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Workshop day

We had a record crowd on hand at the Samford High School Journalism Workshop. That’s our department chair, Bernie Ankney, delivering his opening remarks. Shaun Chavis, associate editor from Health magazine, provided the keynote address.

In the morning sessions we had rooms with professors and journalists discussing news writing, layout, sports writing, broadcasting and magazine journalism. One session discussed the best ledes ever written, one nominee: Bob Considine’s story on the 1938 Lewis-Schmeling bout:

Listen to this, buddy, for it comes from a guy whose palms are still wet, whose throat is still dry, and whose jaw is still agape from the utter shock of watching Joe Louis knock out Max Schmeling.

Carla Jean Whitney talked about the gratification of magazine publication and exciting industry changes. Meanwhile sportswriter Doug Segrest of The Birmingham News does a great session on sports reporting.

I had a lot of nice conversations with teachers before lunch and then in the afternoon got to spend time with the famous Ike Pigott.

Joining him were Tatiana Richards and one of our professors, Dr. Sheree Martin, on a panel about journalism online.

We had a Pulitzer winner, Sonia Nazario, presenting in our afternoon sessions. And I presented too!

Here’s the picture of the day, though:

That’s the newest McAlister. The Yankee spent the day with him today and I got to visit for a few hours this evening. Good kid. Sleeps all the time.

They won’t put him in one of those costumes I found last night, thankfully. He’s already got an Auburn blanket. To update last night’s horror of child rearing:

That landed on The War Eagle Reader this morning. They also used the capital THE in writing the credit.

journalism / photo / Samford / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off
15
Sep 10

Some sunny day

The newspaper was put to bed at 12:30 this morning, which is more than an hour quicker than last week. That’s progress. Now I have to warn the hardworking student-journalists that there will also be a night of setbacks somewhere in their future.

The paper looks better this week. In our critique meeting today I picked on a lot of small things. There are a few design issues to work through and some other editing and writing topics to address, but I think this year’s staff can make quick strides. The biggest thing will just be in recognizing the problems early. No easy trick, that.

Some of those things can be fixed quickly, others will take a little time and perhaps a workshop or two.

Today we finished the preparing on our high school workshop, which takes place tomorrow. We’re going to have a record crowd on hand. This despite one or two local high schools dropping their journalism program for the year because of budget cuts. (Also, the Alabama Scholastic Press Association’s workshop is running opposite the Samford program this year, but it hasn’t hurt our attendance.)

I’m only doing one little presentation this year. I’ll be running around making sure the speakers arrived, everything is working and that no one is lost. It is a great way to spend a day, talking with high school students about their newspapers and television stations, showing them around Samford, introducing them to our students and to professional journalists. We have a great time with it and our visitors always seem to enjoy themselves too.

Now that the big day is almost here I’ll probably turn back to student recruitment. Having a gorgeous day on the beautiful Samford campus tomorrow won’t hurt that effort, either.

It is a great job, and an easy day, when you can talk about exciting things like that with young people who are also very much excited about where they are going to wind up, or what they might study when they get there. That’s the sort of enthusiasm that is contagious.

I talked this afternoon with the news director of the campus radio station. She’s one of those same, excited go-get-em types. If you can’t brainstorm up have a dozen good ideas in a hallway with people like that you just aren’t trying hard enough.

I like to drop little nuggets like this into those conversations from time to time.

Reporting has always in some ways been a collaborative process between journalists and their sources. But increasingly, there’s a merger between the source and the content producer. As a result, more journalism will happen through collaborative reporting, where the witness of the news becomes the reporter, says David Clinch, editorial director for Storyful and a consultant for Skype. Journalists, Clinch says, must be able to pivot quickly between the idea of using the community as a source of news and as the audience for news, because they are both.

Students are intrigued by ideas like that, once they realize they’re allowed to think this way. The latest example, included in that link, is the hostage situation at the Discovery Channel offices in Maryland earlier this month. The story came out of a news start up there, which leaned on a Twitter account to break the story. Novel approach, that.

(Not really, I was doing that two-and-a-half years ago at al.com. I set up that account and within a week broke two fires and a prominent business layoff story. Now that primary account, aldotcom, has 6,500 followers and breaks news constantly.)

I say this to your boredom, but it never ceases to amaze me that I get to read and dream up and put into practice and teach these things and call it a career. I’m a lucky guy.

After all, I get to work here:

Where I get views like this:

Visited Walmart tonight for a little of this and that. The irony was on rollback pricing, since I’d noticed earlier in the day that my bank is now running a cashback program based on my “unique spending preferences.” They are running the ads between the lines of my online register. The first offer was for Waffle House, which I visit exactly once a year. (And where I’ve never used anything but cash, making me wonder just how unique these preferential algorithms are.)

The second offer was for Walmart. I made fun of that. And then I found myself there. And then I found this:

Just wrong.

The meme on Twitter tonight was rock ‘n’ roll retractions. I had a lot of fun with these, and want to remember them forever, sooo:

I’ve got two tickets to paradise. Pack your bag we’ll leave during off peak hours.

What’s the frequency, Kenneth. Oh, never mind, I see it right here.

No more ‘I love yous’ but expect late night hang up calls, standing outside of your apartment and pining on Facebook.

After much consideration I am, in fact, not too sexy for this shirt.

You know what? I WILL put a fine point in it. I am the only bee in your bonnet. No one really likes you.

Yes, you may kiss me once. You may even kiss me twice. But, come on pretty baby, you needn’t kiss me deadly.

It has been brought to my attention that I don’t want you to want me, need you to need me, nor would I love you to love me.

Turns out the heart of rock ‘n’ roll is actually the guy that plays the triangle.

Let’s do the time warp, but only the once, so we do not create space continuum problems.

I’ve reconsidered it, and I would do anything for love, provided it is legal in my state of origin.

Turns out we did not rock the casbah, but we dropped a few bunker busters in the vicinity.

Nope. That was most definitely NOT paradise that I saw there by the dashboard light.

Don’t stop believing. Unless you’ve been swayed as of late by Christopher Hitchens.

Welcome to the jungle. We’ve had a change of heart and you can live quite prosperously here now.

The government now tells me I was born on a protected wetland, born on a protected wetland.

In da gatta da vitta you should know that I am merely fond of you.

Turns out the fire should be on the water and the SMOKE should be in the sky. Deep Purple regrets the error.

We decided to not live in a yellow submarine because, on reflection, that’s just stupid.

About that Lola thing … sorry.

Changed my mind. Not working for the weekend. I have to pull a double shift at the 7-11 on Saturday.

Ok, you talked us into it. We WILL take it, if you’re talking about a general wealth redistribution program.

I’ve had a change of heart. Do not pour your sugar on me. I’m on a low cal diet.

Been thinking about it. Should have never gone electric. Regretfully, Bob Dylan.

The London Tourism Board has asked me to rephrase. There are no werewolves here.

Yes, I said that Friday I was in love, but I was just lonely.

Tons more here.

More photographs from the 1939 World’s Fair will be along in a bit.

Alabama / Auburn / football / photo / Samford / weekend — Comments Off
13
Sep 10

Catching up

We have two weeks of pictures to work through here. The world simply needs to see these without further delay.

This is certainly an brightly painted building for being 170 miles or so inland. It is a bike shop. Very nice people.

This is in the comm building at the University of Alabama. Because there are comm scholars there I’m convinced that everything is a potential experiment. If there is a scrap of paper on the ground I don’t pick it up. Someone is watching. Unless they don’t want me to pick it up. So I kick it. Or stomp on it. Or pick it up and move it over six inches. Anything that might keep me from being a part of the experiment.

If you meet enough field study types you can become paranoid. It hasn’t gotten to me. Unless they want to think it has gotten to me …

Anyway. I’m waiting on the elevator and I see these two selections and think This must be another experiment.

Same brand, same filling. One is a cookie and one is a cracker. Different shapes. But 30 cents different?

(Not everything is an experiment. Though this might be one.)

Aubie is helping this cute little girl with her shoe. This is at the Florida State-Auburn soccer game. Aubie got it into the action later, as you’ll see.

The Yankee at the Auburn soccer game.

A fence. I was being artistic. You’re welcome.

Aubie takes a header.

Samford Hall on game day on the Auburn campus.

We hadn’t met this character before. I’m guessing he’s new? He says Aubie is just a mascot, and not idolatry.

Here’s the thing. It was very, very warm. But she was in the shade. Suddenly that eagle head wear doesn’t seem so silly, does it? OK, it does. But she was a very nice, enthusiastic lady. Next time I’m going to ask her how she came about this idea.

The normal membership at a Sam’s Club only gets you in after 10 a.m. Unless you have the premium membership you have to wait outside with the rest of us. It only costs you $60 more a year to avoid the masses.

I just waited the 20 extra minutes.

My view from inside the Davis Library at Samford University.

The fountain on Ben Brown Plaza at Samford University. This particular day was an organization day. All the groups set up tables to recruit curious students. This was just after they began tearing down the displays.

This joke still works. I only took the picture because I heard a girl get fooled by it.

Friday / photo / Pie Day / video / YouTube Cover Theater — Comments Off
10
Sep 10

Friday is Pie Day

This is necessarily brief, as other typing demands have absorbed a great deal of the day. It is a conference submission day, you see, and these papers must simply get out the door. I could write about writing, but so many people do that with greater flair.

I could also write about the literature review I proofed or, even better, the abstract I crafted this afternoon. It was an interesting one, I thought.

There was rhetoric, too, and that’s always fun. Again, you can get far better rhetoric elsewhere, I wouldn’t presume to impose my qualitative limitations upon you.

So that was pretty much the day, yeah. Until Pie Day, where …

… that isn’t supposed to be on the menu.

We returned to Byron’s tonight, because they have delicious beans and potatoes. They slice the potatoes across the width and do nothing special to them when they cook them, but they are delicious. They were out of chick and ribs tonight. Apparently you have to get to these places early.

We sat in the romantic Punt Bama Punt corner:

The barbecue there is good, but Byron’s, a converted Dairy Queen, doesn’t have pie. So we visited Publix, picked up an apple and brought it home. We concluded our date night by watching Date Night. At just 88 minutes it felt very short, but that’s probably about the right length.

There was enough humor in the story. Steve Carell was Steve Carell and Tina Fey put on a wig and looked like Rene Russo for a while. You get the sense that about 80 percent of the movie was ad lib, which works well for the premise. There are plenty of one-liners in there. No doubt they are all aimed at a generation of people who grew up reciting movie lines in place of having a real conversation.

“He turned the gun sideways! That’s a kill shot!”

One of my family friends is a now retired police officer. He tells a story of responding to a shots fired call where two guys emptied two clips shooting at one another from nearly point-blank range. Nobody hit anything. Investigators figured that the two gang members had turned their guns sideways for that cool movie “kill shot.”

I’ve tried it with a water gun. I can’t hit the cat for anything with the thing turned sideways.

Time once again for YouTube Cover Theater, where we surf the popular video site and look for people paying tribute to their favorite artists and showing off a significant talent of their own. (I like covers.)

I randomly picked Guster this week, which turned out to be harder than it should have been. They’re a pop band, after all. So two of these videos are from seriously aspiring musicians, which goes a bit against the spirit of this concept, but they still work here.

Here’s Demons:

Just two guys, Vanderbilt students I think, strumming along at in the breakfast nook at home, nicely done.

Here’s a Pennsylvania group, The Vulcans, that asks “Am I trying to hard?” The guy running the camera says “You’re in an art studio, wearing a vest and Aaron is already playing a guitar. We’re trying too hard.”

The sound is nice though, it almost has that disembodied, music hall quality to it that is hard to reproduce in a stereo. Plus, I really love that song:

What happens when you take a Massachusetts band and turn them into bluegrass? I had to find out:

I think they’re just a group of guys that named themselves after a river in Illinois, but they have a lot of videos.

Speaking of videos. And of Google Instant — we were speaking about that yesterday, remember? — here’s a Billy Joel visualization:

Good luck getting that out of your head before the night is over.

errands / iPhone / journalism / photo / Samford / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
8
Sep 10

Just your average unusual day

The paper was put to bed at about 2:30 this morning. I slept for about four hours and then started this new day.

Hit the gym for squats and arms and rode 10 miles on the bike.

Visited Sam’s Club, because I need a new tire for the car. I made the mistake of arriving before my puny little membership would let me in. I could, the nice lady at the door said, upgrade my membership. But I can also wait 20 minutes and save 60 bucks. So I did.

While they put on the new tire I walked around the store. Figured this would be an opportunity to test the microphone on the iPhone in a noisy environment. Also, it was a good time to make fun of product packaging. Most of these jokes aren’t especially good, but the microphone proved better than I expected.

It is sensitive to movement. You can really tell when it is closer to my face based on the sound. Next time I’ll try an attached microphone to see what that sounds like. I’ll also not be buying a tire, next time. Already that experiment is more fun.

Returned to the office — wasn’t I just here? — and looked over the paper. Not a bad start. There are obviously things on which we can improve, and I’ve no doubt that will happen.

We had a critique meeting this afternoon where we discussed what went right and wrong and what to fix for next time. I told them of my high expectations for the year. I want them to set high goals because they can reach them. They have a lot of exciting things in the works for the year and I want them to see those plans come to fruition.

Here’s the requisite welcome back type story. Super Bowl champion Tony Dungy dropped in for a surprise visit, which also made the front page.

Had lunch with the university communications people. Critiqued the paper. Visited the library. I found a big stack of negatives and compact discs of old photojournalism assignments. I found at least one sitting U.S. Senator was in the 20-year-old stack of negatives. The special collections people in the library basement like that sort of thing.

The extended family got a bit more extended. He arrived a few days early, but is handsome and smart. Word is that he’s already teaching calculus in the nursery. I made a video for him, but managed to delete it. Just imagine it as being the funniest thing ever composed on a phone, and then reduce your expectations by 17 percent.

Returned to studying.

I purchased, and nearly filled, that binder tonight. The good news: only the last 100 pages of that are for my class tomorrow.

So back to it, then.