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IU / memories / photo / site / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off on Election Day
3
Nov 20

Election Day

My day started with a three-hour webinar. I have four of those this week. There was another hour of Zooming this afternoon. Plus two hours in the studio, where I watched the news team put together some nice election nice coverage. They’ll be proud of that. Team coverage, in-studio interviews, they pitched it back and forth. It looked awfully nice.

But it made for a full day. Or a full-enough day. (So I’m glad I voted last week, but from the look and sound of it around here, I might have waited longer last Monday than people did today.)

Here’s Noelle, anchoring for us this evening:

She’s so steady, and always does a really nice job.

We brought in all the big guns.

I got home just after 8 p.m., which is the earliest election night I’ve had since 1996, I think.

My first election night was as a cub at the campus paper, covering local and Senate and congressional watch parties. If you’ve not been to a Democratic watch party in a hotel banquet hall you haven’t really experienced local politics, is all I’ll say. That night I also talked to Bob Riley just after he was tapped for his first term in Congress. I believe his campaign office was a retro-fitted farmers market, if I recall correctly. The Republican would serve there six years and then two terms as the governor of Alabama. I also talked to Jeff Sessions on the phone that night. One of those gentlemen was more cordial than the other.

I was on the air, and still in college, for the 1998 mid-terms. It was ambitious of us, really. In 2000, well, I ended up catching a few minutes of sleep in my car between election events and being on the air the next morning. It was a long night, for sure. Everyone said that, and they said it about the next several weeks.

The 2002 midterms was a gubernatorial election in Arkansas, where I covered Mike Hubbard’s re-election, when he was still mostly normal. Arkansans also elected Mark Pryor to his first term in the U.S. Senate. He’s a family legacy in that state and had been the state attorney general. It wasn’t a coronation, but it was.

The 2004 election I was producing content, but don’t have a big memory of it. We were all just sick of swift boats and Michael Moore and the staid weariness of the Kerry campaign. The 2006 elections taking place around me saw all of the incumbents win re-election and there was nothing really of note beyond that. Back when people wanted a status quo. I edited a lot that night. And I also used the word “wary.” The next day I interviewed reporters and political scientists.

But 2008 was different. I was in a newsroom, but it wasn’t my newsroom. It was my first student newsroom and the mystery wafted away pretty early in the night. Still, a long night in the newsroom watching a paper being put to bed. I had to talk some people into covering, you know, the historic election of their time. Journalism!

In 2010 I watched the students working around a bit of history. The entire state had turned red. Everything in the executive branch, and for the first time since Reconstruction, the Republicans gained a majority in the state legislature. The man who engineered it, rose to become Speaker of the House for Alabama. Corruption charges soon followed him. He was convicted on state ethics law violations in 2016 and appealed and held off his sentence until September of this year. Just today, in fact, he was transferred from county to state custody. (He was also a former employer of mine.)

That year, 2010, also saw the first win for a woman in a contested race in the state. Alabama sent two women to Congress, including the state’s first black woman elected to Congress from Alabama.

In 2012 I walked into the newsroom after a class to find the news editor designing a front page for a Romney win and another for an Obama win. Journalism! I suggested making a question mark-style front page, just in case. Everything was decided before I’d finished eating dinner and so I watched them put finishing touches on that Obama issue long into the night.

I have no recollection whatsoever of the 2014 midterms. All the incumbent congress members were re-elected around me. I was living in two worlds, and so it always felt like I was sleeping over at someone else’s house and never where I belonged. And Robert Bentley was elected governor in Alabama. I think a lot of people would like to have fewer recollections than what comes to mind these days when his name is uttered.

In 2016, well. New school, new newsroom, new building, and I bet you remember your own experience from that night. It was another late night. I think I left after all of our productions were done at about 2:30 a.m. or so. That’s not an un-standard time for me, on election night.

Tonight, it was just after 8 p.m. when I left for the house. Now I have no idea what to do with myself, other than to watching glowing maps on computer monitors and television screens. So I’ll do that.

I’m also watching the work of former students covering the election pretty much everywhere.

I counted people working in 11 different states covering their local elections tonight. That’s something special, to me.

Here are some photos I took this weekend.

Some amazing weather we’re having right now. Taking advantage of every moment of it while it lasts. And hoping it lasts forever.

Some of those pictures are so nice that one or two of them might wind up as backgrounds on the front page one of these days. Speaking of which, there’s a new look to the front page right now. It looks something like this:

Go check it out.

site — Comments Off on Catober Bonus
2
Nov 20

Catober Bonus

The 2020 edition of Catober has wrapped up nicely. We will now return to the generally regular Monday cat updates. But if that’s not enough, you can always follow Phoebe and Poseidon on their Instagram account.

There will be new stuff there just as soon as we get caught up from Catober. It’s this whole cycle, you see.

Anyway, so that you don’t have to end cold turkey, here are a few bonus Catober photos.

It’s kind of odd that they sit together, and especially this closely together. I think you can see that in Phoebe’s eyes, which is flashing that narrow slice of attitude between “This is my box, I was here first” and “HISS!”

Poseidon, you see, is kind of mean to his sister sometimes. His cuteness, when he’s on a roll, is almost enough to distract you into forgetting that:

Every cat likes the sun and, I think, Phoebe has charted the arc of that great ball of fusion in the sky. Sure, she’s sitting in the shade here, but she’s just waiting for the sunlight to move her direction, which it would just a few moments after this shot. Clever girl:

And cats, of course, like to get into things. So we had to put latches on our cabinets. But we left these two open for them since there’s nothing breakable or dangerous stored inside of them. And, as we have learned their personalities this year, leaving two available was the right choice. The only cat you’ve ever seen more jealous than one of our cats is the other of our two cats.

They will, from time to time, paw open these doors and have a look, or take a nap. The cats have cabinet meetings, where important items are discussed and resolved.

But seldom are there two cabinet meetings going on at once.

That’s all for now. Phoebe and Poseidon thank you for visiting them during Catober, and they really want to be your friend on Instagram.

history / markers / site / television / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Here’s something I’d completely forgotten
28
Oct 20

Here’s something I’d completely forgotten

I am judging high school and junior high news programs this week. There are some really talented young people out there. But we could always say that. Golly gee, kids these days!

Also, I have about 60 of these to work through, so I could say the same thing for the next few days.

Other kids these days:

After work I stopped in at the library to pick up a book I had on hold. It’s just two blocks from the office. I walked in, strolled through the alphabetized hold shelves until I found the S area, considering the sign that said “Respect other users privacy, no browsing” until I found my name. And, being careful to not notice anyone else’s titles, I picked up my hardcover book. Oh, the joys of reading fiction. I don’t a lot, but I will over the next few days. Well, once I’m satisfied there are no cooties on the dust jacket.

There’s a self checkout. You scan your library card and input your password on the touchscreen three times. Because the first time you mess it up so convincingly you wonder if your password is, in fact, something else. Once you get that right, you just hold the book under the scanner. There’s no barcode, it just knows what book you have based on some RFID tag or a near field communication trick.

So now I’m done. Two minutes, maybe three. I did nod to someone, but didn’t have to speak to a soul. I left via the nearest door. I was on a different floor from the one where I entered. I knew that, because there was a stairwell at the beginning of this adventure. I exited on a different side of the building than where I entered. Spatially, I was aware that I would be facing a different direction from where I went in, because I’d traversed most of the place and turned left to leave. So walked around the building was no surprise, but I was, of course, still on the ground, even after that long staircase when I entered. That amused me.

Architects must delight in confusing people who aren’t paying perfect attention.

Got home, cleaned off the day, and had a nice long chat with my mom. She’s fine. Everyone’s fine. (If the extended family would take this more seriously, that would be better, but I can’t convince people of the obvious.)

We’re talking about how we can do Christmas, because Thanksgiving is basically off. Maybe we’ll Zoom over turkey leftovers. We’re going to concentrate on the small joys. Visiting is a gift, and everyone is fine and healthy.

So much Covid data to report on our campus. The weekly numbers came out today, and they ticked up ever so slightly, but they remain impressively low, especially considering the county, and particularly in comparison to the state, which is surging ahead with no headlights, brakes or seatbelts.

Also, you’ll learn in the A-block there about how IU’s testing labs are now open. They’re going to be doing something like 8,500 tests a week here now. It’s an extensive, impressive undertaking. The university has really pulled out all of the stops to look after its campus communities and help the cities they all live in. Remember, this is 100,000 students in nine campuses across the state. And while, ultimately, this is not the fall or spring semester any student — or anyone else wanted — the lengths the university is going to during a pandemic are commendable.

They did a costume feature on the pop culture show and I can’t get over how awesome minimalist M&Ms are.

If you didn’t watch that, you should. They did blindfolds and had to guess what their reporters were dressed up as. So now you’ve got gloved, masked, blindfolded hosts. It was pretty silly.

Do you ever do that thing where you start a project on your website and work on it for a while and collect all the parts the project will need and continue to work on it and then think you’re finished with it? And then come back three years later and realize you weren’t finished?

Oh, that’s just me, huh?

Well OK, then.

Guess why this building is important:

It is important because it means we must return to the historic markers section of the site. This is where I where my bicycle all over the county to find the historic signs and take pictures of them, and the place they’re highlighting. I did this one years ago, but realized only this evening, while I was cleaning some old photos from my phone, that I’d never published them.

So go check out The Gables, which is a building that now holds a restaurant, and has some important local history in it. Also, the guy that owns it is a joy, and his food is pretty good, too. It’s just up the street from my office.

Hoagy Carmichael, who is the focus of this particular historic marker, has a statue on campus, and if I had a statue project on the site it would be one of the feature attractions, because it’s an amazing statue.

And the really good news is that we can get four or five more days worth of content out of old pictures and places I’d already thought I’d addressed! So look for another historic marker update next week.

More tomorrow. Until then, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account. And don’t forget my Instagram. Also, keep up with me on Twitter.

IU / site / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Tuesday, huh?
27
Oct 20

Tuesday, huh?

Have you ever had part of a day just vanish from memory? You know you did things, but you can’t really recall, precisely or vaguely, what those things were, even on the same day?

Welcome to my Tuesday!

I know I got up and puttered around the house and caught up on all the things I read in the news cycle and then at some point went to the office and did office things. I even held an office hour! Virtually! No one showed up.

I watched some videos and pounded out the emails and … anything else I could type about it would just be guessing at the routine. But it was there. Maybe that’s what it was fluorescent light-guided routine.

It’s a studio night for me, which reminds me to update you on some of the recent productions. And here they are now:

The spooky late night comedy show:

By the way, we learned this weekend that Not Too Late, which is the show above, earned an Honorable Mention in the national College Media Association’s Pinnacle Awards. A fine recognition, indeed. It’s a fun little program they’re building over there in Studio 5.

Meanwhile, and elsewhere … notably in Studio 7 …

Big Ten football is back and the subject of this longform talk show.

More sports! Now it feels like fall on campus:

And if you’re more of a morning person than a scary late night person, well I’m sorry we aren’t compatible in this respect, but, nevertheless, there’s a show for you as well:

And that has us all caught up on the last few days of television. I think. They also produce remote programs and social media and something like five different podcasts this semester. There’s a lot going on, is the point, even in this semester where there is, necessarily, less going on.

Forgot to mention: I updated the front page recently. Go check it out. It looks like this:

I have a several new photos I’m going to work through there. I’d like to have some random script do it, like the banners on this page. Around here, we are big fans of visual variety, as you might have noted. And the more you can automate that, the better.

Why not just use the same code?

Aren’t you a clever reader, you clever reader.

I’m tinkering with that. Maybe it’ll work. I might have to try something else to avoid breaking too many other rules on the site.

Why don’t you use javascript?

No thanks.

But —

Look, we’re trying to get away from that around here.

It’s something of an industry standard and —

Oh, believe me, construct I created just to have this conversation with myself, I know. But there’s some bloat and loading and security and some mobile-user issues and I’d just rather have a CSS and a PHP style solution, if you please.

Well, when you put it that way … why not just use the same code as this page?!?

Capital idea! Let me look into that.

memories / photo / site / Thursday — Comments Off on Happy National Radio Day
20
Aug 20

Happy National Radio Day

I worked in radio, a few lifetimes ago. I have a great radio transmitter sign, it reads:

CAUTION



HIGH LEVEL

RADIO FREQUENCY AREA

NO TRESSPASSING

A station engineer gave it to me once upon a time. Too bad he didn’t need to offload a transmitter and broadcast license that day, I suppose. Anyway, sitting right under it, and looking rather out of place because of it, is my Silvertone 8090 AM radio, from 1948.

You wonder what news and entertainment the original owners enjoyed through that cabinet, and how it came to my hands.

I purchased it from a retired educator about three years ago. Restoring radios, he said, was his retirement hobby. Feeling a bit like I was on a reality show, I got him to tell me all about his process and show me his other radios. He gave me a tour of the ones he was tinkering on in his garage, and the finished radios that held pride of place in his home. I got him to drop his price a bit and we loaded it up in the car. It still powers up, and I turned it on when I got it home. I listened to part of a football game on the local AM station.

One day I’ll actually put a Bluetooth speaker in there and play big band music from within the cabinet. But I have to move all of the things in my home office four or five more times first. (Another shuffle is coming this weekend!)

The gentleman I bought it from came to campus a few weeks later and I gave him and his wife a mini-tour of The Media School. They were quite pleased by all that we are doing for students. (I believe she was an educator, too.) On their way out he said he was thinking of selling one of his really, really nice radios. One of the few sorts I’d really want. It was an early console radio with station presets. I could put my old station call letters on the buttons. How neat this would be! We’d talked about them for some time in his home, and I knew better than to ask. But on his campus visit he said he was maybe thinking about selling one, one day.

Which was the time to say, if you do, I hope you’ll consider giving me a chance to make an offer.

I keep checking my Facebook messages to see if he’s ever written me about selling it … no luck on National Radio Day.

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