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journalism / memories / podcast / Tuesday — Comments Off on A flashback before a big flashback
30
Jun 20

A flashback before a big flashback

We were sitting in a corner booth at the OK Cafe in Atlanta, Georgia in 2006 or 2007 and I was, as usual, thinking out loud. The Yankee had to have known that by then — this guy does all his thinking outside of his head — and she still decided to hang out with me.

We were talking about this trip she’d made to New Orleans. She was a TV hotshot and a station down there wanted her to come work for them and, as part of the tour, they drove her around to see what New Orleans was like after Hurricane Katrina. One of the job interview meals was at McDonald’s. There still weren’t a lot of options even at that point in the aftermath.

We’d watched it from afar, fearful for our friends and thankful it wasn’t our coverage area, and knowing that in all that horrible devastation that the media down there would do good, solid, amazing, real work. The year before we’d done the same when another hurricane right into the Port of Mobile. Our corporate boss forwarded us a very complimentary email he’d received, saying our work deserved the Pulitzer Prize. Only Pulitzer didn’t offer it in that format for which I would have been eligible in 2004. But they surely did in 2005 when Katrina roared ashore in New Orleans and our peers in the newsroom down there did the work and got the prize and to live and struggle and grieve and upend their own lives and look after their families and then go back to work to do it all again the next day.

It’s probably easy to forget, if you weren’t there, or somehow otherwise immersed in it, what New Orleans was like after August of that year. In the last week, a quick Google News search tells me, that three dozen stories referencing the storm have been written. It was 15 years ago and it’s still on the tip of their tongues. Which is why the news director wanted to give her the tour when she went down there for the job interview. You need to see, he said, what it is like right now. Usually when people bring you in from out of town they show you the good stuff. Back then, they had to show you the real stuff.

It was, I am sure, sobering. She ultimately turned down the job, but we talked about it a lot, and in that cafe in Atlanta I remember formulating what I thought would be just the neatest job in the world. Because I think out loud it started out pretty ragged and never really got much better, especially the name, but I called it a history journalist, reporting the journalism through the prism of time and past events, and history through a lens of journalism.

None of the things we cover or experience or watch or read about happen in isolation, after all. And New Orleans, a place hip waist deep in history and hip deep in tragedy, would have been a place for that sort of work.

They didn’t invite me down for an interview, which is fine and probably for the best. I would have pitched something like that idea and it would have been dismissed out of hand. A role like that is a passion project. It would take time and vision. And it is, admittedly, incredibly niche, when all of my media work was incredibly immediate and niche in some other sort of way. Besides, most journalists that do that sort of work? They have another name: Author.)

Anyway, I was thinking of that cafe and that corner booth and that conversation and how, all these years later that still sounds like the coolest idea. I interviewed a medical doctor and a professor who somehow holds appointments in seven different areas around the university. He’s written hundreds (literally, hundreds and hundreds) of journal articles and 12 books and he is still practicing medicine and who knows what else.

The subject was how the coronavirus pandemic is sometimes sorta similar to the influenza pandemic of 1918. He answered these questions in his role as a medical historian.

And if Dr. Gunderman, there, can find time in his day to be a medical historian on the side, I should be able to figure out some way to be a history journalist. Right? We should dive into some of that soon.

More on Twitter, check me out on Instagram and more On Topic with IU podcasts as well.

IU / photo / podcast / Thursday — Comments Off on Yeah, this got away from me
18
Jun 20

Yeah, this got away from me

Down at the lake today we didn’t see anyone we know, which is a change of pace. The last few times we’ve been we’ve run into some work friends. Today there were a couple of young families and they stayed mostly away, but for the occasional friendly kid who would wander over.

You can learn a lot about kids and parents and life by hearing just enough of the conversations and negotiations that go on as non sequiturs. And you can tell, pretty quickly, if there’s a parent that plays the heavy. No one wants to do that, of course, because it’s a warm day and you’re on the lake and it’s summertime and everything’s great on the water. How could everything not be great?

There were a few kayaks out on the water, and boats way up and away from this slew, which has generally been a quite and casual place. I sat under a shade tree and watched The Yankee swim and the butterflies dance:

I forgot to mention this here earlier this week, but there’s a new show for you to listen to, if you haven’t already subscribed over there at Soundcloud dot com or any of the other locations where your many fine podcasts are found. Subscribe! Or you might have to wait to find them here, when I can apparently get around to it.

Anyway, this is assistant dean Jill Shedd, of IU’s school of education. She also sits on her local school corporation’s board. It just so happens that not too long before we recorded this interview the state said “What we will be doing this fall is … up to the local schools … ” so we talked about what the fall might look like. The answer is, it depends.

But there’s also a lot at stake here. Safety for students and adults, first and foremost. Secondly, there’s an issue of whether teachers will come back. There’s been a national survey, which we discussed briefly here, that should give one pause. And there’s another survey that suggests parents are thinking about it, too. That, as Dean Shedd points out, could impact money.

Fortunately the schools in this state won’t see any budget cuts this year. The governor has said that this week, so it’s a good time to have this episode of the podcast, and you should listen to it, is what we’re saying.

And now I have to wait for the next round of guests to come my way. I hope the people who insisted on being a part of that booking process will work quickly on that front. We, as is said in the most detestable line of dialog ever, will see.

A close second is ‘Time will tell.’ Sure time will tell, but only if your construct of time removes it from the abstract and applies some sentience. Or assumes that, by the time that time does, in fact, tell, I will still have the capacity to appreciate what time has told us. We’ll see about that, too.

Tied and at a distant third on the list of most detestable sayings are “I am sorry, sir, but we are out of ice cream,” and “Our internet is down.”

What’s on your list of worst sayings? And have noticed how the list of wurst sayings is so different, and so much better?

podcast / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Sometimes Thursday fly
11
Jun 20

Sometimes Thursday fly

The light week continues. I’m not sure where the days are going just now. Probably Zoom meetings and Slack messages. I spent some time this evening working on a project in the garage, too. And, somehow, that constitutes a much of the day. And also a podcast. Third one of the week! I’m saving one for next week, but I do have one for you today.

Danielle Kilgo researches protest movements and she walked me expertly through this conversation. At one point, I think, I said “Statement of fact. Give me an answer?” She overcame my deficiencies and loaned her expertise to the cause and it turned into a terrific show. Just because of her, it had nothing to do with me. Plus, I think, I hope, it represents the beginning of a pivot in the program. We’ll see about that this summer, but for now let’s see about this:

On the subject of shows, I have always wanted to try this, too:

The point would be all of the new ways that a scientist in one field is using a satellite or a radar or some other piece of tech being applied in a field that’s, well, far afield. How did you come to try that? What does this simplify or amplify for you? What kind of doors does this idea up for more work in your specialty?

I got to do one episode of this on an old show, before things got shut down. LIDAR was making the rainforests spill all of its secrets about how big the ancient cities were. I found someone in the same field to talk about how taking a few modern tools were changing the efforts of archeology and nothing less than our understanding of the sheer size of a society. It would be a boring show for everyone that’s not taking part in it, probably, but at some point the first audience is the most important one.

There’s something important to be said about the power of humanity and the healing of the spirit.

Between the leeches and the take-two-of-these-and-call-me-in-the-morning and the tonsillectomies and the Ritalin and the animal-assisted therapy we’re going to find out one day that hope is another important prescription. Maybe this disease creates some circumstances, the highly contagious nature of the thing and negative air pressure rooms, that deprives people of an elemental treatment. It could be that soothing sounds and rhythmic lights and butterflies are part of the deal, too. It could be that we learn one day that hanging upside down or a trivial root boiled at a precise temperature will ease our aches and pains. Maybe we find concentrated sound waves clean up your organs. Maybe concentrated beet juice really does do something. People do something, for each other, too.

Maybe, and bear with me here, masks and social distancing work. Let’s keep trying that.

journalism / photo / podcast / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off on Dip your toes in, the water’s fine
9
Jun 20

Dip your toes in, the water’s fine

And, now, a scene from “the beach,” which is how I mistakenly thought of the lake’s shore line when we were out there for a few minutes today. That says something about how long since I’ve seen a beach.

It was Christmas, last time I saw a beach, and that was just looking into a sound, so it might not even count. If you don’t count that you have to go back to last July. I’m not the biggest beach person in the world, but that still seems like too long.

So we were at the lake for a few minutes. It rained. I sat under an umbrella talked on the phone while The Yankee did some considerable distance of freestyle swim. And that was lunch. Down to the lake, in for a quick dip and then produce a show.

Talked to an economist today. Bottom line is … we know a lot of things, but that really just illustrates what we don’t know. We’re about to start stage four of back-up-and-at-’em here, which will be normal-ish but for some restrictions that won’t get honored a lot, I’m sure.

The good news is that the jobless claims are coming down from the spring. The bad news is they are still very high. The other bad news is that state tax revenues are taking a hit. This was not a surprise, but still, it is underway and impactful. The good news is that people are going back to work and so there is progress to be made. But don’t take my word for it. I have a minor in economics. This is an actual economist:

I have a love-hate relationship with security-footage-as-news stories. It doesn’t devalue a story, but too often it elevates a story beyond its natural worth because of suddenly compelling available video. Compelling, easily available video. (That part is important.) Or, even worse, it elevates a story because there’s video and no one else has anything better that day.

It’s a tricky thing, when visual drive messages. I see and have worked with and teach this stuff, so I consider all sides of the argument. I think we all should consider all sides of its use before using it, and that’d be a great starting point, I’d say.

And then there’s stuff like this …

Funny how video has helped bring to light rampant injustice in society. Funny how necessary that video is for this sort of circumstance. Sometimes the visuals have to drive the message.

More on Twitter, check me out on Instagram and more On Topic with IU podcasts as well.

IU / photo / podcast / site / Wednesday — Comments Off on Give this a listen
3
Jun 20

Give this a listen

Today is going to be brief, because I have decided to take a bit of this day away from this glowing machine. So here’s a flower from a recent walk.

And if the photos look a bit larger around here today, they should. I decided to change the default photo size earlier this week. Mondays, first of the month and all of that. Usually these sorts of changes are made in August, in honor of the anniversary of the place. And, who knows, I have this vague idea that I’ve done this before and that somewhere along the way I forgot that and reverted to the older habit. Habits are like that sometimes.

Said the guy who knows he’s got too many of them.

I talked with sociologist Jessica Calarco today. She students social and socioeconomic inequities and their impacts on families, children and school. It seemed a good set up for the end of the school year, when the state’s school experts are expected to make their first announcements about next fall later this week. She gave us a really great interview.

I have at least three of them lined up for next week. More school issues, more economic issues, and who knows what else may appear. You should just go ahead and subscribe so you can get the latest episodes as they are released.

More on Twitter, check me out on Instagram and more On Topic with IU podcasts as well.

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