Profiles in Discourage

Which we may now call all of the congressional Republicans,

I Rise from the Torpor of my Sickbed to Praise Nancy Pelosi

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The President and Rahm Emmanuel were playing tennis for a while, but the score was still 0-0.

"We might as well stop till Pelosi shows up," the President said, "because she's the one with the balls."

This is, of course, somewhat unfair, and I give the President great credit for finally putting his nose into the Republicans' quivering gut and driving them into their own backfield, creating stumbles and fumbles --metamorphosis! new sports metaphor coming out!

But I certainly read several places that it was Pelosi who fanned the Prez with a towel as he sat bruised in his corner and threatened to make Rahm Emmanuel drink the spit bucket when the White House got shaky after Scott Brown's senate win in Massachusetts. (It's a bird! It's a plane! It's yet another sports analogy!)

Thank you, Nancy. That was no lady. That was Pelosi.

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If Robertsonesque Were a Word....?

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Certainly it would be about the children because it's always about the children. But not in a bad way, for God's sakes.

(Also, note how appropriately I used the subjunctive. Maybe that's what Robertsonesque should mean: It's always about the subjunctive.)

Give a Man a Blog and He Thinks for a Minute. Give a Man an Embed and He ... I Forget

How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?

Joke File

I love him like a brother, a real Cain and Abel thing.

Kicked in the Vanity

First, you need to know that I have got my reporting and reviewing kids tweeting news and reviews this semester using the hashtags #usfreports and #usfreview.

Second, you need to know I broke into journalism as a copy editor, leveraging my Ph.D. in 19th Century English lit in a most surprising way.

And thus: the convergence of the twain.

I send a somewhat boastful email to certain USF journalism grads and also to some friends, under the subject line:

USF reporting students tweeting news and reviews.

Friend Lowell Boileau responds:

Why would the University report students who are tweeting? Is it a violation of rules? Is Hayakawa back?

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I Think of a Joke

Sarah Palin, the Grating White Hope

Biking with E. Third Time Out

A Sort of Anniversary ... It Was 30 Years Ago Today.

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The morning of March 1, 1980, having spent the night in Bakersfield, we arose, had waffles for breakfast, tucked our three cats into the cab of the rented truck filled with all our stuff and headed north on Interstate 5. It was pretty late in the day when we hit Livermore, but we decided to push on.

And thus on the evening of March 1, 1980, we arrived in the Bay Area. We thought it would be temporary, two or three years at the most. I had gotten a job at the San Francisco Chronicle, and that (I thought) would give me the out-of-town glitter that would get me a job at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution somewhere down the line. E. was pretty sure in a year or two she would pass her architect's licensing exams, which would sent her up for a return to Atlanta, where I had been Executive Editor of Atlanta Magazine and E. had just got her degree from Georgia Tech.

Why I was looking for work rather than staying put is a long colorful story that over the years has come to bore even me. Let me just say that my only hope of staying at Atlanta Magazine was a willingness to stab my boss Larry Woods in the back -- to replace him; to become bitch of the bosses. And, having declined that, I knew I was doomed (for bosses love their bitches) and I threw a wide loose net, trying newspapers all over the country (and Time-Life Books, and various government agencies).

A job offer in San Francisco! Wondrous strange and a way station, a footnote, a byway, nothing serious and no commitment, the vocational equivalent of a one night stand -- just the kind of long bomb (a football term, only indirectly militant) that would give me the sheen you got from abandoning the South and then coming back.

Let me divest myself of that participle. It shaded into "going back." And so we never did. And now, somewhat weak, palsied and beaten down, I work on at the university simply so that we can stay right where we are, rather than cashing in our home equity and buying a mountain in western Virginia, from whence I came originally.

Ah. We went on an adventure, and it turned into a life. Ah old California friend who back in the day used to give me merry hell when I refused to call myself a Californian. Now he don't give a damn -- what you learn late is that you shed friends (or they shed you) as a snake season by season.

But I guess I am a Californian, if I am anything.

(To celebrate we went to the Chez Panisse Cafe. Not bad.)

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Uncle Media Studies Wants You

Rage Rage Against the Dying of the Right. By Which I Mean Left.

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A fundraiser for the Democratic senate reelection campaign slipped through my call screening this morning. I told him off, told Joe Lieberman to go to hell, sputtered and hung up.

It felt good. We'll give to individuals, not to any umbrella organizations. I can read polls as well as the next guy.

Canon Restores an Old Man's Faith. For a Moment.

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On our recent salon recon to Crockett to see if the town has the amenities, the intellectual stature, moral fiber and general je ne sais quoi (that quality being the last refuge of the person who just can't make up his mind and doesn't know why) to host a Patrick Finley Memorial Poetry Salon, I was distressed when my camera failed to capture certain amusing pictures of people drinking too much, chewing too much and generally failing to moderate the aperture on their upper orifices.

Friend Richard Anderson said that my camera has the very problem his Canon fell victim to a while back, but that the company was ready to repair the problem, no matter how old the camera. A quick click on the proper link, and I was soon reading the following:

Thank you for contacting Canon product support. We value you as a Canon customer and appreciate the opportunity to assist you. I am sorry to hear that your A95 camera is displaying symptoms of the CCD sensor failure.

It has recently come to our attention that the vendor-supplied CCD image sensor used in this Canon digital camera may cause the following malfunction: When the product is used in recording or playback mode, the LCD screen and/or electronic viewfinder may exhibit either a distorted image or no image at all. While reports of this malfunction have been rare in the United States, we have determined that it may occur if the product is exposed to hot and humid environments.

Based on the information you have provided, it appears that you may have encountered this issue...

They say send it back on their nickel. I am unaccustomed to so ready an embrace of responsibility from a manufacturer.

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The Long Slow Slow Long Slowlonglongslow Death of American Journalism

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This from Oboglo.

"America has in fact transformed journalism from what it once was, the periodical expression of the thought of the time, the opportune record of the questions and answers of contemporary life, into an agency for collecting, condensing and assimilating the trivialities of the entire human existence, [...] the frantic haste with which we bolt everything we take, seconded by the eager wish of the journalist not to be a day behind his competitor, abolishes deliberation from judgment and sound digestion from our mental constitutions. We have no time to go below surfaces, and as a general thing no disposition."

Journalist W.J. Stillman, writing in The Atlantic Monthly about the negative influence of the telegraph, 1891.

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Whatever Happened to Shoe-Leather Reporting?

Where Do Stories Come From?

A national survey, conducted by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University, found that an overwhelming majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media sources when researching their stories. Among the journalists surveyed, 89% said they turn to blogs for story research, 65% to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter. The survey also found that 61% use Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia.

Most journalists said that social media were important or somewhat important for reporting and producing the stories they wrote.

Importance of Social Media to Journalists (% of Respondents)
Degree of Importance	% of Respondents
Important	15%
Somewhat Important	40%
Neither Important nor Unimportant	16%
Somewhat Unimportant	16%
Unimportant	12%
Source: Cision Social Media Study, October 2009

The groups placing the highest levels of importance on social media for reporting and producing stories were journalists who spend most of their professional time writing for Websites . Those at Newspapers ;and Magazines reported this less often. The differences between Magazine journalists and Website journalists is statistically significant.

• Journalists who spend most of their professional time writing for Websites (69%) reported this the most often, and significantly more so than those at Magazines (48%)
• 89% of journalists reported using Blogs for their online research. Only Corporate websites (96%) is used by more journalists when doing online research for a story
• Approximately two-thirds reported using Social Networking sites and just over half make use of Twitter for online research. Newspaper journalists (72%) and those writing for Websites (75%) use Social Networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook for online research significantly more often than those at Magazines (58%)

While the results demonstrate the fast growth of social media as a well-used source of information for mainstream journalists, the survey also made it clear that reporters and editors are acutely aware of the need to verify information they get from social media.

• 84% said social media sources were "slightly less" or "much less" reliable than traditional media
• 49% say social media suffers from "lack of fact checking, verification and reporting standards

Heidi Sullivan, Vice President of Research for Cision, says "Mainstream media have hit a tipping point in their reliance on social media for their research and reporting...however... it is not replacing editors' and reporters' reliance on primary sources, fact-checking and other traditional best practices in journalism."
According to the survey, most journalists turn to public relations professionals for assistance in their primary research:

• 44% of editors and reporters surveyed said they depend on PR professionals for "interviews and access to sources and experts"
• 23% for "answers to questions and targeted information"
• 17% for "perspective, information in context, and background information"

Don Bates, founding director of the GWU Strategic Public Relations program, cautions that, though "Social media provides a wealth of new information for journalists... getting the story right is as important as ever... PR professionals... have a responsibility... to ensure the information they provide journalists is accurate and timely... "

For a copy of the complete survey results, please go here.

Salon Dry Run: A Visit to Nancy in Crockett

Sigh. Our camera has a sensor problem so a number of photos didn't come out. But the general thrust of the experience is captured: visit, eat, drink, hear poetry, hear jazz.

Take my word for it.

Two Thoughts to be Thought about Some More Regarding Arts Reviewing

* It's not just making a recommendation: a recommendation to whom?

* If I were to set up as an anonymous reviewer, my nom would be Anatole Imho.

Twitter Bigots Make Me Cry

They make me laugh, actually. Here's a pleasant cartoon from Darrin Bell.

King of Newspaper Sociologists Big Mike Schudson Fills the Air with Hope

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USC Annenberg | Prepared remarks from Michael Schudson

This from deep in the piece, his fifth reason for hope.

The new online operations remind us how important is the resource of obsessive, endless, gritty enthusiasm. Yes, somehow there has to be a way for these individuals to pay their bills – ultimately. They don’t have to dine on expense accounts. What they have to do is pursue work that gets their adrenalin going and makes them feel that they are doing something that matters. If they can make money doing this, that’s good for them and that’s good for society and that’s good for democracy. But many worthwhile pursuits endure without a so-called business model. Artists, musicians, dramatists have been doing it for centuries. And so have some journalists, those who set up their alternative weeklies in the sixties, those who worked for political magazines or started vegetarian newsletters or pieced together a living as free-lance foreign correspondents. They lived on a combination of passion and lowered expectations for comfort. With just about everyone I have talked to at the new start-ups, whether twenty-somethings at one of their first jobs or 50-somethings who had been let go or had taken buy-outs. One top editor from a major daily newspaper, now working at Pro Publica, told me she felt she had died and gone to heaven, that she was doing more of the work that had led her to journalism in the first place than at any other time in her career.

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Why I Blog: A Friend Wonders

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

A friend writes:

You're a good blogger. I can't get past the mental barrier that one is writing in a black hole, and the singularity is ego, a dark force in the world, sometimes I think the darkest. But maybe that's the force behind all writing. I don't know. An opinion? What do you like best about blogging?


And I reply:

Well, thanks. My blogging falls into two chunks – the first couple years when I thought it would somehow turn into something, that it would become a way into other writing opportunities. (I wasn’t exactly sure how. I imagined something I wrote would go viral, and the rest would unfold with iron inevitability.) After I realized that wouldn’t happen, I thought the blogging would wither away. But I found I still liked to do it because it was a creative release – and I don’t have one, or maybe I should say I am too lazy to work at *really* writing something and getting it published.

For real. For money.

Because I keep track of the number of my daily visitors and how they are referred to my blog, I have a keen sense of how my readership has dropped. Five years ago when I was writing long and posting frequently, I was able to drive my daily visits up to 100. But since then, I have seen the daily hit rate steadily drop to about 20, the majority of whom are accidents, not regular visitors. This is oddly liberating. The fact I am throwing my words out into the void seems brave/ironic/self-consciously futile. No one is reading me *but I soldier on anyway*.

If I described my justifications tomorrow, I would probably describe them very differently. My rationale is variable. But the truth is that I get some kind of sensation out of writing to no one – maybe it’s a kind of “lottery ticket” thing: Knowing you won’t win doesn’t mean you can’t win if you know what I mean, though I should probably say if you *feel* what I mean.

It’s odd. My blog is a kind of commonplace book that helps me keep track of the march of time. (Now that I’ve plugged Twitter into the blog, it’s even more so.) It’s also a personal journal that justifies the effort of typing, not writing by hand, by the fact what is so neatly typed is published – sort of. In fact, one of the pleasures of my blog is all the little “self-publishing” flourishes, all the links and pictures and debris I can throw against the wall.

Somehow it shows I haven’t given up. Well, actually I have. But this is my “apron of leaves.” If I were to blog this, I could link to the quote and maybe to a picture.

I think I *will* blog this. (Maybe the multi-purposing is part of the draw.)

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Return of the Biker