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Monday

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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?

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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!

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2
Mar 15

If you’re going to steal, go big

Back to it today. This, I tell myself every year, is the work week that demonstrates I’m not as young as I used to be. Because I’m young enough — and obtuse enough, I suppose — that it takes a particular week to get the point across. After getting home on Saturday night and doing laundry and a frozen pizza in time to be asleep by 9 p.m. and then Sunday of doing only what is required of a Sunday, it was time to return to the action this morning.

At least, this year, we only had to go to Atlanta. Last year I did this week after a trip to Lafayette, Louisiana. Next year we can look forward to going to Austin Peay, which means almost four hours back to campus on a Saturday before the most abbreviated of weekends and … I feel tired already.

In class today we discussed story ideas, and that is always magical. You ask a group “What makes you happy? What makes you angry?” and you get a half-dozen story ideas right away. What are people talking about? What part of that do they have wrong? What do they need to know? There are all kind of little tricks to help you create story ideas. I always tell classes that there are two kinds of people: those who can spout off a handful of ideas like they were reciting their address and those that can’t. If you can’t, you can learn. And I was in that latter category. But anyone can do it, and here are some ways how.

I sent them off with an assignment sheet, a come up with ideas based on these things, arrangement. Turn in a copy for a grade, keep a copy to start that new idea book you’re about to create. Story ideas are fun. I used to dread them, until I learned how to dream up four or five angles off of one simple idea. And if I can, anyone can.

I had vegetables for dinner. Comfort food of the healthiest order. Now this.

Entre Nous is Samford’s yearbook and this is the 1979 pageant. The winner received the Hypalia Cup. I’m not sure of the origins of that. One of these ladies is a homemaker, I think. Another is an educator. No idea about the third. Also, this, from the accompanying story:

Things to read … because we need something from this century to wrap this up.

You would think this would be a conspicuous choice … and that people wouldn’t do it. Travis Kvapil’s NASCAR racecar stolen from outside hotel, won’t race at Atlanta this weekend:

Getting your car stolen in a major American city is not that unusual an occurrence.

However, getting a professional racecar inside a trailer and attached to a heavy-duty hauling truck stolen is a new one. But that’s exactly what happened to NASCAR veteran Travis Kvapil and his No. 44 Chevrolet Sprint Cup car overnight Friday.

NASCAR comfirmed Friday afternoon that Kvapil had withdrawn from Sunday’s QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Oh. They were caught on tape. And the car has been found, sans trailer or truck, which was discovered later in the day. If LoJack isn’t sponsoring that guy by the end of the month there’s something wrong with America.

Following up on the earlier Bentley-Holtzclaw story, Gov. Robert Bentley says Holtzclaw billboard ‘irresponsible,’ projects will be resumed at some point:

The governor was asked this morning if Cooper’s move should serve as a warning to legislators as they consider whether to support the governor’s $541 million tax increase proposal announced today.

“I wouldn’t say a warning,” Bentley said. “I would say that it is irresponsible to act irresponsibly.”

Bentley said he did not know Cooper had stopped the projects until Cooper informed him, but that he had given Cooper “the green light” to do so.

Asked if there were other “green lights” coming, Bentley said, “It’s on yellow.”

So be careful what you say at the capitol, I guess.

I read this a few days ago and found myself full of wonder and awe and I want to share it with you now, a newspaper editor I know wrote this about a guy he knew once upon a time. It defies excerpting, but it is worth reading: The legacy we leave behind.

And, finally, I don’t always link to all of the stuff the Crimson produces, because that would be a lot of links, but there are some good things in this week’s issue, including this look back to the 1930s, specifically, how the students felt about FDR in 1939:

Down with Roosevelt! Roosevelt for King! FDR should be shot! I love Roosevelt!

These are typical reactions to the question: are you in favor of Roosevelt for a third term as president of the United States. Delving further into complicated statistics and graphs collected by the Crimson staff, we find more than a dozen highly exciting opinions on the most exciting question of the day. (The war in Europe and the Cincinnati-St. Louis baseball feud are of course a great deal more interesting and important, but if a feature writer can’t claim exciting interest for his subject, he might as well not write the article.)

It is a fine read.

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23
Feb 15

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:

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.