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Samford

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19
Apr 12

Just because you read it

Board members from the Alabama Press Association were at Samford today talking to JMC students. Their advice: journalists are generalists, don’t limit yourself to print or video but get a bit of both, separate yourself from your competition.

The board members were passionate, optimistic and dedicated to helping their community and their industry. They gave good advice for students, both in the Crimson office, and in Dr. Jones’ print practicum class.

Dr. Jones got the ball rolling: “What skills do these students need?”

The consensus response? “Everything.”

Sounds familiar. We talk about that all the time at Samford, where our program endorses a broad-based approach. It helps make interns and graduates look more valuable to potential employers.

After that, the students have to take it upon themselves, but to get that encouragement from the faculty, to hear it from the pros — and to see how the industry is coming around to that reality, is a great thing. We’re doing it right.

And then there’s the latest from Pew.

The report goes on to say that 32 percent of these people say the disappearance of their local paper would have a major impact on their lives. Among people who aren’t that interested in local news, about half say their lives wouldn’t change at all if they didn’t have a local paper. Good, for newspapers, right?

But look at it another way: That means 68 percent of local news enthusiasts don’t believe the disappearance of their local paper would affect their lives in a major way. And 34 percent of such enthusiasts say the disappearance wouldn’t affect their lives at all.

This likely reflects local news enthusiasts’ reliance on TV; Pew reports that 80 percent of them use broadcast TV on a weekly basis, compared to 48 percent for newspapers, 52 percent for radio and 57 percent for “word of mouth.” TV was also the preferred source for weather and breaking news, the two issues local news enthusiasts follow most closely.

Believe being the key word. Look, the more media the better, and not just for our students’ sake. If I may return to my watchdog roots for a moment, someone has to watch the politicians and agencies and the occasional white collar bad guys.

And if papers go away, how will you get your comics?

One of the publishers today told the students he’s done everything in a newsroom, report, write, layout, copy editing, emptying garbage and writing the horoscope when it didn’t make it in on time.

So keep that in mind the next time you have a glance at Pisces.

Lessen’s tonight’s fortune somewhat, don’t you think?

I posted that on Facebook. A friend commented ” I got that one once. Three years later, I know my time is coming!”

Not everything you read is worth taking to heart.

music / Samford / video / Wednesday — 1 Comment
18
Apr 12

The Rushton Memorial Carrilon

I took cookies to my students today, because everyone needs a cookie day.

Also, I stood outside and listened to Steve Knight play the Rushton Memorial Carillon above the Harwell Goodwin Davis Library. He’s been doing this for longer than I’ve been alive:

One of our students wrote a little story about him two years ago:

After studying organ under a blind organist in Paris in 1970, Knight’s interest in studying the carillon in Europe grew.

“I knew I wanted to get more involved in carillon, and I was interested in entering a composition contest,” he said. “I told myself that if I won the contest, I’d go over and study.”

With a friend writing down his composition, Knight composed “Pasacaglia Grave.”

He became the first blind American to win the contest, and a month later, was studying at the Royal Carillon School in Belgium.

Ten years later, in 1988, Knight played an organ recital in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. His parents had been encouraging him to play a recital in D.C. for a long time, so he made it happen.

Fascinating man, beautiful sound, lovely place.

journalism / memories / Monday / Samford / video — Comments Off
16
Apr 12

Meanwhile, in the classroom

I taught about false light in two media law classes today.

The three criteria required for a false light case:

1. Publication of material must put an individual in a false light.
2. The false light would be offensive to a reasonable person.
3. The publisher was at fault.

Two anecdotes from the lecture:

The Sun ran a picture of Nellie Mitchell, a 96-year-old Arkansas woman, in a fabricated story about a 101-year-old female news carrier who had to give up her job because she was pregnant. The Sun’s editors needed a photo for their false story. They assumed Nellie was dead and pulled her picture from a previous true story. She was alive and, by then, feeling litigious. She sued. She won $1.5 million in 1991. (That’s $2.5 million today)

In the 1980s WJLA in Washington, D.C., did a story on genital herpes. The reporter shot b roll on a busy D.C. street. The videographer zoomed in on a woman who was easily recognized. In the 11 p.m. broadcast the anchor read the script “For the 20 million Americans who have herpes, it’s not a cure” as tape rolled with the woman’s image. She won her case and was awarded $750.

I like media law, but I think you have to have an anticipation of enjoyment of it before you take it as a class. I imagine that students who don’t have some inkling of that beforehand find themselves miserable. But it is a vitally important topic.

I think I enjoyed it, in part, was because the first media law case I ever read about was Carol Burnett v. National Enquirer, Inc. I loved Carol Burnett as a comedienne, even if her sketch comedy show (which I caught it in syndication) was for an older audience. It always felt like I was getting away with something to be able to watch it late at night, but I remember thinking that Burnett’s case, while important, probably felt ancient to most of my peers. It had happened almost 15 years before we studied it, an eternity to undergrads. (I did not talk about it in class today.)

And so I vowed to give contemporary examples in a media law context. Need to brush up on the dockets a bit.

To know the more than a name makes a case history more interesting. To see this makes it all stick in your head:

I actually remember that bit, which is remarkable with my memory. I suppose it speaks to the impression those talents could leave upon you. To this day my favorite stylings are physical comedy and the famous loss of composure. I blame Harvey Korman for that:

Had a guest in my Mass Media Practices class today. My old friend Napo Monasterio came over from The Birmingham News to talk about that happy, curious, more-flexible-than-ever place where journalist, coder and designer meet. Napo is from Auburn, though he was a year or two behind me. Now I see his work all the time.

Here are some of his page layouts and the online package that went with it. Now he’s developing apps.

He was formally trained as a print journalist and designer, but his desire to learn new things keeps opening doors for him. I hope students pick up on that.

“Just like a firecracker going off in the air — kabuuuuum.”

adventures / Friday / history / iPhone / photo / Samford — Comments Off
14
Apr 12

My day, and a bit of recent San Antonio history

Busy conference day. I presented two papers. The first was a piece I co-authored with my pal Skye titled “In the Huddle: SCCT Analysis of NFL and Players’ Association 2011 Lockout Strategies” which looked at that particular piece of business through the Coombs’ Situational Crisis Communication Theory. In the final analysis they followed part of the model perfectly, but blew it elsewhere.

The second paper was a piece on the Colbert Super PAC, which was one part history of PACs that led to this moment, one part speculation on what Colbert was doing, where Super PACs are taking us and, finally, announcing the latest financials they’ve raised and spent. That is a lot of money.

That paper, which I co-authored with The Yankee, was well received. It won top paper honors. I got a plaque and everything. Not too shabby.

And immediately after that session I served as a respondent in another session.

How this works: someone has grouped a small handful of papers together for the researchers to discuss their examination and findings to their audience, as I did twice earlier today. Another person, the respondent, is assigned to make some larger sense of it all. The respondent’s job is often to find a common thread, but also give some feedback on the papers, deliver some helpful criticism as they continue their research and so on.

I was asked to be the respondent on a mass communication panel titled “‘Talking’ with the People We ‘Know’ Best: Traditional Interaction as it Happens Online.” (Academics aren’t known for riveting titles.) I had four fine papers to read, which makes being a respondent enjoyable. You read things beyond your area and, if you are conscientious about it, you find yourself working hard to make your actual response worthwhile.

It takes some time and sometimes a bit of trepidation. One of those papers I knew nothing about when I started reading. The nice person that wrote it is the expert. What can I say to that person? But eventually you find something. No study is perfect and all that.

And this might be a first: the timekeeper flashed me a one-minute sign. Not sure I’ve ever seen a respondent threaten to go over the allotted time before.

I hope it was at least a little bit worth it to the researchers.

This is Schilo’s:

Pronounce it “She-Lows.”

This is one of those downtown dining institutions. I’d had lunch there two days in a row. Yesterday it was the Wienerschnitzel of breaded pork and a side of red cabbage. Today I had the Friday special, which was a deliciously salty roast beef with mashed potatoes and green beans.

(UPDATE: The next day, Saturday, we returned for breakfast. I had the potato pancakes, which were not the best potato pancakes I’ve ever had by any measure. But the lunches? Oh they know their lunches.)

A man named Fritz Schilo opened a saloon 90 miles away in Beeville, Texas just after the turn of the 20th century. In 1914 he packed up his family and moved his booze joint to San Antonio. Three years later: Prohibition.

So the saloon business dried up. He opened a restaurant. His wife made the food for a location not too far away from this one. He moved next door in 1927, and Fritz Schilo stayed on through the first part of the Depression, until he died in 1935. His son, Edgar, took over and in 1942, during another war, they moved to the current location. You wonder if the family, before they sold the business sometime after the war, ever measured big personal events around big international events.

You’d think, from the perspective of history, everyone did. But do we? Aside from the occasional “Where were you when?” moment, probably not. Still, that Prohibition timing was pretty rough on ol’ Fritz.

A bit more local history, John Wayne stayed at our hotel twice during premieres of two separate movies. He charmed them so well the second time they named a suite after him:

And here’s the man John Wayne wished he could have been. That’s Audie Murphy, second from the right:

The man next to him, unknown to whomever wrote the caption below the picture on display in the hotel lobby, looks positively beside himself with nausea. You would, too, if you were taking a picture with Murphy. If you don’t know what that’s about, you should do a little reading.

(UPDATE: The guy on the far right might be Harold Russell a World War II veteran who is one of only two non-professional actors to win an Oscar for his acting in The Best Years of Our Life. Russell had an amazing life.)

The hotel itself is lovely, in the lobby. The rooms are a bit shabby for the $160 rate they’re asking from conference-goers. We got a slightly better rate. The joke of the conference has been “What broke in your room this morning?” Oh, roughly everything. We’ll see about those rates again later this weekend.

Oh? The Alamo? Everyone says it is smaller than you’d think. And there’s no basement.

adventures / history / iPhone / links / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
12
Apr 12

Signs of downtown San Antonio

Took part in a roundtable panel on the presidential primary season. I made a great Rick Perry joke.

“There were a couple of problems there. The back surgery, the painkillers and … well … I forget the other one.”

Brought down the house. If anyone remembers anything I said on that panel, it won’t be the analysis but the joke.

We got the chance to walk around downtown a bit. Here are a few signs from the area:

The Aztec opened in 1926. It cost $1.25 million, which would be something like $22.6 million today. You wonder what the owner thought a few years later when the Depression landed on him:

In response to competition from other theatres, a magnificent chandelier was commissioned and installed, in only 35 days, in the main lobby in 1929. Weighing over 2,000 pounds, this ornate, 2 story, 12 foot in diameter fixture was billed as “The largest chandelier in the largest state in the Union”.

This says something about the barber, or the client, or both:

We were trying to resolve the mystery when we noticed they also had a foosball table inside.

This sign isn’t old, but I love it like it was creaking from decades in the sun and wind:

This isn’t a sign, but I would like to point out that this is the level of ornamentation they’ve put into a parking garage:

This theatre, The Texas, competed with The Aztec:

Also built in 1926, in the Spanish Colonial and Rococo style, it cost $2 million. It closed in the 1970s and was razed a few years later. The facade, though, lives on as part of an office building. (More here and here and here.)

I love this, because it is a neon sign evocative of one of my favorite songs:

Today we had lunch at a place I’ll write about tomorrow. We had dinner on the River Walk, the touristy part. The enchiladas were good, though.

And now I must return to my notes. I have three panel sessions to participate in tomorrow.