I left her a voicemail while I was outside and it was gray and cold and windy. She called me back while I was in the library, but I needed to leave anyway. She was on the way home from a movie, trying to get back before winter fell, so she could sit and enjoy the rest of her evening in a warm, dry place. We talked about old friends and impossible things we did and our general awesomeness among other things. We’d sent her flowers earlier in the day and she’d texted me but now she said in person on the phone that they were beautiful and colorful, which is exactly what I’d hoped for.
She had a little smile in her voice when she said it, which was the other thing I’d hoped for, and constituted the best part of the day.
I’ve had one of those days. No no, one of those days.
It all started last night, actually. I went out for dinner and the barbecue place I’d decided to visit had a sign on the door: Kitchen is closed, bar is open. It was 8:30.
Dubious of the sign, I asked a woman working there if, in fact, there had been some closing event, perhaps an astronomic singularity or perhaps a sous-chef flu or maybe even a health department shutdown that had taken place.
Yes, they were closed. But for none of those reasons. It was raining, she said. (I can verify this.) And they let the kitchen staff go. They’d given up the idea of making any money, apparently.
OK then. My money is good elsewhere.
Oh, but … oh.
So I drive back over the mountain and go to Chili’s, where Destiny’s Child In 30 Years is waiting to be sat. Finally someone comes to help them. The hostess walks them to the right side of the store, and this is found lacking. She walks them to the left side of the store, and that is not desirable. She brings them back to the middle and then they decide to reverse course and go back to the left. By now people that came in after me have given up and wished me luck.
After some time the hostess comes by and says she’ll be right with me. In about five minutes. I can see four tables with people. Everything else is dirty.
So I leave there. And find myself at Outback, where I enjoy an altogether delicious albeit overpriced sandwich. But when everyone else is rolling up the sidewalks before 8:30 Outback can control the market.
So that just carried over into today. I’m still not feeling very well. The throat thing is getting more pronounced. As the day wore on I began to feel that body ache and fatigue: white blood cells have been summoned. Now I’m just hoping this is merely a sinus attack. I don’t care for them, but I can deal with them.
Then I saw this story and — look, I’ve covered a lot of terrible stories and I’ve read even more of them so it takes a lot to get me worked up but — this is ridiculous:
A Prattville mother of young, twin boys who received several broken bones before they were 1 year old, has been granted youth offender status in her pending child abuse case.
[…]
When the boys were 1 year and 1 week old, Jabril was taken to Children’s Hospital in Birmingham to receive treatment for a broken arm, testimony showed.
Doctors then discovered that Jabril had at least seven fractures, some in various stages of mending. Jacob also was examined and it was found out that he had at least two fractures, also in different stages of mending, according to testimony.
Here is a woman who is married with two kids. Dad is doing 20 years for this. She could get just three now. I don’t know much about parenting. I probably know a bit less about criminal law. I often find that my concepts of sentencing vary, both directions, from judicial guidelines for reasons beyond my understanding. But I propose a simple, new rule: If you have children you forfeit youthful offender status.
That’s not too much to ask.
So, yeah, I’m not my normally chipper self today, and I apologize. But I’ll make it up to both of us with the most ridiculous video on the ‘Net, courtesy of my fellow ridiculous Web finder and Auburn grad, Victoria Cumbow:
Tomorrow, I promise, I’ll be in better spirits, despite 32 percent more coughing.
A long day in the office. There was reading and recruiting and renting a van and finishing the last plans for a trip and grading. lots and lots of grading.
I’m not even sure that I left the building until dinner time.
(T)he effects of a movement toward mobile are everywhere, from shopping to media to search. According to the report, “2013 could spell a very rocky economic transition,” and businesses will have to scramble to stay ahead of consumers’ changing behavior.
Here are a few interesting tidbits from the 48-page report.
The mobile transition is happening astonishingly quickly. Last year, smartphone penetration crossed 50 percent for the first time, led by Android phones. People spend 63 percent of their time online on desktop computers and 37 percent on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, according to comScore.
[…]
As mobile continues to take share from desktop, some industries have been particularly affected, and they are seeing significant declines in desktop use of their products as a result. They are newspapers, search engines, maps, weather, comparison shopping, directories and instant messenger services.
Oh, and this is a hint about what is going to happen to television in the next year or two:
There has also been a turning point for video ads. They cost more than typical ads, and have always lagged behind viewership. But in 2012, 23 percent of videos were accompanied by an ad, up from 14 percent the year before. More TV ad dollars are coming to online video, comScore concluded.
Ten media organizations sent a letter to the National Collegiate Athletic Association last week expressing its frustration with the athletic group’s unwillingness to discuss journalists’ concerns about credentialing and other issues.
“The undersigned organizations are writing to express our profound disappointment with the NCAA’s recent actions affecting journalists’ ability to cover your member institutions’ activities,” reads the letter, which was signed by representatives from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Student Press Law Center, among others.
“In short, our concerns and frustrations are mounting, with a long period of unproductive interaction leading to this follow up letter.”
Restrictions placed on media credentials is the main concern raised in the letter, a situation that has become more onerous in recent years, said Kevin Goldberg, an attorney who represents ASNE.
The letter cites instances where reporters have been faced with “unduly restrictive credentialing conditions” with regard to social media use and other coverage efforts.
More and more you see programs doing more and more of their own media, in inventive and more direct ways than the media outlets are providing. They are going directly to their audience with an effective aspect of branded journalism. Programs are going around the media filter, utilizing their hyper-control of their access to the on-field product and speaking directly to their fanbases.
This is a big deal for the media outlets, of course, who are presently getting edged out. They’ll need to find a way to deliver a new and compelling aspect or version of the product to the wider audience to compensate.
The Samford Athletics Department will hold its fourth-annual Bulldog Bash dinner and silent auction, presented by BB&T, April 25 at the Pete Hanna Center on Samford’s campus. Heisman Trophy winner and former National Football League and Major League Baseball star Bo Jackson will be the featured speaker at this year’s event.
The Bulldog Bash is a silent auction event hosted by Samford University to raise money for the athletics department and its 17 teams. Tables can be purchased for $1,500, with each table seating eight people. Individual seats are also available for $250. A limited number of premium tables which included a private meet and greet with Bo Jackson are available for $3,000.
I bet fellow Auburn alum and Heisman trophy winner Pat Sullivan, the football coach at Samford, helped make this good news happen. Pretty cool stuff.
On the other blog I linked to a nice piece from Prof. Mindy McAdams. It is about learning code. You should check it out.
Tomorrow: We take a field trip to AMG in the Birmingham News building. Should be fun.
Cloudy and in the mid-60s today. For February? You take it. We’re going to get a bit more of the chilly stuff, you can count on it, but we can also enjoy the trend toward nice spring days.
Saturday mail delivery costs the U.S. Postal Service $2.7 billion a year, and it’s a burden the cash-strapped agency is trying to shed — to the dismay of greeting card makers everywhere. Cutting Saturday delivery is a key part of USPS’ five-year plan to save $20 billion by 2015, but it is bumping up against businesses such as Hallmark that benefit from six-day mail delivery.
That story also tells you Hallmark spent $240,000 for lobbying on postal issues. I wonder what Hoops and YoYo would say about that.
Yes, there are too few really good jobs and too many people fighting for them. Yes, salaries start out quite low. Yes, the hours can be long and irregular. Yes, the industry is in a period of extreme disruption, with lots of old jobs being destroyed, and the new ones typically offer less security and require different skills.
None of that changes the core fact here. For those who are cut out for it — and that’s definitely not everyone — journalism is a uniquely rewarding, wonderful career.
Where Visual Revenue believes it can add real value is in being able to recommend specific actions within an editorial framework outlined by the organization — that is, using an algorithm to tell a newsroom when it should tweet and also what it should be tweeting. Mortensen likens these computerized suggestions to the role of a deputy editor: Someone who knows the editorial values of the paper, and can determine the best publishing strategy as a result. Except, in this case, that someone is a robot.
“We set out with this idea of empowering the editor, but not to beat him to the extent where we can automate his job,” Mortensen said. “We actually sit down with the editor in chief and ask him, ‘Give me my instructions just like you tell your deputy editors what they can and cannot do.’ Then we simply adopt those, adhere to those as strictly as possible. And if I’m brutally honest with you, of all of the editors, you’ll see that we’re the only ones that only adhere to the guidelines because we’re an algorithm not a human.”
Another upshot: Non-humans aren’t tethered to print-era concepts that have bled into an online era of publishing. A robot doesn’t care about newsroom culture or tradition; it only cares about the data.
When the machines can accurately read the traffic flow patterns at intersections, that’s when you worry about them taking over. Until then, they are just helpful.
