Wednesday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Wednesday

A comet, y’all

We landed on a comet today. Sure, you and I didn’t have anything to do with it — well, I, at least, didn’t have anything to do it it — but that’s OK. Sure, it was the European Space Agency and not the Americans, but we landed on a comet. Humanity did that. We did that.

We launched something into space 10 years ago, shot it around the earth a few times, Mars and then set it off on a course to catch up to this comet, this leftover from the universe’s creation.

And then our little science experiment, having made and matched the comet’s trajectory, dropped a clothes dryer full of equipment onto it and are talking with an appliance on a comet. I wonder if GE made it.

Oh, and has anyone seen Bruce Willis or Ben Affleck lately? They could be up there, ya know.

There’s a YouTube video titled “Everything Wrong With Armageddon In 14 Minutes Or Less.”

It is more than 16 minutes long.

And, someday, an alien culture will watch Armageddon. Just think on the stuff we’ve been beaming into outer space as our earliest socio-cultural first impressions.

Things to read … because reading always leaves a good impression.

I like the modifier here. As if to suggest that no other manager, nowhere, wants his employees to represent the company in a positive way, Salty Chick-fil-A manager makes list of forbidden words:

A Chick-fil-A manager is so irritated at his staff’s use of slang that he compiled a list of terms the employees are forbidden to use. The missive has gone viral in social media.

[…]

“You will speak properly when you walk through these doors,” he wrote. “You are a professional so speak professionally.”

I’m guessing … heavy print stock and laminate? What Pizza Hut’s Radical New Menu Actually Tastes Like:

On Nov. 19, Pizza Hut will essentially relaunch its entire brand, changing the food it serves, the way its ordered and even the company logo. There are 11 new signature pizzas, six new sauces, 10 new crust flavors and four drizzles — enough options to allow for 2 billion unique pizza combinations. For the company known for trencherman staples like Stuffed Crust, Meat Lover’s and Supreme, the new menu is the fast-food equivalent of a Hail Mary pass.

“It’s a fear of irrelevance,” says Darren Tristano, a food industry analyst at Technomic. “But the potential to negatively influence their current customer base is certainly there.”

It’s a risk Pizza Hut is willing to take, though they’re hedging bets by keeping those old favorites on the menu. Sales at the nation’s largest pizza chain have been dropping for two years, as Domino’s, Little Caesars and Papa John’s—the No. 2, 3 and 4 chains, respectively—have cut into Pizza Hut’s business.

As I tell my students on a regular basis, the “why” is almost always the most interesting part of any story: FSU postpones Jameis Winston hearing until Dec. 1.

This is big. In a tumultous period of advertising and what it means to newsrooms and media outlets, this is big: Half Of Automotive Advertising To Shift To Digital.

New rules for mobile journalism:

Although mobile publishing is quickly changing the rules of journalism, newspapers have been dangerously slow to adapt.

This has got to be fixed, because digital natives like BuzzFeed, Circa, Mic, Upworthy, Vice, Vocative and Vox are competing for – and in many cases winning over – the youthful readers coveted by publishers and advertisers.

As discussed previously here, nearly half of the digital page views at many newspapers are occurring on mobile devices. But editors and publishers have been slow to recognize that mobile publishing is as different from print-to-web publishing as television is from cave drawings.

Constrained screen real estate – like the new 1.5-inch Apple Watch – isn’t the only factor influencing the development of content for mobile devices. An even bigger issue is the limited amount of time that publishers can engage with readers.

And this may be bigger. As I also like to say, the only thing that has demonstrated a growth faster that web proliferation is the mobile penetration.

I bet Philae is up on that comet right now, just waiting on something to download to its iPad.

journalism / links / memories / photo / Samford / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
5
Nov 14

Sigh is a 13th century word — and other noises you didn’t expect

This entire day has felt like that moment just before you release the sigh, he said, not fully knowing what that means.

Or … I could try that again.

This entire day has felt like that moment just before you release the sigh, he sighed, knowing exactly what that meant.

Each time I went outside the sky was this light, slate gray. Even the grays couldn’t be bothered to bring a full palette. Like the sky said “Ya know … forget about it.”

So it was that I found myself bending over to study the leaves on the ground, where there was some actual color. I picked up a few to bring inside for a picture, but I’m not sure why.

All of this probably sounds like I am in a mood, but I am not. Well, I am in a mood, but it can safely be categorized as “good.” I’ve just not been especially impressed by the day.

There was a class though, and there was a newspaper meeting and then some time signing things and copying things and marking up papers. Last night I solved a networking problem. One computer wouldn’t reach anything, a student said. The ethernet cable had been removed. Broken clips sink ships. Today I’m dealing with a scanner problem. Bad software helps the enemy everywhere. Technical support is not my job, but I suppose it is really all of our jobs these days, not unlike wartime security and the old propaganda posters.

I love those old posters. At the Churchill Museum in London I was confronted with an entire room of them I could purchase. My wife and her mother, who were also in the museum, knew I was a lost cause and left me there to go do something else. A friend and former boss owns the poster printing company linked above, with tons of great old art. I’ve spent a lot of time pouring through those as well. In both cases I’ve never managed to buy anything. The next one is always better. There’s that moment before the sigh again, I guess.

Anyway, I can’t make the scanner work with the new computer. I’ve downloaded the things and read all of the forums and installed, changed, rebooted and all of that. I know how to have a good time, boy. Ultimately, though, I’ll need the actual tech folks — the real heroes in any business — come and get this situated.

So I may as well go back to looking through ancient posters — here’s one with a guy in an arm cast and sling in the background with text that says “Don’t get hurt.” In the foreground there’s a GI sprawled out, dead. “It may cost his life.” What a crazy poster to have hanging in the factory —

Suddenly, there’s a big squealing sound. Not the speakers, not the phone, but the scanner, which is in between them. Unplug the scanner, the squeal goes away. Try to scan again, it still will not initialize. There will be no beaming of data this day. We’ll have to send the shuttlecraft, keptin.

This can only mean that later, or some time tomorrow, that random squeal will start again.

Things to read … because reading is never random. (You’ll see. One day.)

Now the posturing sound of people trying to tell you what it all means … Recapping the GOP’s Historic Night:

If Democrats were going to hold off a Republican tsunami, they needed their base voters to come out to the polls and pull the lever for the president’s party. That didn’t happen where Democrats needed it to. Especially with young voters. Nationally, Democratic base groups — young voters, single women, African-Americans and Latinos — posted numbers that looked more like the Democrats’ 2010 midterm “shellacking” than Obama’s 2012 re-election victory. Most strikingly, voters 18-29 nationwide were only 13% of the electorate in 2014 (compared with 22% for GOP-leaning seniors.) In the 2010 midterms, young voters made up 12% of the voting public. In contrast, during Obama’s re-election victory in 2012, 19% of the electorate was under 30.

Locally, it was an uninspired turnout. Alabama voter turnout lower than normal:

Nearly complete election results indicate that about 41 percent of Alabama’s nearly 2.9 million active registered voters participated. A gubernatorial election traditionally attracts more than half of Alabama’s voters.

Maybe if the Democrats would put someone on the statewide ballots …

What did you do freshman year? West Virginia Elects America’s Youngest State Lawmaker:

A West Virginia University freshman who did most of her campaigning out of her dorm room became the youngest state lawmaker in the nation Tuesday.

Republican Saira Blair, a fiscally conservative 18-year-old, will represent a small district in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle, about 1½ hours outside Washington, D.C., after defeating her Democratic opponent 63% to 30%, according to the Associated Press. A third candidate got 7% of the vote.

In a statement, Ms. Blair thanked her supporters and family, as well as her opponents for running a positive campaign. “History has been made tonight in West Virginia, and while I am proud of all that we have accomplished together, it is the future of this state that is now my singular focus,” she said.

Ms. Blair campaigned on a pledge to work to reduce certain taxes on businesses, and she also holds antiabortion and pro-gun positions. She defeated Democrat Layne Diehl, a 44-year-old Martinsburg attorney, whose top priorities included improving secondary education and solving the state’s drug epidemic.

Maybe I share that story with students. No pressure, folks.

CBS to Launch Digital News Channel Tomorrow:

CBS plans to launch its new digital news channel tomorrow, an effort to get the broadcast network into 24-hour news. CBS Interactive head Jim Lanzone confirmed the company’s plans for the news video site during an onstage interview with me at the Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland

If they do something different with that, they could find some success. If the plan is simply to be a 24-hour news channel online … CNN or MSNBC awaits.

And, finally, one I shared with my class today, Social media, journalism and wars: ‘Authenticity has replaced authority’:

The panel stressed that not all of the old values have been swept away. “It’s really old-fashioned: can I find it out, is it true, can I stand by it? That level of trust is really important,” said Sutcliffe. “I’ve got a story, but does it stand up, is it true, what are my sources?”

“There will be two types of parallel journalism going on – the facts on the ground from people who are there, foreign correspondents, and people like us who filter,” said Little.

Some of the filters will be the same media organisations who employ on-the-ground correspondents, though. Time, for example, has a division focused on breaking news, which is deliberately kept separate from its foreign correspondents.

“We’ve hired a bunch of very young people in New York and Hong Kong and they’re essentially aggregating as a breaking news service: when anything appears from a reliable news organisation, quickly write two or three paragraphs and get it out there,“ he said.

Every quote in that piece is worth reading. I hope the students will give it a glance. You should too.

And then let go of that sigh. Tomorrow is Thursday, and yours is going to be great.

history / iPhone / journalism / links / Samford / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
29
Oct 14

What are they doing to the salt?

Crimson folks doing Crimson things:

Those are three members of the editorial staff at their budget meeting tonight. Some others are outside of the shot, but they’re there and they’re a good group. They’ve been getting a lot of compliments, and they deserve them.

They are fun, too. It is easy to get sidetracked with them, but the diversions are worth it. Tonight we discussed the movie Face / Off — and you should see the photos from that conversation. Three or four of us know the movie and we tried to explain it to the others. This is not an easy movie to describe to people. “And then John Travolta, played by Nic Cage, who is now a bad guy … ”

So you start throwing in other actors, who weren’t even in that film, to really make it fun.

“And then Sean Connery says … ”

I saw this tonight while standing at the counter and waiting for my burger. First thought?

Seasoned with what?

The more you think about it, the You know what my salt needs? Some flavoring. But what would go well with salt just now?

And what does Nic Cage think about that? The good Nic Cage, I mean, who is really John Travolta. What if one of those guys wants unseasoned salt? What do you do when the other one says he wants salted salt? Why is my burger taking so long?

Things to read … because that never takes too long.

Great question! As journalism and documentary film converge in digital, what lessons can they share? You might see more mini-docs to address the issue of time, more partnerships from unexpected places and, at last, what I think could be the coolest job in the industry: a historist. The historian journalist, or journalist historian, is a wholly unappreciated idea.

In reality, you’ll probably see a lot more interaction. Virtual Reality will be a part of this, among other things.

Mobile payment has already hit a a security/trust issue, Apple Pay rival CurrentC just got hacked:

On Wednesday, those taking part in the CurrentC pilot program received a warning from the consortium of anti-credit-card retailers called MCX, or Merchant Consumer Exchange: The program was hacked in the last 36 hours, and criminals managed to grab the email addresses of anyone who signed up for the program.

MCX confirmed the hack, adding what’s become a go-to line for any company that loses your data: “We take the security of our users’ information extremely seriously.”

Protecting it is another thing, however.

State agency to investors: Prepare for Ebola-related scams

‘Unusual’ Russian flights concern NATO:

An “unusual” uptick in the size and scale of Russian aircraft flying throughout European airspace in recent days has raised alarm bells for NATO officials that come amid other provocations already rattling the West.

Multiple groups of Russian military bomber and tanker aircraft, flying under the guise of military maneuvers, were detected and monitored over sections of the Baltic Sea, North Sea and Black Sea on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Those flights represented an “unusual level of air activity over European airspace,” according to a press release from NATO.

Adding to the concern — none of the Russian aircraft filed customary flight plans or maintained radio contact with civilian aviation authorities or used any of their onboard transponders.

These surely are interesting times.

It is about time this story is being told on film. MY Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes:

Would you risk your life to save a stranger? And never talk about it? MY ITALIAN SECRET tells the story of Tour de France cycling champion Gino Bartali and other Italians who saved lives during WWII.

Or if you prefer the 30 for 30 method: What if I told you a man saved 800 lives in between three Giro d’Italia wins and two Tour de France titles?

This is not that film, but it does summarize the story a tiny bit:

Bartali apparently rarely even brought it up, which brings us to this quote from the man himself: “Good is something you do, not something you talk about. Some medals are pinned to your soul, not to your jacket.”

Pretty profound for a guy that just moved his feet around in small circles.

journalism / links / memories / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
22
Oct 14

Remembering Ottawa

Five years ago we were in Ottawa at a conference. It was a low key trip in a busy time. The conference only allowed for one paper each, so The Yankee and I got to be tourists. We took a walking tour of Ottawa one day, and it was lovely. The sky was overcast and chilly. We got snow flurries and red poppies for Veteran’s Day. We met exceedingly nice people at every turn. We walked through incredibly moving memorials and beautiful gothic revival architecture. It was, I said on Twitter today, a wonderful place to visit as an American. Some things I wrote that day:

We toured Parliament. I gave security fits. It seems the metal detectors there are set to the highest sensitivity. Wrists make them beep. Not watches, but the bones in your body. The security officers were very patient and polite, almost apologetic. But, then, everyone we’ve met in Ottawa has been unfailingly nice.

When we finally made it in we sat through a few minutes of the House of Commons, including their regular question period. We made our way up to the Peace Tower and Memorial Chamber. The Memorial Chamber is a very solemn, quiet place. So much so that I didn’t even take any photographs there. Everywhere else, yes, and they’ll eventually make it into the November gallery when I get that section of the site back up to speed.

The picture above is from the gift shop in the parliament building. The kids working the cash register were not prepared for my line of questions about the Speaker’s Selection syrup. Peter Milliken has been the speaker for forever, they said (since 2001) and so this has likely been the syrup since he took office.

How did he decide on this particular syrup?

“I think it was a blind taste test,” one young lady offered.

But surely not. Milliken is from Ontario, but imagine if he’d chosen a syrup from British Columbia in a blind test. That’d be a bit embarrassing. No, he probably brought his favorite from home. Surely this producer is among his constituency.

Unfortunately I couldn’t bring some home with us. The humorless TSA would not allow it. Perhaps I can order some online.

We visited a fancy mall while looking for hats. Turns out this was the coldest day of the season so far. It was 30 degrees with the occasional flurry and we were out taking pictures all day. The guy working the desk at our hotel directed us to the mall, telling us “You can’t get more Canadian than Roots.” He told us to look for a toque.

This was the sort of mall that made you feel poor just by walking inside. “Authentic Canadian” must mean fooling the Americans. Before we found Roots we found Old Navy. Figuring they would be cheaper we steered that way. Right next to Old Navy was a store called Buck or Two.

Why not? We walked in, found hats right up front and bought two of them. Four bucks.

We found Roots, found the toques. Twenty-six dollars, each.

On our way out of the mall I noted my hat couldn’t get any more American: Made in China.

Take that, desk clerk! You will not be getting any kickbacks tonight!

Sure, we’re staying at the downtown Radisson, but we booked through an online discount site. We = Cheap.

We met some striking museum curators — a noun and modifier that could lend itself to a great band name or a magazine layout. These nice, freezing folks were trying to get better wages and less contract labor in their field. Museum curators are important; these are being replaced, the woman said, by non-experts at a lower wage.

Not Canadian, but what can we do? They urged us to drop this note of protest in the mail to our representatives. My guy wasn’t on the mailing list, what with him living in a different country, but I picked a good sturdy English name from a place I’d like to visit and dropped him a note in the local postal system.

We also saw the Notre Dame Basilica. It is across the street from the art museum — we didn’t go — with the giant spider on the corner. If they make a Night at the Museum III they should start with that. Creepy.We saw black squirrels, the famous canal from which all of Ottawa sprang, Quebec on the other side of the river and some very nice, funky shops.

And, sadly, today all of that was locked down after a shooting at Parliament. It seems the Sergeant-at-Arms put a stop to the chaos. More details will emerge, but at this point one victim, a reservist, and the shooter are dead. The soldier was killed at the national war memorial. The shooter somewhere inside Parliament itself.

A writer wrote that this wasn’t supposed to happen in Canada. We can all sympathize; this sort of thing shouldn’t happen anywhere. Parliament member John Williamson wrote “Parliament Hill is never going to be the same.”

Sad to think of that.

Things to read … because there’s always something to think of.

One more note from Canada, these are the running announcements from the Ottawa police.

We see people starting to talk about this subject. I’ve mentioned it and linked to some essays here. Today is a good reminder that it is a conversation worth having. There are plenty of great points here. User Generated Content: time to consider the ethical conundrums as well as the opportunities:

Steve Herrmann says verification is the main challenge when dealing with user-generated content.

“The biggest challenge of all is establishing something is true and retaining peoples’ trust at a time when information is moving so fast it can be very, very hard to check.”

He says that although the speed of the news cycle makes verification difficult, newsrooms need to make sure it’s correct before publishing or broadcasting.

“Or at least if you’re not quite sure, you need to be very clear [about that]”

However, Claire Wardle says the phrase ‘we cannot independently verify this’ is doing a disservice to the audience.

“Until we sort that out, we’ll have content being run too quickly with these caveats, and this isn’t transparent,” she says, indicating that there needs to be more transparency when dealing with UGC.

It is booming. Inside Bloomberg Media’s digital video business:

Bloomberg.com’s desktop site racked up over 5.3 million unique video viewers in September, more than triple the amount it ran a year earlier, according to comScore. Making that more impressive, overall unique visitors to Bloomberg.com declined slightly during that period, from 8.7 million to 8.2 million. That’s important, considering Bloomberg fetches $75 CPMs for its video ads, according to Marcum.

“The world leaders in business are tremendously appealing to advertisers, and we have them,” he said.

These are ambitious numbers, and even if they are close to accurate … Worldwide Subscription Video-On-Demand To Grow Nearly 30% In Revenue In 2014:

Information research company Gartner expects consumer spending on SVOD services to grow 28.1% in 2014 and 18.2% in 2015. Gartner says spending on SVOD services in North America is on pace to improve 28.5% in 2014 and 18.6% in Western Europe. Emerging territories will see a 53% growth rate in 2014.

What Journalists Worry About in the Middle of the Night: I find items 10, 9 and then, ultimately, 2 particularly worrisome.

Thursday update: A cartoon from Halifax’s Chronicle Herald by Bruce MacKinnon, with proceeds from the reprints going to the family of the fallen soldier:

family / memories / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
15
Oct 14

The things that stick us

I’ve been wearing these for a while:

I’ve been wearing them for me, but hadn’t thought about what I would say if someone asked why I am wearing a pin. Why would anyone ask? Who would care?

I got pins for my mom and my cousin.

My lovely wife gets the idea, even if I’ve only just figured out why I got them.

My grandmother loved hummingbirds. And I am still not ready to think about this in the past tense.

My grandmother’s chair sits right beside the large picture window in her house. And outside, on the long porch, there are several hummingbird feeders. She could sit and watch them hover and fight all day long.

Her oldest friend laughed and told me how my grandmother was, every year, in a competition to get the first hummingbird visit. She delighted in calling and bragging about her hummingbird feeders because they brought the first birds and the biggest and the most colorful. And it was all, no doubt, owing to some secret ingredient (four times the recommended sugar, perhaps) that she put in the syrup.

So there was a hummingbird this and a hummingbird that at the funeral. I was looking for something to hang on to and got a pin for my mom and cousin and, ultimately, me. So I rotate through these four lapel pins. One day a student asked why I was wearing one and I struggled with that. The classroom isn’t the place for all that, after all. On Friday a coworker asked about it, and then that led to a conversation about her grandmother, which was nice.

Later that day, though, I figured all of this out.

It has been a few months — I can’t bear to count the days — but I miss her dearly and completely and in all things. These are the standard laments about time and things to be said and learned and easing the hurt of others close to her. Meanwhile the world moves and I feel stuck. It was days before this and weeks before that and now I’m at a couple of months of random emotional moments.

My mother-in-law said perhaps the most purposeful and explanatory thing on all of this, that the grandparent-grandchild bond is a strong and unique one. Every memory is a bird’s wing, every memory is a prompt and every prompt is a catch in the throat and a watery eye. There is always fluttering to do.

My personal framework is pretty basic: If I did this, would my mother approve? Would my grandmother? Maybe that’s silly, but it always served me well when I abided by it, the opinions of people that matter are important and formative and lasting.

Because of that, whether I was at her home, or living two or four or six hours away, my grandmother was always in my day, always helping or laughing or talking or fussing, always present.

Those little pins are a way of keeping her there.