Journalism's "Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad" Week

(NOTE: I was going to use this phrase for a post back in February when the Brian Williams career "inflation" imbroglio, Jon Stewart's retirement announcement and the deaths of CBS News reporter Bob Simon and New York Times' columnist David Carr all happened in a very short span; however, this past week's events have greatly outdone that earlier gloom and deserve the headline.)

Three separate (but unequally tragic) instances happened last week that created seismic-like waves in the journalism world

I call myself a "citizen journalist"--one who currently practices the tenets of this profession in a "when I can get to it", part-time role. I do not rely upon this activity to support myself financially and have been largely absent here over the past eight months. I also conduct it without having to put my personal freedoms, my reputation, or--as horribly depicted on live television--my life on the line. Unfortunately, all three of these examples were witnessed last week and I feel compelled to comment on all of them as a member of this extended "family".

My "No Show" November

I hadn't missed an entire month since June 2013 and only done so twice in the 41-month run of this blog

Near the end of a productive year (51 posts in 10 months), it appears that I have done something I've only done once before in the history of my blog--I missed an entire month! A span of 38 days went by where I did not post any items to this website and that would be considered a "drought" instead of the few "hiatuses" I took while doing my journalism certificate program. A little bit of background information will help explain the rationale for my absence.

Back in July, I started an 8-part series about my "journo-less" summer where I mentioned that I was unemployed at that time. Unfortunately, that situation remains in effect and it seemed to come to a head in October when yet another delay was going to push any job hopes off until early in 2015 (at the earliest). Once my state jobless benefits ended in early August, I've been on my own and things have become more critical on the financial front as the months have gone by. With the day-to-day anxieties weighing heavily on me, I did what any 50-something might do--I ran away from home (with my wife's permission) and took a credit card-funded "road trip" to get me away from my problems for just a little while.

A Tiny Taste of "The Day After"

A three-hour power outage triggered thoughts of a post-apocalyptic world (graphic courtesy of Christophe Dessaigne)

As someone who has worked in the national security and defense business, it isn't something that I dwell upon very often; however, I recently had a small glimpse into a world minus all of the things our society has grown accustomed to in the 21st century during a short power outage a week ago today. Last Sunday morning, in an event that was not forecast by severe weather or by homeland security notices, we lost electrical service in our and a neighboring subdivision. While it came at an inconvenient time (Sunday is my "laundry" day and we are well into the 2014-15 NFL regular season), its intrusion into my family's lives triggered dystopian thoughts that seem to be a lot more plausible than I care to admit.

My Three-Day "Tweet-kend"

My first "viral" tweet began with a bang...and ended with nary a mention.

Back in September 2012, I posted an item documenting my experiences (and frustrations) with Twitter, the 140-character or less micro-blogging platform where anybody associated with journalism is supposed to readily adopt and participate on a regular basis. In that entry, I pondered if it was a "one-way street"--where everyone has something to say but no one bothers to respond (a old Current TV video describes it as a place "where you talk to no one--and everyone"). I use my account primarily for announcing when I upload new items or if I want to promote/document something I might be seeing/experiencing at the time. The "tweet" you see above happens to be the first "viral" one I can claim and I will get around to describing its origin when I detail how my recent three-day Memorial Day "tweet-kend" played out beyond the jump below.

MSNBC Dissed Me (Again)!

This was probably the only thing that The Daily Rundown got right in this recognition

Thanks to MSNBC's Chris Jansing, I learned a new word today (friggatriskaidekaphobia, or more commonly known as "fear of Friday the 13th") and I might have to affix blame to this rarely occurring calendrical event to explain how that channel screwed up (once again), this time on a very personal level, because I don't want to think that it may have been done deliberately.

BTS: Obama's Stretch Run in Ohio (Part 1 of 2)

[NOTE: this is the first of a two-part installment of my "behind the scenes" observations related to the 2012 presidential campaign.  With the nearly 6-month delay between the events and this posting, I might overlook some of the trivial things I endured but I wanted to finally jot down the main items as well as my reflections on the entire reporting experience.] 

Seasongood Pavillion in Cincinnati's Eden Park being prepared the evening before President Obama's "grassroots event" last September

If you go back to my last "BTS" feature (related to my coverage of Vice President Joe Biden's September 12th "grassroots rally" at Wright State University), you would see that I (finally!) established contact with the Obama campaign's press office and was issued official press credentials to cover that rally as a full-fledged member of the media.  Since they had me on their email notification roster, I was receiving several updates per day on the current, recently completed, and upcoming events scheduled for the president and his running mate.  With Ohio as the biggest "swing state" prize in the November general election, it was only a matter of time before Obama would make his own appearance in the local area, and I received the following advisory just a few short days later:

My (Kinda Sorta) National Television Debut

[NOTE: with the nice weekend weather in these parts, I was originally going to take a trip down to the University of Cincinnati campus to report on an evolving controversy with potential national implications involving the open display of female genitalia and First Amendment protections.  Instead, I opted to write about an issue that strikes closer to home--at least for me.]

The Daily Rundown's host Chuck Todd giving his First Read on a very busy Wednesday morning...perhaps it was a little too busy for the MSNBC graphics department

While my blogging has been few and far between during these first few months of 2013, I am still keeping up with what is going on in the world around me (my last post is proof of that continuing awareness) and in domestic political circles, too.  One of my "can't miss" television programs about politics, The Daily Rundown, airs every weekday morning on the MSNBC cable news channel.  If you look through my postings over the past 15 months, I have blogged about it here several times already to offer my congratulations (and criticisms) when warranted.  Unfortunately, this entry falls under the latter category.

MSNBC Gives Dayton No Respect

MSNBC host Chuck Todd hosted "The Daily Rundown" from Cincinnati on Thursday morning...and Dayton is nowhere to be seen behind him

I often wonder to myself (and now, thanks to this blog, publicly) if I take some things that I observe in my daily life a little too seriously for my own good.  I have a wide variety of roles that occupy the majority of my waking hours but I have been known to fixate on things that do not directly impact them from time to time.  If you are a regular reader of this blog, you would have seen an item that I recently posted about how Dayton, Ohio was being incorrectly positioned on graphics displayed on the cable news channel MSNBC back in late September.  Since this is my main source for television news, I was forced to endure repeated airings of this error and, as the post documented, I 'tweeted' my dissatisfaction.  It finally took a venue change for the event they were using that graphic for (an appearance by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Dayton was being moved to the city's airport in nearby Vandalia and had become a joint appearance with his running mate, Wisconsin representative Paul Ryan).  At the end of that piece, I selflessly credited my actions in perhaps playing a minor role in that on-screen revision and I privately hoped that such a recurrence would not happen.  Almost a month to the day later, that hope was, regrettably, extinguished.

Is Twitter Just a One-Way Street?

Twitter...'tweeting'...the 'Twitter-verse'...if you are currently involved in any kind of media-related activity, you cannot shun this micro-blogging phenomenon that has attracted over 500 million users and produces over 340 million updates daily.  Started in 2006, the allure of this service is in its brevity--all 'tweets' must be 140 characters or less.  While the user can attach photos or embed hyperlinks to provide some subject context, that self-imposed limit supposedly allows for more spontaneous submissions and simulates a public 'chat' among a group of individuals who 'follow' each other's postings.

I joined Twitter a little over a year ago and have 'tweeted' 149 150 times (my 150th 151st will be announcing this blog posting).  Along the way, I have acquired 24 'followers' whom I became acquainted with during my pursuit of my lifelong dream either directly, through others already subscribed to my feed, or complete strangers who were merely attracted by my content.  I follow 78 other 'Twitizens' who hail from the world of journalism, the media, my UMass classes, or were the subjects/settings for my published pieces.

I will honestly admit that I do not keep as current with this account as I do with my personal Facebook page but I do receive notifications when I get a new 'follower' or when I am mentioned in someone else's 'tweet'.  When such an email hits my in-box, I log in to check on that activity (and some very interesting people have tried to befriend me which resulted in 'spam' notifications to the service).  This is a rather mundane process for someone who only interacts with two dozen others on an irregular basis so I cannot imagine how someone with 10,000 times more 'followers' handles the deluge of daily comments, 'retweets', and direct messages that might be generated.  And this dilemma is what has me posting today.

Creating a Publishing Platform: Frank Rich

[NOTE: I listened to Frank Rich this morning during the last half hour of The Bill Press Show on Current TV and that reminded me that I just wrote about him during my recently completed Intro to Online Journalism course.  I was to find and analyze the online channels used by my favorite writer and detail how they use them to capture audience attention and create conversations. Just thought that I should share the assignment, which was written in the middle of July, with my readership.]

If given the choice of any writer I would aspire to be (or one that would require a natural disaster for me to miss their latest work), the hands-down choice would be Frank Rich.  A one-time theater critic turned op/ed columnist, Rich has been one of the leading progressive voices in America’s ‘mediascape’ for the past decade who came into his own during the country’s lead-up to the Iraq War and the later years of the George W. Bush administration.  On a weekly basis, he penned hard-hitting 1,500-word columns on politics, current events and culture which anchored The New York Times’ expanded ‘Week in Review’ section in their Sunday editions from 2005 until early 2011 when he left to join New York Magazine.  Rich has slowed down just a tad at his new employer (he now does a monthly column and weekly ‘interview’ sessions with editor-in-chief Adam Moss) but this new tempo has not diminished his veracity nor his desire to seek out the truth from among the multitude of media outlets and political operatives.  While already a devoted weekly reader, his 2006 book The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth and its blistering expose of how Bush and his team ‘rolled out’ a campaign to coerce the American public to sanction a war with Iraq cemented his place as my favorite writer.

Mitt Romney's Pending (and Perhaps Only) Presidential-level Decision

(NOTE: this is my final project for JOURNAL 397W, Intro to Online Journalism.  I was tasked to create a comprehensive profile on a subject of my choosing and present it as a multimedia feature through pre-selected online tools--I relied upon Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, and the Google News data aggregator.  Once compiled, I was to then use Storify to bring those images, videos, quotes, and tweets together and display them in a blog setting.  Luckily, that site provided a code that allows me to embed the piece here just like it appears at the original location.  Unfortunately, I cannot insert a "jump break" within the Storify item so you will have to scroll through the entire posting when navigating on my page.)

(UPDATE: while I was finishing the project and preparing it for posting, it appears that Mitt Romney announced that he will introduce Wisconsin representative Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential pick at a campaign event this morning in Norfolk, Virginia.  The Storify piece was updated at 1:30AM on the 11th to reflect this information.)

(FOR MY INSTRUCTOR: when prompted for the embed code, I opted for the "HTML for SEO" option.  I hope that will give me some extra credit points ;-)  )

It's Simply Human Nature

(NOTE: this piece was the final assignment for my recently completed JOURN 201 class.  We were tasked to postulate where we see journalism heading over the next 10 years or so when common people can communicate across physical, virtual and ideological 'battlelines'.  We were instructed to write a magazine-style article that was limited to 1,000 words.  My submission came in at 995.  The instructor's comments were "excellent as far as you went".  I finished the course with an 'A' and am looking forward to the next course which starts late next month.)


It’s Simply Human Nature
Social networking success links back to humanity’s most basic need

People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people - and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time.
- Mark Zuckerberg

It appears that the co-creator of Facebook, the world’s most popular social networking website, may have tapped into a primal necessity that still influences modern man.

In an age where many people have less discretionary time to maintain their numerous life relationships, the Internet now provides a medium to facilitate an online 24/7 presence to those we want to remain in contact with and to connect to others with similar interests or backgrounds. 

Guest Papers: Catch-Up Edition

October has been a very busy month for me so I'm adding a few papers here to catch up on this feature.  The first two were from a trip to Columbus at the beginning of the month.  The third one was our local daily from last weekend.