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Does this guy look familiar to you?

Yesterday I spent a few minute hanging some newspapers in our newsroom. I took a few ancient issues from frames that were tucked away in a corner and replaced them with more recent and better copy. Now we have a wall that shows off a strong front page from each of the last four years. It looks nice.

But that means I have some old yellow newspapers on my desk. And that means I got to read through them today. And that means I took pictures of the good stuff. Like this guy:

This pair were in the paper because they’d just had a great run at a national debate tournament. They placed in the top 10, having beaten Harvard and MIT and others along the way. Samford’s second team had a great showing, too, but, really, I think we can all admit now that the hair had something to do with it.

He has a very common name, which is a bummer, or I’d look him up and see what what road life has offered him. The newspaper is from 1978, and so many of the folks here are often well placed in their careers. Indeed, among the 1978 newspaper staff there is now a university provost, a reverend, an attorney, pediatrician, professor and more. They seem to have done well for themselves.

You can see a few more items from this 1978 newspaper on my Tumblr site, here, here, here, here and here.

The lead story in that issue was this guy who would soon have a concert on campus:

I have an entire drawer of clips from the 70s and 80s in my office. I’ll get to them soon. The Crimson is celebrating its 100th anniversary in the spring, so we’ll be looking at things a lot farther back than the Carter years. Even still, that hair was worth seeing, right?

The best 3:40 commercial you’ll see this year, and it is based in historical truth some 100 years ago:

There’s also a “making of” video and an “about our video” video. Because if you’re going to run a 3:40 spot, even online, go all out.

A history teacher friend of mine found that online. I was just having a conversation about why history is or isn’t interesting to people, and it so often comes down to the person in the front of a classroom somewhere. I had one great history teacher that made the things she taught about people and their emotions and motivations and not just names and dates, and here I am. I suspect that my history teacher friend, passionate as she is about her subject matter, inspires her students too.

Things to read … because a simple story can inspire, too.

100 years young, Tennessee woman sees the coast for the first time in Orange Beach:

Ruby Holt has seen a lot of things in her 100 years and counting (she’ll turn 101 next month) on this earth. She’s seen two world wars, a Great Depression, 17 presidents and more than a few hard times. But she’d never seen the beach until this week.

Holt made the six-hour trip from the Sterling House senior living facility in Columbia, Tenn., to fulfill a long-time dream of seeing the shore.

(That story made it on the BBC, too.)

Unfortunate news here, Boeing layoffs target 130 jobs in Huntsville, elsewhere

I’d want to change them too often, so I better not put my pictures on my shoes, How adidas puts your images on their shoes:

adidas has let the buying public in on a little secret: the ability to step into a production line with their own shoe design.

[…]

The concept started when adidas began promoting their own product with satellite images of cities such as London, Moscow and Berlin. “The design team was really amazed by the quality of the prints, which led to lively discussions about what other prints we could create,” Schumacher says. “This sparked the idea for an app.”

Customization, the micro-wave of today, the artist’s feet of the future.

The rhetoric being used here is something else, Apple and Others Encrypt Phones, Fueling Government Standoff:

The No. 2 official at the Justice Department delivered a blunt message last month to Apple Inc. executives: New encryption technology that renders locked iPhones impervious to law enforcement would lead to tragedy. A child would die, he said, because police wouldn’t be able to scour a suspect’s phone, according to people who attended the meeting.

If Disney features animals and toys talking behind our backs, and Tron was about the inner-workings of video games … well, wait until someone like Pixar gets a line on this, The Secret Life of Passwords

And that should just about be enough for today. Come back soon. There is always more to see.

journalism / links / music / photo / Samford / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
19
Nov 14

Winter breaks, and now to spring, right?

It has been cold. We have enjoyed bitter cold. Or, perhaps, the opposite. These last few days a few places have reported wind chills at 12 degrees. Twice we’ve had weather stations reporting morning lows lower than you can find on the northern shores of the 49th state.

When it is warmer in Barrow, Alaska …

But it has all turned a bit today, when it is only chilly. It isn’t the sort of “Oh we’re used to it, and so now it is just chilly” sort of day, but rather an invigorating sort of “take it outside while there’s still warmth in the sun to enjoy” kind of chilly.

I watched a lot of it pass by from my window, as usual.

So this guy goes on Chatroulette and gets people to sing songs with him. This is very helpful since I somehow found myself in a conversation about Taylor Swift today. I was able to retort with this:

If you didn’t watch, allow me to try one more time: I’m not sure if I preferred the Spiderman-Batman interaction or the grandma making it rain.

In class today we talked about user generated content, which I can sum up in one business card-sized image for anyone interested in curation and aggregation:

The Verification Handbook, an invaluable resource, has more on the subject if you’re interested.

That’s what they don’t see …

Sometimes that song isn’t so good, no?

One of our students, who is awesome:

@kennysmith My friends asked me why they haven't seen me in 9 days. I told them the @SamfordCrimson is a lifestyle, not a hobby.

— Emily Featherston (@feathers_878) November 20, 2014

Things to read … which are also awesome.

Polygraph Critic Charged with Training People to Thwart Polygraphs:

Williams is admitting to the charges. But why is his action a crime? Polygraphs have been notoriously unreliable for decades and their results are inadmissible in court because of that. A campaign to further undermine confidence in the technology is, if anything, laudable.

Nielsen to Measure Netflix Viewing:

Even as Netflix Inc. and other streaming-video providers have expanded to reach 40% of American homes, they have largely remained black boxes. They have refused to share data on how many viewers watch TV shows on their services, and there has been little independent data.

This looks to be about licensing, but I wonder if it will account for the times I inevitably fall asleep watching while I’m streaming something.

football / video / weekend — Comments Off
15
Nov 14

South! Alabama

You can’t get tired of these stories, I won’t let you get tired of these kinds of stories. This one has a cute addition to it. South Alabama’s football team signed a kid, Colby Sawyer, and name dropped Alabama and Auburn.

When you’re out-recruiting the Tide and Tigers, good things happen. As you’ll see in this video, the Jaguars are bowl eligible:

South Alabama is bowl eligible for the first time in just their second year in Division I. Some bowl better pick up this program.

Update: How awesome is this? They named Sawyer player of the week.

Pardon me, I have to go put on my Jags shirt.

food / Friday / links / things to read / video — Comments Off
14
Nov 14

Comet: Avoid green beans, eat doughnuts

Back to that comet for 90 seconds. USA Today offers us the chance to hear the spooky-beautiful “sound” the thing makes.

Sure, those are clicks and pops in the magnetic field, amplified for the human ear’s range. But why is it, Mr. Smart Space Guy, that science fiction always has a similar sound to the creatures who are chasing the protagonists?

Isn’t that neat? You just listened to a comet. The 21st century is a pretty amazing place. I’m happy to be here in it with you.

Today’s post is brief because there was class — we discussed aggregation and curation — and then reading a bunch of paper that had to do with a news story and then a flurry of emails about it, the last weighing in at something like 1,500 words, with three footnotes. (Pro tip: When you go back to revise and shorten the email and it just keeps growing, press send and walk away.)

Got home just in time for dinner, so we went out with our friend Sally Ann and had a wonderful Pie Day.

The vegetable of the day was green beans. I mention this because, even if you are a huge supporter of the vegetable of the day concept, there’s no way you can stand by green beans as being worth a mention.

I like green beans, but they hardly win any given day. But if you have a recipe to jazz them up, I’m ready to hear about it.

Adding almond slivers does not constitute jazzing up green beans.

I plan on being asleep before it gets late, so you can see why I’ve so quickly come to the green bean portion of the festivities.

I did not have green beans.

Things to read … because you have to provide nutrition for the brain, too.

This is a fine, worthwhile essay about events taking place at the high school level. There are a few issues on some college campuses, but nowhere near as many and, thankfully, not on ours. At the high school level is where you see the pernicious influence. Still, ever vigilant, First Amendment: In land of the free, why are schools afraid of freedom?:

In one community, for example, school officials ban coverage of student religious clubs while permitting coverage of all other student clubs. But in a very different community, administrators instruct students not to report on LGBT issues because a few parents once complained about a profile of a gay student in the school paper.

Under current law, school officials may review what goes into school publications (though they aren’t required by any law to do so). But they may not turn “prior review” into “prior restraint” with overly broad and vague restrictions on what student reporters may cover.

Unfortunately, many public school administrators are either unfamiliar with the First Amendment or simply ignore it.

It must be serious, the AP is writing about it, Facebook’s privacy update: 5 things to know:

Facebook doesn’t just track what you do on its site. It also collects information about your activities when you’re off Facebook. For example, if you use Facebook to log in to outside websites and mobile apps, the company will receive data about those. It also gets information about your activity on other businesses it owns, such as WhatsApp and Instagram, in accordance with those services’ privacy policies.

[…]

Everything is fair game. Facebook explains it best: “We collect the content and other information you provide when you use our Services, including when you sign up for an account, create or share, and message or communicate with others.” Plus, Facebook says it also collects information about how you use Facebook, “such as the types of content you view or engage with or the frequency and duration of your activities.”

This defies excerpting, but it confirms a lot of what you might have read soon after the recent fence jumper, Secret Service Blunders Eased White House Intruder’s Way, Review Says.

I’m trying to imagine my grandparents doing this. Go ahead, give it a shot, Adults Apparently Wanted Underoos So Badly, They’re Already Sold Out.

No?

Last week I was talking with a student and somehow we came to discover the Krispy Kreme Challenge. He’s a sprinter, but now I’m trying to talk him into doing this race — 2.5 miles, a dozen doughnuts and then 2.5 more miles. I’m going to do it in my neighborhood I said, just to see. I found the 2014 times of the race. If I can finish it, I at least won’t be last.

Well. Turns out there’s a Krispy Kreme Challenge in Huntsville, too. The 2-time Krispy Kreme Challenge champion explains how one prepares for 12 doughnuts and 4 miles in 1 hour:

“It’s mostly being in general good shape. There’s two components–running and eating. You can do one or the other, but the skill is to do both. This kind of race is hard to train for.”

This could be a mistake, but I think I might be that kind of guy. This could be a further, more grievous mistake, but next weekend I have a date with the track and a dozen glazed.

journalism / links / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
12
Nov 14

A comet, y’all

We landed on a comet today. Sure, you and I didn’t have anything to do with it — well, I, at least, didn’t have anything to do it it — but that’s OK. Sure, it was the European Space Agency and not the Americans, but we landed on a comet. Humanity did that. We did that.

We launched something into space 10 years ago, shot it around the earth a few times, Mars and then set it off on a course to catch up to this comet, this leftover from the universe’s creation.

And then our little science experiment, having made and matched the comet’s trajectory, dropped a clothes dryer full of equipment onto it and are talking with an appliance on a comet. I wonder if GE made it.

Oh, and has anyone seen Bruce Willis or Ben Affleck lately? They could be up there, ya know.

There’s a YouTube video titled “Everything Wrong With Armageddon In 14 Minutes Or Less.”

It is more than 16 minutes long.

And, someday, an alien culture will watch Armageddon. Just think on the stuff we’ve been beaming into outer space as our earliest socio-cultural first impressions.

Things to read … because reading always leaves a good impression.

I like the modifier here. As if to suggest that no other manager, nowhere, wants his employees to represent the company in a positive way, Salty Chick-fil-A manager makes list of forbidden words:

A Chick-fil-A manager is so irritated at his staff’s use of slang that he compiled a list of terms the employees are forbidden to use. The missive has gone viral in social media.

[…]

“You will speak properly when you walk through these doors,” he wrote. “You are a professional so speak professionally.”

I’m guessing … heavy print stock and laminate? What Pizza Hut’s Radical New Menu Actually Tastes Like:

On Nov. 19, Pizza Hut will essentially relaunch its entire brand, changing the food it serves, the way its ordered and even the company logo. There are 11 new signature pizzas, six new sauces, 10 new crust flavors and four drizzles — enough options to allow for 2 billion unique pizza combinations. For the company known for trencherman staples like Stuffed Crust, Meat Lover’s and Supreme, the new menu is the fast-food equivalent of a Hail Mary pass.

“It’s a fear of irrelevance,” says Darren Tristano, a food industry analyst at Technomic. “But the potential to negatively influence their current customer base is certainly there.”

It’s a risk Pizza Hut is willing to take, though they’re hedging bets by keeping those old favorites on the menu. Sales at the nation’s largest pizza chain have been dropping for two years, as Domino’s, Little Caesars and Papa John’s—the No. 2, 3 and 4 chains, respectively—have cut into Pizza Hut’s business.

As I tell my students on a regular basis, the “why” is almost always the most interesting part of any story: FSU postpones Jameis Winston hearing until Dec. 1.

This is big. In a tumultous period of advertising and what it means to newsrooms and media outlets, this is big: Half Of Automotive Advertising To Shift To Digital.

New rules for mobile journalism:

Although mobile publishing is quickly changing the rules of journalism, newspapers have been dangerously slow to adapt.

This has got to be fixed, because digital natives like BuzzFeed, Circa, Mic, Upworthy, Vice, Vocative and Vox are competing for – and in many cases winning over – the youthful readers coveted by publishers and advertisers.

As discussed previously here, nearly half of the digital page views at many newspapers are occurring on mobile devices. But editors and publishers have been slow to recognize that mobile publishing is as different from print-to-web publishing as television is from cave drawings.

Constrained screen real estate – like the new 1.5-inch Apple Watch – isn’t the only factor influencing the development of content for mobile devices. An even bigger issue is the limited amount of time that publishers can engage with readers.

And this may be bigger. As I also like to say, the only thing that has demonstrated a growth faster that web proliferation is the mobile penetration.

I bet Philae is up on that comet right now, just waiting on something to download to its iPad.