Samford

I do not know what is happening. / iPhone / journalism / links / Samford / swimming / things to read / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on You’ve no choice — you will like the video at the end
8
Oct 13

You’ve no choice — you will like the video at the end

I can write my day in one sentence.

In the morning I read, in the afternoon I worked in the library, in the evening I was in the pool and tonight I’m with the student-journalists who are putting their newspaper together.

Which, in the scheme of things, makes this a pretty great day. Dinner could have been healthier, but I promised myself a Milo’s burger if I swam a lot. So it was that I caught up on the morning’s news. I sat in a deep leather chair and watched the reflection of the world in the dark corners of my computer screen poring in from the window behind me.

It was a beautiful day. I had a conversation about it while I was trying to make this panorama. A colleague and I decided we shouldn’t be inside, but rather on the quad:

Photosynth, showing me the errors in my panoramas, but only after I uploaded the thing, ever since I got the app. However, if you are in a picturesque place, that’s a pretty good free app.

I made it to the pool just in time to spend that sunlight-twilight-dusk-darkness period carefully avoiding drowning.

I swam 1.5 miles tonight. I’ve been told by the best swimmer in my house — and probably the best swimmer on our side of town — that I should note these measurements in a different unit. So I swam 2,700 yards.

I do not know what is happening.

Every third lap I did freestyle, so 900 free. And remember, I couldn’t do half a length of any pool like that this summer on account of my shoulder and collarbone.

The last 200 yards or so were even more ragged than usual. I am slow, and it isn’t pretty, but I am pleased.

Then a burger and fries. Finally back to the office for a night enjoying the editors put their paper together. It’ll be done sometime after midnight. It’ll be on newsstands tomorrow. I’m sure it’ll be another strong edition.

Things to read, which I thought you might enjoy …

This is, perhaps, the best thing I’ve ever read on HuffPo, Nadine Schweigert, North Dakota Woman, ‘Marries Herself,’ Opens Up About Self-Marriage

The marriage took place among friends and family who were encouraged to “blow kisses to the world” after she exchanged rings with her “inner groom”, My Fox Phoenix reports.

“I feel very empowered, very happy, very joyous … I want to share that with people, and also the people that were in attendance, it’s a form of accountability,” Nadien Schweigert told Anderson Cooper.

So long as you now feel accountable to yourself and, one presumes, for yourself.

This is just about the most offensive story of the day, I should think. Mother of fallen soldier denied death benefits: ‘I won’t ever understand it’:

Collins said she feels lucky to have a job and supervisors who will allow her to take paid time off to take care of her son’s return. For those who aren’t as fortunate, the death gratuity may be critical to their survival and sense of closure.

“While that benefit may not be urgent for me, it’s urgent for somebody. There’s somebody who needs to fly their family home. There’s somebody who needs to have expenses covered, or be able to take off work to handle the affairs of their loved one,” she said. “And to know that the government shutting down will delay their ability to handle their business, some people just won’t be able to do it.

While, financially,she is able to address her son’s return, Collins said she still could use help in paying for his funeral.

“I don’t necessarily have $10,000 to bury my son,” she said. While she is working with the funeral home to make arrangements, she wondered: “Am I going to be on a payment plan for the rest of my life so that my son can have the services that he deserves?”

You also have this feeling that this particular cruelty will be remedied right quickly now that Congress sees it played out in the media. And that should tell you everything you need to know about how the government works.

The best story of the day is an easy one. North Haledon quadruple amputee teen happy to play soccer, motivate others:

Jorge has lived with amputated limbs since he underwent a life-saving procedure at the age of 14 months because of an infection — most likely meningococcal meningitis, Dyksen said. “His skin was just rotting away,” she said. Today, he’s healthy.

It’s not only on the soccer field that Jorge has looked past his physical constraints. He’s also a member of the school bowling team, using both arms to roll a ball without holes. And he’s also prolific at text-messaging, family friend Carla Nash said, hitting away at keys without his prosthetic right hand. In the classroom, he holds a pencil between both arms.

[…]

He said he hopes to be a motivational speaker as an adult. “Because I know there’s people out there that really need motivation and everyone says I always motivate other people,” he said. “I help them get happy in their lives. I’m always smiling and I just feel like that’s the right thing for me.”

Good for Jorge.

You want video? They’ve got video.

“Nothing is impossible,” his teammates say. Special young man, there.

errands / iPhone / journalism / links / Samford / things to read / Twitter — Comments Off on The sounds of Monday
7
Oct 13

The sounds of Monday

Some people don’t get it:

And then they double down:

Because saying that, perhaps, you didn’t play that as well as, perhaps, you could and that, perhaps, people are put off by it is, perhaps, a step too far.

Made my fourth visit to the tuxedo rental store in the last month this morning. There is a wedding in which I will participate next weekend. To recap, I am trying to match up a rental tux with the one other civilian, a man I’ve yet to have the pleasure of meeting, in the wedding who owns his own. I first visited the local shop and left with something of a poor impression. I visited a sister store after work one day and found a more enthusiastic reply. So I returned to the original shop. The gentleman there had already begun inputting my data in the archaic 1997 software system they use for rentals. The second guy, at the second shop, who’s manly look and brusque attitude suggested he knew about making a man look good in fine clothes, was only countered by fingers so thick they couldn’t hit the keys, and an apparent misunderstanding about how form fields work.

So the first store again, last week, where I rented the tux. Same guy. Same uneasy feeling of general uncertainty. But it got rented. Last night, from the wedding party, I was informed of further details to consider and, ultimately, change. So that was this morning.

“We’d be happy to help with that, just as soon as I struggle with the system for 15 minutes because we can’t boot even boot DOS Shell on these machines and the cursor buttons are broken because of storeroom angst and won’t you please by this tiny cube of collar stays for $9 or this fancy tie blotting napkin for $18. How about some $100 jeans while you’re here? Our software is terrible, but Fred Flinstone is in the back coaxing the bird into hammering the text into the stone faster.”

“Also, that’ll be a $40 late upgrade fee.”

It was during this experience when I considered the customer vs. employee experience. All these expensive pieces of handsome finery, and you can’t even give your crew a workable system? Or hardware from this century?

“You’re going to love the way we telegraph in your order, I guarantee it.”

It turns out that the tuxedo will ship the original order. And then ship the subsequent late additions. This will all be delivered by the middle of the week, so at least they have one part of the PDQ distribution model down, but not the parts that make logistical sense.

So I’ll go back to the tuxedo rental place late Thursday, for the fifth visit, so they can check to see if any alterations are necessary. And I can pick it up on Friday, the sixth visit.

I could have made the tuxedo, if only I had the pattern.

And then there was a stop at the gas station. I chose the one that orbits outside a big box store, that has four pumps, eight hoses and 16 square feet of parking lot to maneuver into. I hate this gas station, but it is the second cheapest in town and it was on a direct path to get my oil changed.

And that was done quickly. They did not spray my door hinges with WD-40, which is a part of the experience that I found I missed. The guy ran through the safety check himself, so I did not get to do the lights, the high beams or the blinkers — or as he did it: libeamblink!. I did get to tap the breaks and honk the horn. The air filter continues to be a marvel of modern technology. All of the fluids and belts and hoses look good. All of this the guy said in 2.4 seconds, which gave me something to decode for the next 10 minutes and gave him an air of cool efficiency. Nothing was wasted, no move was unnecessary, and could you sign the receipt a little faster, please and thank you?

Then work. A fight with the copy machine. A last minute tweak to the afternoon class plan. Then the class itself. Notes, notes, notes, editing, and then an editing exercise. All very riveting for probably me alone.

Most people don’t find editing to be a gripping part of their classroom experience, and you can’t blame them for that.

Then some office time with office stuff. I went to the pool, but was mysteriously locked out. Through the door you could hear the sounds of what you might interpret as people having fun. Or, perhaps they were the sounds of people being chased by a horror movie character.

So back to the office then. Some work. And then dinner. And then some more reading and writing and … that’s pretty much the day.

Things to read which I found interesting today:

The Newest Journalism:

These days, the web seems a bit less wild and more polished. Everywhere you look, there are signs that publishers are importing traditional journalism values to the constantly shifting digital environment. The web continues to do what it does better than print—delivering on-the-minute stories with a conversational tone to an always-connected audience—and the blog post, as one distinct unit of digital journalism, still offers what Andrew Sullivan called in 2008 “the spontaneous expression of instantaneous thought…accountable in immediate and unavoidable ways to readers.” But increasingly, digital journalism does its business while embracing certain core beliefs typically associated with old media.

I just did a presentation on that not too long ago. Nice to know you’re not the only one that notices shifts and changes, big and subtle.

The visual arms race of cable TV sets is now joined. Fox News debuts bizarre, giant tablets in its outrageous new newsroom:

Fox says the new “news deck” is designed to appeal to viewers who are “nonlinear” — those who sift through news all day on their phones and computers. “Just like you, we get our news from multiple platforms,” Smith says, “and this is the place where viewers can watch us sort it all out as it happens.” In other words, Fox’s new newsroom will serve as a fact-checking machine for Twitter’s firehose.

I wonder if this will stay awkward looking, or if we’ll become accustomed to it.

This seems like a bad idea. ‘Truckers for the Constitution’ Plan to Slow D.C. Beltway, Arrest Congressmen:

“We are not going to ask for impeachment,” Conlon said. “We are coming whether they like it or not. We’re not asking for impeachment, we’re asking for the arrest of everyone in government who has violated their oath of office.”

Conlon cited the idea of a citizens grand jury – meaning a pool of jurors convened without court approval – as the mechanism for indicting the officials.

“We want these people arrested, and we’re coming in with the grand jury to do it,” he said. “We are going to ask the law enforcement to uphold their constitutional oath and make these arrests. If they refuse to do it, by the power of the people of the United States and the people’s grand jury, they don’t want to do it, we will. … We the people will find a way.”

The best thing I’ve read today, and well worth your time, hence the long excerpt. Give Us This Day, Our Daily Senate Scolding:

The disapproval comes from angry constituents, baffled party elders and colleagues on the other side of the Capitol. But nowhere have senators found criticism more personal or immediate than right inside their own chamber every morning when the chaplain delivers the opening prayer.

“Save us from the madness,” the chaplain, a Seventh-day Adventist, former Navy rear admiral and collector of brightly colored bow ties named Barry C. Black, said one day late last week as he warmed up into what became an epic ministerial scolding.

“We acknowledge our transgressions, our shortcomings, our smugness, our selfishness and our pride,” he went on, his baritone voice filling the room. “Deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable.”

So it has gone every day for the last week when Mr. Black, who has been the Senate’s official man of the cloth for 10 years, has taken one of the more rote rituals on Capitol Hill — the morning invocation — and turned it into a daily conscience check for the 100 men and women of the United States Senate.

And, finally, Picle still doesn’t know how to embed. But I still like the concept of a photo (or series) mixed with audio I can record and put together on my phone. It takes 10 seconds, and only needs an embed function. This has been around for a year now, so maybe someone else has an app. Let me check … Anyway, this is the day the weather broke. The sun is high, but it seems farther away. The air is dry and the evening is almost crisp. This is the first night it seems possible, I wrote on Twitter that we could lose that beautiful summer symphony.

Every year you hear the first one, but never the last.

I do not know what is happening. / journalism / links / memories / photo / running / Samford / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off on Out goes the best neon in east Alabama
2
Oct 13

Out goes the best neon in east Alabama

This is a sad little story:

Lamar Phillips, the owner of Goal Post Bar-B-Q in Anniston, on Friday closed the doors to his restaurant for the final time.

He said he will sell the business, a fixture of Quintard Avenue since the 1960s, but declined to provide the potential buyer’s name or that person’s intentions for the building.

That Anniston restaurant has some of the best neon around:

Goal Post

I took that picture on Valentine’s Day in 2007. We had dinner that night at a catfish joint. Had I been thinking we would have gone to Goal Post. Catfish was not the best Valentine’s dinner. (Because barbecue is the ideal, of course. And it would have run me $12, apparently.) But we sat right down at the catfish joint, if I recall. Anyway, it was being in the same place that mattered. That year The Yankee was in Atlanta and we spent a lot of time on I-20 going back and forth.

Certain stretches of that road bring it all back.

Anyway, Goal Post was great. The neon is the best in that part of the state. The kicker actually puts the ball through the uprights. You can just see the other parts of the neon fading into the darkness. It looks great in motion. And that kicker has never missed.

Hope they are doing business there again soon.

I hope those American tourists can figure out a way around this barricade at the World War I memorial. I’m more troubled by the presumption that someone would tell you where you may practice your rights.

But the doings at the World War II memorial, just down the mall, are of course getting a lot of attention:

Some of it is disproportionate:

All of this is needless, of course.

The first time I visited the World War II memorial, it was about midnight on a cold December Saturday. It was open, as it was designed to stay open.

The memorial has 4,048 gold stars, each representing 100 Americans who died in the war. “Closing” open memorials with the simple intention of inconveniencing people is, well, simple. But you’ve learned to not expect a lot of nuance out of Washington D.C. these days.

In front of the wall of stars there is the message “Here we mark the price of freedom.”

Here’s a story with a great pull quote: “(W)hen he called the parks service, he was told they would face arrest. ‘I said, are you kidding me? You’re going to arrest a 90/91-year-old veteran from seeing his memorial? If it wasn’t for them it wouldn’t be there. She said, ‘That’s correct sir.””

But a bit of sanity finally prevailed.

It is shameful to make sacred places props, both the closing it and the photo opportunity it turned into for some congress members, but there’s not a great supply of shame in Washington.

And, think, we’re just getting started. We’re going about all of this all wrong, on both sides.

Things to read that I found interesting today …

Speaking of the shutdown, please meet The Most Unessential Man in America, in what is surely a bitterly humorous and demoralizing tale.

Here’s The Onion on the shutdown.

Local reads:

Study: Alabama residents pay 14 percent more for homeowner’s insurance after making 1 claim

4 found shot to death inside vehicle in remote area of Winston Co.

This one is interesting. How Big The Internet Of Things Could Become:

By the end of the decade, a nearly nine-fold increase in the volume of devices on the Internet of Things will mean a lot of infrastructure investment and market opportunities will available in this sector.

[…]

Who wins if any of these scenarios takes place? Semiconductor, network, remote sensor and big data vendors will be the lottery winners of such Internet of Things growth, to name a very few. Big data especially: 75 billion devices all generating signals of data to be analyzed and measured, many of which in real- or near-realtime? That’s got big data written all over it.

Designers and engineers look for opportunities in problems. In something that massively big maybe the idea is to look for the problem. My bet is on networking the data — which is challenging in volume — and predictive algorithms.

Now, what would you do with that, if you knew what to do with that?

Sticking to the newsroom, then, there was an afternoon of grading things. And then, in the early evening, we critiqued the Crimson. High story count, but it needs better art, not their best design. As always there were a few critical copy editing points. A solid effort, but, perhaps, not the one of which we are capable.

That’s what the next issue is for, of course. Check out the what the hardworking students at the Crimson are doing, here.

On the drive home I spent a lot of time thinking about the run I was going to do. What? This is supposed to be a rest day, anyway, and I’m thinking about running? As in, I found myself looking forward to it.

I do not know what is happening.

So I ran through the neighborhood in the darkness. Only two stretches of which don’t have good light. One of those, of course, being the short bridge over the creek at the bottom of the neighborhood. There’s a light at the far end and a light down a way from the other side. And, right in the middle of the two sits the bridge. Between having no oxygen in your brain and no light for your eyes it looked like there were goblins and monsters on the bridge.

Greeeeat.

May there be no trolls on your footpaths!

I do not know what is happening. / links / Samford / swimming / things to read / Tuesday / Tumblr / Twitter — Comments Off on More open than DC
1
Oct 13

More open than DC

Someone wrote this on the floor-to-ceiling chalkboard in the Samford Crimson’s newsroom.

chalkboard

Lately the board has been filled with non sequiturs, cryptic notes or jokes. That’s fun. I’ve always wanted to draw football plays on it. One day I’ll quote some 13th century Chinese philosopher and see if anyone notices.

The government shut down. In pieces, full of the nonessential types, which are surely made up of people who find themselves and their salaries essential. You wonder how long the thing will last this time. You recall the 1990s and how a lot of people didn’t seem to notice. You wonder how long it would take for some of those unfortunate nonessential types to be considered truly nonessential.

But if there is one place that jobs aren’t fungible, you know where that is.

All that could be said about the government shutdown has been said elsewhere, or is perfectly capable of being digested in 140 character increments on Twitter, or tuned out with The Million Second Quiz. Mileage may vary, of course. I’m pretty certain we’ll come to the conclusion that no one is playing their parts especially well.

I swam 1.33 miles tonight, 2,400 yards.

I do not know what is happening.

It started out poorly. Oh, it ended raggedly, too, but at least it improved a touch. The first 400 yards, though, were such that I was questioning pretty much every decision of the day. I hadn’t slept enough. I hadn’t eaten enough. I shouldn’t have walked over to the pool. I shouldn’t have deleted that spam email about arm replacements and on and on. I started bargaining with myself about when I would hang it up, because this wasn’t a pleasant experience.

After a time, though, the laps started ticking off and the weak feelings disappeared.

I improved my freestyle. For the first 1,800 yards I was doing 150 in my tadpole breaststroke and then 50 free. In the last 600 yards I was doing 100 in the fake stroke and 50 free. So, over the course of the swim, that worked out to 650 yards of freestyle. Which, I guess, means I have to learn how to swim now.

Remember, this summer I couldn’t swim more than four or five strokes of freestyle, so this is grand progress.

Things to read which I found interesting today.

Wearable Computers Could Make Steep Inroads into Farming, Experts Say

Does the right to “inspect” public records include the right to Instagram them?

College football attendance drops 3 percent in opening month

Inside Nairobi’s Devastated Westgate Mall

I put this on Tumblr. There’s more stuff there you can scroll through. Find me on Twitter, too.

And now I’m being summoned into the newsroom … so until tomorrow, then.

Catember / journalism / links / Monday / Samford / things to read — 1 Comment
30
Sep 13

Good for 63.73 percent of the people in the poll below; they said ‘Who cares?’

Didn’t you love Catember? We love Catember. That’s the fourth year I’ve put that on the site, and it is probably one of the more popular things going. You can follow this link to the Catember category and see all of them. Allie is wacky as ever.

This morning she got locked in a linen closet. Because if you go to that part of the house then you must be going into that room. And if you are going into that room it must be because you are going to open the door for her.

It is a neat trick, really. She jumps up to a second shelf, while ducking down to avoid hitting the third shelf and fitting in a narrow space on top of beach towels. She likes to be on clean things. Very fussy.

Talked about news leads in class today. Riveting stuff. Here are some of the slides:

My favorite part is finding examples of bad leads. New York Times, student media, the local pros. None of us are immune. I read a dreadful one out of the old gray lady today. It violated almost every rule of thumb you would ordinarily use.

Otherwise, the day passed as it should.

Things to read that I thought you might find interesting:

Auburn-Opelika named as top place to retire

More than 2,000 NASA workers in Huntsville look to Washington today as government shutdown looms

Shutdown would lead to 2,000 civilian furloughs, no pay for military at Maxwell

Here’s an interesting profile on author and “performer” Malcolm Gladwell who has a new book out. He addresses critics. And his hair is still artistically unkempt:

“When you write about sports, you’re allowed to engage in mischief,” he says. “Nothing is at stake. It’s a bicycle race!” As a serious amateur runner himself (just the other day, he finished the Fifth Avenue Mile race, in Manhattan, in five minutes and three seconds) he’s “totally anti-doping … But what I’m trying to say is, look, we have to come up with better reasons. Our reasons suck! And when the majority has taken a position that’s ill thought-through, it’s appropriate to make trouble.” His expression settles into a characteristic half-smile that makes clear he’d relish it if you disagreed.

Here’s an insightful New Yorker piece on the Guardian taking on the British government:

At 5:23 p.m., roughly eight hours after the encounter in his office, Rusbridger ordered the Guardian to post the G.C.H.Q. story on its Web site and then in its print edition. Although the British government had taken no further action, the mood in the Guardian’s offices was anxious. As the stories based on Snowden’s revelations were taking shape, Rusbridger had hired additional security for the building and established a secure office two floors above the newsroom, just down the corridor from the advertising department, to house the documents. When he flew to New York to work with his team there on the stories, “he couldn’t talk on the phone,” his wife, Lindsay Mackie, said. “He couldn’t say what was going on.”

It has been the Guardian’s biggest story so far. With eighty-four million monthly visitors, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Guardian Web site is now the third most popular English-language newspaper Web site in the world, behind London’s Daily Mail, with its celebrity gossip and abundant cleavage, and the New York Times. But its print circulation, of a hundred and ninety thousand, is half what it was in 2002. The Guardian, which is supported by the Scott Trust, established nearly eighty years ago to subsidize an “independent” and “liberal” newspaper, has lost money for nine straight years. In the most recent fiscal year, the paper lost thirty-one million pounds (about fifty million dollars), an improvement over the forty-four million pounds it lost the year before.

Last year, Andrew Miller, the director of the trust and the C.E.O. of the Guardian Media Group, warned that the trust’s money would be exhausted in three to five years if the losses were not dramatically reduced. To save the Guardian, Rusbridger has pushed to transform it into a global digital newspaper, aimed at engaged, anti-establishment readers and available entirely for free. In 2011, Guardian U.S., a digital-only edition, was expanded, followed this year by the launch of an Australian online edition. It’s a grand experiment, he concedes: just how free can a free press be?

For reasons big and small beyond this story I really, really hope they make it.

Somebody had to say it. I say it to my freshmen (your job is learning as much as you can and selecting and sharing the most critical parts) and I’ve told it to old reporters (do what you do best and link to the rest) and pretty much anyone in between (solicit and cultivate your community) who’d care to disagree. But the truth is the truth. Journalism *is* curation: tips on curation tools and techniques:

Curation is a relatively new term in journalism, but the practice is as old as journalism itself. Every act of journalism is an act of curation: think of how a news report or feature selects and combines elements from a range of sources (first hand sources, background facts, first or second hand colour). Not only that: every act of publishing is, too: selecting and combining different types of content to ensure a news or content ‘mix’.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in his talk to employees at the Washington Post said: “People will buy a package … they will not pay for a story.” Previously that package was limited to what your staff produced, and wire copy. But as more content becomes digitised, it is possible to combine more content from a wider variety of sources in a range of media – and on any one of a number of platforms.

Curation is nothing new – but it is becoming harder.

It is becoming faster, with stronger feedback, and with more and more places to monitor and share. So, in that sense, yes, it is harder. Really it is more intensive, and more thorough.

And then there’s this embarrassment: AJ and Katherine: A kiss is just a kiss, or is it? (poll)

We can’t let people live their personal lives. And by people I mean a young woman who’s caught a minor bit of celebrity in the most 21st century way possible and a college student. We must speculate. Are they on or off? Here’s a photo gallery! And take this poll! Now let’s bring in our kiss expert (“lukewarm at best”) who is really, and I’m not making this up, the public safety reporter.

A commenter wrote “AL.com, please use the poll results to help refine the amount of time you spend covering Katherine Webb stories. Thanks.”

Others:

Carol’s reply:

It is a good thing bandwidth is cheap. So is the content.

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