The Yankee found it strange to hear Christmas music, outside at a florist in short sleeves.
I told her the leaves were turning …
Tuesday
13
Nov 12
Three limited stories
Sometimes I get to talk about a bit of public relations in class. I’m a journalist, of course. If I merged all those happy worlds I’d be a branded journalist along the fault lines where marketing and public relations meet. Admittedly this is a very narrow intersection. Even my general training and choices have turned me into a specialist, it sometimes seems.
So last week this class had a public relations professional in to talk about how all of the writing is very important, public relations is very important and — in big shops — the other multimedia skills you can learn right now are increasingly important. Be a general specialist, then.
It is a great specialty.
So today we talked press releases. The format, the style, the approach, all of it. My students were counting down to Thanksgiving — a week-and-a-half away — and you could see it in their eyes.
There was a great deal of commotion today having to do with a new lock in one of my departments. We’d opted to go away from the traditional physical key and get something modern and frustratingly elaborate. The new lock allows for combination codes. And it allows us to give everyone a different number for tracking purposes.
We thought about the two walled, biometric, fingerprint, eye scanner with a platoon of Israeli ex-special forces, but decided against them. We simply had nowhere to stow them when they weren’t on duty.
Instead I have another seven-character string to memorize. There are also two physical keys, of course, because the batteries on the lock system will eventually die. Or there could be an electromagnetic pulse. Or the lock could go rogue and decide to take over the world. Good luck with that, lock. You’re mounted to a heavy door!
Had dinner at Jason’s Deli tonight, where exactly nothing remarkable happened. There was a long line of people who had no idea how to order food for themselves, but they all knew each other and knew most everyone else dining at the place. The cashier now asks if this is the first time you’ve dined there before. One person that works there sees me enough to know better, but this person might be new. She might be a stickler for protocol. This could be the new protocol. Why not? The Chick-fil-A down the street now asks your name.
I think we’re getting a bit too personal with our fast food.
One thing did happen: I’ve noticed Jason’s Deli no longer puts a pickle spear on my plate. Maybe they’re trying to save at the margins. Guess I’ll have to get my money’s worth elsewhere.
I’ll take extra sunflower seeds from the salad bar. That’ll show ’em.
6
Nov 12
Election day
Autumn is here:
You can’t put that in a picture: the smells, the smiling sun, the sometimes crisp air, the crunch of leaves, the smell of that first wood fire in someone’s yard competing with the smell of a fresh lawn. You can’t capture that in a photograph and you can’t share it in a video. But we surely do try.
It was also election day today. I visited my polling place after breakfast. We vote in a hotel. The parking lot was full and so was the overflow lot next to them.
They have the sign-in stations organized by the alphabet, of course. I visit the Q-S line, which had three people in it. I was through the line quickly. Here’s my ID, there I am in your roster. Sign here and take your ballot.
She said they’d been busy since they opened at 7 a.m.
I sat down at a folding table. I was soon joined by a young lady who was making her first vote. She was pretty excited by this prospect, and busy asking her mother what all the amendments on the ballot meant. Her mother didn’t much know either. We had quite a few, and they aren’t written for a low reading level.
I ran my ballot through the machine, watched with pleasure as the tally ticked up one line. I politely turned down the “I voted” sticker, which seemed to throw the nice lady for a loop.
Someone lost their Voter ID registration card. I returned it to the help desk — there was a help desk — feeling it was part of my civic duty. Hopefully they can mail it to the lady.
I received emails from some of my students who were telling me they may be late to class. They were going to vote. One of those extra perks about teaching college students: they’re all getting their first vote this year.
They all made it to class on time, too.
We had a guest speaker in class today. At the end of his presentation there were still two more hours before the polls closed. I encouraged all of the local students, if they had not voted yet, to consider going to do so. “It will mean more to you as you get older.”
Our guest speaker agreed.
Went upstairs to the Crimson office. The news editor was designing a front page for a Romney win and another for an Obama win. I convinced her of the wisdom of designing a third one, a question mark. She started working on that.
Of course the race was all but over by the time I returned from dinner. They’re working long into the night on the paper.
I remember my first election coverage in 1996. I was writing for my college paper. I attended a county watch party. It was held in the same hotel where I voted today. A very inebriated lady of considerable local influence spent most of the party hitting on me. I left there to go to the other party’s headquarters and spoke with a newly elected congressman on the phone. From my place I called a new senator. His staff told me I would be a terrible reporter. I asked too many questions. It was a badge of honor.
I worked on that story late into the night, typing until morning time. I think I had two front page stories that issue.
Elections are like Christmas. And that’s one of the nights the recovering journalist misses being in a working newsroom.
I remember sleeping in my car for two hours on the night of the 2000 election. That was after watching the deadest watch party ever. The candidate hadn’t talked to the media or much of anyone, felt the whole ordeal was basically hers because she deigned run and was stunned when she lost badly. I feel asleep in my car that night, though, after working probably 20 hours, listening to the radio in the early morning. When I nodded off we didn’t know anything about what was really going on in Florida. I woke up before the sunrise to find we still didn’t know anything about what was happening in Florida. I worked all that Wednesday, but don’t remember much about it on zero sleep.
Like Christmas.
Maybe I’ll get a little more rest tonight.
30
Oct 12
Journalism in the clouds
Journalism, journalism, journalism. My day was just eaten up with the stuff.
All of the Sandy material in the world, it must be read, if not looked at. I find it harder and harder to look at hurricane damage. Tornado damage isn’t easy, but hurricanes, I’d rather just look away, if only I was allowed. Sometimes the work supersedes the want. Tornado damage, though, has a different scope. Devastating, sure, but to fewer people. The volume of a hurricane’s destruction is hard to comprehend and that can be a lot to bear.
Tornadoes? Not quite as bad. Or at least that’s what I thought until the giant tornado carved a path between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham last year. I’ve watched a lot of tornadoes. Chased a few, even. Seeing that monster on television was hard to watch, though. This one, from the ground during the same storm, I’ll never forget. The rotation is just behind the mall and you can tell from the shot how hard they were fighting against the wind. Those are just tornadoes, though, right?
The humanistic response outweighs the journalistic impulse and I think I’d be happy never to cover a hurricane, thanks. Just look at the scale:
Showed that in class today. And then we did Associated Press style for the rest of the afternoon. Then I had to give an interview to a student who is working on a project about the phone hacking scandal in London. She was a freshman, but she’s clearly done a lot of research and put a lot of thought into the project. It was a pleasant surprise. I figured we’d talk about ethics and process. Behave better, this is how this is supposed to work. She wanted to talk about organization. OK then, there were many corrupted people acting unscrupulously, and it seems to go all the way to the top.
From time to time someone wants to come and interview me about how some aspect of the working media operates. That’s wonderful and we should have more of that. This young lady pulled out her digital recorder and her pages of notes and I knew I was going to be talking for a while. It was a lot of fun. Hopefully I gave her something useful. And so we did.
Then, of course, tonight is the night the student-journalists put out their paper, too. So I stuck around for that so I could answer important stylistic questions like “Do you like this? Or that?”
There’s also reading things like:
Lance Armstrong shows why the disruption in journalism matters
Journalism ethics in a digital age
And my favorite, Drone journalism set for takeoff – once they’re permitted to use our airspace
I want one:
And here’s an entry-level, legal in the U.S. model, the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 It has limited range and altitude, of course, but it also has two cameras on it.
Here’s a video from a slightly more expensive make, shooting footage over Detroit:
Clearly you could get some great storm damage footage this way.
16
Oct 12
Tuesdays go so fast
An overcast, almost cool day. No wonder I saw cider at the store. We’re not there yet, but soon, I’m sure.
Saw this guy on the road this morning. Always nice to see them moving sedately down the interstate:
Saw this guy on a support column this evening. Always nice to see them wait for me to get the best shot I can, which is to say a blurry, fuzzy, nighttime snapshot off my iPhone:
In between I taught a class, arranged a big meeting with several publishers for next week, helped a student with a story, talked cutlines and all of the other rewarding things that go into a Tuesday. Life is pretty good, indeed.
Some things from the other blog:
