IU / Monday / photo / television / video — Comments Off on It will be a light, long week here
28
Feb 22

It will be a light, long week here

The day started bright and sunny, and the week is trending that way, according to the forecasts. I will see it in the morning, and that’ll be about all I see of it this week. There’s a lot going on, and it’ll be lighter than usual here.

So almost non-existent?

If you want to be cynical about it, dear straw man construct.

What would be the point of inventing this dialogue, otherwise?

To pad the post with paragraph breaks and an empty construct?

Who’s being cynical now? And on Monday, even.

Exactly.

It was a day full of meetings, most of them over Zoom. I don’t know if you’ve been in a meeting where the person in every Zoom window simultaneously raised their eyebrows and watched 10 pairs of eyes get wide simultaneously, but that happened in my first meeting of the day.

Someone mentioned something about a specific deadline on a particular project which pushed things up considerably. No one else was familiar with this date. I consulted two notebooks and my batch of post it notes and saw no such date. We decided maybe the speaker had misspoken. Perhaps he was thinking of another deadline for another project, and another group of people. It would be understandable, everyone has more than one project.

One of my large projects will wrap this week. I’ve been producing a singing contest show. And my last meeting of the day was with the organizers of that event. We have the names of the contestants now. Eighteen will enter, 10 will advance to the finals. Fortunately, I do not have to produce the finals. I spent three-and-a-half hours on the semifinals this thing, going over details we should have well in hand by now. But at least some of them are in, so I can finally write the show’s rundown. Another meeting on this tomorrow, and more all week. At some point all of the music will come in. And the scripts. And the entire speaker’s list. At least I have a crew for the show.

We have hit none of the deadlines I established for this project. It will still be better organized than when we did this same event last year.

Here’s a show the students posted this weekend. I like the shows like this, where the crew working on it just seem to be having a ton of fun.

They, and their fellow IUSTV crews, will produce at least six studio shows this week. It’s a delight to watch them grow.

Anyway, I left the office at 7:30 tonight and, yes, I am keeping score.

Let’s check in on the cats, as we so often do on Mondays. Phoebe found some morning sun and proves once more that it’s a pretty good life to be a cat in this house.

Poseidon would agree, except I framed this so that his sister said it. So, to be difficult, he would probably find fault with that, and try to bite her. It’s a good thing he’s occasionally charming, I tell him, he can be a trying cat.

Not that you’d ever know it from handsome looks like that.

(I have to play this cool and dish out some compliments. He’s sitting next to me as I type this.)

Friday / IU / journalism / television / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Let me eat all the cake
26
Feb 22

Let me eat all the cake

After hours cake in an after-hours newsroom. I passed through the campus paper’s office as they were wrapping up the 155th birthday celebration of the IDS. Think of that, a student newspaper for 155 years! I have a reprint of the original front page, and, today, I had the last piece of cake.

Didn’t taste a day over 135 years old.

Also this week we learned that one of the writers of that august publication was a finalist for a prestigious national Hearst Award, continuing a 12-year consecutive streak of having a finalist or winner from IU. Also, the current editor-in-chief of the paper was named the photojournalist of the year by the Indiana News Photographers Association.

Furthermore, we learned that a podcast two of our interns worked on are nominated for an NAACP Image Award this weekend.

Other students were raising money for a high school newsroom this week. Game design students saw the video game debut at Steam’s Next Fest, and still more game design students rolled out their game for sale this week.

The TV crowd just kept producing television. Eight shows this week, and here’s the seventh of them, now.

Taken altogether, it was a pretty good week for people who are anxiously eyeing spring break.

And next week gets really busy.

(I’m anxiously eyeing spring break, too. And next weekend.)

IU / photo / Thursday / video — Comments Off on Talked with someone in Ukraine today
24
Feb 22

Talked with someone in Ukraine today

The guy in the front of the room in the picture below is one of our professors. He keeps in touch with some of his former students and one of them is a graduate school alumnus who works in Kyiv. She joined the professor’s broadcast media analysis class to talk about what she and her family have seen and heard and done in the early hours of Russia’s invasion and war with Ukraine.

She wrote an opinion piece for CNN this morning, and had this chat and we captured some video. She talked about spending a night finding all the fallout shelters and gathering things in case they needed to evacuate. She talked about hearing artillery shelling and distracting her kid with Ironman movies. She said they’ll all probably sleep in their clothes tonight, just in case they need to scramble.

Of course, cats the world over understand video chats, and hers cat tried to steal the show. She said the cat carriers are prepped, as well.

There’s just a little something there, at the end of that video, that will stick with you.

To be in a war, to know it is coming close to your home. To have the composure she had this afternoon. It’s a scary, impressive thing.

To lighten the mood, let’s take a look at some of the sports shows the IUSTV gang produced last night. Here’s the highlight show.

And here’s one of their new sports talk shows. They are discussing basketball, of course. It is Indiana, after all.

There’s another sports show, and so much other stuff, tomorrow. It, and the weekend, are only a day away.

IU / photo / television / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on It’s a Wednesday
23
Feb 22

It’s a Wednesday

I know, I know, I haven’t shown off the kitties yet this week. Let’s fix that right away! I know! I know! Some of you come here specifically for that.

Phoebe has been enjoying some extra blanket time in the chilly weather.

But Poseidon found some sunshine and contented himself with catching some rays.

He is not happy with my work schedule. Far too much time in the office, not enough time petting him.

And Phoebe says I should stop working at home.

They might be on to something, I don’t know.

One of those not-sure-how-it-got-away-from-you days, but there it was, full and complete and long and mildly interesting. After the day of editing and emails and meetings and Zooms, it was time for a night in the studio. Tonight was a sports night.

Those two shows will be up tomorrow. I’ll share them here then, of course. But, right now, I can show you the shows the news division did last night. Here’s the regular news show. It’s a nice, short, tight newscast with tons of information, well packed and delivered.

And here’s the magazine style show.

More tomorrow. Until then, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account. And keep up with me on Twitter, but don’t forget my Instagram. There are also some very interesting On Topic with IU podcasts for you, as well.

IU / journalism / photo / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off on Your personal blog experience
22
Feb 22

Your personal blog experience

One overused word is narrative. Another is polarized. Right behind those two is experience.

Ummm, no.

One of the downsides to the phone experience since we all got portable phones in the 90s has been the hang up experience. You just can’t slam the phone down. You removed the phone from your face and … pressed a button. This disappointing experience has continued into the smartphone era. Even worse, the other person doesn’t get a dial tone experience.

Similarly, I can’t have a satisfying tab-closing experience. I read that and could only role my eyes and press the X to close the screen — which I could not do fast enough.

I do not need a personalized registration experience. I need only to beat the human rush and avoid lines.

Whatever consultant told the comms and coding people to write that needs a new kind of working experience.

I saw this this morning.

Modernist avant-garde is now ubiquitous and contemporary, and today I sat in that spot just long enough to contemplate it. What do you suppose those are made of? They’re too high up in a ludicrously tall room to tell.

What do you suppose the artist’s intention was? There’s no sign I saw that offered an interpretation.

What do you think the artist was thinking about when they got this commission? When they were planning this out? When they watched hoisted to the ludicrously high ceiling?

That’s always the real question, really.

The other, I suppose, is how many people have contemplated these same questions? And other questions? And what answers did they conjure for themselves? It’s all a new thing, so probably not many, and who knows, and wouldn’t it be worrying to know the answer to that last one?

Though, some sort of interactivity would be nice. An artistic suggestion box, if you will. What did you think when you saw this installation of glass and aluminum and nylon string? You could see the artist saying “I’ll take all of this into consideration on my next project,” until they saw the replies they received.

Then they, too, will know about the comments.

Studio night, and it was a good one.

That’ll all be online tomorrow, and I’ll share it here. See you then!

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