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Samford

Monday / Samford / video — Comments Off
18
Feb 13

No glass was broken while writing this entry

Bound to happen, Mondays I mean. I don’t have them often — the day occurs once in every few sunrises, of course — but the Mondays …

You know, there are a lot of videos on YouTube when you search for “A case of the Mondays.” I hadn’t realized it was such a prevailing and lasting theme from Office Space. I could not find the precise bit I wanted to put here, but the Internet doth giveth. Office Space as a slasher film:

I’d buy Stephen Root as that guy. So long as he didn’t make Jimmy James that guy:

Because Jimmy James had fancy plans, and pants to match:

The man has depth.

Class today. We talked about online presence, which means social media, Facebook, Twitter, Friendster and getting Dooced.

And then I continued my quixotic mission to find shoes. Judging by the shelves in the five places I’ve been there is a startling number of people that prefer a cheap brown model in size 13. How can there be so many of us that no store can keep the product stocked?

I’ll go again later this week, then.

Had a calzone at Mellow Mushroom, stopping in at precisely the time that everyone else left. Well, there was the one woman who’s son slipped and fell on his elbow near the restroom, but it looked like a free pizza grift to me.

When I left the guy at the oven asked how my calzone was. The question startled me. Usually you don’t get that on your way out, as an introduction, from someone you haven’t met.

Good, I said. I meant The bread was over-baked.

You can’t win them all, and Mellow Mushroom wins their share, so it all works out in the end.

Still not sure why the waiter was changing things up each visit. T-shirt, jacket, then a hat, then the t-shirt with the hat, finally he just stopped in at a nearby place and got their uniform, just for grins. Maybe he was trying to outrun Monday. Pizza guys.

And now, the most physical piece of situation comedy I think to have been recorded in the last 20 years. Jimmy mad:

I hope he doesn’t have a case of the Mondays.

Alabama / Auburn / journalism / links / Samford / things to read / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
6
Feb 13

The critical use of the word ‘Just’

We discussed critiquing news stories in class today. How to do it, what to critique, what not to get overly zealous about. How to treat this as a constructive exercise and not as a personal reproach, and so on. The idea is that the more you watch things critically — because I make you critique them — the more you’ll see things that work and things that don’t work.

A critical eye is very important in the craft.

So we talked about television packages. I showed this story’s video package, which was still timely early in the week. It was a nice example of localizing the story when it came to the Midland standoff.

The reporter found a local police officer who has gone through the FBI negotiation training and interviewed him about what might have been taking place. It was a helpful story to a degree. There are some vagaries, which is both based on the nature of this officer not knowing every detail about what is happening hours outside of his jurisdiction and a need to speak generally for tactical reasons too. But it is nice localized story. It has some production issues and some very strange B-roll shots. It gave us something to look at.

And then I showed them this:

That is never going to get old, even as fewer and fewer students are familiar with the YouTube sensation.

And then we got started in our efforts to set up WordPress blogs. They are a sharp group of students, and I’m sure they’ll be running the Internet by the end of the semester.

I have done thy bidding, Internet, and given you many more people to add content!

Lovely, busy day otherwise. It was national signing day, and the Crimson’s sports editor was posting stuff continually to their Twitter account. That earned him follows from two of the television stations in town. Nice little reward for his work.

My open letter to new signees got repackaged.

On the way home I stopped at Buy Buy Baby to get something off a friend’s registry. This place is full of things you didn’t know you needed if you’re raising children. Glancing at the products it is amazing any of us made it out of toddler years without these things in our homes.

The store is bright and smells of baby powder. Just add water, I suppose.

That’s an improvement, though, really. The last time I was in this store it was still a Circuit City. As I noted on Twitter, it was dank and dim and smelled of desperation then. I remember trying to test a camera of some device and the guy there was not able to put a battery into the thing.

I looked around at the deep sockets of the eyes of the few people actually in the store, realized that everyone there was touching, but no one was buying. I knew it was over.

Within a year they were all gone.

If only that one floor guy had bothered to look for a battery, things might have gone differently.

But probably not.

Anyway, in a much more pleasant environment with a thoroughly enjoyable young lady helping, I managed to find the appropriate burp cloths. They were very, very decorative. I’m sure yours were just a flat white, once upon a time.

Three recent items on the other blog:

Localizing the big stories

Have you tried SoundCloud?

USPS to drop Saturday deliveries

I have a lot of things stored away to write over there. Get used to the links, I guess.

Saw this sign, the oracle of our time:

I know the owner. His son and daughter are friends. The sign has become a big fun quasi-event lately. It isn’t true until Krystal’s says it is, and all that.

When I took that picture it was halftime in the Alabama-Auburn basketball game. Alabama was leading Auburn 23-13. Halftime. In a basketball game, full of varsity, scholarship players. Presumably for both teams. (So you see why the word “Just” is important on that sign.)

In the second half Auburn went on a 36-14 run — that was all of the scoring. The final was 49-37, Auburn. Weird game. But Auburn held Alabama to its lowest point total in the 146 game series history, so there’s that.

journalism / links / Monday / Samford / things to read — Comments Off
4
Feb 13

Examples of adaptability

Lovely, cool day today. Sunny and clear and a high of 52. Winter, such as it has been, is on notice. We’re preparing to move toward spring. Oh, sure, there will be one or two chilly revolts between here and there, but the corner is in view and we’ll soon round it, and look to find another beautiful spring waiting on us.

Everything will go according to plan: the blooms, the longer sunshine in the afternoon and then the warm days and cool evenings. About that same time will come the leaves, sprigs at first, and then dots and finally, suddenly, that one day when your eyes are overwhelmed by the verdancy.

The leaves!

And then, almost as quickly, your brain will get used to it.

There are the leaves.

The mind is amazingly adaptable like that.

Class today was marred today by a technical problem. I could not show the videos I wanted to show for news critiquing purposes. I will show them Wednesday. Problem solved! Adaptability!

Things to read: Budget outlook worries state legislators :

A decision by Alabama voters to transfer $437 million from savings to fix the General Fund over three years may not be enough to help state agencies that provide programs affecting every state resident.

According to the Associated Press, legislators are worried that the programs could end up with less money for operations in the coming fiscal year.

I, for one, am shocked by this shocking revelation, which finds us all shocked by shocking it is.

Here’s what the state’s elected officials said before they asked primary voters, not the general ballot, for permission to raid the trust fund to pay standard bills:

Gov. Robert Bentley and legislative leaders said Tuesday they are committed to paying back the money if Alabama voters agree to take more than $437 million from a state trust fund and use it to prevent huge cuts in spending on state programs for three years.

Bentley said the commitment should help garner more votes for the proposed constitutional amendment, which is the only thing on the statewide ballot Sept. 18.

So here we are today, probably a few days from the first state legislative vote that would pay that fund back, but:

State agencies that provide programs affecting every Alabama resident could end up with less money for operations in the coming fiscal year even though voters approved shifting $437 million from savings to shore up the beleaguered General Fund over three years.

[…]

(L)egislative leaders said the outlook is troubling despite the extra money provided by voters. State agencies have been asked to prepare operating plans based on budget cuts of 5 percent to 10 percent for the new fiscal year.

Coupons for everyone, then.

Mobile couponing is set to be the next big thing:

The rapidly expanding adoption of mobile couponing is poised to become a major challenge to one of the most profitable and important revenue streams remaining for newspapers: preprint advertising circulars.

[…]

(A)s consumers and marketers rapidly embrace the power of mobile phones to deliver the right deal at the right place and time to exactly the right customer. While only 6.0% of mobile phone owners used mobile coupons in 2012, the number rose to 16.3% in 2012 and is projected to leap to 24.3% by 2014, according to eMarketer, an independent research company.

Who wanted Oreos during the Super ~~Bowl~~ Blackout?:

When a power outage at the Superdome in New Orleans stopped the game between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers for an epic 34 minutes, Oreo’s team took action and posted a simple ad that was retweeted, or shared, more than 14,500 times on Twitter. The message: “Power Out? No Problem” accompanied with a picture of a cookie with the line “You can still dunk in the dark.” How did 360i –the agency responsible for the ad– do it so quickly?

[…]

Oreo’s instant Twitter ad stood out on a night when 30-second ads on TV cost $3.8 million. It helped demonstrate the power of ingenuity over money, and social media over traditional forms. It is likely part of a coming wave of real-time advertising that reacts, like a political campaign war room, to real-time events.

This is going to be great. A clever turn of words, the almost just-right photograph filtering through your various media streams, and all of it precipitated by some external event.

And then it will be clunky. Somewhere it will get out of control. (Some agency is bound to overreach.) And, pretty quickly, we’ll imagine that its always been just like this.

I think this means that more and more of those agency assets become in-house products.

The little boy in Midland is safe, after a week in captivity, being rescued at about 3:12 p.m. today:

4:36 p.m. Law enforcement officials confirm Dykes is dead but declined to say whether they shot him or if he shot himself. Dykes was seen with a gun in his hand, Richardson said.

4:30 p.m. Steve Richardson, Special Agent in Charge of FBI’s Mobile office said that at 3:12 p.m, the FBI safely recovered the child. He said that within the the past 24 hours negotiations deteriorated, and fearing the child was in imminent danger, agents entered the bunker.

That brave little boy turns six this week. Tonight he’s playing with his family again. Follow excellent coverage here.

Why government needs watchdogs: Ruling to open DCS records a victory for children. That’s in Tennessee, where the state was trying to block a big records release when it comes to child deaths under the observation of the state Department of Children’s Services. Victory, indeed.

history / Samford / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
30
Jan 13

Emergence — seemingly coordinated movement

Big storms, bad weather overnight and this morning. Campus delayed opening for a few hours. The most destructive elements of the storm were elsewhere, thankfully, not nearly as severe or widespread as it could have been.

There was a leak in my office.

My desk faces a wall. On the other side of that wall is a part of the campus radio station studio. Behind the wall to my desk’s right is part of the newspaper’s newsroom. The wall to my left opens to the exterior of the University Center. There’s a large, long window that looks out onto a green hill, a parking lot and a tree line in front of the next building up the hill.

From the top of that window there was a long, slow dripdripdrip. Under loud booms of thunder I called the facilities department to see about this leak. Our building is about 60 years old, so there are leaks from time to time. Offices across the hall had a good scare in the last year or so. The radio station had a leak, too, but managed to avoid damage. An office on the floor directly below the newspaper had a leak a few weeks ago. The folks that did the repair work surmised it must have gotten there from the newspaper, but we showed no damage. There are a few ceiling tiles in the hallway that have seen better days.

But now the gutter outside my window is threatening neatly stacked piles of paper filled with lecture notes and classroom exercises.

I met a man today who started his career at Samford years ago as a member of the campus safety department. He told me a story about working a late shift in the guard shack at the entrance in his first few weeks on the job.

A car pulled up, he asked to see some identification. The driver couldn’t produce any. He’d left his wallet and license at home.

The man, citing state law, said “I should make you park your car and call you a cab since you have no license with you.”

The driver said he’d turn around, head home and fetch his ID.

The next day the new guard was talking to his boss, who’d just had a conversation with his boss. They talked about the man he’d encountered last night. Older gentleman. Tall. Well dressed. Turns out the car was driven by Dr. Thomas Corts, the president of the university. The new employee didn’t recognize him.

The president said the man at the guard shack had behaved appropriately. And he should never do that to the president again.

We all had a nice laugh. Corts stepped down as the university president in 2006 and died four years ago. People still tell great stories about him. They all have some lesson in them, which is probably one of those marks of a good man. This one was pretty clear: You never know when you’ll meet someone important to you.

We talked about those kinds of first impressions in class a bit today. We talked career expos, first impressions and so on. It was resume day for the intro class. The Career Development Center led a great discussion on the Dos and Don’ts.

Rule Number One: Don’t use your mother as a reference.

Things to read: 4 TED Talks every journalist should watch.

For 40 years, this Russian family was cut off from all human contact, unaware of World War II:

Led by Pismenskaya, the scientists backed hurriedly out of the hut and retreated to a spot a few yards away, where they took out some provisions and began to eat. After about half an hour, the door of the cabin creaked open, and the old man and his two daughters emerged—no longer hysterical and, though still obviously frightened, “frankly curious.” Warily, the three strange figures approached and sat down with their visitors, rejecting everything that they were offered—jam, tea, bread—with a muttered, “We are not allowed that!” When Pismenskaya asked, “Have you ever eaten bread?” the old man answered: “I have. But they have not. They have never seen it.”

Birds dancing in the sky, beautiful and hypnotic:

I remember discussing this phenomenon in a leadership class once, discussing birds flying in formation. Emergence:

A school of fish or a flock of birds is not controlled by any leader. Instead, it emerges naturally as each individual follows a few simple rules, such as go in the same direction as the other guy, don’t get too close, and flee any predators.

Surely someone made some sort of Aristotelian reference. Of course Aristotle also thought it was transmutation … But Aristotle had a lot to say about rain.

journalism / links / maps / Samford / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
29
Jan 13

I had a bite of banana pudding today

Newspaper meetings, staff meetings, some other meeting. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, breathing.

I read a lot. I wrote some. I wrote a lecture. I created a work schedule and wrote emails. I tweaked a PowerPoint. I got rained on. It is remarkable how easy it is to slip back into the routine.

It is a nice routine.

The only thing unusual about it all was that the heat in my office worked. As far as I know that hasn’t been the case in the four years it has been my office. Of course it was 70 degrees outside today.

Everything else was just lovely. They were offering banana pudding in the cafeteria, after all.

I’m trying to settle on the Very Short List Of Desserts I’ll Allow Myself If They Are Available. Banana Pudding will be on this list.

Things to read: Entrepreneurial journalism? Credible voices? Two great topics for me.

The rise of the entrepreneurial journalist in a world seeking credible voices:

Breaking news without context and perspective is a commodity today. George gets that and has the experience and judgment to succeed on a platform like ours. We do our best to make sure that all of our contributors are right for the role. They’re all picked, vetted and on-boarded by FORBES editors who have worked here for years, often a decade or more. We prominently place a writer’s bio on each of their posts so readers can judge their credentials. Transparency sits at the core of everything we do. Not all our contributors work out. Some discover it’s not for them. Some never meet our standards and we part ways. We’re always learning how best to evaluate potential contributors, what the audience wants and what’s right for our brand. It’s part art and science.

We have a disruptive model for journalism. Last week, I wrote about the new wave of journalist on our full-time staff. Many work directly with our extensive curated contributor network. Our platform, tools and product features power a world of entrepreneurial journalism at a time when so many media companies are still shrinking. Our goal remains the same as it was the day we first embarked on our new journey: to build a sustainable model for journalism by respecting the values and standards of our heritage and embracing the dynamism of a digital era.

TV records uptick in dual-screen viewing:

Not only will there more second screens in consumers’ living rooms — but there could be more big second screens.

Deloitte, the consulting firm, estimates this year that 10% of homes in developed countries will have a “dual video screen” — that is two or more screens showing TV programs at the same time in the same room.

While near-term this dual video screening will continue to be dominated by combinations of TV sets and smaller screens — laptops/tablets — larger video second screens will take hold in future years.

This two screen business is all transitional, just so you know.

Great story about a great type of paper, may it publish forever, Pacific Palisades newspaper junkie buys his own paper:

Smolinisky, 33, is a newspaper junkie. He abides by Munger’s philosophy that high achievers in the financial world tend to be voracious readers.

“I love knowing everything going on everywhere in the world,” said Smolinisky, a real estate entrepreneur who keeps a peacock blue Bentley and a red Ferrari in his garage. Late last year, he satisfied a decade-long dream, paying seven figures for the Palisadian-Post. The weekly has chronicled life in Pacific Palisades since 1928 and has been losing money. Smolinisky aims to turn it around.

“Pacific Palisades is my favorite place on Earth, and the Palisadian-Post is my favorite newspaper,” he said. “I have a moral obligation to make sure this newspaper arrives every Thursday for as long as I live.”

As of now you can check out North Korea via Google Maps. I have a sneaking suspicion that that is really what the northern peninsula is actually angry about. Anyway, read about how it all came to pass, here.

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