Wednesday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Wednesday

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?)

iPhone / journalism / links / photo / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
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 …

food / friends / iPhone / journalism / links / memories / photo / Samford / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
24
Sep 14

A good man, a good plan and a good brand

I never met Mr. Davis, but I worked with his daughter, Tiffany. She was fresh out of college and I was about two years removed. She was smart and talented and charming. She was friendly and amusing. She learned a lot and worked hard and got better. She was a lot of the things that we probably all hope we are. She talked about her father an awful lot. They always sounded like a devoted family. He sounded like a good man.

She still is all of those things, by the way. She’s moved out west, but we’re still friends online. I imagine her brother is all of those things too, but we’ve never met. You’ve probably seen him on television, where he comes off as an incredibly likable man who works hard and knows his craft.

It seems to me that to have raised two children like his, you must be some kind of lucky and some kind of parent. Mr. Davis just recently passed away. Rece wrote about his dad, a wonderful and intimate remembrance proving the kind of man he was.

Those are my favorite verses, too.

Spent the afternoon counting things. I do this every year, taking stock of the department. Demographics are important, and one must always know how many of these and those there are, to say nothing of the thoses and thises. I do this every year and this is still the best method I have thought up:

You don’t change the classics. What you can change is the spreadsheet which holds the data and digests it into simple charts and graphs. There are pages and pages of data, and I get it down to one page of information, all thanks to the humble and inconsistent tally marks.

Things to read … because reading leads to pages and pages of information.

First, the quick list of journalism links:

How social media is reshaping news

Harnessing the power of immersive, interactive storytelling

The secret to BuzzFeed’s video success: Data

New York Times is retiring the Managing Editor title in favor of four deputy executive editors

Forest Service says media needs photography permit in wilderness areas, alarming First Amendment advocates

How TV Everywhere strategy is evolving in the world of cable news

Advice for real-time reporting from BBC, Guardian, Telegraph

Tool Called Dataminr Hunts for News in the Din of Twitter

And now for something delicious, The Creation Myth of Chocolate-Chip Cookies:

What’s less certain is why, exactly, Wakefield put the chopped-up chocolate into her cookies to begin with. A few versions of the story have her creating the recipe accidentally—she was out of nuts, she thought the chocolate would melt into the batter, the chips fell into the bowl by accident. Wyman, in her book, argues that Wakefield was too much of a perfectionist to have come upon the recipe so haphazardly. In support of her argument, she cites a few accounts from the 1970s in which Wakefield tells reporters that she’d been planning experiments with chocolate chunks.

And, of course, she had no idea what it would all become. It says she gave permission to Nestle to reprint her recipe. It does not say what she got in the deal. There’s also a link to the original cookie, if you’d like to try it.

Websites Are Wary of Facebook Tracking Software:

Online retailers and publishers are pushing back against Facebook Inc.’s efforts to track users across the Internet, fearing that the data it vacuums up to target ads will give the social network too much of an edge.

Web traffic experts say there is less data flowing from some sites to Facebook, suggesting they have been reprogrammed to hold back information.

Because they figured out what they were giving away, that they weren’t a partner with Facebook, just a vehicle for it.

Snapchat and your higher ed social media strategy:

When this social media tool first came out, many people were worried that certain *ahem* risque behaviour would take place at a much higher rate. However, since its launch in late 2011, it’s became pretty clear that college kids mainly use Snapchat for selfies, pictures of their pets and photos/videos of the events they attend. And seeing as a new study by Mashable reveals 77 percent of college students check their Snapchats daily, it’s definitely an outlet not to be overlooked when planning your higher ed social media strategy.

We’ve considered that, put it on the back burner and considered it again. I’m sure it will ultimately happen. We do like stories, after all.

This I want to see: Coca-Cola vintage ad will be unveiled at Opelika’s Smith T Building Supply:

Opelika-area residents and Coca-Cola enthusiasts are invited to the unveiling of one of the oldest untouched Coca-Cola painted wall advertisements in existence.

The unveiling event will be held on Oct. 9 at 4 p.m., at Smith T Building Supply in downtown Opelika. Historians from The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta and community leaders will be in attendance. Vintage bottles of Coke will be given away while supplies last.

The experts think the sign was painted in 1907 or 1908. The ad is being seen for the first time in more than a century. How about that?

cycling / overwriting / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
23
Sep 14

Just some pictures

I had these shots from my ride on Sunday and I’ve been staring at them. The colors are beautiful. The light is perfect. The road just sings to you. There’s a great whir, whir, whirring in my imagination from the rubber tire on the road. When you get close enough you can smell the clay:

On my bike I am always trying to ride hard and fast, because I am not fast. But in my daydreams I’m lazily drifting onto the center line, where the road noise is different, quieter. When I have the space to ride on a painted lane I always wonder if it moves faster. Maybe the paint makes less friction, somehow. It is quieter. There’s just your breathe there, just the whoosh of the wind in your ears. And then you can really see the things around you:

Not far from there at all, really, I looked up the road and saw the prettiest site I’ve seen on an otherwise normal, and freshly paved, ribbon of road:

And I started doing the only other kind of riding I know how to do, the slow back and forth tilts from the shoulder to centerline, making big swooping curves over the asphalt. Sine waves. Sign language.

In my mind I’m sitting on the saddle. In reality I’m sitting in my office chair, wondering why it is lately less comfortable.

GoPro / iPhone / journalism / links / photo / Samford / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
17
Sep 14

The wedding of the year and serious journalism

Crimson meeting. Everyone is intently concentrating on something being said by a reporter out of the frame. They’re also wondering what I’m doing climbing up into a chair, I’m sure.

A newspaper editor friend of mine said “Everyone looks depressed. Great job preparing them for the real world of journalism!”

That only makes me wish I knew what they were talking about at the moment. This is a budget meeting, though, and I deliberately stay out of those. Immediately after the budget, though, is the critique, where we pore over the most recent issue. The short version: it is a remarkably good second issue. There are a few things to work on, there always will be. And we’re about to go on a great crusade of immediacy and urgency, but there is great potential in what this crew brings together. I’m very proud for them.

Meanwhile …

Things to read … the things to read were always destined to intersect with a “meanwhile.”

Trust in Mass Media Returns to All-Time Low:

After registering slightly higher trust last year, Americans’ confidence in the media’s ability to report “the news fully, accurately, and fairly” has returned to its previous all-time low of 40%. Americans’ trust in mass media has generally been edging downward from higher levels in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.

There are some cultural and societal issues at play here. We also benefit from a great many more voices now, too, and often those voices are critical of the media, or, more-to-the-point, illustrative of where “the media” is getting something wrong. Also, sometimes, you just get bad work. (And don’t forget comment sections of websites.)

For example … Everything you could ever want to know about AJ McCarron and Katherine Webb’s wedding. Let’s set the scene. Two months ago a young couple got married. Here is a FAQ. A reporter said to me:

@kennysmith @aldotcom I can't wait for the anniversary!

— Madison Underwood (@MadisonU) September 18, 2014

Wouldn’t it be weird to report on an anniversary? Or just stalk it?

In that FAQ there is this line: Wedding pictures FINALLY revealed.

It is an entertainment piece and there’s an audience for this stuff. Not my speed, but that’s fine, I get it. But if you write the above sentence you desperately need to gain some perspective.

I rather like interviews with thoughtful journalists. It is often inside baseball, but if you’re actually talking to a reporter about something they actually know about, it can be enlightening … Here’s Alison Gow, Editor of Digital Innovation at Trinity Mirror Regionals:

Paint us a picture: what does innovation in newsrooms look like to you?

It’s a newsroom where experimentation leading to some form of change happens all the time: it might be telling a story in a different way, or developing a new tool for news-gathering or collaboration. Personally, I think experimentation is the thing that keeps our journalism fresh and makes us relevant … but it will probably be a bit of a leap of faith and lead to an evolution of how we work, interact with audiences and present our journalism. It’s also a newsroom with a clear system for managing ideas, whether they benefit editorial, commercial, or other departments: one that understands anyone in the company may have a ‘Eureka!’ moment, and should know where to take it. You don’t get the monopoly on ideas because you’re a manager.

Often, I think, innovation is working backwards from the endpoint of an idea, refining the processes to make it happen, without ever losing sight of the final goal. Too often we compromise or give up on a final vision because operations/systems/culture won’t accommodate it. Never lose sight of what you’re aiming to achieve, and work over or through obstacles.

That’s why you often have to say yes in those newsroom meetings.

(Wedding pictures aren’t innovative.)

Who’s really to blame for ad fraud?:

Ad fraud is the ultimate case of who done it? Nobody argues there’s a problem, but as for who is to blame … well, that’s where things get dicey.

This much is for sure: ad fraud, and your definition of what constitutes it may vary, has gone from being viewed as a basic cost of doing business to becoming one of the biggest issues facing the online ad industry. The credibility of the medium is at risk.

This story is becoming an annual affair, and it is one of the best things going … Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle window washers amaze young patients at Children’s Hospital

I read paragraphs and paragraphs of this story on GoPro, the fad, the great videos, the IPO, the GoPro fails. Nothing of it was new. But I got to this part and I started thinking about Polaroid … We are a camera:

The company wants to capitalize on the mass-market home-video urge, the camera’s aptitude for capturing what GoPro’s president, Tony Bates, calls “life’s great moments,” and yet retain its reputation as a kind of philosopher’s stone, capable of transforming ordinary experience into magical footage. (Two tips: “Slow it down and you look like a pro.” “The closer the better.”)

And the next sentence mentions the Brownie and Polaroid and the democratization of video. The story continues:

But the analogy comes up short, because GoPro videos aspire to go viral. You’re sharing the photos of your ski trip not just with your family and a few friends but, if you’re any good, with thousands, if not millions, of people. The GoPro, by implication, asks its users to push a little harder, as both subjects and filmmakers. Be a Hero: The premise from the start has been that you, in every way an amateur, can go pro—on both sides of the lens. It’s karaoke, but with the full Marshall stack.

The short video synonymous with GoPro is a kind of post-literate diary, a stop on the way to a future in which everything will be filmed from every point of view. Humans have always recorded their experiences, in an array of media and for a variety of reasons. Not until very recently, with the advent of digital photography and video, and unlimited storage and distribution capacity, has it been conceivable to film everything. As we now more than ever communicate through pictures, either still or moving, perhaps our lives come closer to Susan Sontag’s imagined “anthology of images.” An obvious example is the people who film concerts on their smartphones. Will they ever watch the video? And if they do will it measure up to the concert, which they half missed? Of course not. They film the concert to certify their attendance and convey their good fortune. The frame corroborates.

Polaroid is coming into that market, as well. They’re looking at the truly democratized, less high adrenaline adventure segment of consumerism. They’ll compete with GoPro on one end and probably smartphones on the other.

Just imagine if someone was recording me when I took the photo above, on the odd chance that I fell out of my chair. Oh, the laughs they would have had at my expense. Serious journalism, indeed, undone.