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The past and the present all come together on this page

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.

Rosa Parks is getting a stamp. She would turn 100 today.

You might not see that stamp on Saturdays:

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.

Journalism is the best job ever:

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.

Most of his reasons are wonderful. But I wonder: Does he have a robot?

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.

My friend Andre Natta at the Birmingham Terminal asked “What is Virtual Alabama?”

So glad he asked. In answering his own question he shared this case study, which really only seems to scratch the surface, when you think about it:

Finally, the Alabama Backroads Cycling Series. I want to do it. Think I might (try).

football / memories / Monday / site / video / weekend — Comments Off
3
Feb 13

Paul Harvey, FFA, Dodge win the Super Bowl

Maybe I’m aging out of the demographic. Maybe a lot of sponsors should demand their money back. Either way it seemed that with costs ranging from $3.8 to $4 million per 30-second spot, the value seemed to be lacking.

Unless you look at all of them as regressions, then even some of the average spots might get some Monday replays. For once the game was compelling, and you could actually leave the room during the breaks. In hours of programming, only spot one stood out.

Blake Harris wrote “So the only time all night the room has been totally silent has been during the Paul Harvey commercial. Everyone was glued to tv.”

You could write an essay why. Some obvious points — Paul Harvey, a way of life, a lack of shrill Madison Avenue attitude and agriculture — jump out.

Paul Harvey was the consensus best broadcaster in the business for generations. There’s not much argument on this, nor should there be. The industry won’t allow anyone like him again, let alone better than him. A statement like that owes a lot to his longevity and his staff, but the man had a voice and an intriguing pace. He had a touch with a microphone and everyone attached to his programming had a deft feel for a central element of society.

And maybe those times have changed. Demographies are always changing, improving and evolving. Maybe the people that could identify with Harvey are just living quietly and being drowned out by the morass of mass media. Maybe there’s a lifestyle of quiet humility and moral rectitude that is just beneath the surface. Maybe the spot appeals to a generational nostalgia for which we long. Maybe that’s gone forever. None of these are particularly true over another. All of those things — celebrated in a spot like that, by a man like that — still exist. They’re just a little harder to see because of all the other noise.

You’ve watched commercials, seen ads, felt the highs and lows of every medium. You’ve seen the Super Bowl spots. Reduce any of these things to their own elements. Make them stand alone, apart, from their advertising counterparts. They can be absurd, necessary of course, but absurd. Take your financial advice from a talking baby. Choose your insurance because an actor is pretending to be snow on a roof. Consider every ad produced since “Sex sells” became the first rule of the creative industry. There’s not much else to say about Madison Avenue after that. Perhaps an ad not designed to shock or titillate is actually a winner

Not to talk about that ad frame for frame, but that long, wide, bleak shot of that Angus at the beginning said so much about what you were about to experience. Paul Harvey was talking to the 1978 National FFA Convention in Kansas City in that speech, extolling the virtues of a way of life that, as a society, we’ve almost forgotten because most of us have never known it personally. Because of economic turns and technology and the postal system and education and all manner of things the farm has typically become a big corporate organization. There are less people doing the hard work to keep us fed, even as the production is increasing.

When Paul Harvey made that speech in 1978 the national numbers were:

Total population: 227,020,000
Farm population: 6,051,000
Farmers 3.4% of labor force
Number of farms: 2,439,510

Things were changing awfully fast. Still are, in many respects. These days only 1.96 million people in the U.S. are farmers or working directly in the agricultural industry whereas the nation is filled with an estimated 315,268,206 people as of this writing.

When I was in the FFA — I had the pleasure of attending five national conventions and served as a state officer in the Alabama FFA Association — the stat in use was that two percent of Americans were farmers. That percentage continues to decline, making a narrow part of the hourglass ever more slender.

There’s a movement afoot, the locavore movement, people that aspire to eat local produce, which would naturally promote a simpler example of farm economics. It must be serious because we’ve mangled words to create a new title for them within the language. Maybe a quiet shift is coming. Maybe there’s just a longing for a more romanticized time. Maybe it is just a great spot, filled with both nostalgia and truth.

Ultimately you take two iconic pieces of Americana, Paul Harvey and the men and women on the farm. (Yes, the spot needed migrant workers.) Put them in a quiet presentation that belies every other spot running against it with a tone that didn’t need to be crafted by a skyscraper executive* and you’ll beat a GoDaddy commercial every time. A Wall Street Journal blog has already called it “The Great American Super Bowl Commercial.”

Put together components that bespeak of a certain quite nobility, and you’ll get that.

Ram is raising $1 million for the National FFA Organization. Here’s how you can contribute. You can support them directly, too.

*Indeed, the Super Bowl spot was actually an updated version of this YouTube video that was uploaded in 2011:

football / Friday / music / recipes / video / YouTube Cover Theater — Comments Off
1
Feb 13

A recipe, a grand football joke and music

I made dinner last night, a new recipe for us, and very occasionally I share those here. So here’s the recipe.

My dinner started off with a chickpea salad with a homemade dressing. Make the dressing first:

1/2 cup – fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup – generic mild red wine vinegar
3 cloves – garlic
1 teaspoon – kosher salt
fresh black pepper

Mince the garlic cloves. Mix the liquids with the garlic. Add the salt and pepper. While that rests, put together your salad:

1 can – chickpeas/garbanzo beans
1 – large cucumber
1 tray – of grape tomatoes
1/4 cup – Athenos Garlic and Herb Feta cheese
1/4 cup – red onion
Fresh pepper

Quarter the cucumber. You should get around three cups. Halve the tomatoes, which should turn into about two cups. Rinse and add the chickpeas. Pour in the crumbled feta and diced onions. When ready to serve, strain any stray bits of garlic from the dressing and then pour into the salad, tossing to cover everything.

The main dish was ravioli with arugula and romano cheese:

1 pound – fresh or frozen cheese ravioli
1 clove of garlic
1/2 teaspoon – kosher salt
1/4 cup – extra-virgin olive oil
2 – shallots
3 tablespoons – red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon – honey Dijon mustard
3 cups – arugula (It’s a vegetable.)
Pepper to taste

Boil a pot of water while mashing your garlic (over salt) into smithereens, making a nice past-like substance. Drop the ravioli in your pot and stir. Let them boil until they float.

Pour your oil into a small skillet over medium. Add in your new garlic paste and diced shallots. Brown that mixture, which should be about two or three minutes. Then pour over it your vinegar, mustard and fresh pepper. Remove quickly from the heat.

Your ravioli is probably done by now. Drain that. Put it in a bowl, pour in the skillet’s contents and toss with your arugula. This is where your pecorino or parmesan goes. Serve hot. Enjoy a reasonably healthy meal.

Every so often I find something online and think “This, beyond the obvious military and financial and communication purposes, is what the web was made for.”

This is not that, but APAAWWWLLLLO 13 is worth seeing.

As has been correctly pointed out in the comments at SB Nation, Ken Mattingly, so ably played by Gary Sinise, is an Auburn man, and thus should not be cheering. Everything else feels wholly correct, however.

Naturally Forrest Gump is driving the thing.

YouTube Cover Theater: We find covers online and allow the talent of undiscovered folks playing music in their bedrooms and living rooms and kitchens to shine through. It is like every third show on network television, but without the more annoying parts.

Today’s featured covered artist(s) are the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. If you don’t understand their relative importance, open another tab in your browser and do a bit of Googling as these videos play.

First, here’s an older gentleman playing through a ceramic tunnel into the most acoustically vibrant church designed in the galaxy singing American Dream:

Mr. Bojangles:

OK, so this guy is singing this to his grandmother on her 80th birthday at her request. Automatic entry:

Two of these songs were written by Rodney Crowell, so I guess next week we’ll have to feature covers of songs he performed.

I like, even more than covers, on-stage collaboration. Here’s Nitty Gritty Dirty Band, Allison Kraus and others covering a Johnny Russell classic:

This became way more country-folk than I’d intended when I started. Enjoy the arugula!

history / Samford / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
30
Jan 13

Emergence — seemingly coordinated movement

Big storms, bad weather overnight and this morning. Campus delayed opening for a few hours. The most destructive elements of the storm were elsewhere, thankfully, not nearly as severe or widespread as it could have been.

There was a leak in my office.

My desk faces a wall. On the other side of that wall is a part of the campus radio station studio. Behind the wall to my desk’s right is part of the newspaper’s newsroom. The wall to my left opens to the exterior of the University Center. There’s a large, long window that looks out onto a green hill, a parking lot and a tree line in front of the next building up the hill.

From the top of that window there was a long, slow dripdripdrip. Under loud booms of thunder I called the facilities department to see about this leak. Our building is about 60 years old, so there are leaks from time to time. Offices across the hall had a good scare in the last year or so. The radio station had a leak, too, but managed to avoid damage. An office on the floor directly below the newspaper had a leak a few weeks ago. The folks that did the repair work surmised it must have gotten there from the newspaper, but we showed no damage. There are a few ceiling tiles in the hallway that have seen better days.

But now the gutter outside my window is threatening neatly stacked piles of paper filled with lecture notes and classroom exercises.

I met a man today who started his career at Samford years ago as a member of the campus safety department. He told me a story about working a late shift in the guard shack at the entrance in his first few weeks on the job.

A car pulled up, he asked to see some identification. The driver couldn’t produce any. He’d left his wallet and license at home.

The man, citing state law, said “I should make you park your car and call you a cab since you have no license with you.”

The driver said he’d turn around, head home and fetch his ID.

The next day the new guard was talking to his boss, who’d just had a conversation with his boss. They talked about the man he’d encountered last night. Older gentleman. Tall. Well dressed. Turns out the car was driven by Dr. Thomas Corts, the president of the university. The new employee didn’t recognize him.

The president said the man at the guard shack had behaved appropriately. And he should never do that to the president again.

We all had a nice laugh. Corts stepped down as the university president in 2006 and died four years ago. People still tell great stories about him. They all have some lesson in them, which is probably one of those marks of a good man. This one was pretty clear: You never know when you’ll meet someone important to you.

We talked about those kinds of first impressions in class a bit today. We talked career expos, first impressions and so on. It was resume day for the intro class. The Career Development Center led a great discussion on the Dos and Don’ts.

Rule Number One: Don’t use your mother as a reference.

Things to read: 4 TED Talks every journalist should watch.

For 40 years, this Russian family was cut off from all human contact, unaware of World War II:

Led by Pismenskaya, the scientists backed hurriedly out of the hut and retreated to a spot a few yards away, where they took out some provisions and began to eat. After about half an hour, the door of the cabin creaked open, and the old man and his two daughters emerged—no longer hysterical and, though still obviously frightened, “frankly curious.” Warily, the three strange figures approached and sat down with their visitors, rejecting everything that they were offered—jam, tea, bread—with a muttered, “We are not allowed that!” When Pismenskaya asked, “Have you ever eaten bread?” the old man answered: “I have. But they have not. They have never seen it.”

Birds dancing in the sky, beautiful and hypnotic:

I remember discussing this phenomenon in a leadership class once, discussing birds flying in formation. Emergence:

A school of fish or a flock of birds is not controlled by any leader. Instead, it emerges naturally as each individual follows a few simple rules, such as go in the same direction as the other guy, don’t get too close, and flee any predators.

Surely someone made some sort of Aristotelian reference. Of course Aristotle also thought it was transmutation … But Aristotle had a lot to say about rain.

journalism / links / music / Samford / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
23
Jan 13

Voices of the past

I am not sure where today went. I’m going to blame the emails, literally hunders of them, that I wrote today. Also there was reading materia. Reading my material and then reading for a class I’m teaching. Somehow the day disappeared.

So, here, have some interesting links.

As ESPN Debated, Manti Te’o Story Slipped Away:

Some inside the network argued that its reporters — who had initially been put onto the story by Tom Condon, Te’o’s agent — had enough material to justify publishing an article. Others were less sure and pushed to get an interview with Te’o, something that might happen as soon as the next day. For them, it was a question of journalistic standards. They did not want to be wrong.

Bless those hearts full of integrity. What’s that ESPN? Yet another bizarre update in the bizarre story? OK:

A source close to Te’o gave ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap documents that the source says are Te’o’s AT&T phone records from May 11 to Sept. 12, the date that the woman was supposed to have died. The logs are not originals, but spreadsheets sent via emails, and could not be independently verified.

They re-wrote it, but I recorded the original passage on Twitter. The earlier version said “Their veracity couldn’t be independently confirmed, but the source insisted they are genuine.”

The source insisted. In a story about hoaxes. Journalistic standards.

Jobs: Recession, Tech kill middle-class jobs:

Five years after the start of the Great Recession, the toll is terrifyingly clear: Millions of middle-class jobs have been lost in developed countries the world over.

And the situation is even worse than it appears.

Most of the jobs will never return, and millions more are likely to vanish as well, say experts who study the labor market.

On the other hand, Lowe’s is hiring 54,000 and 9,000 permanently. And union membership is down in Alabama.

Finally, A 1951 home recording from Hazel Street. Kim and Herb are celebrating 25 years, and all of their friends recorded a message on a Wilcox-Gay Recordio.

That’s via James Lileks. And since he didn’t, I’ll wonder why it is that this recording fascinates in ways 60 years from now that nothing we produce on Instagram or Pinterest or anywhere else won’t in 2075.

Here’s Bill Wagner, a coal man, who — think about this — was about to hear his recorded voice for the first time ever.

Here’s a raucous group sing:

Here’s evidence that teenaged girls have giggled for generations. This song is from 1935, the first country song by a female artist, Patsy Montana to sell more than one million units. So maybe this was recorded by amateurs now lost to history in the 40s or 50s.

Here Albert is recording a message in California for friends or family back home in the midwest during World War II:

Those were all thrift store finds. This one is a family heirloom:

There are at least several dozen of these on YouTube. I could listen to them all day.

That is not where my day went.