasn’t for a few more seasons that we realized he was dead. And these must just be really excitable neurons firing off at the end.

Imagine if there had been popular message boards around when this TV show was on the air. Or if JJ Abrams was involved.

If/when they re-launch this series, I’d watch this episode again. I’d sit through it, I’m saying, but only if JJ Abrams isn’t around to make the foggy mist from the trees turn into the evil alien that is ready to fell us all, and also, there is a massive conspiracy that only Al can uncover, if he doesn’t get unplugged.

I hate relaunches.

Anyway, Anne Haney would get her revenge. She showed up again eight months later (in realtime) as a different character set in Arkansas two years earlier (the drought episode). This made sense on Quantum Leap and quite possibly nowhere else.

And then, finally, after we’d met the father-to-be — he worked for Sam’s dad in the oil fields, but was going off to college in the fall, he was all “I’d want no baby!” — we have the moment of truth. At the pitch table with the writers this was great. “OK, then we’ll have Sam go through all seven stages of grief to acceptance. It’ll be a comical ride from the front door of the hospital into the delivery room. And we’ll show stirrups again! And then Sam, who is intent on keeping this baby, will finally be resistant about having the baby, because, you know, he’s got boy parts, except he’s a woman in this episode.”

And someone says “Wait. He — ”

And then the first guy again, says “They’re watching NBC. They’ll go along with it.

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

Now Al pops back into the delivery room to tell us that the baby has disappeared in the future. Sam is in stirrups in the past. Puuuuush!

The doctor, played by Parley Baer, who is a poor man’s Barnard Hughes, who played the curmudgeonly old doctor in Doc Hollywood, says “I see a head … ”

And Sam leaps.

I plugged Hughes, who has 101 titles on IMDB and Baer, who has 270 titles, into the Oracle of Bacon. They have at least five different one-step-removed connections from one another, including Coreys Haim and Feldman. Why either of them felt the need to work after that, I don’t know.

The gentleman that cuts my hair some times remembers me better than other times. He sees a lot of folks, of course. Today was one of those days where it all clicked. He remembered I taught journalism and wanted to know what I thought of “that Selena woman.” You know how you can change the subject when something like that comes up? “Fox News!”

So we talked about something going on in the Aurora shooting case, where a reporter is refusing a judge’s orders and may be going to jail. We did not have to talk about that Selena woman. Just as well.

(My answer would have been “I was never that strong of a creative writer, and so I am not really the best person to ask.” Because when everyone else is saying everything there is to say about a particular topic, what’s the point?)

So I left with a nice new hairstyle and we talked about photography in class this afternoon.

I have to pack a bag. Here, have some things to read.

How mobile has changed daily news consumption and why you need to understand it:

Mobile devices have extended the time frame during which publishers need to pay attention to the content they are putting in front of consumers, but it has also massively increased the complexity of news consumption throughout the day. That makes delivering the right content in the right way at the right time far more challenging.

If you are in the communication business and you aren’t by now paying attention to mobile growth I’m not sure what will convince you.

Journalism’s decline boosts j-schools

“There is something new to learn [at journalism schools] for the first time since the advent of broadcast journalism in the 1950s,” said Steve Shepard, founding dean of CUNY’s school, which enrolled its first class in 2006. “And it’s much harder to learn it on the job—if you can get a job—because there’s much less mentoring going on compared to my day.”

[…]

Professors acknowledge that they’re sending students out into a tough, unpredictable environment, but say that is part of their education.

Master a skill set, learn more about another one. Consider a double major. Redouble your best writing and editing efforts. Realize the first job probably isn’t going to be The Job. Show them what you have and demonstrate your potential. Work hard. Do good work. Build your portfolio.

That’s the way of it.

Press angry over Obama’s lack of access:

Newspapers and reporters are being left out of the equation, even such established publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Reider reports that Obama “has turned to regional reporters and TV celebrities who are less likely to challenge him.” Obama’s go-to interviewer is Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” who in January conducted an interview with Obama and Hilary Clinton. The interview was heavily criticized as being “soft.” This is the complaint of many of Obama’s interviews. He is effectively bypassing reporters who ask the tough questions.

First of all, that’s a poor headline. President Obama is accessing things just fine. He’s just not giving the press corps the time of day.

Second, not many people in that particular room are asking “tough questions” these days when they do have the opportunity.

You can look at that in one of two ways. You could scream “Libruhl meeeedia!” Or you might consider that these people are on edge because a.) they have a job to do and b.) when the time comes to talk to someone more important than poor Jay Carney they are chilled because they don’t want to be shut out in the future because c.) see part a.

Also, the president has his audience, he has an embarrassment of riches of media that aren’t in the White House press corps that are just thrilled to have him on the Morning Zoo. And the president also has a communication office that can these days speak directly to his constituency. He doesn’t need the media right now.

That’s the same thing I’ve been saying about athletic departments for four years now, by the way. If you have a devoted following and the tools to go directly to them, sans filter, you’re going to take advantage of that opportunity. The journalists tasked with covering that particular beat are going to be marginalized.

I don’t like it. (It is fraught with danger.) I just see it.

Peektures. Margaret Thatcher came to Samford during the university’s 150th anniversary. She’s here with then-president Thomas Corts.

They are standing in front of the library and Dr. Corts appears to be point out some feature of the administration building, Samford Hall.

I wonder what she was thinking.

How did we get into space and the moon? Really big ladders, of course. And, also, a tall chalkboard.

Auburn / Glomerata / history / links / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on Stuck in 1898
2
Apr 13

Stuck in 1898

I am very interested in some of the pictures from my oldest Glomerata, the 1898, the second one they ever published. Here are a few notes about one of the pictures.

On page 86-87 you find this image and the heading “Our Co-Eds.”

Coeds1898Glomerata

Click to embiggen, and then read these scant little bios.

There is Miss Erin Black, who grew up in Lee County, home to Auburn University.

Miss Dabney Bondurant, who would ultimately marry Clifford L. Hare. Auburn people know him very well. ‘Fessor Hare was the longtime dean of Auburn’s chemistry program. He also played on Auburn’s first football team and would ultimately served the university for more than half a century, the football stadium is named after him. They are both buried in Pine Hill Cemetery, just off campus. Much of their personal correspondence is held in Special Collections at the University of Virginia.

Miss Mary Boyd, the daughter of Auburn’s fifth president David French Boyd, was the wife of Walter Lynwood Fleming. A professor at Vanderbilt, he was the recipient of the dedication in the book “I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition.” David Boyd was pals, before the war, with William Tecumseh Sherman. After the war he started LSU. His daughter, Mary Boyd, pictured here, christened a Liberty Ship during World War II. All of that in the span of one generation of a family.

Ms. Lucile Burton would go on to be the secretary to the university’s board of trustees. She died in 1966. There’s a dormitory named after her today.

Miss Toccoa Cozart was born in Atlanta, and moved with her widowed mother to Montgomery just before the Civil War. She grew up on Perry Street, right in here. She became a school teacher, and attended State Normal College in Florence, Ala. (The modern University of North Alabama) and API, studying English and history, under the great George Petrie. She wrote a biography on Congressman and Ambassador Henry W. Hilliard. Her uncle was Confederate colonel William Howell, who took a famous photograph of the inauguration of Jefferson Davis.

Miss Marian Dawson might shows up in the society pages of The Atlanta Constitution in 1905. Seems she was moving elsewhere. The Internet doesn’t give us much more, however.

Miss Eula Belle Hale was the eighth and Miss Zadie Hale was the fourth of 11 children. They probably often heard the tale: their mother, Josephine, was previously courted by their father Samuel’s brother. But the brother was killed at Chancellorsville. They could trace her family back to early settlers in Massachusetts in 1637 and many fighters of the American Revolution. Eula Belle died in the early 1970s.

Miss Pearl Hanson was only 15 in this picture. She’d live only seven more years. Her brother, Charles, would move to Memphis and become a very successful business man. They’re both buried near their parents in Opelika. Pearl’s husband was Ira Champion, the secretary to Gov. Thomas Kilby. Pearl died just five months after they were married. Ira would stay single, worked as a journalist and finally caught on with the governor. He died in 1942.

Miss Fanny Holstun was born just up the road, one county over in sleepy little Waverly. And that’s all we know of her for now.

Miss Kate Lane stayed in town. She buried her sister in 1942. Her brother-in-law was Dean George Petrie and Kate donated his papers to the university in 1948, the largest donation they’d ever received at that time. She also gave her scrapbooks to the university, where they are held in Special Collections. Here is a picture of both Lane and Petrie. Her father was Gen. James Henry Lane, who was a part of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg and a hero of the Battle of Bloody Angle (Spotsylvania). She died in 1968, and was buried just off campus. (Update: The General James Henry Lane House, where Kate lived, also appears in the Markers section of the site.)

Miss Lottie Lane was Kate’s sister. While Kate stayed single, Lottie married Matthew Scott Sloan of Birmingham, who also attended API and played football there at the turn of the 20th century. Matthew was a successful railroad man, managing the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Lines in the 1930s, tripling their revenues, and that during the Depression. Before that he worked at General Electric, Birmingam Railway, Light & Power, the New Orleans Railway & Light Company and was president of the Brooklyn Edison Company. Harvard Business School apparently called him one of the 20th century’s great American business leaders.

Miss Jessie Lockhart escapes us entirely. But I did find that she had a younger sister, Katherine, born in 1900. She died, in Auburn, in my lifetime.

Miss Julia Moore married Marion Roby Buckalew. Together they had seven children, including an accountant, two Naval Academy students, an Army officer who retired to become a high-ranking official at Veterans Affairs (who died just a few years ago) and more. She died in 1938.

Miss Hattie Phelps may have become part of a prominent family in Athens, Ala. She could have also lived and died a preacher’s wife in Citronelle, Ala. Now that we’ve covered both ends of the state, via a newspaper and a headstone, the point should also be made that she could have become anything.

Miss Annye Purifoy remains an open mystery.

Miss Mary Robinson was one of the first six young women enrolled at API. (Presumably the rest are also on this list.) She was the second of 10 children, and also from Waverly. She started college with just three years of formal education. She’d go on to be a teacher, and teach all over the state, including just down the road from where I grew up. She attended Howard College (now Samford University, where I teach) for post-graduate work. Her father rode with Gen. Joe Wheeler during the Civil War, and she traced her lineage back to John Hart, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. A remarkable lady, she died in 1955. I found all of this, and more, on a page dedicated to her that was written by Mary Helen Stitzel Benford.

Miss Berta Summers, one of eight children, stayed at home in nearby Opelika. She lost a brother in France in the Great War. A National Register of Historic Places document shows her selling Summers Plantation, a carpenter gothic, to family members in 1954. These days that property is home to the Little Halawakee Wildlife Reserve. The trail for Berta goes cold there.

Not bad for a little Internet searching of people who’ve been gone for decades. It seems they lived full lives of various scope. You’d love to know more details. How many of these young women grew into the suffrage movement, for example?

Next week we’ll check out the 1897-1898 track team.

Hint: They ran fast — for their era.

Alabama / Auburn / baseball / journalism / links / photo / things to read / Thursday — Comments Off on The baseball Iron Bowl
28
Mar 13

The baseball Iron Bowl

Alabama visited Auburn for a three game series, starting tonight. Things did not go well for the Tigers.

Ryan Tella was 1-of-5 with three strike outs:

Tella

Garrett Cooper had one hit in four at bats and struck out once:

Cooper

Between the two they stranded five of Auburn’s eight base runners as Alabama won 6-2.

In the major sports – football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball – Auburn is now 9-43 against the SEC since the 2012 SEC baseball tournament. I’m keeping count because someone has to.

Other things: Nineteen percent of Alabama are on food stamps.

Then there’s this most depressing lead:

In Hale County, Alabama, 1 in 4 working-age adults is on disability. On the day government checks come in every month, banks stay open late, Main Street fills up with cars, and anybody looking to unload an old TV or armchair has a yard sale.

[…]

As far as the federal government is concerned, you’re disabled if you have a medical condition that makes it impossible to work. In practice, it’s a judgment call made in doctors’ offices and courtrooms around the country. The health problems where there is most latitude for judgment — back pain, mental illness — are among the fastest growing causes of disability.

[…]

In Hale County, there was one guy whose name was mentioned in almost every story about becoming disabled: Dr. Perry Timberlake. I began to wonder if he was the reason so many people in Hale County are on disability. Maybe he was running some sort of disability scam, referring tons of people into the program.

After sitting in the waiting room of his clinic several mornings in a row, I met Dr. Timberlake. It turns out, there is nothing shifty about him. He is a doctor in a very poor place where pretty much every person who comes into his office tells him they are in pain.

“We talk about the pain and what it’s like,” he says. “I always ask them, ‘What grade did you finish?'”

What grade did you finish, of course, is not really a medical question. But Dr. Timberlake believes he needs this information in disability cases because people who have only a high school education aren’t going to be able to get a sit-down job.

It is an enlightening piece, and worth your read.

journalism / links / Tuesday / Tumblr / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Amateurish, unless the right person does it
26
Mar 13

Amateurish, unless the right person does it

Here’s something insulting:

Some journalists are starting to renew attention to an old storytelling form — “the one-shot” technique.

Rather than editing together dozens or even hundreds of shots to tell a video story, the one-shot story uses just one shot, sometimes a couple of minutes long, to tell a story. A reporter drops in sections of voiced-over track to fill in the gaps or explain information the viewer might not know. It sounds amateurish, even YouTube-ish, until you see a journalist like John Sharify use it.

Because the videos you make aren’t good. Unless you are a reporter.

This is the example that column uses. Be the judge:

It doesn’t do anything for me. It comes off like a reporter trying to walk up to a post, which is amateurish, unless a DJ does it. And he doesn’t have a lot to say, except for repetition, which maybe doubles for emotion. But that just feels like someone who is unprepared.

But at least a journalist did it, saving us from so much YouTube.

Here’s a story from Madison, Ala., where Easter is too … Eastery for one principal:

The power went out in Homewood tonight. So I ducked out for dinner, only the power was out. No intersections had lights. No restaurants could run their neon or their kitchens. People took it in stride. They knew it was coming back on eventually. So I went downtown and finally settled on a calzone at Mellow Mushroom. It was silly to say, but I ordered the Italian Stallion, and it was flavorful.

Then I was able to watch the soccer match:

Just the second point the Americans have ever earned at Azteca. Even if Mexico is playing bizarrely uncharacteristic soccer right now — nothing I saw made sense at least — you take the point toward World Cup qualifying.

Two of the weakest things I’ve put on Tumblr, here and here. There’s also a lot more of useful things on Twitter. Be sure to check that out.

That’s all for now. More tomorrow, have a great evening!

adventures / Friday / iPhone / links / photo / things to read / Tumblr / video / YouTube Cover Theater — Comments Off on This is spring, right?
22
Mar 13

This is spring, right?

“It is tough,” she said, “to be that enthusiastic at that this time of day.”

She meant the morning, trying to wake up for breakfast, which is something to be excited about. And it was delicious:

biscuit

And then it was cloudy and cold. Well, there was that part of the afternoon were it rained. That really changed things up. All week long. That’s pretty much been the way of it this week.

Today we learned that Harvey Updyke could be back on the street by May. I’m over the guy. He has so many probation conditions I’m sure he’ll get picked up again before too long.

More importantly something collapsed at the newly renovated terminal at the Birmingham airport. A family was hurt. Turned out they were standing under one of those large flight info screens when it fell off the wall. I was listening to the fire department scanner chatter. Three rescue units were there. And then a fourth and fifth were dispatched.

Meanwhile they were answering calls to an elderly person with trouble breathing, a teen who couldn’t see and a car crashing into a power pole. Listening to a scanner is addictive.

Late in the evening we learned a 10-year-old died in the airport accident. The people that picked up the info screen off the family said it weighed between 300 and 400 pounds. The mother had some serious leg injuries. Her younger children were also taken to the hospital. They were on vacation, returning home, and just passing through the Birmingham airport.

In a happier story, the US played Costa Rica in a World Cup qualifier and someone thought booking this in a Colorado venue in March would be a good idea. Craziest non-soccer game I’ve ever watched at the international level:

Two new things on Tumblr this week. Here’s one and here’s another.

Posts from the campus blog this week:

Building a media room

WaPo to go behind paywall

Improving the interview

Conde Nast’s video project

What to worry over in the publishing game

Welcome back YouTube Cover Theater, where we celebrate the talent of regular people who are playing on their sofas, at their bars and on their decks, in front of a camera and, now, the world. We do this by choosing a feature act and showing off covers of their original work. This week’s inspiration is Old Crow Medicine Show:

James River Blues:

There have been some 5,200 views of that one. I can’t believe this one of Caroline has less than 2,000:

This one just looks older because of the sepia:

Every other Old Crow Medicine Show cover is of Wagon Wheel. So we’ll just go to Mumford and Sons:

Hope you have a great weekend, and that it is a little warmer and a little drier where you are.

We’re getting more rain all weekend.

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