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things to read

journalism / links / Monday / things to read — Comments Off
23
Mar 15

Things to read

You wouldn’t believe me if I told you about today. I scarcely can process it all myself. But, hey, I was still in the office doing things at 9:30 that I should have had done by 4 p.m., but for the metaphorical fires that were kindled today. Let’s just go read some cool stuff from around the Internet, instead.

Below you’ll find journalism links, stories of an interesting nature and a few wonderful uplifting tales. But, up first, stories of a political nature.

Here’s a sad truth. One of these costs money, the other one makes money. Study: Political Ads Dwarfed News Stories About Actual Political Issues in 2014:

A new study by Philly Political Media Watch finds that during evening newscasts leading up to the 2014 midterm elections the airtime given to political ads dwarfed stories about political issues by a ratio of 45:1.

[…]

The Philadelphia market dominates three states: Pennsylvania, Delaware and Southern New Jersey, and the study found that even in non-competitive races in that area, candidates continued to spend heavily throughout the course of the last few weeks of the campaign. The big winner of this trend? The companies that own the television stations.

[…]

While reaping the financial benefit from a flood of advertising dollars, however, the stations did not substantially increase the political content of their news programs.

There are dollar signs and interesting financial figures included in that story.

The story just gets worse. Hillary Clinton’s E-Mail Was Vulnerable to ‘Spoofing’:

illary Clinton didn’t take a basic precaution with her personal e-mail system to prevent hackers from impersonating or “spoofing” her identity in messages to close associates, according to former U.S. officials familiar with her e-mail system and other cyber-security experts.

This vulnerability put anyone who was in communication with her clintonemail.com account while she was secretary of state at risk of being hacked.

Well there is a shortage … Demoted Alabama trooper drove patrol car while drinking, fled Arab cops during domestic incident:

An Alabama state trooper who was demoted following a domestic incident last October was sent to rehab instead of jail, despite the fact that he drove his patrol car while under the influence of alcohol, pointed his state-issued gun at his estranged wife and fled from Arab police officers when they responded to the scene.

No charges were filed against Gary Shannon Gates, who lives in Huntsville. He also kept his job.

This was expected, and no less reprehensible. VA whistleblowers say they’ve been punished:

Two whistleblowers say that not only are they under attack for alerting the public about long wait times being covered up at the central Alabama VA, but that those wait times are getting longer.

Hundreds of leaked documents sent to the Advertiser during a seven-month period revealed patient abuse, inadequate care and unethical practices by the director and other staff at the Montgomery and Tuskegee hospitals.

US Rep. Martha Roby denounces alleged retaliation against VA whistleblowers:

Roby said Tremaine and Meuse were the only two who would give her a straight answer about what was happening at Montgomery’s VA facility.

“They told me the truth about the cover-ups that were happening at the VA, and for that they should be rewarded, not punished or marginalized,” she said. “My office has been working with these and many other whistleblowers since the VA scandal story broke. We were very careful to keep their identities confidential, but today they felt they had no choice but to come forward.”

There’s an awful lot of rot in the system, it seems.

Meanwhile, we go north for one of the most amazing quotes you’ve seen in a while. NH lawmakers harshly kill 4th-graders’ bill in front of them:

In the spirit of learning by doing, students drafted a bill to learn the process of how a bill becomes law. They proposed House Bill 373, an act establishing the Red Tail Hawk as the New Hampshire State Raptor. Even though it passed through the Environment and Agriculture committee with a majority vote, some representatives were far from receptive.

Rep. Warren Groen, a Republican from Rochester said, “It grasps them with its talons then uses its razor sharp beak to basically tear it apart limb by limb, and I guess the shame about making this a state bird is it would serve as a much better mascot for Planned Parenthood.”

The students were seated in the Gallery, for this.

Ordinarily, I have a sanity rule for these sorts of things. It goes like this, if you don’t understand the First Amendment, I find your argument invalid. The First Amendment should never protect hatred. And remember, it is only hate when someone else does it. That’s how those -isms usually work. I do like the reaction she’s receiving for that piece.

Before the journalism links, here is a story — Thousands vanished from official’s campaign report — and no one noticed from the AJC that is about politics and about campaign funds. I shared this in class today and the story was one thing, but when they learned it was broken by a college junior that got a real reaction. Great story for that young lady.

Some journalism and media links, arranged in just such an order:

The most creative uses for Meerkat, SXSW’s hottest app
New NYT styleguide reflects an evolving paper
Podcasts Reach Fans’ Ears via Mobile
USA Today Cuts 90 in Buyout Offers to Staffers Age 55 and Older
Los Angeles Times headline denounced as clickbait
Mother Jones: Staffer arrested photographing prison
Newsroom architecture: Yesterday, today, tomorrow
Hearst president: ‘We’re a content company with a platform mentality’
Ouch! Gannett newspaper in Louisiana misspells Louisiana
Reporters use Yik Yak to get instant audience take on Ted Cruz’s big campaign speech

Here’s what may be later viewed as a good, then bad, idea. cebook wants to be the new World Wide Web, and news orgs are apparently on board. This part should strike us all as odd:

The real issue is this: Facebook has far better data about individual users than any publisher has, and it wants to keep its users on Facebook. At one level, that data edge should enable it to charge higher rates to advertisers. But on another, Facebook’s audience is — by nature of its including a nontrivial share of all humanity — the definition of an undifferentiated, programmatic ad base, and premium publishers like (say) The New York Times should be able to outstrip it on a CPM basis.

Facebook controls a huge share of the traffic publishers get — 40 percent or more in many cases. Combine that with the appification of people’s online life — the retreat from the open web toward a few social-media icons on your phone’s home screen — and you start to get at the motivations here. Facebook has fallen into the role of audience gatekeeper for many publishers, and it’s offering (!) to optimize that relationship.

Isn’t it curious who is good at that, and who is not. What would you have said, 20 or so years ago, if someone asked who would have 21st century gatekeeping, data, understanding — audience analysis, an ad base, stratifications, real penetration — the local media front that has been in your world all of your life or an amorphous company out west?

The current result, if you’ll look at today as a result, is one young group who saw a marketing opening and many other older, less nimble groups who still isn’t sure about it. It is the not small degree of difference between what we are willing to say about ourselves and what we want others to ask us.

All of @jeffjarvis‘ discussion on media community, connectivity, links, trust, all networks, all of it, is coming home (again) in this one story. And, ultimately, we’ll likely see that the news orgs won’t get the data — the real capital — they need. And they won’t get the money they’ll imagine. We’ve been down this walled garden path a few times now.

So, then, I give you this story: Twitter puts trillions of tweets up for sale to data miners:

Selling data is as yet a small part of Twitter’s overall income – $70m out of a total of $1.3bn last year, with the lion’s share of cash coming from advertising, but the social network has big plans to increase that. Its acquisition of Chris Moody’s analytics company Gnip for $130m last April is a sign of that intent.

Google and Facebook have built their businesses around sharing data, but their control of our private and public information has become a source of huge controversy.

Moody acknowledges it is an area fraught with ethical and reputational risk: “One of the questions we get asked is: how do we ensure that we are not being creepy?” Context, he believes, is the key.

“Twitter gives this fascinating ability to understand people in context like we’ve never been able to do before. It’s not ‘I know that Chris Moody is a 48-year-old male’ – which is how we’ve thought about marketing in the past – but ‘I understand that Chris Moody is dealing with the death of a parent because he’s talking about it on this public platform’,” he said, adding that a Twitter user has in effect said: “I’ve stepped up to the microphone and I’ve said I want the world to know that this thing is happening in my life.”

If you aren’t paying for it, you are the product.

So I’d like to see a premium social media market emerge. Give me the opportunity and a platform for which I can pay for insular privacy within my self-selected network and then let the data just sit there, doing nothing. Because your consumers, your users, your clients, are already paying you. No ads, no announcements, no firehose. Just a nice, lazy little low-flow water can in the yard of your life. What would that be worth to you?

There’s a marketplace for it.

Lovely story, here: Shelby County School District’s special-needs prom: ‘This is their time to shine’:

“I’ve never seen someone like me in a prom picture before, and I was worried I wouldn’t get in,” he said.

Thanks to the efforts of the Shelby County Board of Education’s adaptive physical education department and many other school faculty and staff personnel — as well as plenty of donations from community members — Baugh along with about 80 other special-needs students have their moment to dance the day away.

“A lot of these kids don’t get the birthday invites and party stuff,” said Lisa McLean of Shelby, who has one son with autism and another with Asperger’s syndrome. “They don’t get invited to all the dances, but this, they go all out for these kids. It gives them a chance to get out from under their parents and it gives them a chance to be themselves.”

I like this one, because it lets me say the kids are alright. Johnson City 6-year-old walks again after waking up paralyzed:

Doctors immediately started treatment and Beka slowly started to improve.

While her friends were preparing for their next ballet, this 6-year-old was learning to walk again.

After 11 days in the hospital Beka got to go home.

A couple of days later, Beka was supposed to play a part in the Nutcracker.

Still unable to walk, her friends didn’t want her to miss it, and carried her across the stage.

Kids these days, huh?

links / photo / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
17
Mar 15

Cat ketchup

We are catching up on some very important cuddling:

After a few more days of this it may be that she has gotten her fill and moves to lounge not all over me, but perhaps merely beside me, or nearby.

Until then, however, she’s read as much of these links as I have.

Things to read … because there is no kitty literature here.

Ex-NSA director: China has hacked ‘every major corporation’ in U.S.:

McConnell’s assertion is different. It would mean that no large company can escape the massive theft of American entrepreneurial ideas.

In his speech, McConnell also said that during the final years of the Bush administration, the Chinese government employed a jaw-dropping 100,000 hackers dedicated solely to breaking into computers.

By comparison, he said the United States had that many spies — total.

McConnell listed what the Chinese are stealing: “planning information for advanced concepts, windmills, automobiles, airplanes, space ships, manufacturing design, software.”

“If they can take that, before we can take it to market – for free – and it’s unchecked for 15, 20 years, I would say that has strategic consequences for the United States,” he said.

Makes you wonder what he’s not been cleared to say out loud, doesn’t it?

Don’t worry, if the Chinese aren’t snooping enough for you, the local police may have you covered. A Police Gadget Tracks Phones? Shhh! It’s Secret:

A powerful new surveillance tool being adopted by police departments across the country comes with an unusual requirement: To buy it, law enforcement officials must sign a nondisclosure agreement preventing them from saying almost anything about the technology.

Any disclosure about the technology, which tracks cellphones and is often called StingRay, could allow criminals and terrorists to circumvent it, the F.B.I. has said in an affidavit. But the tool is adopted in such secrecy that communities are not always sure what they are buying or whether the technology could raise serious privacy concerns.

[…]

“So, just to be clear,” Joe Simitian, a county supervisor, said, “we are being asked to spend $500,000 of taxpayers’ money and $42,000 a year thereafter for a product for the name brand which we are not sure of, a product we have not seen, a demonstration we don’t have, and we have a nondisclosure requirement as a precondition. You want us to vote and spend money,” he continued, but “you can’t tell us more about it.”

Please, tell us again the one about how if you aren’t doing anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about.

Meerkat became very popular as a live streaming platform very quickly. And so we knew this day would come as Twitter readies their new acquisition, Periscope, but did it come fast enough? Twitter Chokes Off Meerkat’s Access To Its Social Network:

Friday evening, BuzzFeed News learned from a source familiar with the matter that Twitter was taking steps to break Meerkat’s ability to access its social graph. When we tried adding other accounts, such as the BuzzFeed SF and BuzzFeed FWD Twitter accounts, we noticed lots of inconsistencies with the follower graph numbers.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that Meerkat had been cut off.

“We are limiting their access to Twitter’s social graph, consistent with our internal policy,” the spoeksperson said. “Their users will still be able to distribute videos on Twitter and log in with their Twitter credentials.”

This won’t totally kill Meerkat — people will still be able to use it to announce on Twitter that they are streaming — but it will seriously kneecap it.

Time will tell.

I link to this story because it is a good one. It speaks to the power of the Internet, personal networking and just good old fashioned human kindness. I also link to it for one quote, which parallels something I used to say when speaking at leadership workshops.

First off, this is a story about a reunion of a young patient given a kindness by a young nurse. His tale, discussed in the story above, is a hard one to imagine any kid going through. Her story is not that uncommon. Nurses are generally remarkable people. You can see it in that one comment, too, “I wish I would have known. I wish that I would have known more. I wish I could have done more.”

We seldom do know the impact we have on others, I’d tell young high school and college leaders. And even if we do find out, it is usually well after the fact. But what you do, what you say, how we all act, means something to someone. That’s just one of those stories that reminds us of the truism.

Sometimes the headline in no way captures the story. This is one of those times: Chris Koch to speak in Auburn in April.

Got 15 minutes? Here’s a guide. How I Got 6.2 Million Pageviews and 144,920 Followers

I do not know what is happening. / journalism / links / photo / running / swimming / things to read / Thursday — Comments Off
12
Mar 15

I’m slower at a lot of things

Slipped into a pool lane today just as my sports editor was leaving the pool. He’s coming back from a little injury and is racing in his first track meet in some time this weekend. He’s naturally very excited. So today, of course, he was just knocking out 2,250 yards in the pool.

“Hey,” I said, knowing I was going to run later and that he’s run at the same place before and that he’s a lot faster than me, “I’m going to do a few laps after this if you want to wait around.”

He was planning to run too. Because he’s young and he can do that.

“Where are you going to eat later? I’ll stop by and eat slower than you, too.”

He laughed and disappeared. I swam my 2,000 yards, feeling nauseous for the second half, thinking so that’s what that feels like.

Then I went and ran three miles, feeling better and sprinting through about 15 percent of the thing, pretending I knew about intervals. After I got cleaned up I looked up the sports editor’s best times 5K. He’s very fast. Good thing he turned me down.

Here’s the view from the track. Three black cinder walls and then one side with three of these:

I saw a great pick on the basketball court below, and then I ran my last three laps as the lacrosse team warmed up running laps below. They must have not been trying too hard, I stayed with them. But, hey, that’s two bricks in a week, and that feels great.

Things to read … because reading is always great.

I think this is the first Twitter video I’ve embedded here. This is a great video:

Watch this. Go home. Your day can't possibly get any better. https://t.co/cz1TtpDW00

— kenny smith (@kennysmith) March 12, 2015

Here’s a newsroom with some spunk. Turns out someone set fire to the building, but the publisher is unimpressed. Fiery journalism:

We know there is a portion of the population that doesn’t like what we do here. A nice quiet chamber of commerce cheerleader that runs press releases, without asking questions, is more to their liking. Those readers don’t want to know how badly the schools are doing, lack of city services, problems in police departments and county job bids that are illegal and padded.

That would be so easy to do. We could operate on half the reporters and they’d require no news writing education, training or experience.

But that’s not what we do. We do what journalists everywhere used to do, before bowing to advertisers, money, pressure and threats and the easy road. When a newspaper informs readers in such a manner, whether they wish to be informed or not, certain risks come with that, including bullet holes in windows, occasional paint-balling and the ever-so-popular rocks.

But to start a fire? Understanding the anger or the arsonist’s lack of ability to cope with a problem is just beyond all of us here at the Rio Grande SUN. Richard Beaudoin states it very well in his letter on page A7: write a letter, come talk to us or start your own cheerleader and print what you want.

Better yet, don’t do the stupid, immature, irresponsible things that lead to your actions or words being reported in your local newspaper. The community would be better for it.

I wonder what they write when the arsonist is caught.

I like most everything about this:

Climb Mt. Everest? Nah. I saw it on Google Maps:

Monasteries, lodges and schools have all been captured and Apa says you might even see some yaks along the way.

“My hope is that when people see this imagery online, they’ll have a deeper understanding of the region and the Sherpa people that live there,” says Apa.

Previously Google has mapped other renowned locations, including the Amazon forest, Greenland’s ice fjords and wedding chapels in Las Vegas.

Don’t you wish they hadn’t grouped Las Vegas with those other places?

The kids are alright: Basketball players stop game to stand up for cheerleader.

Anyone know what this is? It is an old three-ring binder. This was a high school book that belonged to my grandfather.

Seventy-some years ago he was writing in that book. I’ve been looking through it. Some of it is worth seeing, and I’ll share it soon.

journalism / links / Samford / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
11
Mar 15

The flexibility of now

I walked into a classroom today with one idea about a later thing and when I walked out of the room an hour later I knew other things. A meeting had changed. One student had a story and another had a joke. A third had big news. A lot can happen in a calm hour. Some days the idea of now is an obviously thin construct and some days now is a solid and statuesque thing.

There are at least four full statues and a bust on campus, and this fact amuses and bewilders me.

One of them is an abstraction, three of them are representations of real people, including an ancient president of the institution, a statue which once stood at the U.S. Capitol. Another is a football coach, which, OK. And then there’s Ralph Beeson, who was a big donor and has the family name on quite a few nice things around campus. His statue is centrally located and figures into a lot of pictures and general merriment around the place. Also, it has the great honor of being the voice behind one of the best Twitter accounts on campus, even if some of it is school-specific.

Anyway, I recently stumbled upon this 1988 clip which explains a bit about the man and the then-new statue. The Twitter account asked us to republish it. Great idea, alas, it was from The Birmingham News, and not ours.

We were discussing our publication tonight when someone poked their head into the newsroom and offered us free food. There was a focus group down the hall and journalists are always hungry for leftovers. I grabbed a few things:

I’m going swimming tomorrow, and I won’t eat them all at one time, so it works out, right?

Things to read … because reading always works out right.

There’s one truly incredible story worth reading, it is a bit long, but absolutely worth it. And I mention it here so you’ll keep looking below. First, though, a few journalism links:

24 takeaways from the ONA London conference on mobile
Los Angeles Times reorients for digital
CNN Pushes More Original Web Video
How to capture fly-by digital visitors
Boston Herald, Franklin Pierce combine for exclusive coverage

And now the story worth spending a few minutes to read. It defies excerpting, really, so here are just a few of the first paragraphs. A Bulldog’s battle:

It was morning in Lithuania and Andrew Smith was getting dressed. As he put a shirt on, he caught an oddity in the mirror, a weird bump at the base of his neck just above the collarbone. The former Butler center was a newly married man playing foreign hoops in a faraway land, just three months into his first professional contract and living with his wife, Sam, and dog, Charlie.

Thinking little of it then — Smith had battled mono and enlarged lymph nodes during his freshman year at Butler — he brushed aside any serious concerns. Over the next two weeks, the bump got bigger and more uncomfortable. The scare increased when pressure crept on his insides, near his chest, and soon enough breathing became a conscious task. Lithuanian health care is not optimal, and the team physician spoke broken English, which did not translate at all to nuanced medical terminology.

[…]

In a foreign country with doctors they did not trust, the Smiths weren’t getting clear answers. Tests were not immediately coming back with conclusive results. An initial biopsy came back negative for cancer, but still, Andrew reluctantly agreed to minor surgery because his neck’s discomfort was preventing him from being able to play.

Smith was — get this — awake for the procedure and could faintly feel doctors tugging with metal tools at his numbed neck as they attempted to remove the blockage in his throat. What at first blatantly felt like the wrong decision turned into a mistake he was lucky to make. Without successful surgery, more evaluation was needed. Andrew’s neck was coral-red as he and Sam spent their first Christmas together as man and wife. They Skyped home, telling their parents Andrew was cancer-free. But a few days later, Smith’s growth got grotesque. He was living with a rock attached to his throat and a perma-red neck. He underwent a full body scan, and as they awaited the results, Andrew rung in 2014 feeling like his chest was shrinking by the day. He was unable to sleep.

Maybe it was his heart? No. For now, Andrew’s heart was fine.

That part, that “for now” part, that becomes important. But “for now” is always important.

history / iPhone / journalism / links / Monday / music / photo / things to read / triathlon / video — Comments Off
9
Mar 15

The only thing wrong with this post is the headline

You can tell people all of the reasons they shouldn’t take pictures of signs, and there are plenty of good reasons, but still, when the classics come back to life, you can’t help yourself:

The story:

After nearly a decade of its pumps sitting idle, fuel is again flowing at the former Saco gas station at the corner of Dean Road and Opelika Road in Auburn.

Auburn resident Mike Woodham turned the station’s original lights back on at the Saco gas station Monday as he reopened it as Woodham’s Full Service—a gas station offering full or self serve fuel service, a full-service tire shop, oil changes and more.

“The City of Auburn has been very gracious to my kids and very good to me, and we wanted to give something back,” said Woodham, who owned Woodham’s Tire in Montgomery and has been in the auto business for 30 years. “We wanted to serve back. And the best way that we know of is what we bring to market with our tire knowledge.”

Known for its iconic Saco sign, the previous gas station closed more than nine years ago after then-owner Dick Salmon was shot and killed at the business in July 2005. According to an Associated Press article as reported by The Decatur Daily on July 24, 2005, Salmon had worked at the family-run business for 43 years.

And the store:

Not a lot has changed, and that seems to be the plan, and that’s great.

Breakfast at Barbecue House this morning, which meant I could skip lunch. Read students’ news stories all morning and afternoon, and that is always fun, right up until I imagine then trying to read my marginalia. And then there was class, where we talked about profiles and obits and got ready to point to exciting digital methods of story telling, which will last us through the rest of the week.

There were other office things, a late dinner and here we are.

Things to read … because here we are.

I’m keeping it to three, but these are three incredible Selma pieces to read. Because they are better than the headlines, I will link you with a good quote for each:

I thought I saw death. I thought I was going to die. — Rep. John Lewis

The world doesn’t know this happened because you didn’t photograph it … it is so much more important for you to take a picture of us getting beaten up than for you to be another person joining in the fray. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Not even the National Guard wanted to go through Selma — Dr. Bernard LaFayette

And now for another kind of fortitude, this is a strong testament of health, strength, and mind over chemo, Finding strength in triathlons:

It was debilitating. “I was 10 days away from doing my eighth Ironman,” Hackett says. “I was still training 100 percent and I had this huge, stage four tumour going.” His youngest daughter was just two weeks old. His oldest was five years old.

[…]

Hackett is on an aggressive form of chemotherapy, a regimen called FOLIRI, whose name represents three different drugs. His oncologist, Dr. Michael Sawyer, combines the regimen with a relatively new drug called bevacizumab that attacks the growth of new blood vessels. Hackett tolerates it well. “He told me he biked 20 or 30 kilometres the day before I saw him,” Sawyer says. He also ran a five-kilometre race just four hours after he finished his first round of chemotherapy.
The exercise might have something to do with it. “There are many studies, both in curative chemotherapy (to remove cancer completely) and chemotherapy to prolong people’s lives, where it appears that people who exercise do better than people who do not,” says Sawyer.

So we’ll all be at the gym a bit longer tomorrow, no?

Here are a few media links:

How four top publishers use Facebook for video

Testing out Meerkat: the app that brings live streaming to Twitter

What does the Twitter live streaming app Meerkat actually do?

You Won’t Understand The Potential of Snapchat Until You See This

And, finally, we’ll end with some music today. If you’re still looking for something to hate Tom Hanks in, keep looking because this probably isn’t that thing either:

Have a great and purposeful week. See ya tomorrow!