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things to read

There are at least four (really bad) puns here

One more week and this becomes a thing, but today I saw this cruise down the highway.

If you think of it, most everything gets shipped somewhere, one way or another. But you never really think about that, at least until you see a truck hauling logs going one way as it passes a truck hauling logs going the other way. Then it seems silly. “They’ve got logs over here, too!”

Maybe it should have sunk in and stuck in our traveling minds the first time we saw a big truck hauling other trucks, or when you saw a freighter moving most any thing that can move on its own. Everything gets shipped, even the live fish. And you hope to never think about it, or become aware of it which, in this case, would usually mean bad news puns because of an accident. “Ofishials: Traffic flounders after accidents, bystanders threaten to sushi.”

Just Coelorinchus horribilis.

(Yes, I had to look that up.)

You want to see that crudely drawn logo, you say? No problem:

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the fish has a fishing pole. Like a fish can whistle.

Things to read … because I can’t whistle, either.

Boston’s Winter From Hell:

Sure, it’s not the same as an earthquake: The snow will melt, eventually. But that will bring more woes. The flooding will hurt the T, ruin roofs and basements and clog roads still more.

Where are the federal disaster funds, the presidential visit, Anderson Cooper interviewing victims, volunteers flying in, goods and services donated after hurricanes and tornadoes? The pictures may be pretty. But we need help, now.

This is more snow, seven feet in three weeks it says, than I’ve seen in my entire life, probably. And there are certainly big problems — many of them are detailed in that column. But, really?

(We’re absolutely getting two to four inches of snow later this week. I’m going to laugh at us.)

Easily the best story I read yesterday, Chasing Bayla:

Moore had engineered something that could be a breakthrough for rescuers, a way to sedate whales at sea. The man standing to his left on the Zodiac platform held the instrument Moore had conceived for the task: a pressurized rifle tipped with a dart and syringe filled with 60 cc’s of a sedative so powerful that a few drops on human skin could kill.

Bayla was probably seven tons, but you can’t weigh a free-swimming whale. If the estimate were wrong, an overdose could plunge Bayla into a catastrophic slumber and she would drown.

Moore scanned the horizon. Fishing charters and Disney Cruise Liners jockeyed for space at the shore. Ahead, the vast reach of the Atlantic met at every point with the prickling Florida sun.

He knew that the work of a lifetime shouldn’t come down to a single moment. He was the father of four grown boys. He loved his wife. His home was an island in Marion Harbor. He had published scores of peer-reviewed papers and commanded millions in grant money.

Yet the vow he had made to himself as a young man, the thing he had dedicated his career and heart to, remained unfulfilled. For Moore, nearing retirement and running out of ideas, there might be no more chances.

Blow spouted off the port bow.

That’s a slightly longer read, and it has stunning visuals. Well worth your time.

CNN … just … Does Kim Jong Un’s new look reflect a new attitude?

Journalism links:

Why Journalism Students Need a Baseline Understanding of Coding
Local newspapers are hoping online radio can be a growth area
Your ultimate guide to Snapchat
Snapchat boss sees music as a ‘really interesting opportunity’

And. finally, we return to the old Crimson archives that are still in my office. I’m trying to work through them all and file them away elsewhere. Occasionally I find some interesting things. Here’s one now. This was written in 1979 by a person who now works at a non-profit in Texas and a Kentucky physician.

Did you know there was a rear gate? It was right here:

Friday / journalism / links / photo / Samford / things to read — Comments Off
20
Feb 15

Rocket truck, burning out his fuel out here alone

My class ran long, and that was my fault. But no one in the room said anything. And that was the students’ fault. It was a fun class, I thought. We talked about the stories they are going to be writing next. I’d just handed back their first papers, some of which were very good. The next ones will be even better — more practice, feedback and so on — but also the story selection I heard about today was intriguing.

I feel like story ideas can be something you’re either blessed with or something you learn. I had to learn it. And, to be honest, I’m amazed by people that can just rattle off a dozen ideas in one breath. I can too, usually, but it doesn’t come naturally to me.

So, on Wednesday, I told the class about a guy I know who brings a baseball cap into his classroom and does not let his students leave until they come up with 50 story ideas inspired by that hat. (Give it a try some time.) You are lucky, I told my class, I’m only asking for three for Friday. And everyone had at least two good ones today. Now it is up to them to turn some of those into great stories.

After this round of articles I’ll ask them for a lot more ideas. It all builds, of course.

It is cold out, but dry in my part of world, at least. To the north there is ice, there are accidents, there are road closures. I got nice views of the evening sky:

Also, I met this truck. From a bit further back it looked like a stack of rockets.

Propane tanks, rockets, whatever. It makes a nice close to the week, considering I saw pretend-rocket nose cones on Monday.

Things to read … because it is the weekend.

Go to where your audience is, ABC News Launches on Xbox One:

ABC News announced today the launch of its app for Xbox One. Debuting as the first U.S. news application on the gaming console, the ABC News app will offer immediate access to multiple simultaneous streams of live video as well as on-demand content, entertainment news, original programming and highlights from ABC News programs.

During Oscars weekend, the app will feature clips and live video from ABC News’ extensive coverage, including interviews with nominees and segments on Oscars fashion, trends and history.

“The app for Xbox One is a major step forward in our efforts to develop new creative forms of storytelling and put ABC News everywhere people get their news and information” said ABC News VP of Digital Colby Smith.

Well … How 25 years of Photoshop changed the way we see reality

This is an NPR Ebola feature, one of the better stories I saw today: Life after death. Feels like the now-an-advertising app Tapestry. It is very immersive. The photography is sharp and the thing that, to me, makes NPR work really stand out: taking the time to find the right audio, which gives the piece an incredible directness.

And the coding, at first glance, looks straightforward. Nice stuff all around.

Enjoy your weekend!

journalism / links / photo / Samford / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
18
Feb 15

Where all of this leads

Hanging out with the Crimson crew, a crowd so big tonight that it takes two photographs to get them in:

I talked about leads all day, it seems. Lead stories, leads to stories, why this cold weather was leading us farther and farther away from spring.

Things to read … because we have to wait out this cold somehow.

Is Google making the web stupid?

Google (the source of so much traffic) is under huge pressure from Wall Street to deliver increased profits, and until self-driving cars kick in, the largest share of those earnings is going to come from the ads they sell. To maximize their profit, Google has spent the last nine years aggressively working to increase the share of ads on each page in their search results, as well as working hard to keep as many clicks as they can within the Google ecosystem.

If you want traffic, Google’s arc makes clear to publishers, you’re going to have to pay for it.

Which is their right, of course, but that means that the ad tactics on every other site have to get ever more aggressive, because search traffic is harder to earn with good content. And even more germane to my headline, it means that content publishers are moving toward social and viral traffic, because they can no longer count on search to work for them. It’s this addiction to social that makes the web dumber. If you want tonnage, lower your standards.

So. Are you writing for traffic, or for people?

As ESPN Comes To The iPad, It Drops The SportsCenter Brand From Its Mobile Apps:

Behind the scenes, the app update is part of a larger shift within ESPN as a product and editorial organization that is designed to unify all the different ways readers and viewers consume its content. The goal is to have a consistent experience regardless of which platform or device a person is using.

The ESPN product team is working on a desktop web version of the ESPN site — now in beta — that will look and feel a lot more like its mobile apps. That means taking the same sort of three-column user experience that is now available on the iPad and bringing it to the web.

If that sounds familiar, I’ve been saying it since last year. Nice to know I’m on the right track.

(We assume anything in line with an ESPN plan is on the right track until ESPN discontinues that approach.)

Theory: Snapchat launched an app platform:

Discover may look like content distribution, but instead of “publisher” think “developer,” and instead of “channel” think “app.” And then go through the list of capabilities they can bring.

For some years now, if you thought about it, it has made sense to start thinking of the social media item du jour as a tool rather than a medium unto itself. I don’t know everything about Snapchat, but this sounds like the logical extension of that idea.

This makes a lot of sense, I suppose. Wish I’d thought of it. Discovery Is Latest Cable Net to Stop Touting Live Ratings:

“As time-shifted viewership continues to increase, Live + Same-Day data no longer captures an accurate picture and value of our audience, and the lift from Live + 3 for many of our top programs is significant and growing,” said David Leavy, chief communications officer at Discovery.

The company said its top networks saw a 23% increase on average when accounting for viewership in the three days after a program airs versus the traditional live plus same-day metric among adults 25 to 54.

On the record, preemptive finger pointing, is that a good sign? US Officials Admit Concern Over Syrian Refugee Effort.

journalism / links / photo / things to read / Tuesday / Twitter / video — Comments Off
17
Feb 15

If we ignore the weather, it will go away, right?

This is ridiculous.

It is 24 (feels like 18) in Birmingham. It is 45 degrees in Anchorage, Alaska.

— kenny smith (@kennysmith) February 17, 2015

Bearing in mind that when I wrote that in the 8 o’clock hour here it was 5:41 a.m. in Anchorage. Ridiculous. And, also, quite the chilly day. Nothing to do about it but shiver. Because my offices never get warm. (Until about April.) So there I sat for most of the day, space heater six inches from skin, wrapped up in various clothing patterns, hoping for the best, or at least some temporary global warming. Even a bit of change would have been good. We’re all ready for spring, I think.

Newspaper fun today. This is, apparently, the rumor addition of the paper. Not so keen on that. Rumors are rumors, after all. That’s what Yik Yak is for. Right?

I tried Yik Yak. I lurked for a bit and then posted one or two things there and lurked for a bit more. I lurked in more than one community, as the quasi-anonymous platform (but not really) is geography based. I suppose if you have something to get off your chest it would be good for those thinking they can do so without proper retort. But that seems to the biggest extent of it. (I’ve read a few pro Yik Yak stories and they all have the same positive Yik Yak anecdote. You’d like to see more, suggesting they have more than the one, but not yet.) And that’s kind of depressing. So I deleted it.

So I’m playing with new platforms this week — watching and reading how others are experimenting. I’d like to venture out to the bleeding edge of things again. Once upon a time I got to play with stuff that was brand new and that no one had ever really tried. I can do that again. But first I have to make sure I’m caught up on what’s going on today. And so here we are.

Saw this while out to dinner this evening:

I’m not a big sticker-on-the-car guy, most messages being ephermal, but the anti-sticker sticker seems especially weird. Hey, someone made four bucks off of you! Congratulations!

I do enjoy the “0.0” sticker, and I run. Or shuffle.

Things to read … or at least shuffle through.

As I have not received my rejection notice, I suppose I am still in the running on this. That’s the way these things work, right? 100 Candidates Selected for One-Way Mission to Mars:

Over the past two years, more than 200,000 people have applied to be the first colonists on Mars (that we know of), and now the pool has been narrowed down to 100. The Dutch nonprofit Mars One intends to send just four people on a one-way mission to the red planet that’s scheduled to leave Earth in 2024. According to the Washington Post, the most recent cut was made after chief medical officer Norbert Kraft interviewed 660 candidates. Now 24 people will be selected for training by undergoing the most rigorous competition known to humankind: being a reality-show contestant.

Of course I didn’t apply, so there’s that.

That story is 289 words, in total, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find 300 words that better define our era than that little post.

Coverage does not equal care. Out of Pocket, Out of Control:

In the past five years, the average price to see a primary care doctor has risen 20 percent. For a specialist it’s gone up 29 percent, and for outpatient surgery it’s up 43 percent. And that’s just for employer-sponsored insurance; on average, those covered through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges face even higher expenses.

No wonder 22 percent of people now say the cost of getting care has led them to delay treatment for a serious condition. That’s the highest percentage since Gallup started asking in 2001. Another poll found that as many as 16 million adults with chronic conditions have avoided the doctor because of out-of-pocket costs.

See if you can find the key here, Posting a photo is the worst way to get people to see your Facebook posts:

Data provided to Business Insider by the social-media analytics company Socialbakers shows just how badly photos perform compared with videos, links, and even simple text-only posts in terms of reach on Facebook.

What makes this data so remarkable is that it wasn’t so long ago that posting photos used to give brand page owners the best chance of their posts being seen by their fans (indeed, a Socialbakers study dated April 2014 declared “Photos Are Still King On Facebook”). Now the algorithm has changed, punishing photos, perhaps in response to page owners trying to game the system by constantly posting photos, or maybe because Facebook has been shifting its strategy ever more toward video in recent months.

The numbers keep climbing: Smartphone Penetration, Rising in All Age and Income Demos, Hits 75% of the US Mobile Market.

The end of the beginning of the beginning’s end, TV ad model: Dead:

Television as we knew it died this week at 73. Or at least the advertising model did. Boomers and Generation X won’t have to quit ad blocks cold turkey but they will note that a growing percentage of what they see will be ads for retirement villages and Cialis. The kids, which in this case means anyone under 34, are moving online and the money is going with them.

Commercials started with a 10-second spot for Bulova watches during a baseball game in 1941. The death blow came yesterday during PepsiCo’s (PEP) conference call when CEO Indra Nooyi said her company’s ad budget would stay at 5.9% of revenues but be “reallocated.” A Pepsi spokesperson tells Yahoo Finance that means “realloacted to consumer facing activities.” I read that to mean moving ads off television and into other formats.

5.9% of PepsiCo’s 2014 revenues works out to roughly $3.9 billion. They’re the company that brought us Katy Perry and Left Shark, for God’s sake. Sports was the last great hope for ads and one of its biggest backers is drawing the line. There’s nothing in Indra Nooyi’s history to suggest she’s bluffing.

But don’t take PepsiCo’s word for it. Omnicom Media (OMC) which positions some $50 billion worth of ads a year for not just Pepsi but Apple (AAPL), McDonald’s (MCD) and Starbucks (SBUX) advised its clients to shift 25% of their budgets away from TV last year.

You live in a transitional time, to be sure.

Another, sad transition:

I don’t know Larry Stogner, in fact I’ve never even been in his market to view his work, which, of a sudden, seems a shame. But it is clear what his community has meant to him and, having known people like that in a handful of local media markets, I have a good guess what he means to the community.

At some point, not too far off, we’ll see more and more farewells. It is a generational thing. And then more people will come along and be important and stay in one market for a long time and then they’ll retire to see their grandbabies or because the pension kicks in or because they want to travel or are ill. And then that’ll be the end of it. By then every TV newsroom will likely be some version of the hub-and-spoke model and the local feel will, improbably, fade away. (You’ve seen it in radio, it is happening in some aspects of the newspaper business and, already, in some smaller television markets.) We live in a transitional time.

Atlanta’s been on this tear for a while, but as you’ll see the migration isn’t limited to north Georgia. It all started when the northerners realized we’d mastered air conditioning, and they’d ruined their rivers. Mercedes-Benz’s move to Georgia is the latest in an epic and under-reported migration:

According to the latest Census figures, the South was the fastest-growing region in America over the past decade, up 14 percent. “The center of population has moved south in the most extreme way we’ve ever seen in history,” Robert Groves, director of the Census Bureau, said at a news conference in 2011.

“The hegira to the Sunbelt continues, as last year the South accounted for six of the top eight states attracting domestic migrants,” Joel Kotkin reported in The Daily Beast in 2013.

And it isn’t just millions of American citizens packing their bags and heading south. Last month, in a move that shocked residents of northern New Jersey, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz USA announced it was moving its headquarters from Montvale (just miles from where I grew up) to Sandy Springs, Ga. And it’s bringing nearly 1,000 people along with it, at an average salary of nearly $80,000 per worker.

I kid, of course. Tax incentives, infrastructure and a willing workforce are just as important as clean rivers.

This story is just getting itchier, isn’t it? To shill a mockingbird: How a manuscript’s discovery became Harper Lee’s ‘new’ novel Neely Tucker is a son of the South, a seventh-generation Mississippi boy. He’s perhaps got as good a read on this as most any outsider could.

journalism / links / Monday / photo / things to read / windshield time — 1 Comment
16
Feb 15

What is this guy hauling?

I don’t spend all of my time on the road, thank goodness, but I have enough windshield time that I see a lot of strange and boring and interesting and unusual things. I go through cities and the rural countryside and, of course, all of this is basically on the transportation corridor up from the Gulf of Mexico to points far beyond, so on any given day you can see something worth seeing in between the cars and pickups.

Today I passed this guy:

I couldn’t figure out what we’re staring at there and it will probably forever remain a mystery. Safe to say I don’t see anything like that on a daily basis, but maybe you do. This could be a load of something very normal and boring. Medical devices for giants, perhaps. I wanted them, at first, to be rocket cones, but they are just a casing. And they had a fair amount of flexibility to them if they caught some wind. That would seem to be something you’d consider when designing giant rocket cone parts.

I suppose they could be for some high-end, new age silo project, or the cap of an intricate fallout shelter plan. I tried a few Google searches, but came up empty. Where would you even begin? Maybe they will be industrial strength floor protectors, or a new feature in a Katy Perry show. I’ve no idea.

Anyone?

Things to read … because if you didn’t read this stuff, you might not have any idea, either.

There’s some interesting data in this Wall Street Journal story. The Picture Gets Fuzzy at Viacom shares with us that in 2000, shortly after Stewart sat down at “The Daily Show,” the average age of viewers was 29. Now, it’s 45.

So, yes, this is an unsettled time for the Viacom property. But this is also one of those times when change is good. I imagine Comedy Central tilts young again, very soon. Either that or they’ll break with television wisdom in the most unconventional of ways. In either respect, the Daily Show run was a great success with Jon Stewart, if for nothing more than what that statistic implies. And that might be one we seldom, if ever, see again.

Google and Mattel pull the View-Master into virtual reality:

When it launches, kids will be able to explore various 3D scenes, including the streets of Paris and Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay and the solar system. While some scenes like the Golden Gate Bridge include actual images from the area, others like the dinosaur and solar system scene are enhanced with CGI technology to show, for example, what it’s like to fly through the galaxy. There’s also the option of buying additional reels (four for $15) for other immersive experiences.

I don’t spend an awful lot of time thinking about View-Master (but I should). This makes a lot of sense though, doesn’t it?

There’s a common element to all of this high-touch tech. How One College Is Using Tech to Grow Sports Beyond Football:

When the Ole Miss Rebels return to their 26-year-old ballpark in Oxford, Mississippi, this afternoon, the Southeastern Conference college baseball club and its fans will be sharing space with a decidedly modern technology: mobile tracking beacons.

The small devices are becoming ubiquitous in major league facilities, but the University of Mississippi’s athletics department — which has built up its marketing team significantly in the past few years — is the first SEC school employing them, not only to streamline foot traffic but to enhance its rewards program and spur interest in less-popular sports at a school where football dominates.

[…]

For this season, Swayze Field has 21 beacons placed strategically at all entrances and exits, concession stands, merch stores and restrooms. The system, operated by Spark Compass, a mobile marketing platform from Total Communicator Solutions, will help track fan movement at the games, showing how long people stay to watch the action and where lines are forming.

“The seating area is critical…. It gives us the most accurate dwell time,” said Mr. Thompson, a primary catalyst in upgrading the three-year old Rebel Rewards program from one involving staff scanning tickets to a mobile system that produces foot traffic heat maps and other data in real-time.

How are you using this to better serve your customers? That should be the first, middle and last question you ask. Chuck Martin, one of those good Twitter follow types, spends a lot of time thinking about beacons and was just recently writing about this.

Journalism links:

How to make news more reusable
NPR’s Generation Listen
Inside The New York Times Instagram strategy
New rules governing drone journalism are on the way — and there’s reason to be optimistic
How AP is adapting live video for digital

There are five links there, and I’d like to put their principles into a classroom. Wouldn’t that be a fun curriculum.

Maybe, if we could Instagram photos, and then tailor video footage and audio from a drone, someone could finally tell us what that truck up there is hauling.