Soap Box: A Minor Mistake Eclipsed Some Major Stories

[NOTE: football and car problems kept me away from the keyboard this past weekend...0 for 2 is not a good start.]

A small military office's inadvertently released email drew my attention away from last week's major media attractions.

In our current 24/7 non-stop, constantly churning information cycle, media proprietors are constantly on the lookout for significant activities to populate their already purchased time or inches or bandwidth in order to attract audiences and keep their financial backers off of theirs. It is a very good week if two high profile and multifaceted stories can generate enough attention to get them through the Monday through Friday period (and provide adequate fodder for the Sunday morning "talking head" shows).  Remarkably, last week had three "buzzworthy" items that dominated those cycles (when the 2014 North American Cold Wave is included) but it was a very small item from my news aggregator that has me ignoring them and dedicating this week's column to highlight its importance.

Soap Box: Same Old, Same "Auld Lang Syne" in DC

[NOTE: "Soap Box" is my initial attempt at creating a weekly opinion-based column. I will focus primarily on politics, national security, and the media but I can't rule out commenting on some of the "silly" things that seem to capture our national attention from time to time.  I am hoping that this can become a full-time gig for me--wish me luck!]


The start of a new calendar year normally initiates two reflective activities in our society--a review of the just-completed 12-month span and a preview of the upcoming 365-day period.  Due to the nature of our country's political systems and schedules, Congress will get the lion's share of attention as it slogs its way through the second half of a very disappointing two-year term.  While achieving high marks in terms of hyperbole, political theater and partisanship, it is failing in what the voters sent those members there to do--legislate!

2014 is shaping up to be a lot like 2013 was on Capitol Hill -- unproductive!

My Year of Application

Greetings to all of my readers, followers, former classmates and friends on this first day of 2014, or as I am branding it "My Year of Application".  As I said at the close of my last blog update of 2013, I declared completion with my Certificate in Journalism program through the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the physical certificate is in the process of being delivered to me sometime in the next five-to-ten school business days.  Over the past 28 months, I've become formally acquainted with the fundamentals of journalism, did some newswriting and reporting, learned about the current online environment, reviewed ethical considerations, practiced some public relations writing, expanded my photojournalism confidence levels and, lastly, dabbled in opinion writing (to supplement my near lifelong following of these subjects).  Throughout that period, I posted some of my coursework submissions here to serve as waypoints to measure my personal progress towards the certificate completion goal. 

My Opinion of My Opinion Writing Class

John Lithgow's 2012 Broadway portrayal of Joseph Alsop, one of America's most influential newspaper columnists

In probably my most fractious experience as a University of Massachusetts student, I was able to successfully navigate my way through the school’s recently concluded JOURNAL 392S, Opinion Writing: Columns offering.  It wasn’t easy to apply a kind adjective to the semester because a combination of events and issues made it a very unenjoyable 14 weeks for me and ended my certificate program on a negative note.

My Personal JFK Reflections

Aaron Shilker's posthumously commissioned official White House portrait of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Up until the tragic events of 9/11, people of my age group (and younger) did not have their own "where were you?" moment like those born before 1957-1958 did when our nation's 35th president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas' Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.  While our nation had experienced similar terrible events in its past (Pearl Harbor, the similar political killings of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, natural disasters like the 1906 Great San Francisco Earthquake), what made the Kennedy murder much more profound was in the way we all learned about it.  News of the Japanese attack on our Hawaiian naval and aviation outposts (and FDR's subsequent declaration of war against Japan) was disseminated via the most modern technology of that time--radio; however, because of its remote location, it took nearly two weeks for some newspapers to get the initial images of the damage and several months later for people to see the devastation in newsreel coverage at their local movie theaters.

Farewell, Early Bird

A screen capture of a .pdf version of the Pentagon's final published Early Bird daily press compilation.

As we have seen in recent years--and will undoubtedly continue to see--in the print journalism sector, publications that were a significant part of the everyday lives of many thousands of people have been relegated to our collective memories due to the changing paradigms and business models of that industry.  While not its own unique periodical, the Pentagon's Early Bird was, for many, their main source of defense and defense-related national security information and they never paid a subscription price for its contents during its near 50-year run that officially ended on November 1st.

Journalism's Role in "The Panic Broadcast" of 1938

Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater on the Air show scared the bejeezus out of many Americans 75 years ago last week

There aren't many people around today that have a first-hand account of the Halloween Eve radio offering that was dubbed "the panic broadcast" when it first aired in late October 1938.  Orson Wells, the multi-talented actor, director, playwright and prodigy, transformed H.G. Wells' late 19th century novel The War of the Worlds into a live-action radio drama that transfixed portions of his audience in their chairs with a ring-side seat to the destruction of the human race by Martian invaders.

An "Old Dog" CAN Learn New Tricks!

[NOTE: this is another story that has taken way too long to post here--it was originally from February!] 

The Dayton Daily News dragged me into the "e-edition" world of newspaper reading.

First there were the introduction of symbols (cave paintings, petroglyphs, pictograms, and ideograms).  After writing and alphabets were developed, humans now had systems to document and record events.  Through smoke signals, drums, horns, runners, pigeons, lamps, telegraphy, radio and television, the dissemination of those events could now be more widely and, via those last three, almost instantaneously announced to a global audience.  The introduction of computers and internet-based communications exponentially enhanced this process to the point of almost reversing course and replicating the mediums it replaced.  Streaming audio and video have eliminated the temporal demands of radio and television programming.  Now, with devices and software interfaces to closely resemble the newspaper reading experience, another long-held tradition appears to be biting the dust.

My Media Vacation (Part 1 of 3): New York City

[NOTE: Due to the amount of research I've been doing for my current journalism class and work-related activities, my brain is a little too "fried" for a deep-thought posting.  A while back, I shared parts of a vacation trip that I made with my son over to the East Coast in late July/early August 2012.  These are some of the photos that I took along the way--I hope you enjoy them!] 

"30 Rock" serves as the anchor of New York City's Rockefeller Plaza (and the headquarters of NBC News)

After the reunion/family-related activities of our visit back in Pennsylvania was completed, our first stop for this father/son "road trip" was Secaucus, New Jersey--just across the river from Manhattan and the recognized media capital of the world, New York City.  I chose the cross-river location due to expenses (a two-night stay at a quality hotel in "the Garden State" was roughly equivalent to a single night just five miles to the east) and easy access to the city itself (we were just one exit away from the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel and mid-town locations).  Fortunately, a day-long tour bus stopped right outside our lobby and we made sure we were up bright and early for day one of our two-day visit to "the Big Apple".

"Will McAvoy" Wins Best Actor Emmy (and My Critique of Season 2 of HBO's The Newsroom)

[NOTE: this post will discuss story elements--and probably introduce spoilers--from the recently completed second season of HBO's The Newsroom...if you have not yet finished watching, be advised!] 

Jeff Daniels, star of HBO's The Newsroom, proudly poses backstage after winning his Primetime Emmy Award last  Sunday night (photo copyright PA Images Dan Steinberg/AP).

In a somewhat mild upset, a fictitious cable news anchorman beat out a similarly pretend former teacher turned meth manufacturer at last Sunday night's 65th Primetime Emmy Awards, broadcast from the Nokia Theater L.A. Live in Los Angeles.  Jeff Daniels, who plays cable news anchor Will McAvoy on HBO's The Newsroom, was chosen over a group of five others, which included perceived favorite Bryan Cranston (Walter White from AMC's critically acclaimed series Breaking Bad) for the honor of Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. This was Daniels' first Emmy award nomination and second major acting award win (his portrayal as Dr. Ross Jennings in the 1990 film Arachnophobia earned him a Saturn Award for best actor in a science fiction, fantasy or horror film or television role).  I am calling it an "upset" because Breaking Bad, a very popular show via live and streaming viewing, was coming to the end of its five-season run tonight and its lead actor had won three consecutive Emmys between 2008 and 2010 (he also bested Kevin Spacey, Congressman Francis "Frank" Underwood from another of my favorite shows, the Netflix non-broadcast series House of Cards).

"Talking Heads" are Not News Anchors

As much as I might like them in their regular roles, Ed, Al and Chris are not at their best when anchoring live news events.

This past Monday, our nation experienced its most recent mass shooting tragedy when 12 workers at a US military installation in the District of Columbia were killed and 14 were wounded when a lone gunman opened fire on a crowded atrium within the Naval Sea Systems Command headquarters building at the beginning of the work day.  At around 8:20AM, Aaron Alexis, a 34-year old defense subcontractor and former Navy reservist, drove his rental car inside that defense-related installation with a recently purchased shotgun and 24 rounds of ammunition (he would also acquire a 9mm semi-automatic pistol from a security officer he shot on his way to that electronically protected main building and possibly one more from an internal official) and made his way to a strategic position on a 4th floor walkway overlooking that congested food service area during their breakfast service.  Facility and district law enforcement officials responded within 2-3 minutes of the 911 call and eventually encountered Alexis along the walkway.  After wounding an officer and at the end of an approximately 30 minute standoff, he was fatally shot and killed at around 9AM.  These are facts that, in the span of 24 to 48 hours after-the-fact can be succinctly conveyed in a 12-line area of a blog; however, in the immediate aftermath of such a rapidly evolving event, brevity and clarity is nearly non-existent and these scenarios pose significant impediments to those who have been trained to tell us the news.  A much more dire situation occurs when we must endure this process with people who have no formal journalism backgrounds and must ramble on because they must fill their outlet's unlimited air time and I personally witnessed that embarrassment on Monday afternoon on MSNBC.

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.

Revisit: The (Re)Birth of a Network

[NOTE: this is a new feature that I'm hoping not to have to use that often that goes back to items that I previously posted on this blog and, through personal miscalculations or events totally out of my control, have been proven to no longer be accurate.  I couldn't decide between calling it a "retraction" or a "revision" so I opted for the "revisit" moniker instead.]

When I checked this blog's statistics over the weekend, I noticed that the post I did about Current TV back in March 2012 had 133 page views during the past week (August 25 - September 1) and 437 over the past month (August 1 - September 1).  At the time that I uploaded it, that cable news outlet was trying to posture itself as the 'progressive' alternative to MSNBC's left-leaning programming.  With a marque name on its payroll (the former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann), a solidifying prime-time lineup and simulcasts of popular liberal radio talk show hosts during the 6AM-noon time slots, it appeared that the station initially envisioned as a viewer-generated channel to specifically focus on the lucrative 18-34 market demographic could pose a serious challenge to the "Big Three" of cable news offerings.  The specific date of that posting was March 27th and it would be an event just three days later--unforeseen by me at that time--that would spell the beginning of the end of that challenge.

Photojournalism Course Completed!

I now know how Clem Inspeak, the fedora-wearing foreground gentleman above with the antiquated equipment, must have felt after being in a photojournalism class with students using Canon 5D Mark III cameras (photo by Larry Bessel and courtesy of The Los Angeles Times).

It's hard to believe that six weeks have past since I began JOURNAL 333, Introduction to Digital Photojournalism, my latest course with the University of Massachusetts Amherst's online journalism program.  Starting at the end of a personal "stay-cation" (I watched the household while my wife went on an Alaskan cruise with family members), the 16 students in the class were given weekly assignments to exemplify and demonstrate knowledge of the readings and other information provided by our instructor.  Subjects for these photo shoots ranged from a self-portrait to the selection of workplace-related images to submitting ones demonstrating personal relationships (the overall capstone project was a photographic essay).  With all of the picture taking I have done here over the past two years, I thought that I had a good bead on what would be required to pass the class and my grades and instructor feedback seem to back up that initial presumption.  Since I like to show off my work, I will post a few of the pics that I took

In Memorium: Helen Thomas

Renowned journalist Helen Thomas reads a copy of The New York Times in her front row seat in the White House Briefing Room on August 2, 2006 (photo courtesy of Brenden Smalowski/Getty Images)

Helen Amelia Thomas, a pioneering American journalist whose career spanned eight decades and marked the inclusion of women into one of the country's most elite all-male organizations, died on Saturday at the age of 92.  Hired in 1943 by United Press, she remained with that press outlet (which eventually became United Press International) and served in a variety of capacities for the next 57 years.  In 1961, she was named the UPI's White House correspondent--the first woman given such a  position--and stayed there as bureau manager until she resigned and moved to Hearst Newspapers in 2000 to write a national affairs opinion column.  It was in that position that her controversial personal opinions on Middle Eastern affairs were recorded and posted online which resulted in her abrupt resignation in 2010.  She moved on to a suburban Washington weekly seven months later and remained on their staff until her passing.  In addition to her milestone in the White House Briefing Room, Thomas was also the first woman officer of the National Press Club, first female president of the White House Correspondents Association and first woman member of the Gridiron Club, the oldest and one of the most prestigious journalistic organizations in the nation's capital.