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things to read

Oh, this is awkward, but deliberately so

In class today we talked about different story forms. I got to discuss the circle lead, one of the best tricks in a writer’s quiver. I’d use them all the time if I could, but if you don’t get it just right that arrow in your quiver becomes a whacky splinter, spinning out of control.

They have to be done well. There is an art to them. You see these often — the ending in some way refers back to the beginning, with a phrase or a callback so that your news story comes full circle — and some are definitely better than others.

(Watch, I’ll do a bad one below.)

There was a story in the Crimson about another awareness month — October is just full of them for some reason. Only in this particular one, nothing seems to be happening. But you are aware! There is a feature on Yik Yak. Our features editor interviewed the CEO. Turns out they know some of the same people. There was also a column comparing cats and engagement rings.

You can find them all, and more, on the site, which is due a relaunch here in the next few weeks. Looking forward to that.

Things to read … because I always look forward to reading.

We saw this in recruitment two years ago, but now it is “official.” Not sure if that’s because an investment firm did some research or that the research got written about in a paper, Teens are officially over Facebook

Somehow, I doubt this particular gentleman’s unfortunate story is far from over, Ebola patient in Dallas hospital dies

Meanwhile, Conn. Health Commissioner Granted Quarantine Power

And locally, CDC Sets Up Mock Ebola Ward Set Up In Alabama:

Time to put on the protective suits. The students use a buddy system to check each other as they pull on each piece of gear – boots, a jumpsuit, surgical gloves, head covering, facemask, apron. Heather Bedlion is a registered nurse and has worked in a disaster zone, but she’s never put on this amount of protection.

It sounds like protocol will mean everything.

Predictable, perhaps unavoidable, and sad, Turkey Refusing to Fight ISIS Right on Its Border

Don’t forget about these folks, South, North Korea ships fire shots at disputed sea border

And, here at home, Jimmy Carter unhappy with Obama’s policies in Middle East:

Carter said it was hard to figure out exactly what President Obama’s policy is in the Middle East.

“It changes from time to time,” Carter said. “I noticed that two of his secretaries of defense, after they got out of office, were very critical of the lack of positive action on the part of the president.”

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was the most recent to criticize Obama, in remarks he made to USA Today while promoting his new book, “Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace.”

Carter acknowledged that the ISIS situation is complicated and he thinks the United States waited too long to respond.

“First of all, we waited too long. We let the Islamic state build up its money, capability and strength and weapons while it was still in Syria,” he said. “Then when [ISIS] moved into Iraq, the Sunni Muslims didn’t object to their being there and about a third of the territory in Iraq was abandoned.”

Carter is just stating facts, and the facts as he sees them. He’s always just a moment or two away from returning to that most annoying of political institutions, the critical ex-president.

Long has there been a tradition of great men — and even the lesser men that have held the office — of retiring and holding their tongues. Some people just can’t help themselves, though. Jimmy Carter can be one of those guys. Harry Truman was the same. And that’s, perhaps, the most Trumanesque thing he can muster. We’d perhaps all be better off if he simply returned to the great post-presidency work he’s done. That’s the strongest arrow in his quiver.

(See?)

I do not know what is happening. / journalism / links / running / Samford / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
7
Oct 14

On betterment

Time to get better. Got in a nice little run this morning, because, I’d decided, the offseason was over. I hadn’t done anything in a week, hadn’t run in 10 days, so a 5K seemed a good place to start. The offseason was over. Let the sweating and straining and suffering and self-improvement begin.

Meanwhile, the Ironman world championships are about to take place in Hawai’i, which means there are way to many profiles of struggle and triumph and achievement and sheer cardiovascular stubbornness floating around. I might share one or two. Here’s a man more than twice my age who’s probably six or eight times in better shape: No Such Thing as “Aging Up”:

Scott had chest pain during a bike ride a decade ago, and did what any triathlete would do. He rode his bike to his doctor’s office. After an examination, his suspicions of cardiac disease confirmed, the doctor wanted Scott to head to the hospital for a cardiac cath. Scott agreed and started to put his helmet back on to ride his bike to the hospital. The doctor would have none of it and Scott was transported in the usual fashion. After a stent placement and recovery, he went on to set the Kona age group records for the next age group (75-79) as well.

Now, Scott, 83, is a 14-time IRONMAN World Championship finisher and course record holder in three age groups.

A multiple of six or eight might not be enough, actually.

Things to read … because I’m not a 14-time Ironman.

Just the Facts? This Dossier Goes Further

Tracking consumers across platforms is key to mobile ad revenue

Twitter Sues the Government for Violating Its First Amendment Rights

10-Step guide to auditing your school’s compliance with the Clery Act

‘A Terrible Slaughter Is Coming’

We were in the mountains of eastern Tennessee when this story broke in 2012, in a place where the cell service wasn’t good, so we were driving and looking for bars and hoping these rumors wouldn’t pan out. Sadly, horribly, they did. Desmonte Leonard found guilty of capital murder in shooting deaths of three people

I assume that this is one of those things that gives some measure of completion to the people who were directly touched. If that really happens or not, I don’t know. This must surely be better than learning of the time they had to delay a hearing because they left this guy at the jail. Or the day we learned that he was caught up in some story about having sex with a corrections officer. Or when he was on the run. I remember we sat at home the night the police sat for hours outside a residential home in Montgomery, thinking they had the guy cornered in an attic. He was nowhere near there.

Here’s a reaction story. Student reactions are always the weirdest and the best, Law enforcement, AU students react to Leonard verdict.

Newspaper night tonight. This is a feisty bunch. They are funny and they know their stuff. And they get done early. We’ve had staffs that worked way into the wee hours of the morning, into a time when the hours were distressingly no longer wee. This crowd is done by midnight, usually. And their work is pretty good, too. It makes the critiques, which we do on Wednesdays, fun. But it also makes it hard to find things to pick on them about.

It is a nice problem to have. Now I get to start challenging them to do bigger things. Time to get better.

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6
Oct 14

The first sign of the fall

The maples always give up first. They are always noticeable. This is the first one of the year, and this is how it will go from here on in. Leaves and things falling onto the car, into the yard and showing the thinning trees and the sticks. It is demoralizing, even without the symbolism. But this is how it goes, a bright red, a shocking yellow and then browns and grays and the long, deep holding of one’s breath until the first buds of spring.

I think it will be harder this year.

Slept a lot of yesterday afternoon away. I was just so tired all weekend. Of course by the time I’d recouped enough to feel close to normal evening had arrived. By the time my third wind arrived I was wide awake for the witching hour. So I got a few things off the DVR, at least.

Up early this morning, and then subsequently at ’em. If they ever figure out we’re at ’em things are going to change. No one ever discusses that, but it is a distinct possibility we have to consider.

Class today and then office stuff and helping with a few story ideas. I had dinner at a place where the menu said one price and my ticket indicated another, higher one. I pointed this out to the server, a cheerful woman who has seen me enough to offer a really solid — but incorrect — guess about what I was having for dinner. She laughed it off. I’ll remember that when I don’t go back anytime soon.

After dinner, this was my view:

Which wasn’t bad, really. The maple leaves are getting drunk and falling down, but the temperatures are still nice and comforting and warm.

Things to read … because reading is comforting, and can keep you warm — if you’re someplace warm.

A tragedy, an eventuality, and I agree with Dr. Joyner, this was poorly handled. US Marine First Casualty in Fight Against ISIS.

There’s a great sadness, and surely a great number of people who cared, who now wish they’d had a way to help. A terrible loss, Hazel Green community mourns death of football standout Julian Jones.

He might not be presidential timber, but he’s an interesting man. This is another little insight into the man from Massachusetts, Mitt Isn’t Ready to Call It Quits.

So one team’s quarterback gets hurt. No one else on the team can play the part. So a guy from the other team comes over to take a few snaps, High school quarterback helps opposing team during their time of need.

Are you interested in media law stemming from the Boston Marathon bombing? Well, New York Post’s Shoddy Reporting Leaves Legal, Ethical Lessons.

This is another great piece from last week that should have been written in the last decade, How journalists are embracing the innovation of Twitter.

The Cluetrain, happily, is still making plenty of stops.

I parked under a tree today. Now all of the crevices are filled with tiny leaves. The elms are taking cues from the maples. Quitters.

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2
Oct 14

Sigoggling

Sometimes you spend all day in your office, doing office things. Sometimes you do office things and it doesn’t even seem like you’ve done office things. But, then, sometimes, you spend all day doing office things, questioning your progress on doing those things and then walk outside at just the right time.

And that, as they say, is its own reward.

My other reward was veggies.

Things to read … because reading makes us big and strong.

(That’s what you’ve been told your entire life, anyway.)

Help for victims of sex trafficking: priest Becca Stevens wants Birmingham to do more

This will stick with you, How to Spot a Trafficking Victim at an Airport

Here’s the trailer for American Sniper, starring Bradley Cooper, detailing the nation’s best sniper. As movie trailers go, that’s incredibly intense.

This story never gets old, Sportsmanship allows middle school boy to live football dream:

Dalton, diagnosed with Down syndrome at birth, had just realized a long-time dream — playing football for his beloved Bears. Dalton had been hoping to dress with the team all season. Finally approved to participate, assistant Bears coach J.T. Lawrence and the other coaches had an idea.

“We thought it would be a great experience for Dalton and for the rest of our kids if he could get into a game and score,” Lawrence said. There was one problem. Dalton did not need to have any physical contact.

Lawrence talked to Prattville Christian athletic director Sam Peak and asked if his school would allow Dalton to go into the game and score a 2-point conversion if Billingsley scored a touchdown.

“That was an easy answer,” Peak said. “We coach our kids to be thankful for each opportunity to touch someone else’s life. This was an opportunity for us to do something good.”

A friend found the video:

UAB gets $47M grant for low-income education initiative

The Cult of Neil deGrasse Tyson

One System, Two Media: How China, Hong Kong Are Covering The Protests

The second half of this is great, Young Protesters in Hong Kong Have Found an Ingenious Way Around Cyber Censors

Occupy Hong Kong: Macro scale, micro-adaptations

Speaking of adaptations:

Could have told them that at the beginning … Facebook is more important to news distribution than you think, and journalists are freaked out:

At ONA, anxiety about Facebook’s increasing control over our traffic revealed itself in lots of questions: If I have 250,000 fans of my page, why don’t they all see everything I post? Why does my journalism seem to reach fewer people than it used to? Is Facebook trying to pressure my news organization to spend money to boost my posts or take out ads?

But there are more existential fears behind this conversation, too: If Facebook isn’t interested in exposing users to content that might be important but won’t result in high engagement like softer news and quizzes do, what will happen to news literacy? What will happen to civic engagement? What happens to The News That Matters, if only Facebook gets to decide what matters?

From the department of obvious things that could be understood but for interest, Editors who don’t use Twitter undercut their pleas to innovate.

If you’re from anywhere near where I’m from, this sounds a bit like home:

The sounds are the same, but those North Carolinians have their own unique vocabulary. You get the sense that even that language is falling away. Some of those words were things a parent said, some of them took some recollection. Good that it has been recorded in documentary form — and I want to see the full thing. How else would we have seemingly random blog post titles?

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1
Oct 14

The unknown stories of things

We hope you enjoyed Catember. Allie enjoyed being famous on the Internet. It was another successful month of showing off, cat hijinx and being cute. Life is hard for a black cat.

She’s curled up sleeping somewhere as I write this.

What do you suppose this is?

I caught the quickest glimpse of it on the freeway. The left lane is closed for repaving. The big orange barrels that come with road work are jutting out into the newly redone right line far enough that you’re driving at least halfway onto the shoulder. Fortunately, that was recently paved as well. At least the traffic is moving through the area, and the work is high quality. It is one of three or four stretches of road construction between here and there on that interstate.

None of which explains what that device does. I think it might perhaps have something to do with lane marking, but you can’t see a paint container there.

Things to read … because … we have to fill our own paint containers?

How media outlets are ‘gamifying’ the news:

News organizations are increasingly turning to video games to attract online readers, especially younger ones. The games hold promise — not just in terms of generating more readers and traffic hits, but in terms of helping people understand and consume news in different ways.

[…]

“It’s important for us and our journalists to not allow a medium to develop that we’re not going to at least explore,” Anthony DeBarros, director of interactive applications at Gannett Digital, said in a Digiday story this week. “It’s important to understand how we can be a part of an emerging medium.”

There are several great examples of emerging ideas in that story, including work from the European Journalism Centre and Al Jazeera.

How newsrooms can make the most of their archives:

In 1950 William Faulkner wrote “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past,” in his novel Requium for a Nun. However, the quote gained renewed attention in 2008 when then-candidate Obama gave a major speech on race in America. Obama was tapping into the archives of American culture to add context to the news of the day and connect that moment to the long and troubled history of race in America.

The Internet has made this idea of the past living alongside – and interwoven with – the present more true now than ever. Today, even relatively new newsrooms have vast and quickly growing archives of work to tap into and build upon. These archives hold huge potential to add context to current events, fuel community engagement and even serve as a new revenue stream.

Tablet Magazines Are Lousy, But J-Schools Can Make Them Better:

Though Apple claims it has sold more than 200 million iPads since 2010, not many of those users subscribe to magazines. Replica digital magazines accounted for only 3.8 percent of total paid circulation in the first half of 2014, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. To put this in perspective: National Geographic won the National Magazine Award for best tablet magazine this year. The Geographic’s paid print circulation is 3.5 million. Circulation for the tablet edition: 164,408. The “best” the industry has to offer amounts to less than 5 percent of paid circulation. (Blame the AAM, in part, for the industry’s reliance on tedious replica apps; they are the only versions counted in a publication’s rate base, which help determine its ad rates.)

While magazines are still producing tablet issues, they haven’t saved the industry like we hoped. But that doesn’t stop journalism schools from making them a focal point in the curriculum.

The White House Wants to Reveal Where Government Drones Fly:

The White House is getting ready to send out an order to make agencies open up data on where they fly drones and what happens to all of the data they collect.

Right now, only the government is actually allowed to fly drones legally. Commercial drone use is banned by the FAA, although it gave out several permits to movie and television production companies to let them use drones, and gave unique permission to a company in Texas to let it use drones in a search and rescue mission.

The new executive order would specifically tell federal agencies to open up data on its drone fleets that it has kept secret for years. Although the new rules would cover all federal agencies, the Department of Defense, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security have the largest fleets and would be most affected by the disclosure rules.

We talked about this today in a Crimson meeting. I am no expert on the extent of this issue, but it is an interesting topic that comes to light from time to time, and should be held up for examination more frequently, Reports on college crime are deceptively inaccurate:

The crime statistics being released by colleges nationwide on Wednesday are so misleading that they give students and parents a false sense of security.

Even the U.S. Department of Education official who oversees compliance with a federal law requiring that the statistics be posted on Oct. 1 each year admits that they are inaccurate. Jim Moore said that a vast majority of schools comply with the law but some purposely underreport crimes to protect their images; others have made honest mistakes in attempting to comply.

In addition, weaknesses in the law allow for thousands of off-campus crimes involving students to go unreported, and the Education Department does little to monitor or enforce compliance with the law — even when colleges report numbers that seem questionable.

Here are Samford’s published data covering 2011 through 2013 and for September 2014. I wonder if there is a story there …