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Samford

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27
Jan 14

First day of classes

As I got out of the car we were in the process of temperatures dropping from the low 60s into the low 30s. It isn’t usually as noticeably dramatic as all that, but I can say that after class I went from my office to the gym and from the gym to my car and it was dramatic.

And by the time I made it from the car to the restaurant it was cold. In the restaurant the staff was quoting Coming to America.

So I quoted it with them, which they found amusing. And then a lady asked me if I knew the name of the elephant in the movie. Like everyone knows the name of an elephant in a quarter-century old movie. I said as much online, where I soon learned that everyone knows the name of the elephant.

First day of class today. I had notes and had practiced the syllabus speech and all of the opening day material, as I always do. It never plays out in the classroom the way it does in my mind. So maybe I should just develop the syllabus and wing it from there.

It is a fun class, though. We take field trips. I always enjoy this one.

It is really cold now. The weather moves in tomorrow. Are you ready?

cycling / journalism / links / Monday / movies / Samford / things to read / video — Comments Off
16
Dec 13

No title Monday

I’m thinking of using that headline every Monday. I don’t know what it is about the day, but they never lend themselves to anything insightful, curiosity-inducing, oblique or funny. TDoesn’t matter if they are busy days or quiet days or anything. They all seem to exist in the category of “They just are.”

And if that is the extent of your Monday problems, well, just try to keep it together, would ya, bub?

I took the opportunity for a quick ride this afternoon. I was going to go farther, but I started too late in the day. I was going to try a new route, but it seemed wise to get home in the daylight rather than the twilight.

Besides, I was just trying to stretch my legs and clear my head.

Which had a soda cup tossed at it. So that was charming.

That’s never happened before. But the best part was that I almost caught up with the guy in the white pickup, license plate redacted to protect the owner in case the truck was stolen for a joy ride by a guy with a taste for Sonic, at the next stop sign.

I’d decided I’d stop right by his window and nicely say “How awkward for you.”

But he got through the intersection before I could catch him. So that’s a good reason to get faster.

Things to read … Robot Writers and the Digital Age:

The printing press put a generation of scribes out of a job, and the telegraph sent couriers scurrying to find new employment.

Could software robots do the same for reporters?

That’s one of many questions raised by the emergence of Narrative Science and Automated Insights, two startups that have developed sophisticated computer programs that analyze large amounts of data and automatically generate news stories.

Someone told me once, when I was first starting out, this could never happen. She no longer works in news, but for different reasons. That story does a nice job identifying a lot of the interesting work done in automated/robotic/AI reporting. In the short and middle distance we’ll see a place where programs do some really awesome augmenting and complimenting the work of human reporters. In the long term? Don’t bet against this stuff. Or someone might refer to you vaguely, as I did to start this paragraph.

Once again, this was all foreseen by Back to the Future II. Though they’ve yet to deliver on the hover boards.

I wonder if robot reporters would accept so many “anonymous sources” as their human counterparts are doing as of late. Anonymous sources are increasing in news stories, along with rather curious explanations:

“Frankly, this kind of sourcing is ridiculous,” says Alicia Shepard, a journalist and NPR’s former ombudsman. She adds: “I get it that [news organizations] are trying to be transparent, but it doesn’t enhance the believability of the anonymous quote. The only thing worthwhile about the convoluted sourcing explainers is how funny they are.”

In fact, such descriptions can do more harm than good, says Matt Carlson, an associate professor at St. Louis University and the author of “On Condition of Anonymity: Unnamed Sources and the Battle for Journalism,” published in 2011. Rather than enhancing a reader’s understanding, the descriptions used by reporters can be disingenuous and misleading about a source’s affiliation or motives, Carlson says.

Using anonymity in reporting has a venerable place in the craft, but it is becoming a crutch.

I read some wire copy today that five times (five!) referred to unnamed sources. How many reporters, branded or generic, do you trust that you’ll, as a reader, allow five references to anonymity and no names on the record?

By the way, that was a sports story.

Related only in that these are stories and they are about sports: perhaps you’ve seen the Together We Make Football promos on television? Well, the finalists include some incredible tales.

Here’s a quote: “It took me a while to realize I was still alive. I thought, ‘This is what it feels like to be dead.'”

Now go read the story.

This video is of mom recording her son receiving his acceptance letter to Samford. Fun stuff:

In a somewhat similar vein, this reporter covered a story and then got involved personally. Two years later and the Boston Globe’s Billy Baker is updating the tale on Twitter, where it was a huge hit today. Now it is a story in the traditional format. Two critically poor kids. VIetnamese parents. Dad killed himself. Kids struggle. Reporter comes along and gives them a nudge here and there. They scrape and save, these kids. They worked hard:

In the fall, Johnny left for his freshman year at UMass Amherst.

As college application time rolled around for George a few months later, we knew he was in a good position. His grades were outstanding. He had a compelling story. And so he aimed high. Very high.

These boys are the nearest I’ve come to that thing we call the American Dream. But when George texted me on Monday evening …

Well, just go read the thing.

Take a tissue with you.

journalism / links / Samford / things to read / Thursday / video — Comments Off
12
Dec 13

Loan me your 3D printer

The grades are in. The grades are done. Here’s to another hope that I got them all correct. You always have a slight concern about that sort of thing. The paperwork, should you find yourself in error, would surely be immense.

Paperwork being one of those evolving terms. I’m sure the entire process is all contained on one of the three or four web-based forms we use for most everything. And, yet, there is still plenty of paperwork. Some of it changes with the seasons. It could be that someone in an office somewhere has found a more efficient use for line 42 on form R-163. It is possible there is a legal justification for such regular changes. Maybe the person In Charge of Forms is in cahoots with the Xerox toner guy.

“I need to sell 16 more units. Isn’t that form you printed 7,000 copies of last week outmoded?”

Of course forms aren’t printed like that. Almost every office in the country uses their computer and a printer as a small-scale analog of the PDQ distribution method.

Bet you never thought of your machine as Amazon, marketing 1s and 0s. I think of it as a site like Cafepress or Zazzle. You want that shirt or custom mug? Print. (Now run out and buy yourself a 3D printer and go wild.)

I thought of Cafepress because that’s where I order our ornaments from every year. We do custom pieces, photos from places we’ve been that year. This year’s shots include a scene from the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, London and after the Iron Bowl.

We have so many of the ornaments now that the project has outgrown the tabletop tree. Next year we’ll need another option. (Can I borrow your 3D printer?)

Things to read … First, two updates from yesterday. You remember the sign language story, no doubt. Here’s the latest. The story involves angels and perhaps some psychotic delusions.

The boy in Denver that was suspended for giving his girlfriend a peck on the cheek? The “educators” couldn’t back peddle fast enough. This story does have something from the point of view of the little girl’s mother, which is probably where this should have started and stopped anyway.

Now two cute kid stories. First, go ahead and time yourself on how long you can keep the “Awww” to yourself here:

And when you read this story you’ll want to hug everyone in it:

Over Thanksgiving weekend 2012, Slade, then 6-years-old, was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Lymphoma.

Doctors knew his young body was making too many immature white blood cells and would need chemotherapy immediately.

Without a minute to waste, an ambulance transported Slade and Emily over to St. Jude where he remained for eight steady weeks.

But that is just the beginning of a wonderful story. Go ahead and read it. We’ll be here when you get back.

Branded Video Sharing Almost 50 Times Higher Than 5 Years Ago:

According to The Unruly Viral Spiral, the sharing of video ads has increased almost 50 times over the last eight years. Unruly’s latest interactive infographic visualizes the explosive growth of video sharing since 2006, charting the extent to which many advertisers are using social video to amplify their brand.

[…]

According to the data, the top three ads in 2013 have so far attracted 11.6 million shares — 47.5 times more than the top three ads managed in 2006 (244,395 shares combined).

Video, stand-out video, is where we all need to be headed. And make sure you are thinking about mobile devices when you set out on that journey.

Aren’t you glad I mentioned Videolicious yesterday?

football / iPhone / journalism / photo / Samford / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
4
Dec 13

I am not suspicious, just grading

The great sign:

A friend of mine’s father owns that place. I like to think that I’ve helped with a few of the football-related messages this season. Every week it is a great excitement to drive down that stretch of College, just to see what they have put up. They are always amusing messages.

Less amusing:

Is this standard, end-of-year fare? Or is it ACA driven? And is the font large enough, because, you know, vision center and all.

The last newspaper of the semester is in the books. They put it to bed early this morning and it was on shelves today and we critiqued it this evening. They are now halfway through their run. It always goes so fast, but they never believe it will.

Also, we had about 19 student projects nominated for awards in the Southeast Journalism Conference’s Best of the South competition. We managed to get those in with about 10 minutes to spare today. There is some great work in there, so we are excited to see how they’ll do next February when the awards are announced.

Otherwise, there are the things that always fill this time of year. The paperwork that approaches wrapping things up. The administrative work that goes along with it. Sign this, establish hours for that, consider what’s next. And, oh, don’t forget to grade everything. It is a great time of year. The only downside is that my hands are covered in newsprint and red ink. If I found myself in a conversation with a police officer he or she might be concerned.

We’re watching the Iron Bowl again tonight. I’m going to make a lot of references to this video:

Auburn / football / journalism / links / running / Samford / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
26
Nov 13

I’d like my blue skies back, please

Cold. Rainy. Miserable outdoor experience. The high was 46. The low was only 41, but even thermometers can be fooled. Just gray and yucky all day. Yucky is the preferred meteorological term.

I went out for a run, but it was drizzling and I realized I didn’t need to run that bad.

So I didn’t run, except back inside to put on warmer clothes.

More phone calls and other assorted things, all of which make for riveting site reads, I’m sure. Instead, we’ll move on.

Things to read … The Guardian’s Gabriel Dance on new tools for story and cultivating interactive journalism:

I can go to someone on my team, give them a topic, and ask them to report on that topic and the process is very similar to how that might work with a more traditional print reporter. They go out, they explore it, they see what information is available. They schedule some interviews, they gather data, and they come back and we work on what form it might take.

Are we producing articles with strictly text? No. But I think what we are producing is much closer to what you saw in Decoded, which is what I guess I’d call web-first journalism.

When people talk about this as new and different, it only really is if you’re looking at the old things as the status quo.

This would work for branded journalism, too. That’s a great Q&A, worth your time if you’re interested in the topic. Also, I have other topics.

Gene Policinski, whom I’ve had the good fortune to meet and spend a day with, writes: Inside the First Amendment | Privacy the impetus for conflict

(I)n our lifetimes — and more since just last June — privacy and its implications for First Amendment areas ranging from free speech to the freedom to assemble have taken on a new urgency prompted by government surveillance of the World Wide Web, phone calls and high-tech gadgetry.

Beyond questions of how much does the government know about our individual lives through captured emails, online search logs and records of whom we telephoned, where and for how long, there’s the looming impact on whether we will feel free to speak our minds even in “private” moments, and whom will we be willing to be seen with?

US B-52 bombers challenge disputed China air zone:

The US has flown two B-52 bombers over disputed islands in the East China Sea in defiance of new Chinese air defence rules, officials say.

China set up its “air defence identification zone” on Saturday insisting that aircraft obey its rules or face “emergency defensive measures”.

A Pentagon spokesman said the planes had followed “normal procedures”.

The islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, are a source of rising tension between the two nations.

Turn an eye to the east. That is getting interesting in a hurry.

Sports fan? TV buff? This is a great read. Inside the chaos and spectacle of the NFL on Fox:

To watch a football broadcast is to see much more than a football game. There are only about 11 minutes of actual action during a three-hour game, which means 95 percent of the time there’s something else going on. The graphics, replays, highlights, and analysis that make a football game into the at-home experience millions of people know and love — it’s all from Fox, and it’s all done on the fly. Nearly everyone on the crew says that while they broadcast the game, what they really do is make television.

It starts at 6AM on Saturday, in the cold, dark Foxboro morning, as the Fox team shows up to unload three 53-foot trucks. Stadiums don’t have much in the way of built-in A / V equipment, so Fox (and every other network) carries everything the crew will need for the weekend inside those trucks — the show has to be built and broken down every weekend. This Saturday, it has to be even faster: there’s a college football game at 4PM.

That those things never occur to you is a testament to the quality of their work, really.

We’d like you to meet a paralympic sprinter Blake Leeper. He was a guest on Arsenio Hall’s show. Hall brought on a surprise special guest. Leeper’s reaction is priceless.

This is a candid and refreshing read. If you followed Auburn last season, it is a nice way to, maybe, finally, close the door on all that. The former head coach, forever gracious, gave a wide-ranging interview to USA Today. Coach Gene Chizik on Auburn ouster, team’s current success:

I think you’d have to start with the players. What people don’t understand is from a coaching perspective when you struggle like we struggled last year, you hurt so much for the players. The players, you brought them there and told them that this is the way it’s going to be and give them this vision of championships and things of that nature. And when it doesn’t unfold exactly like that and go through the struggle we went through last year you hurt for the players. So I’m ecstatic for the players.

I couldn’t be happier to sit there and watch them win these games, particularly these close ones, however they pull it out and we all know how that’s gone this year. It’s an absolute joy for me to watch them celebrate and be happy and win. I think without question, that’s what I get the biggest joy out of.

Gus has done a fantastic job, and he and I worked together for three years and he’s done a fantastic job of regrouping the troops and them buying into him and the staff he brought in and it’s really nice to see those guys rebound and do what we recruited them to do and that’s win. They’re definitely a talented group of young men, and they’re great kids and they deserve this.

A nice Samford sports story, too: Summerlin And Shade Named Players Of The Year:

Samford senior quarterback Andy Summerlin and senior linebacker Justin Shade were named Southern Conference Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year, respectively, by the SoCon Sports Media Association, when the league released its postseason awards Tuesday morning.

They’ll start a playoff run this weekend.

Leaf update:

It is gone. Fell this morning or overnight. A new picture would just be of branches and twigs. I wouldn’t want to embarrass the tree that way.

Tomorrow it will be sunny again. And warmer. Has to be, right?