Winter in S.C.: Snow, earthquake - cue the locusts.

Two winter storms and now an earthquake remind me of 1986 in Dayton, Ohio, when I was AP correspondent there.

For several days a chemical-filled train that had derailed burned in nearby Miamisburg, throwing a cloud of smoke filled with who-knew-what (authorities certainly weren't sure) over the area and leading to one of the largest U.S. evacuations related to a train accident.

I had the job of covering it - more than 72 hours straight. I'd managed to get inside the police lines and to the warehouse about a quarter mile away that they had set up as a command post. The surrounding area had turned into a ghost town.

That same week, in golf, the Women's Open was being played at the NCR Country Club. It was touch and go as they kept a wary eye on the cloud. It was also brutally hot.

And then came monsoons. All in all, a fine week.

So there I was (having finally gotten a few hours' sleep) in the AP cubicle in the old Dayton Daily News building pounding out the requisite Sunday recap/thumbsucker, having just read a lede about the golf tourney in (I think it was) the Boston Globe that went something (as best as I can remember it): "We've had the fire. We've had the flood. Now all we need is the earthquake."

Sure enough, as I'm sitting there, a mag 3 or so temblor hits.

I swore, if I ever met that writer, I would throttle him.

Firefox version whatever

With the announcement that Firefox, now in new version 15, will soon be coming out with version 17 - continuing the annoying march of full version updates that sent websites scrambling to update (while we all get nag notices), here's my take on things:

2011 AP stylebooks a hot item?

Amazon is listing a new edition of last year's AP stylebook for $134.78 and used from $112.29.

Who knew these would become high-priced collector's editions, eh?

I'm thinking #pricefail here.

I especially love this above the display:

When you buy this book now for $112.29 and sell it back later for a $0.26 Amazon.com Gift Card, it could cost you as little as $112.03.

And don't forget that free (!) two-day shipping for students.

(I can probably cut you a deal on one of these for, say, just $105 {grinnnnnnnn}.)



A tip o' the hat to Karen Flowers for the outpoint.

Get your AP Stylebook T-shirts while they're hot

AP Stylebook T-shirts (and you'd better get that right, not t-shirts or tee-shirts {grin}).

Definitely should be in the pile of holiday packages for every copy editor.

ACES should include one in the goodie bag for everyone that goes to its New Orleans meeting in April.

Love the slogan: "We wrote the book on style. Edited it, too."

More J-reality bites and the reality of PR and journos

Folks have been having fun with Xtranormal, producing all sorts of videos about the new realities in journalism. (See earlier post.)

A few samples. Let's start with Freelancing 1.



And Freelancing 2:



Another bit on the relationship between journos and PR:

Funnies: World News Now TSA parody

From the folks who brought you the annoyingly funny "World News Now Polka" (http://vimeo.com/2239164 - see if you can get it out of your head once you've listened to it)

Here's a TSA Parody Polka video. (Caution, language has slight yellow tinge.)



Happy travels!

RSS? We don't need no stinkin' RSS

I love this photo that Brain Traffic has labeled "RSS in the olden days."

When did we get away from the idea that serving readers was a key job, even if it meant posting the news in the window?

I guess this might also be a metaphor for paywalls.

English R.I.P

Being perpetually behind in my reading, I just now caught up with this Sept. 19 column by Gene Weingarten on the untimely passing of the English language.

A moment of silence please.

I'd laugh, if I weren't crying so hard.

Actually, I was laughing after this sendup video about usage by the Guardian's David Mitchell. (Mentioned by one of the commenters to the Weingarten column.)

Hed of of the month club

You just can't make this stuff up:

A tip of the hat to Alex Riley for the pointer.

Journalism warning labels - gotta have 'em

Oh, I love this! (A tip of the hat to former student Justin Fenner for the pointer.)

British comedian Tom Scott has prepared a set of journalism warning labels that can be printed off and pasted on your favorite dead-tree version (or, we assume, in a corner of your TV set or computer monitor).

These hit soooooo close to home (and, of course, that is why they are so dang funny, if not sad at the same time). In the U.S., the British spellings give it a nice little twist.

North, S.C.

One of my great joys as an AP news editor was conversations with the New York general desk about localisms.

For instance, there was the time a New York editor during our coverage of the killing of James Jordan (Michael Jordan's father), told me that the distance from Columbia to McColl on the N.C.-S.C. border where the body was found (about 90 miles as the crow flies and a fair amount more by rural two-lane road) looked to her "like a short cab ride."

But my favorites were sending New York stories with South Carolina's strange datelines: Norway, Denmark, Ninety Six, Due West, etc.

None was funnier than to send the desk a story with the dateline of "North, S.C.," which brought the inevitable call*:

N.Y.: Hi, xxxx on the general desk. About this story. North what ...

Me: Just North.

N.Y.: Yes, but North what?

Me: North. North, South Carolina.

N.Y.: Yes, I know. But North what in South Carolina?

Me. No. Just North. The name of the town is North.

N.Y.: Yes, I understand. But North what?

etc.

(*Any resemblance to the old Abbott and Costello routine is entirely intentional - and real.)

Meanwhile, others on the desk, hearing my side of the call and knowing it was from New York (we'd given the general desk folks a special number so when it rang we knew it was them), were splitting a gut in laughter.

Don't believe me? Check out this You Tube video from the revival of "You Bet Your Life" with Bill Cosby:

Does Christ have a PR agent?

OK, this is one of those stories to read on a Monday morning just -- well, just because. From the Berkshire Eagle, outpointed by Bonnie - thanks.

Best line:
Christ could not be reached for comment Friday.

For when you get that Irish pub Jones

Now here's a Web site we can all get behind: http://www.irishbeerfinder.com/

Internet Writing Syllabus

I had not seen this till a friend showed it to me today -- Robert Lanham's "Internet-age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview."

It has such nuggets as:

Instant messaging. Twittering. Facebook updates. These 21st-century literary genres are defining a new "Lost Generation" of minimalists who would much rather watch Lost on their iPhones than toil over long-winded articles and short stories. Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness. All without the restraints of writing in complete sentences. w00t! w00t! Throughout the course, a further paring down of the Hemingway/Stein school of minimalism will be emphasized, limiting the superfluous use of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, gerunds, and other literary pitfalls.

Evaluation: Students will be graded on the RBBEAW* system, developed to assess and score students based on their own relative merit.

A+ = 100–90
A = 89–80
A- = 79–70
A-- = 69–60
A--- = 59–50
A---- = 49–0

Instructor: Robert Lanham, star of the vblog series Writer's Block: Embrace It—Stop Wasting Time and Live!

- - - -

* Raised by Boomers, Everyone's a Winner

Enjoy, even though those may be tears mixed in with the laughs.

Uncle Jay explains 2008

Just enjoy. I actually think it's a little better than Jib Jab's this year.




And to all a wish for a health and happy 2009. Anything's got to be better than '08.

'Big Key' media

The other day, in discussing the Tampa Tribune single-section prototypes, I said the problem is that "right now, much of our digital strategy -- and this includes companies far beyond media -- is of necessity tied to a multi-pound chunk of silicon and plastic" that is likely to change significantly in ways we can't know yet. "Eventually, I suspect these things will not only upend newspapers but all this stuff we've come to "know" about our Web sites, which might not really be sites at all but various digital streams."

David Sullivan riffs off that to produce a hilariously funny look into the future and the punditry on "Big Key media." He even got the obligatory Jeff Jarvis reference in.

BONG 695

This week's BONG Bull from Charley Stough has suggestions on how to answer those thorny questions about your newspaper's future (sample below), and Herman and Typo clear the path to the press box at the Olympic Stadium.

There's even a visual, now, of the "Deft Duo" from Chagrin Falls produced by Don Vanderbeek.
To subscribe, drop Charley a line at bongstuff@yahoo.com.

(Sample of Newspaper Buyout FAQs)

A staffer from a formerly major newspaper company that has just announced a 14 percent reduction in force. prepared these, suggesting they might be useful for other newspapers cutting staff:

Q. Why are we reducing the number of employees?
A. We have too many to be profitable.

Q. If we got rid of everybody, would we finally be profitable?
A. Probably.

Q. People say that the newspaper industry is out of step with modern communications and there’s no future in it. Is that true?
A. You really need to define what you mean by “future.”

Q. Does the newspaper industry have a future through August?
A. Absolutely.

Q. Through October?
A. No.

Q. Does this have anything to do with the publisher’s stock options?
A. Only indirectly.

Q. Why do we need to get rid of so many employees?
A. We want people to understand that even after the cutbacks, six of seven people will still have their jobs.

Q. How about me?
A. You’re one out of seven.

Q. When will the company decide if it needs to involuntarily furlough employees?
A. After we learn how many people have volunteered to take the severance package, we will sit down with department heads and analyze the results. We will then determine the numbers of employees that might be involuntarily separated, and we’ll decide which people should be separated.

Q. Who is most at risk of losing their jobs in that situation?
A. The people who ask questions in employee briefings.

A bientot

Off to Chicago to witness the annual flocking of that not-so-rare bird, the North American journalism professor (with a few other continents represented as well). I am traveling light, which means no portable computer, no iPhone or Treo -- no nuthin' except occasional access to the convention computers.

In short, I'm taking a few days' break. While I'm gone, some thoughts:

• Have at me in the previous post about newsrooms not owning the presses. That piece is a bit of thinking out loud, thought in progress kind of thing. So your thoughts and observations are valued.
• ChooseChicago is one of the best city travel/tourism sites. Period. The ability to sort restaurants, museums, etc., by part of town; to create a "notebook" of things you cut and paste with a click; and to print out handy maps and descriptions -- not to mention its comprehensiveness -- leave me wondering why hasn't your newspaper done this for your city? Why wait for the tourism bureau, such as it is. Make your site the destination for your destination.
• I leave you with a pretty funny post by Bryan Murley poking fun at all the angst-filled stories and "liberal media" comments about newspapers' problems. Play along by bringing your own dice. Even numbers, you pick the first choice. Odd ones, the second. (In the case of more than two choices, make up your own rules.) Have a run at it.

See you next week.

Converting numbers to useful comparisons

We've already talked on this blog about Weird Converter, the online site that allows you to convert numbers into very odd, but fun, comparisons, such as how many kegs of beer in an Airbus 380.

But there also is SensibleUnits.com, which has, as its name suggests, some sensible units (type in "10 feet" and you'll get "46 dollar bills end to end," but also some fun/weird ones like "13 chopsticks end to end" and "2.3 Alaskan moose antler spans." (There are some gross ones, too; we'll skip the reference to fetuses, thanks.) Click on and off the "objects" tab and you get some new ones each time. (For instance, the earlier fetus example was replaced by "25 CDs side by side." Much better.)

(Thanks to 10,000 words for the pointer.)

I do believe ...

You know I rarely make political comments here. It's not really what I'm about. But there are times the silliness just asks for a pin-prick.

Thus we have South Carolina's Legislature approving "I Believe" license plates with a picture of a cross on them (modeled after this one in Florida that didn't pass).

And then we have the obligatory lawsuit challenging them.

And then, on cue, we have the aggrieved lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, who drafted the legislation: "For those who say this violates the Constitution by giving preference to Christianity, I think this lawsuit clearly discriminates against persons of faith." Uh huh.

In the spirit of ecumenism, and to try to settle this while capturing the true meaning of the sentiments being expressed, I'd like to propose a slight modification to the plates' wording:

I Believe ... Andre Bauer is running for higher office

There, now wasn't that easy?