Not the way they’d anticipated this playing, I’d bet. On 9/11 the newspapers of the Alabama Media Group ran their cloned front pages to celebrate the 100th birthday of Paul Bryant. He died in 1983. Ignored was the 12th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. The reaction on Twitter was awkward. I’ve collected them on Storify. (Blogging continues below.)
That isn’t cherry picking. I searched Bryant’s name and the names of the papers and AMG. I didn’t add one which was linkbait. I chose not to include one which was tangential at best. I avoided anything that was purely directed at the University of Alabama. (They had their own unfortunate public response after today asking people to honor the former coach by changing their Facebook photos, but that’s not relevant here.)
Furthermore, of the 13 dailies from the state I surveyed today (via newseum.org) two localized 9/11. Two offered skybox teases to 9/11 content elsewhere in the paper. Four ran some elements of a wire story about New York’s current mayor Michael Bloomberg. There was not as much Syria on the collected front pages as you might imagine, either.
Meanwhile, talk radio host Matt Murphy had his way with the newspaper. You can hear that segment here.
As for the Crimson the paper looks impressive considering this is the new staff’s first paper. I’ve challenged them to start strong and become great quickly, and they’re answering. Here are the first two pages. They have plenty they can concentrate on, but I do believe this is the best first issue paper I’ve seen in my six years at Samford. And we’ve seen some fine starts, too.
They worked on it until almost daylight.
You can see the rest of the stories at samfordcrimson.com.
The department’s Twitter account liked it:
Props to our @SamfordCrimson staff – great first issue! @stickmenmartini @madisonbmiles @syd_cromwell @churdle76 pic.twitter.com/86kLuZAKVX
— Samford JMC (@SamfordJMC) September 11, 2013
The day marched by quickly. Lunch at my desk. People talking about the paper. Phone calls, emails and so on.
There were meetings. Meetings where one ended so another could begin. Talking with students, an advertising meeting, the paper’s critique meeting.
Left work to go on step two of the tuxedo rental odyssey. Stopped by a place last week to try to match a rental with someone (whom I’ve yet to meet) who owns a tux with a fair description and one photograph. The guy last week said it couldn’t be done. The guy this week, in step two, told me to go back to step one.
Good thing everyone will be busy staring at the bride and not me. Maybe they won’t notice if I go with the blue ruffles.
Got home and everything seized up on me again. Went immediately to the foam roller and abandoned that for the flat floor. That helped a bit, but I ended up in such a state I didn’t know how to get up.
But, more therapy tomorrow, so there’s that.
