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Poor rickshaw guy. They made him carry six people and their cooler. Hope they gave him a nice tip.
The professionals now clean Toomer’s Corner by hand:
Sunset over Montgomery.
Clouds over the Samford campus.
For more pictures, including all of Catember, go to the September photo gallery, which is now live.
I didn’t even take a picture to serve as a placeholder today.
But I did teach a class. We talked online headlines and links and search engine optimization. Some people are really into this sort of thing, and some are not. I suspect that’s the way of it everywhere. One student stayed to talk about it after class, which is where, I think, teaching is most rewarding.
Tonight I watched a little football and did a little more work. Hopefully I’ll be in bed by a reasonable time for another busy day, tomorrow.
It was a day of working on conference papers. There are two of them due tomorrow. Teaser: tomorrow will be much like this paragraph.
Have you ever written one thing over and over?
Yeah. That’s where I am today.
Anyway, the second issue of this year’s paper is out. Looks pretty nice, too.
Lots of areas the hardworking student-journalists can be proud of. Lots of areas for them to improve. That’s about where you should be in the second week.
You can see all the stories online at the also newly relaunched samfordcrimson.com
And now back to the same paragraphs of the same paper. I hate when that happens.
Oh the things you can get done on a Monday!
Set some hours. Wrote a lot of emails. Volunteered myself onto a panel. Worked on my car. Read and tinkered with two papers. Watched some television. Washed my car. Vacuumed the floor mats.
The floor mats, people.
Sure, when you throw it down into one fast list it doesn’t seem like much, but there’s some heft to that list.
At least three of those things involved Microsoft Word, after all.
And since you’re not interested in any of those things in the slightest, have some pictures. I found this quilt hanging at the city library yesterday:
The quilt was sponsored by American Field Service of Auburn, which now has a different name, I believe, but is a youth organization. Each panel is a little bit of the local history — and judging by the content, somewhere from the mid-late 1970s — so this safely fits into the realm of folk art. Here’s Old Main:
Old Main, built in 1859, was the first building on Auburn’s campus. Classes were held there. It served as a hospital during the Civil War (when the university was closed). It was destroyed by fire in 1887 and replaced by the iconic Samford Hall.
Here’s the lathe, which has now remarkably been mentioned here twice in the span of eight days:
Built in Selma, Ala. during the early part of the Civil War it was intended to make military supplies for the Confederates. They tried to move it to Georgia to keep it from being captured, and it was ultimately buried in Irondale, near modern Birmingham. It later was moved to Columbus, Ga. and worked through the end of the war boring cannons. After the war it was used in the coal iron industry. In the 1950s it was presented to Auburn. Also, the legend goes, if you stand in front of it under a full moon and say some random thing or another it will move three times and make all your dreams come true. Or something.
People don’t talk about it much anymore, I guess most everyone who can relate to it are all gone now, but the rail depot was a vital part of the community. It even figures into the football lore. The depot still stands. It was a realty office for three decades after the trains stopped rumbling through. Now it is empty and is considered a state sight in peril.
Reading that link you’ll learn it was the third one in town, designed by a student in 1904. The last passenger ticket was sold in 1970. Here it is today.
“But this first night is always a long effort.”
I said last night, around 11 p.m. If I had known better I would have written it differently.
I would have written “It will be a long night.” The headline above this would have read “And by long night I meant …”
And the text would have simply said “5:30 a.m.”
Now, to be clear: I don’t mind. I’ve been tired all day, but that’s part of the job and I love the job. After a series of first-issue problems, trial and errors the new staff put to bed a nice first edition this morning. I wouldn’t have minded a few more hours of sleep before saying that, but that’s the price of education by experience some time.
So about two-and-a-half or three hours of sleep this morning. And then today was our high school journalism workshop.
We had two series of sessions this morning and then two more sets in the afternoon. More than 300 students from across the area joined us.
Southern Living’s Kim Cross discussed their commendable series, Lessons from the Storm as a study in the use of multimedia.
CBS-42 reporter and Samford grad Kaitlin McCulley talked about television packages:
The kids had a great day:
I had an afternoon session, where two of the staffers from The Samford Crimson joined me. You can tell by their reaction that I’d just made a profoundly important point:
Anyway. After the workshop was concluded I taught a class on leads. It is perhaps one of my better lectures, which works out well since it is the first thing you read and an important component of a news story. That’s the first thing the journalism professors read when their students have created another issue of the campus paper.
Speaking of the Crimson, this was a big day. Sure, it was the first issue of the year. And it was delayed because of the storms that caused a campus-wide power outage yesterday. But, the paper returned to a tab size this year.
And the issue looks nice, too.
Also, we re-launched a new version of the Crimson’s website, too. There’s a lot to come from this new design and the content management system behind it — we switched from College Publisher, which is somewhat limited, to WordPress.
Here’s a screen capture of the old version:
And here’s the new version:
In this first issue we already have five feature stories, represented in those thumbnails below the main photograph. Below the fold the stories fall into a neat structure. There’s better comment moderation strength, ease of publication, a system I can teach to new students in under an hour and a very clean look.
Now we just need to put ads on it.
