This is one of my problems with journalism as we practice it today. Local affiliate ABC 33/40, generally a solid market performer reports:
Drew Hawk beat out all of his classmates in the local tournament of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors'. It's a hand game where two people guesture a rock, paper, and scissors...rock smashes scissors and scissors cut paper to win. The objectivity is to guess which your opponent will show so you do the opposite to either smash or cut to win.
Someone felt the need to explain the nuance and intricacy in the game Rock, Paper, Scissors. There has been, I assure you, NO market research that suggested such a concept needed to be explained to the viewing audience, but there we are, nonetheless, reducing a story to the most insulting level possible.
The gist of the story is that the guy has advanced in a campus tournament of the game (Where, we learn, the best two out of three hands wins, thanks 33/40!) to a national level which might ultimately earn the guy some tuition money. So good for him. And good for him in the video -- unfortunately if you click the video in the story they send you to another page where you must, yes, click play again -- looking bemused at the idea of explaining to the reporter how this game is played.
All set to discuss the virtues of the story as a feature story, I noticed that the piece ran in the B-block, which can only mean slow news day, right?
This day started and ended with the rain. Actually Wednesday's rain started on Tuesday night, and left us with a most emphatic end more than 24 hours later.
It rained very hard on the way to Tuscaloosa today, which is a trip that doesn't needed the added disincentive of blinding streams of swiftly falling water and hydroplaning driving conditions to make you want to stay inside. For one brief moment I thought we were going to pull over, it rained so, but it turned out we were doing 40 miles per hour on the interstate.
Rained off and on through the afternoon. It mercifully let up during the times I had to be outside. It rained hard at every other moment.
In my quantitative class, the last one before spring break, we set up the remainder of the semester, all with varying degrees of calm and panic. The professor says "You'll be venturing to exotic an locale for spring break."
"Yeah, the library," a classmate retorts. The final paper, a book review and two presentations to go in that class. The final paper will intimidate most everyone, but everything else is manageable.
And we are to "Write, write, write" during the break. At the library, indeed.
We tried to beat the next rain cell out of town. The storm had the decency to hold off until I got out of class and made it to the car. We opted for drive-thru, hoping to beat the storm home. We got a little late start and then Chick-fil-A had a few problems grilling the chicken, so we caught the rain the entire way home.
On the upside, we met a very nice young lady at the drive-thru window who, sensing the need to fill time, gave us a bit of her biographical story. She dislikes driving in the rain and hoped to make it out in between storms tonight, or else she might just stay in the restaurant. Naturally The Yankee immediately finds the positive, "At least you'd have free breakfast."
We're positive, breakfast-centered people.
Just after we made it home, having driven all the way in a punishing storm, we heard the most impressive clap of thunder of my life. The entire house shook. Car alarms in the neighborhood rang out.
Glancing over the latest Pew Survey again, "Some 46 percent of Americans say they get news from four to six media platforms on a typical day. Just 7 percent get their news from a single media platform on a typical day."
This is most intriguing part of the summary:
In this new multi-platform media environment, people's relationship to news is becoming portable, personalized and participatory. These new metrics stand out:
* Portable: 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones. * Personalized: 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them. * Participatory: 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.
Everyone can be a reporter, agenda setter or curator these days. Exciting times.
I think that I must crack down on the students. They are having entirely too much fun, which is something I know they've heard about, but are not supposed to experience directly. This would be an unfortunate use of their time, seeing as how they could be doing unfun things while simultaneously dreaming wistfully of fun. It is a delicate balance to maintain, but one worth attempting.
Otherwise you get conversations like the one they had tonight, which went on for hours, it seemed. As they put together their newspaper I could hear them from my office -- indeed people across campus might have heard bits of the tales -- on their traumatic first dates gone wrong.
To get from my office to my printer I must walk across the newsroom, passing all of the fun-having students and avoid eye-contact, lest they pull me into this conversation. They will want to hear some horror story of a dating experience. Happily I don't have one.
Oh I have good stories, and I have meh stories, but no real bad ones. The worst, I suppose, being the girl I took out on a date in high school who fell asleep in the car as I drove her back home. I've thought of myself as a potential Ambien Lunesta cocktail ever since.
She was a nice girl. I ran into her a few years ago, she worked at a clothing store. I didn't have the heart to remind her about having fallen asleep on me. If that's as bad as it gets you've got it made. And I, my friends, have it made.
So I told them the story of how The Yankee and I got engaged. I noticed the story is getting longer with each re-telling already. In a few years this thing will need an intermission. Have I told you that story, Internet? I'll ask for permission (I know my place) and maybe tell it to you later this year as an anniversary celebration.
Plotting out December posts in March? That's the mark of a good blogger.
Spent all day today on one project. Finished it. Now, I hope, everything else will flow freely from here after this 30-page monkey has been removed from my back. I should have another paper finished by the end of the week. After that I'm going to make a list of the projects that still need attention. When you get down to list-making you know you're serious.
None too soon, either.
Tomorrow, then: One class and the long slow climb toward something resembling being caught up.
Spent the morning at the library, always a worthy trip.
Spent the afternoon writing things. I've a stack of things to write, but after I finished today's project I'm hoping that everything else will come much more easily. Write, rewrite, edit, trim, get flustered over pagination, rinse and repeat. I've been mulling over this for two or three weeks now and it is a great relief to just have it finished.
Now we'll see what comes of it.
It all means today was a busy and productive day. Tomorrow will be even busier.
Did you watch 24? It was explosive. Starbuck still looks less than ept. Bubba is growing into the job as the boss of CTU. Kiefer Sutherland chews a little scenery, and they write what might be one of their best promos for the scenes from next week ever.
(You'll be shocked to learn, next week, that either: A. There's a mole in CTU B. CTU is a target for the bad guys.)
We watched the local news, rewinding the TiVo along the way. Live television is hard enough, rewinding it to catch the errors just isn't fair. I did find two typos in 20 minutes of screen time.
Me especially, but we can all benefit from a little copy editing.
Beautiful day. Just beautiful. Spring is here, arrived earlier than the calendar implied, but later than we wished. Nevertheless, spring is here and it doesn't know who realizes it.
We opened the windows and the sliding doors today for the first time this season. We took the cats out onto the balcony. One of them, years ago, lived outside, but they are both pretty timid about it when there isn't a pane of glass or a screen between them and the big bad world.
On the balcony though the cats aimed right at the corners. Just as I thought I should sweep this up they started rolling around in the dust and dirt and leaves. Just after that I took this picture.
It is very hard to convince a dirty cat that a towel can be an innocuous thing.
So I cleaned a bit. I also put away laundry, read a lot, got ready for the week a little. Wish I'd done all of those things outdoors. It was a beautiful day.
