Thursday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Thursday

adventures / Thursday / video — Comments Off
31
May 12

Travel day

Busy, long, early, full travel day. Here are video clips I shot on the Saugatuck River.

I woke up at 5:30 this morning. More tomorrow.

journalism / links / Storify / things to read / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off
24
May 12

Local media shake-up

Last night David Carr ran a piece on his Media Decoder blog pointing to big changes coming to the Times-Picayune in New Orleans.

The T-P management found themselves behind the curve. Many of their employees heard the news elsewhere. It was a morning of scramble in New Orleans. In Alabama the next domino tipped. Sister papers in Huntsville, Birmingham and Mobile all announced their similar changes. Starting this fall their dailies will be gone. There will be a greater emphasis on the online news content. They’ll publish a dead tree version three times a week. A new company, Alabama Media Group, is being formed:

The change is designed to reshape how Alabama’s leading media companies deliver award-winning local news, sports and entertainment coverage in an increasingly digital age. The Alabama Media Group will dramatically expand its news-gathering efforts around the clock, seven days a week, while offering enhanced printed newspapers on a schedule of three days a week. The newspapers will be home-delivered and sold in stores on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays only.

A second company, Advance Central Services Alabama, will handle production, distribution, technology, finance and human resources, and will be led by current Birmingham News President and Publisher Pam Siddall. Both companies are owned by Advance Publications, Inc.

Driving these changes are rapid advances in how readers engage with news content across all platforms, print and digital.

Carr likely tipped their hand, forcing this announcement before Newhouse and Advance had hoped. But there is also a sense of inevitability here. The writing has been on that particular wall. These are market trends, economic realities and publishers moving with their audiences.

Now, before anything else: Clearly there are tough, uncertain days ahead for many employees, and that’s more than a little regrettable.

There will also be a lot of opportunities in store, as well.

The reaction I’ve read (see below) from the community has generally been one critical of the paper reduction. Interestingly, few have discussed the news outlets’ online growth. Perhaps people feel too deeply about the newspapers, despite their shrinking circulation. Perhaps they don’t have faith in the ability of the company — with many of the same staffers, mind you — to do the job online. One person’s interpretation of the reaction is as good as the next. Alabama Media Group needs to get out in front of that, and I’m sure they will. But, between today’s news and the new site rollout, they’ve had a busy week.

Some readers will initially be marginalized. That will be unfortunate. (Someone might have suggested that that number is declining for a variety of reasons, that subscriptions for the papers here and elsewhere have been in decline for years. Also, the numbers for the website have soared. They probably then suggested they are taking the long view. Wouldn’t that be refreshing for a news outlet?)

How many people who take the paper will feel they’re getting less of a service when this goes into effect? Think quality over quantity. I’m hoping it is a really great three-day paper which buttresses an incredible online effort. If that happens it will be driven by the strength of great reporting on the site.

The question we must really and seriously consider is “How will these developments serve the community?”

If it puts more people in coverage areas and reaches under-served communities, great. If it means more watchdog journalism, marvelous. There will need to be more than mullet tossing pictures from the beach and A-Day coverage from the quad — but I’m a traditionalist. If the coverage is there, and the coverage is good, good things will come.

This is a sea change rather than a sinking outlet desperately signaling they’re drowning. Hopefully the staff (there are plenty of hardworking, talented people at each paper and at al.com) that stay on and the readers/viewers they work for will give it a good chance.

The idea is that The Huntsville Times, Birmingham News and the Press-Register will continue on, expanding their coverage with more reporters on the ground. Those outlets, which have long been sister publications, will become much more collaborative. There will be growing pains. There will also be streamlining. The key, as always, will be in the quality of the content. If the quality goes up, the communities win.

The Montgomery Advertiser will this fall become the state’s largest daily. Gannett recently announced they’ll soon be putting that publication behind an online paywall.

Here is a collection of the reactions found on Twitter in the hours immediately after the announcement. These are representative rather than exhaustive. I gathered these through Twitterfall, using key word searches relative to the cities, publication names and parent company ownership. They are arranged here chronologically.

Disclosure: I worked for Advance at al.com for four-plus years, long before all of these developments came to pass. Good people; good company.

Auburn / baseball / iPhone / photo / site / Thursday — Comments Off
17
May 12

Hey look! Something shiny!

I was going to write a bit about baseball tonight, and all through Saturday. That was originally the plan. The grading is almost done. The weather is just agonizingly perfect. That’s not a good description. Let me try again.

You know that one moment around Christmas that you aren’t obsessing over presents, traffic, wrapping paper, relatives or cooking? That moment where the moment settles on you nice and quietly? That’s the same moment you get on mild Fourth of July evenings if you get a gentle little breeze. That bit of easy peace, that’s what the weather feels like right now.

It’ll be in the 90s next week, but what we have now we have to soak up, low 80s, light breezes, beautiful skies, brilliant sun, quiet nights. Perfect springtime weather.

So the weather is behaving marvelously. I’ve made serious headway in the grading. (Almost done in fact!) This is the last weekend of regular season baseball. Our plan was to eat a lot of peanuts.

And before I could even zoom in:

Florida had a 5-0 run by the time Auburn collected their fifth out of the game. One of those nights.

This might have been the highlight:

Creede Simpson got back to first safely. On the next pitch he’d bluff a steal. The catcher threw down to second, missed the shortstop and the ball sailed into center. Simpson stayed at first. He was, literally, staring at his shoes.

So it was that kind of night. But Florida is the second or third ranked team in the nation depending on which poll you use. These guys are almost a AAA team. Oh, look, something shiny!

That’s hanging from a crane over the lot that formerly was Sewell Hall behind right field. They tore that old dorm down for a new one recently and the work crews are quickly building a new one. There are three cranes on the job right now, that’s hanging over the pine trees tonight.

Florida won 6-0 over Auburn. It was a game where not much went right. But there’s always tomorrow.

And there’s the new decoration for the top of the blog that came out of the game:

adventures / Auburn / iPhone / memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
10
May 12

The nonexistent slings and unpainful arrows

For those who have never been to Price’s Barbecue House — I’m sorry and you should fix that as soon as possible — they are set up to take your order at the counter, hand the ticket to their right while you get settled at a table. After an appropriate amount of time spent thinking about the delicious food you are about to receive one of the nice guys running the short order grill calls your name. You go collect your food and eat this delicious meal they have prepared for you.

Mr. Price sometimes takes the order. More often than not, of late, one of the ladies working there is running the front counter. Mr. Price, as I’ve mentioned here before, remembers me. I visited the place so much during undergrad that last fall he asked if I was back or just visiting. That was more than a decade and thousands of customers ago.

(I’ve eaten a lot of food here. And, while it is still sensibly priced, I just had a flash of memory: is it possible that my breakfast here once cost $2.17? Surely not. That seems shockingly low, even for a century ago, especially for the golden age of the 1990s. Another number pops in my head: $5.45? My memory can’t be trusted. That was in the last century, mind you.)

Anyway, Mr. Price remembers me. The ladies, one of them at least, doesn’t recall my name, but she remembers the usual breakfast we order. This new lady, though … Last week she wrote my name as she did above. I thought that perhaps she spelled it phonetically. Perhaps, I reasoned, a little of my north Alabama accent had slipped into my name as I told her the order. Maybe I’d done as much of my family does and made it sound like an I. Today I was very deliberate with the pronunciation, just out of curiosity.

“Kenny.”

And, again, she wrote: Kinny.

And that might have been the worst thing that happened today.

I’ve got it made, I tell ya.

Also, I have a big stack of papers to grade. So, if you’ll pardon me …

site / Thursday — 1 Comment
26
Apr 12

Pain in the neck

Much as I like to complain about this sort of thing, I haven’t done so. Until now, of course.

Three weeks ago I narrowly avoided broadsiding an SUV on my bike. I’d been in the saddle for three or four hours. I was back in the neighborhood, but was dragging. My head was down. A lady turned right in front of me. I looked up just in time to yank my bike over hard.

I missed her handsome SUV, but strained my neck. It stretched out just fine that afternoon, so I figured I was dehydrated.

Two weeks ago, in San Antonio, I slept on a poor bed in a shabby room. On Saturday I stood up from breakfast and everything in my neck suddenly felt weird. I took a few extra hot showers that day and everything stretched out, improving so much that I’d all but forgotten about it by dinner time.

And that’s when I played with our friends’ four-year-old. We were doing that thing where you swing the kid’s feet over his head by his arms. He loved it. Four or five times his father and I pitched him in the between us.

Suddenly there was a blinding, white light. Put the kid down, deal with this strangely powerful pain in the neck.

I’ve been fighting this, and losing, ever since. The odd thing is that it moves around. One day it is on the right side of my neck. The next day it could be on the left side. I look like a zombie in the mornings. There’s no turning of the head, and I’m trying to do everything from my waist. It loosens up as the day progresses, but there’s always some point I can’t move beyond. Looking down is pretty much impossible. Tilting my head back is about the worst thing imaginable.

It has moved to my back. Everything from my shoulder blades up is suspect. My trapezius muscles don’t know what is going on.
Tuesday I complained about a spasm in my right shoulder that almost turned me into a one-handed individual. So The Yankee booked me a bit of soigneur-style therapy.

Which was great. Nice lady. She was from Pennsylvania, studied in South Carolina. Found her way to Birmingham … “There was a boy.”

A familiar tale. But I didn’t press for details. As I sat on the table and as we talked my left shoulder spasmed up. Interesting sensation.

So I must, somehow, change the way I sleep. Do this, do that; come back if you aren’t better in a week or two.

I’m tired of this. I’m not interested in giving it two weeks. Sleeping is tough, waking up is worse. Can’t ride my bike. Turning around in the car is a bit painful, making some intersections uncomfortable.

This is approaching miserable, but it could be worse. Then again I could also not hurt.