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Tuesday

journalism / links / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
14
Sep 10

John Mayer quit Twitter

That was on a quiz I gave today. Students get the occasional pop quiz on current events. I’d love to ask 10 serious news questions — and a few students, I think, would do well. My news tastes aren’t all of the news, though, so I ask a sports question and an entertainment question and so on.

And since we established that John Mayer quit we’ll just have to see if Twitter can keep moving on Bieber power.

Anyway. Met with the boss and got my class assignments for next semester.

I taught class. We discussed punctuation and edited a few sample pieces. I showed off the regrettable cover Newsweek recently published. I asked them to find the typo. They stared down every word, reassuring themselves that coddling was spelled correctly. Until, finally they found it.

Met with a student. Had a sales meeting. Turned over a big stack of phone numbers and business cards as leads. (Anyone around Lakeshore or Greensprings or Homewood looking to advertise? Never hurts to ask.)

Had a talk with the sports editor. Our paper’s style calls for student-athletes to have their position on the team, their year in school and their major. It is a challenge to get it all in, but keep the story moving. The staff is picking up the touch quickly, though.

It adds up to the better part of a day, somehow. The rest of the evening has been spent on the newspaper.

Had Milo’s for dinner. The tea was not good. This is an insignificant observation to most people who might ever stumble across this post, but those familiar with the chain are right now recoiling in horror. This is a hamburger chain that is really centered around a drink. McDonald’s doesn’t distribute their beverages in stores around the region. Milo’s does. And, tonight, at one of the restaurants, the tea was off.

Journalism links: Apparently we still need to discuss the potential non-dangerous of SEO for journalism. Having actually gone through this in the halcyon days of 2007 I’d just assumed everyone had figured this out. It is a nice piece, though, and the comments, as always, are instructive.

How are you getting your news? And how much time are you doing it? Pew knows. The graphic, and this paragraph have a big hint:

In short, instead of replacing traditional news platforms, Americans are increasingly integrating new technologies into their news consumption habits. More than a third (36%) of Americans say they got news from both digital and traditional sources yesterday, just shy of the number who relied solely on traditional sources (39%). Only 9% of Americans got news through the internet and mobile technology without also using traditional sources.

Plenty of more great details can be found in the bullets at the bottom of that page.

And now, for a random link, the $6 million man will be from SMU:

(A) $5.6-mil Neurophotonics Research Center (will) develop prosthetic limbs using fiber optics that actually feel things like pressure and temperature. Says SMU: “Lightning-fast connections between robotic limbs and the human brain may be within reach for injured soldiers and other amputees.”
[…]

(I)f all goes according to plan, SMU’s researchers will also use the DOD’s dough to fashion “brain implants for the control of tremors, neuro-modulators for chronic pain management and implants for patients with spinal cord injuries.”

Science fiction is science now.

Back in a bit with today’s black and whites.

journalism / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
7
Sep 10

Teaching grammar is fun, making newspapers is more funner

Kidnappers are dumb. Seems to be a universal thing, as Japanese reporter Kosuke Tsuneoka can attest:

A Japanese journalist held hostage in Afghanistan for five months managed to send out a message via Twitter that he was alive when his captors asked him how to use a cell phone.

Just days before he was freed, Kosuke Tsuneoka said one of the militants brought him his new cell phone and asked the prisoner to set it up.

The younger militants were more interested in accessing Al-Jazeera on the phone, but Tsuneoka managed to shift their attention to Twitter, successfully getting them to ask him to demonstrate how it worked.

“That’s how I got the message out,” Tsuneoka told a news conference in Tokyo on Tuesday, a day after he arrived safely back in Japan. “I’m sure they never thought they were tricked.”

Then you must also question the sanity of some reporters, as well. Tsuneoka was also kidnapped in Georgia (the country) in 2001.

Oh we all want to be war reporters, but you don’t think about the possibility of being kidnapped or the even more attractive things like dysentery and getting shot at. War reporting sounds like so much fun.

Taught 90 minutes on grammar today. I spent an inordinate amount of time preparing the lecture yesterday. It isn’t the most fun class the students have, but it is necessary. They were patient, though, and laughed at all the right places. Next week I’ll change things up and we’ll discuss … punctuation!

Meanwhile, the editorial staff was spending the night putting together their first newspaper of the new school year. It’ll be on newsstands tomorrow. I looked over their shoulders a bit. It should be a nice start for an almost entirely new staff.

If they can ever get finished. This is usually a late-night-early-morning process. The beginning of the year even more so since there are the inevitable software struggles and design difficulties.

It’s a long day, but a rewarding.

I wrote something on Auburn’s season opener for al.com today. (They didn’t link to me, unfortunately, so I’m not going to waste a lot of time on it.)

My inbox has been full of the comments that came in under that contribution, though. Most of it from Alabama fans. Using the prevailing logic they must be very concerned about Cameron Newton. I don’t blame them. The guy is terrifying.

Tomorrow, newspaper, meetings, studying, the 1939 World’s Fair and probably more.

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31
Aug 10

What has happened to our conviction?

First class of the semester. For the professor in me, at least. Samford gets the benefit of a later start. Classes began yesterday, mine kicked off this afternoon. I’m teaching editing to a class full of eager young student journalists. I’ve had some of these students in previous classes.

We did the standard fare introductory stuff and then I gave a quiz. Now I’m that professor.

I showed them this video:

The point of the video being to speak and write with conviction and purpose. Seemed appropriate for an editing class. Took them a while, but they got into it by the end.

Should be a good class, if the professor does a good job with his part.

Had a meeting with the boss. Had a meeting with our new sales manager. We brain stormed ideas and then a few more and then one or two more besides. Now she just has to go out and spread the good word. Had a third meeting.

And then I read a lot.

My reading

That’s for class on Thursday.

The black and whites will be up shortly, but that’s it for the day. Tomorrow will be more workshop stuff, more studying, more work. More more more. (And another new, September long feature.)

memories / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
24
Aug 10

Sales meeting, and also, Ted Turner

Getting to be that time of year again:

Samford fanfest

Incidentally, that white vehicle on the left margin? That’s an armored truck absolutely running through a stone cold red light. Almost whacked that car, which was turning under a supposedly protected green arrow. I hope the money made it to wherever 45 seconds earlier than necessary. But I digress.

I stopped by an outdoors store — where they pay a guy to ride a forklift, full time, moving giant gun safes back and forth across the parking lot. It is a curious activity. Anyway, I’d stopped there because I have this old knife:

USMC knife

My great-grandfather gave it to me, years ago. It is a Marine Corps knife, though my grandfather was in the army. (You can read a bit more about the knife here and here.) He was a medic in Europe, earned a silver star and a purple heart. After the war he came home, never talked about it, raised his family and farmed his land. I think, if I remember correctly, he found this on the side of the road and gave it to my mother to give to me when I became old and smart enough to not cut off my hand.

Not that there’s any danger of that right now. The blade needs sharpening. But, otherwise, it is in great shape, except that the one tang has the point snapped off. The blades need a good deal of cleaning. I know a little about knives, enough to know you can damage them if you clean them incorrectly. So I’ve been hoping, for a while, to find a knife expert. Hence the outdoor store.

Find the knife counter, they had a knife counter, and the guy working there interrupts his conversation with another man who was Ted Turner.

Or his twin.

And, yes, you’d think he would have been taller. In the South the man is as big as life itself. In person, this gentleman was about five-foot-four.

The guy behind the counter says he can show me what I need. He leads me away. I apologize to Mr. Turner, who says “A great-grandfather’s knife is far more important than I am.”

Which is how I realized that the man I met wasn’t Ted Turner. There’s no way that guy is as cool as this guy.

The stuff I need, is a product called Flitz. Wash the blades with a mild dish soap, he said. Dry it. And then go to work on it with Flitz. It will take elbow grease, but it will shine the blades up nicely, he said.

I’ll let you know how the project turns out.

Met the new sales manager today. She’s a nice young lady. I try not to overload them with too much material all at once, but sometimes there is just a lot to be shared. We talked for about an hour about rate cards and sales approaches and this and that. I think she’ll do a very nice job.

I’m going to sit down with the Samford Crimson staff next week and talk about goals and achievements and try to start them out with a good, passionate first step. The are a little young, this year, but there’s a lot of potential in the group and I expect they’ll take some great strides and be doing great things before the year is out.

No pressure.

At the gym I had a monster workout. Basically doubled the reps on squats and lunges. I did way too many trapezoid curls. I did abs. I rode 30 miles. All together it was a two-hour endorphin ride. That ended before I even made it to the shower, unfortunately. But! But. If I could work out for two hours on a regular basis I’d be very pleased with myself.

If only.

Tomorrow: I work the phones. I read. And the 1939 World’s Fair will make a comeback.

Alabama / Auburn / memories / site / Tuesday — Comments Off
17
Aug 10

The last of it

The final hours of summer are upon us. I had a meeting at Alabama Monday, and a class there Thursday. I have a workshop to attend at Samford that afternoon. We’re jumping right into the fall.

You forget how much you appreciate the summers when adulthood turns you into a 40 hour a week, 50 or more weeks a year person. That happened to me. Summer wasn’t a time to be off, but rather a time to work some more. So it was just more time. It was time out of time, which is what summer is, for children, but only different.

Two years ago when I returned to campus professionally I looked forward to the summer. All that happened during those three months was marriage, a promotion, a move and the busiest nine hours of my graduate school career. It didn’t feel especially like summer. Which was fine. I’d been used to that for years. Long years, in fact. It has been 20 summers since I’ve had either no classes or no job.

And so this summer, I’ve looked forward to it for some long time. All we did was go to Europe, buy a house and move. I did the tiniest bit of research, the smallest bit of work and otherwise enjoyed the summer. And got spoiled by it.

Now we return to reality. I have class and work and they are wonderful and I’m blessed that this is my career and my daily experience, truly. (But wanting a little more summer is only natural, right?) Next summer — not that I’m looking that far ahead — I’ll be finishing my dissertation. I’m guessing that won’t feel like much of a break, but this one has had a very nice feel.

One of those many signs of the return of campus obligations is the dreadful Beloit list. This was, once upon a time, a more entertaining collection. It is aimed at professors, to try and give them some humor and insight into the cultural positioning of incoming freshmen. I suppose it also makes some professors feel old. It also stretches the bonds of credulity:

9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.

12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.

65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.

72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.

9. But probably not, since Hal was a robot. In space. And also because the Cyrus family is only going to one campus this fall. Odds are it isn’t yours, no matter what that girl in freshman bio said about seeing Hannah Montana in the quad.

12. This presupposes that every student stays away from cable television and has no fathers, grandfathers or other family members with a predisposition to westerns.

65. Is just insulting, really.

72. A humanities professor is tied to this list, but he should have spoken with his political science colleagues. Surely they speak here of Clinton, but in reality it has forever, and shall always be, about the economy.

The list also stretches the boundaries of chronology:

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.

1. I know that they are teaching to the test at elementary and grade schools now, but surely there is an itinerant English teacher who insisted they could pull off a cursive lowercase F if need be.

19. Really? The timing of these just looks at things like market penetration of wireless and cell phones, but doesn’t consider the ubiquity of former tools. Some people still even have these phones, which mean the class of 2020, even, will know that plastic, rubbery feel.

28. I’m testing this on my students and will let you know the results.

Others are there to indulge the righteousness of the professoriate:

21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.

41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.

42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.

21. While I’m betting the wrist gesture still works, I’m certain Woody Allen is far removed from the students’ minds, to say nothing of Soon-Yi. But he’s important to some film prof.

41. Because the political nuance must be attended.

42. That Dan Quayle sure was dumb.

Now let us do the math. By comparison of years, the Beloit Mindset list — had it existed when I was a freshman, would have referenced something Walter Mondale did in office. None of us would have understood the reference, either. Which is the point of the list, I suppose.

Usually, this is a better instrument of enlightenment, of whoa and wow. Perhaps, though, we’ve reached a point where the changes over the course of a generation are less earth shaking. Maybe we’ve reached the post of post-modernity. For example, “The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy” isn’t keeping kids up nights. Today’s students, their peers nor their peers likely sit to reflect on annus horribilis.

“Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.” But, then, REM was creeping onto the classic rock station when I was in undergrad. And “The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.”

Have I told you the story of last year’s freshmen? I did a presentation with this picture:

I asked “Who knows who this man is?”

Nothing.

Crickets.

The man had been off the air for only five years.

See the entire Beloit list here. Enjoy more cogent thoughts on the subject from the always impressive James Lileks.

Elsewhere I used today productively. I struggled with and tried three different ways to build the websites The Yankee wanted. She had one lapse on her a while back and since her classes are starting these things must be restored. I experimented, about a month ago, actually, with the WordPress MU platform. I have a small handful of photo blogs I’m running off of MU. I figured it out in an hour or two.

And so, naturally, when I settled in to do this for her I found that WordPress has incorporated the MU into their basic platform now. Somehow the changes and how to make it work escaped me. We came up with a workaround, however. This was my afternoon. I tinkered with code and listened to hours of TiVoed television. Lovely afternoon.

Tomorrow you’ll see the beginning of the 1939 World’s Fair project. You can hardly wait.

Tomorrow I’ll get a hair cut. I can hardly wait.