Insiders' Guide to the Greater Tampa Bay Area

Yesterday was the official release date for my new book (how good it feels to say that!), Insiders' Guide to the Greater Tampa Bay Area: Including Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater.

Check out my new blog by the same name to keep tabs on IGTB and on the Tampa Bay area. There's also a Facebook page -- if you become a fan, you'll get an update most days as to what's happening around Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties.

Here, I'll put the answers to a few questions people have asked about the writing itself.


How long did it take you to write the book? From initial contact to release date was just over a year. From contract date to the finish of the text was a tad over ninety days. That's three pages-plus a day, seven days a week, of research, writing, and revising. After that, I also had to proofread/revise the entire text twice, plus help create the maps.

Is this a self-published book? No, the book is published by Globe Pequot Press, a subsidiary of Morris Communications, LLC. 


How did you get this job? Short answer: It was a fluke. A writing friend passed along an email she had received that included info about GPP looking for a writer from the Tampa Bay area to write an IG. I sent in my resume and clips, and they contacted me. Long answer: There are no flukes. Seven years before, I had quit my job as a business manager and devoted myself to writing -- childrens' stories, I thought -- full time. Six years before, I started freelancing for Tampa Bay Newspapers. Four years before, I went back to school and earned by B.F.A. in Creative Writing from Eckerd College, where I did more writing in 18 months than I think I had done in my whole life up to that time. Six months before, I had graduated from the University of Alabama with an M.A. in Community Journalism, where I doubled the amount of writing I did at Eckerd. As part of the program I spent a year in the newsroom of the Anniston Star and explored just about every facet of community life through a journalist's eyes. Having lived in this area for more than 30 years, I had the background. Having taken the writing journey I did over the last seven years, I was in shape to get the job done. Even longer answer: In the beginning, God . . . 

Have questions about the writing process? Ask! In the meantime, help me celebrate! Ready?? 1-2-3 . . . WAHOOOOOOO!!!

Now available in bookstores and at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, etc. 326 pages. Softcover. ISBN: 978-0-7627-5347-5

Get 'Em While They're Young

This past Thursday through Saturday, I attended the National Newspaper Association's 123rd Convention in Mobile, Alabama.

Meeting publishers and editors of community newspapers -- mostly weekly papers -- from all parts of the United States reinforced my conviction of just how vital their work is to the overall health of an area.

Thanks to Dr. Jennifer Greer, journalism department chair at the University of Alabama and my master's project advisor, she and I were invited to present the paper and project as part of NNA's Community Building Symposium.

We heard lots of good ideas presented by people doing everything they can to help newspapers find their way to continue serving their communities through a changing economic and technological landscape.

I maintain one key is largely overlooked -- instilling the news habit when kids are young. Common wisdom says you don't wait until your child is an adult before you teach him or her to brush his or her teeth.

The problem is that not much in most newspapers is targeted to kids, is about kids, or is on a child's reading level. Our study showed less than 7% of available news space was targeted to or referred to children age 14 and under -- about 20% of the population.

Material targeted to children is largely puzzles, games, general knowledge articles, and coloring pages.

I applaud any newspaper who does that much. They have invested money and space in those products in an effort to include the youngest members of their communities in the readership of their community publication.

But most of the material we found -- even material targeted directly to children -- was written at a higher-than-9th-grade reading level.

I contend newsrooms can do more -- much more.

Part of a newspaper's responsibility is to help citizens "navigate society," according to Bill Kovach and Ted Rosenstiel, authors of The Elements of Journalism. But how credible is the map if 20% of the population is largely missing from the picture? And how useful is the map to the community's youngest citizens if they can't read it?

Want to know more about how to write real local news -- government meetings, community events, community issues, and more -- from a "kid angle" and in simple language?

Reply to this blog posting or send me an email (aander8130@gmail.com). I'd love to talk to you about scaling down local news without dumbing it down.

Our children (and their parents and teachers) can use all the help they can get in finding their way through their local world.

Kid-sized real toothbrushes, kid-sized real news -- makes sense, yes?

DATELINE: New York

Friday, March 13, 2009

I'm writing this from the breakfast room of a Holiday Inn in New York.

No, not Manhattan or even the Bronx. Not New York City at all, although I can say I'm in close proximity to the Big Apple.

I'm in a town called Stony Brook, home of Stony Brook University, where I've been attending a news literacy conference and meeting a marvelously eclectic group of people ranging from a high school librarian from Illinois to a man from Spain who works for the United Nations' media literacy program. Most people who attended are university presidents, college professors and high school teachers. That's because Stony Brook is promoting its News Literacy curriculum and program, hoping to help others to implement it or something similar.

A few industry people were here, most notably Neil Budde, formerly with Wall Street Journal Online and Yahoo! News and now with DailyMe.com; Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News; Ted Koppel, now senior news analyst for NPR and a contributing analyst for BBC America; Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of NPR and former senior vice-president for NYTimes.com; and Alexandra Wallace, senior vice-president of NBC news.

Some news innovators were here giving presentations about NewsTrust.com, Link TV's Know the News project, Poynter's NewsU, and other projects including some that reach around the world.

What was the outcome?

Monday, March 16, 2009

I'm writing this from home sweet home in Pinellas County, Florida.

I'm still sorting through my impressions of last week's news literacy conference, as well as the impressions of a conference in St. Pete the week before called Journalism That Matters.

Aside from all the interesting people I met from all over the world this past two weeks, and aside from how strongly I feel that the news industry has an important function to fulfill in society, I am more and more disturbed by that same news industry's current definitions of 'news,' of 'journalism that matters,' and of 'news literacy.'

Oh no, I hear some of you saying. This sounds like it may be the beginning of another diatribe or sermon. At the least, another scathing letter to Somebody In Charge.

Signs of the (newspaper) times . . .

The Tampa Tribune reports that, after 40 years of weekly publication, the St. Petersburg edition of The Florida Catholic is changing to an online news service. Six times a year TFC will mail a free magazine, to be called Gathered, to every registered Catholic family in the diocese. The article was not clear whether TFC would continue a print edition serving the rest of its multi-diocese circulation area.

Unfortunately, TFC's last front page and Bishop Lynch's comments both make it sound as though TFC is gone for good. Only in the sixth paragraph does Lynch add the words "as we have known it."

If journalism is to survive as a profession and as an industry, we MUST recognize the difference between "dead and gone," "gone for good," and "in transition." The more we use deadening words, the harder the transition to new, living forms.

BTW, the Tampa Tribune announced 18 more newsroom job cuts including a columnist and editorial editor.

And locally, the Tropical Breeze, Safety Harbor's monthly newspaper, stopped publishing a print edition with its October, 2008, issue.

"As long as the Arctic stays cold"

Movie trivia time.

Anyone out there remember what movie ended with the line above?

The year was 1958 and movie studios had discovered that horror movies made money. So Valley Forge Films, needing to fill the coffers for other, more esoteric films produced by its parent company, Good News Productions -- although IMDB (Internet Movie Database) lists the film company as Fairway Productions -- came up with this screamer.

Burt Bacharach and Ralph Carmichael each contributed to the music. The lead actor opted to take a $3,000 flat fee instead of $150 + 10% -- and the film ended up grossing millions.

In 2008, the film was nominated for TV Land's Best Movie to Watch at the Drive-In award.

And a new book, The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet, called a journalist because he is a contributor to several magazines, including Harper's and Rolling Stone, and creator of a couple of blogs purporting to monitor "America's secret theocrats," suggests that this movie was a fundamentalist Christian group's deliberate attempt to sway public sentiment by making the monster a metaphor for Communism.

There may be, however, just one or two tiny problems having to do with accuracy.

Rudy Nelson, associate professor of English at the University of Albany and "Third Assistant Director in Charge of Daily Script Revision" on the film in question, explores the discrepancies in Sharlet's article in his own article . . . but to put the name of Nelson's article here would give away the title of the movie.

Before I do that, here's what Sharlet emailed Nelson after Nelson emailed Sharlet with what Nelson says was a "low-intensity (and good-natured, I hope) correction of the misinformation, not really expecting a reply."

Nelson says Sharlet "thanks me for my message, offers apologies if he's misunderstood [the movie], and then goes on to point out, with several apt illustrations, that art can take on meanings not intended by its creators."

This is true to a point. As a dramatist and writer of fiction, I'm sometimes startled by what actors/readers take from my work.

But to charge intent is different from art taking on "meanings not intended by its creators."

I wouldn't think Sharlet can have it both ways.

Ah well. Read the articles for yourself. You decide. That's what a free, unbiased press is all about, right?

The actor? Steve McQueen.

The movie? The Blob.

Nelson's article? "The Blob and I" in the most recent issue of Books and Culture, published by Christianity Today.

The last line of the movie? Let's not even go there. At least not in this entry.

Note dated December 17, 2008: Corrected grammar in paragraph six.

Need I.N.F.O.?

Check out my newest blog page called I.N.F.O. -- Information. News. Facts. Opinion. -- and its debut article "All 13 Presidential Candidates on Florida's Ballot."

Yes, there are more than two candidates on the ballot -- 13 in Florida! -- ranging from an Alaskan representing the Prohibition Party to a Nicaraguan representing the Socialist Workers Party to the ubiquitous Ralph Nader representing, no, not the Green Party -- that's Cynthia McKinney on the first all-woman-of-color ticket -- but the Ecology Party.

Bye-Bye BAMA BLOG

After today, it's officially over.

Today I can still say I AM a Knight Fellow in Community Journalism at the University of Alabama and The Anniston Star.

Tomorrow the verb changes to WAS. Grades have been posted (4.0, thank you very much)and the diploma gets mailed next month.

Already I've been shut out of the UA electronic library system. That hurt.

Yes, I left Alabama almost three weeks ago. Turned in the final version of my master's project (Title: Community Journalism and the Community's Youngest Readers: A Study to Determine the Extent of Newspaper Content Directed toward Readers in Grades 2 through 8) on July 24, packed up, shipped off, yard-saled, and gave away the rest on the 25th & 26th, and left on July 27. Took a side trip to North Carolina and arrived home on August 3.

It was a really good year.

But now it's over.

Today's StoryPeople story reads:

I used to wait for a sign, she said, before I did anything. Then one night I had a dream & an angel in black tights came to me & said, you can start any time now, & then I asked is this a sign? & the angel started laughing & I woke up. Now, I think the whole world is filled with signs, but if there's no laughter, I know they're not for me.

So now I'm listening for laughter, ready to start any time now.

Anyone need a journalist out there?

All Over But the Shoutin'

Oh, wait. Maybe I shouldn't use that for the title of this blog. It is, after all, the title of Rick Bragg's book.

But then titles can't be copyrighted, so technically I'm OK.

And it's a really good title, one that I'm not sure I really understood until now. Because now it really is all over ... but the shoutin' on August 9 when Pomp and Circumstance plays for the gazillionth time and capped and gowned scholars parade past capped and gowned pedagogues and pay homage to Wisdom.

Or something.

I, however, shall participate in spirit only.

So what did I learn this past year?

I learned that trying to define the profession? craft? art? trade? of journalism is like trying to define the boundaries of the oceans. Much depends on the tides, the shifting sands, and whether you're on a boat or on shore.

There are very good reasons for not describing too precisely who is and who is not a journalist -- the Associated Press lists only a high school diploma in its requirements for reporters -- and there are equally compelling concerns about an 'anything goes' rumor-mongering that passes for journalism when the definition becomes too fuzzy.

I learned that most news organizations are three-headed monsters pulling in separate directions, mainly because the business? industry? service? manufacture? of journalism is equally muddled. Financial accounting in the world of journalism is neither strictly based on goods produced nor on services provided. Instead, it's a hybrid. And if you talk to employees in any of the three separate, but supposedly equal (yeah, right) departments -- newsroom, advertising, circulation -- you'll hear three different visions for the company.

I Left My Heart....

Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Fransisco among cobblestoned hills and cable cars. I left mine -- at least a piece of it -- between Cheaha and Piedmont among the kudzu-covered foothills of Calhoun County, Alabama. In particular, in Anniston.

The last paper has been written and turned in. The last presentation has been given. The last, the last, the last.

It's been more than a good year. It's been a gift.

I mean, how can you not have a good year when you've been given an all-expenses paid master's degree?

Oh sure, we paid in brain cramps from more than a few long nights reading academic studies and then writing, writing, writing.

But, all in all, it was a marvelous gift.

I gained new respect for journalists and academics alike. I learned to navigate a new community quickly. I made new friends.

And then there was the music.

From being stretched by singing with the Civic Chorale to learning shape-note music singing ... and the sung liturgy of the church I attended and learning that William Levi Dawson was actually from Anniston -- a second marvelous gift.

Now it's over.

Now the Knight Fellows go their separate ways.

Now I move on.

I don't know what the future holds. But I know Who holds the future.

And that it's about the Giver more than the gifts.

For Posterity

For some reason, this article took some tracking down in The Anniston Star's archives. As it's one of the most extensive I did this past year, I wanted to link it to my blog.

Calhoun County overrun with strays -- from the October 15, 2007 Anniston Star.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

"Once upon a time, there was a community nestled against the foothills of the mountains of northeastern Alabama.

The community had a long and varied history.

It had music and art. It had hiking and biking trails.

What it didn't have was a lot of high-paying jobs.

It used to have Industry. But then times changed, and the foundries and mills and factories shut down and moved to a place called Out Source."

So begins my editorial series, published in today's Anniston Star.

What you won't see reading it online is the layout. Full front page of the Insight section -- wow! Pardon me for a moment while I turn a cartwheel or two -- figuratively speaking, of course.

This wasn't just an assignment to me. As I've spent the greater part of a year here, I've heard wistfulness in people's voices ... a yearning that Anniston, and many of its surrounding communities, could somehow regain its former "Model City" status. I've heard more about the area's problems than its potential.

That's not to say there aren't problems. But every community, every person, has problems. You can let them consume your life, or you can develop your assets and trust that the problems get resolved in the process. Mostly they do.

Calhoun County, with Anniston as its heart, has so many assets on which to draw. Maybe they've just been taken for granted -- like heirloom silver service being used for everyday breakfast but never being polished up and used to serve company. Maybe my outsider's eyes will help this area see that "what might be" might be even better than what once was.

I thought of this as my gift to a community about which I've grown to care a great deal. They've helped me make a home away from home, and I'm grateful.

Spring Session

After loading us with theory and arming us with methodologies, the creators of this course launched us into the field with a short-term assignment: Produce a piece of community journalism while meeting the needs of your host news organization.

In my case, the host organization was the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg. This non-profit organization that teaches journalists around the world how to be better journalists, owns the St. Petersburg Times ... and also Tampa Bay Newspapers, for whom I wrote.

They were gracious hosts indeed -- gave me my own office with telephone, Internet access and use of the copy & fax machines and of their extensive library. Provided coffee and an assortment of teas. Even a meal or two or three.

More important, they provided friendly interest, probing questions and expert guidance as I explored elementary, middle, and high school newsrooms in the area. My focus, I thought, was going to be on how the high school programs were changing. It ended up being slightly different, and that is a subject for a different post.

In the meantime, here are two videos I produced at two of the high schools I visited. Hillsborough High in Tampa is home to The Red & Black, Florida's oldest high school newspaper, first published in 1899. At Palm Harbor University High School in Pinellas County, publishers of The Eye, I focused on yearbook journalism.

Second Term is History

So is the interim Spring term.

But I'll get to that in a separate posting.

First, I must beg pardon of all my faithful followers of the BAMA BLOG (or M'Lady's M'Log). I promised to keep you apprised of my academic adventures in Anniston, Alabama.

Instead I have digressed.

I've chatted about "chemical weapons incident" sirens and about singing with the Calhoun County Civic Chorale. I've bragged on my husband's pottery and have shared my observations on revival in Obama land ... and have given equal time to the Snoopy candidate.

Granted, I have shared some of my 'Grand Rounds in Community Journalism' videos. Viewers learned how to bake lebkuchen and experienced the beauty of Anniston awakening to Spring. And I posted an editorial about the proper punctuation of President's Day ... er, Presidents' Day ... I think.

Weighty stuff, right? For this I move 563 miles away and leave my family and friends for a year?? This is graduate school???

Allow me to make amends.

Besides Grand Rounds, which is a one-credit lab class, we studied Editorial Leadership, Media Management, and Research Methods. A slightly lighter load than last term's five classes, but we also were expected to begin work on our individual projects due later this summer. Here's a recap of each course:

Editorial Leadership -- Lots of writing in this one beginning with a lengthy op-ed column (mine was on the negative personal savings rate in the U.S.), several unsigned editorial board editorials (everything from the aforementioned punctuation piece to one on abortion), a letter to the editor (on who's really to blame for pharmaceuticals entering our water supply), several personal columns (observations about life), several reviews (the play Copenhagen, a choral concert, a middle school entrance, and Jon Stewart's America: The Book), and a 5-part editorial series written after we had organized, publicized, and held a public forum (decent attendance ... about 25 people showed up and we had a good discussion). This class gets the award for most readable textbooks -- four of them.

Media Management -- Lots of field trips in this class, both in-house -- think delivering papers at 3 a.m. to learn about independently contracted carriers -- and as far afield as Montgomery. We visited the headquarters for Southern Living (sweet, and not just as in cookies) and the offices of the Daily Home (circulation about 2500, although they have several publications). We learned about every aspect of the news business -- accounting, production, advertising, broadcasting, radio, online -- and attended legislative sessions and visited with AP reporters. Only two writing assignments for this course. Here's the intro to my final paper:

Turkeys Can Fly and Other Disastrous Circulation Assumptions

Mention the Great Thanksgiving Day Turkey Drop and those of a certain age immediately think WKRP in Cincinnati, the 1978-1982 CBS sit-com set at a struggling radio station. The turkey giveaway, station manager Arthur Carlson’s idea, involved dropping live turkeys from a helicopter to patrons at a shopping center. Needless to say, the event was a disaster – both for the turkeys and for the shoppers.

“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly,” Carlson said later in the show.

As God is our witness, we in the newspaper industry have tended to think newspapers can sell themselves.

“We’ve depended on the fact that we put this product out 365 days a year and that should be enough,” said Dennis Dunn, circulation director at The Anniston Star, a 30,000 circulation Consolidated Publishing daily in northeastern Alabama. “We’ve been a little naïve in that our attitude has been, ‘We’re ‘The Newspaper’ and people should beg to buy us.’”

Research Methods -- Actual exams in this class -- ones where we had to memorize terms like prestige bias, intercoder reliability, cohort analysis and explain how they related to other terms. Lots of analyzing of experiments as to whether they were reliable and/or valid. As a class we did a content analysis of 200+ newspaper Web sites to determine how many attempted to convey newsroom ethics policies to readers. And our final assignment was a paper/presentation proposing our master's project. Appropriately researched, cited and with every step laid out before the committee, of course. Mine is titled:

Community Journalism and the Community’s Youngest Readers:
A Study to Determine the Extent of Newspaper Content
Directed toward Readers in Grades 2 through 8

There you have it.

Had it.

It's history now.

April in Anniston -- and Say It Ain't So

Birds (look right to see fine feathered fellow outside my door the other day) and bees ... and first lawn-mowing of the season occurred yesterday.

It's April in Anniston, which means only four more months remain of this program. And when I think of the work I have to do in that four months -- yikes!

Who Woulda Thunk It?

'Tis the season to be jolly well into getting the tax forms filled out and sent off to the IRS.

So I'm compiling and posting and figuring it all up. And sorting through bills and papers so everything for 2007 gets put away neat and tidy for posterity.

Part of the process is putting all my published or produced writing for the year into a binder. And this year of 2007, I've discovered, was a bit remarkable for me as my work was published in four different genres and in six different publications, including three different newspapers, a children's magazine (short story), a literary review (poem), and an anthology(worship services). Also did some advertising copy writing and learned to write historical research -- a different style than regular academic work, which I also did this year.

I can remember reading a "How to Be a Writer" kind of book in the Pinedale, Wyo., library when I was barely 20 and thinking, "I can do this." I can remember taking a Journalism class and a Literary Magazine Production class at St. Petersburg Junior College's Clearwater Campus a few years later and thinking, "I'd love to do this."

But making a living at it was another matter -- or at least I thought it was -- and so instead of making books I kept them (the financial kind) and, and, and.

And kept writing a little bit at a time. School newsletters. Letters to church vestries and politicos and writers I disagreed with ("Not another letter," my husband would say. "I feel sorry for whoever's getting this one." They were nice. But they were forceful and to the point.) Church skits and plays.

Until here I am 30 years later getting paid to go to school and write!

"I alone know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "Plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11 ... a combination of Today's English Good News Translation and the New King James Version.

Amazing.

Editorial Leadership

That's the name of one of our classes this term. And, since some of my many fans have asked for samples of my writing -- OK, OK, in my dreams they have -- here's a recent assignment:

Punctuate This

No wonder we can’t figure out complicated problems like health care and Social Security. We can’t even figure out how to punctuate Presidents Day.

Northerners of a certain age remember making stovepipe hats out of black construction paper near February 12, eating cherry pie on February 22 and having two days of no school.

Pity our children and grandchildren. The Uniform Holidays Bill of 1968 moved Washington’s Birthday, as it had been called since 1885, to the third Monday in February. One holiday instead of two.

Side note: George Washington might not have minded the switch. A change in calendar systems during his lifetime shifted his birthday from February 11 to February 22.

The 1968 bill also proposed renaming the holiday “Presidents’ Day” (apostrophe after the ‘s’) to honor both Washington and Lincoln. But that part of the bill got lost, and it wasn’t reinserted in 1971 when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act was passed.

President Nixon proclaimed it “Presidents’ Day” in 1971, in honor of all presidents, but a presidential proclamation is not the same as an executive order.

Technically, we celebrate one president’s birthday (apostrophe before the ‘s’) because the holiday is still listed in Federal statutes as Washington’s Birthday. State statutes are another matter.

In Alabama, for instance, on the third Monday in February we officially celebrate George Washington’s birthday and Thomas Jefferson’s birthday – although Jefferson was born in April. Alabama Department of Archives and History officials were stumped as to why we honor Jefferson, saying only that it “slipped into the code” in 1907.

“Presidents Day” (no apostrophe) has become the officially preferred designation, in an attempt to honor all presidents, even though “President’s Day” is the p.c. – punctuationally correct – version and even though the Chicago Manual of Style and many dictionaries prefer “Presidents’ Day.”

And even though, officially, it’s still just Washington’s Birthday.

With the latest round of presidential candidates riding into their respective Jerusalems so convention delegates can raise the palm branches and shout ‘Hosanna!’ we should acknowledge the peculiar combination of destiny and drive that has drawn fewer than 50 people – very different in parentage, in education, in religion, in character, in conviction of what was best for this country – to occupy its highest office.

We should also acknowledge that we among the nations of the earth can most truly say to our children that any of them might grow up to be President of the United States.
We should not take either of those peculiarities for granted, regardless of whether we agree with the current occupant of the office or not.

It’s time to make it official. Presidents Day.

No apostrophe. Honoring our past. Keeping faith with our future.

If we can do that, maybe there’s hope for resolving health care and Social Security.

Typicus Touri

I are one. Or at least I were one.

Two weekends ago, Sandra Martinez and I drove to Panama City Beach, Fla., for the American Journalism Historians Association's Southeastern Symposium. Jennifer and Jeremy Cox, fellow Fellows, drove down separately ... er, together, but in a separate car. Sandra came to cheer on the three of us as we presented papers we had done in our Media History class for Dr. Julie Williams, professor of Media History at Samford University in Birmingham and our professor through UA.

The conference was fun and informative. Feminist and ethnic perspectives on historic media tended to predominate; our papers were unique in that regard: Jen's focused on how the media reported the deaths of two blonde bombshells 70-some years apart, Jeremy's was a look at sports journalism focusing on the controversy the last time the Cubse. won the World Series, and mine told of the beginnings of medical journalism.

We walked the beaches and bought trinkets and met new friends. On the way home, we stopped in DeFuniak Springs, Fla, which was just winding up their 13th Annual Assembly at the Florida Chautauqua Center. What an event! Civil War/War of Northern Aggression reenactors, art shows, horse & carriage rides, music and scholarly speakers from various disciplines. What a great idea! Go to www.Florida-Chautauqua-Center.org for more info.

But pictures are more fun, so here you are:

Back to Work . . .

To those I missed seeing over Christmas break, my apologies! I picked up a more-than-a-cold-not-quite-the-flu bug that wiped me out pretty much from New Year's Eve on. Believe me, I had a list of folks with whom I wanted to share some time, but I doubted they wanted to share my bug. I'm still a bit froggy . . . taking a while to shake the effects completely.

Lee and I drove back up January 6, then he flew back. Classes began Wed, Jan 9 . . . but this term our classes are Monday (Editorial Leadership in the morning and Grand Rounds in the afternoon), Tuesday (Research Methods), and Wednesday (Media Management). So we had one class on Wed the 9th, then four days off. Then three classes and a Chamber of Commerce annual luncheon w/economic report on Friday. Then Monday off (MLK day), class on Tuesday, and then attend the Public Research Council meeting in Birmingham on Wednesday with all kinds of state officials and those who want their attention.

Tomorrow we go to class in the morning as usual. Then we get up the next morning at @ 2 a.m. and go deliver newspapers with the contract carriers. When they say we'll learn all phases of media management, they're not kidding.

We're also working on a bit of primary election coverage. And doing LOTS of reading . . .

This coming weekend three of us will be presenting papers we wrote for our media history class at the American Journalism Historians Association symposium in Panama City.

Meantime, check out my video (below) I did last term on municipal sewer systems. Watch for a slide show to be posted tomorrow from the Barack Obama rally in Birmingham that I attended with fellow Fellow Jeremy Cox.

Stay healthy!

A Day in the Life of a Knight(Fellow in Community Journalism) Errant

So just what does a Knight Fellow in Community Journalism do, you ask. Perhaps you imagine us sallying forth from The Anniston Star castle, swooping down upon neighboring villages and countryside in quest of glorious adventure, and performing such noble deeds as exposing corruption or slaying ignorance with ink and paper, bytes and (sound) bites.

Not quite.

Though it is true that Star Castle sits atop a hill and is surrounded by forest wherein woodland creatures dwell ... and though it is true that there are neighboring villages wherein all manner of life is lived ... though these things are true, our sallying forth occurs but seldom and then for purposes inquisitive rather than conquistative, to coin a word.

Actually, we sally forth each morning from our individual abodes in various neighboring villages and arrive at Star Castle no later than nine, Star-time. Generally, Star-time agrees with Central Daylight (soon to be Standard) Time, but the two clocks in our section have been purposely set ahead by several minutes in an attempt to spur the sports writers, who share their space with us, to meet their 11:30 p.m. deadline. Their copy generally concludes the day's news, and so the printers below in the belly of the fortress wait on them to set the presses in motion.

Back to the a.m. hours when we arrive. At nine, we gather in a conference room with our professor of the day. Three of the professors travel I-20 from Tuscaloosa -- about a two-hour drive -- while one comes from Birmingham, an hour away. From nine until noon we are occupied thus:

• Mondays--Production: Dr. Ed Mullins, retired journalist and professor emeritus who oversees the class. Various Star employees have given us mini-workshops on design software, video shooting and software, photo shooting and software, etc. Our current assignment, which concludes at the end of this semester, is to talk to people within our assigned communities to discover what concerns they bring to next fall's local elections. We will be producing a special section in December.
• Tuesdays--Contemporary Issues in Journalism: Dr. Jennifer Greer, department chair and newly arrived from the University of Reno. We study everything from financial models to media law to media formats to ethics to the latest trends in public/civic and citizen journalism. A veritable smorgasbord of issues served up in books and speakers and field trips to various newsrooms ... well, until our travel allowance was slashed, that is. Our main project is a research paper about one of the issues; I'm looking at the ways media communicate their ethical standards to the public.
  
• Wednesdays--Communication Theory: Dr. Wilson Lowrey, who began his career as a political cartoonist and worked as a designer and editor before migrating to the theoretical dark side of trying to figure out just how it is that we never quite say what we mean and how we tend to mishear what others think they say. And what media can and ought to do about it. Dr. Lowrey's self-deprecating sense of humor keeps this class from becoming a dragon in need of slaying. We have each chosen a community issue (mine is animal control), written a news article about it, and are now writing a research paper applying various theories to the issue. We'll be creating a Web site about the issues to finish off the semester.
• Thursdays--Media History and the First Amendment: Dr. Julie Williams, from Samford University in Birmingham, brings samples from her collection of period newspapers and other treats...including Nestles candy bars in honor of Civil War New York Times journalist Charles Anderson Page who founded the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company which merged with Nestles in the early 1900s (another source says it became Bordens ... but then we wouldn't have gotten Nestles candy bars....). We have been given our own set of six newspapers--the real deal, folks, not repros--from which to study developments in reporting and printing. And I'm continuing my interest in children's media by doing my research paper on a facet of Youth's Companion, one of the longest running family magazines (1827-1929) with a high subscription circulation of 500,000 households.
• Fridays--Grand Rounds in Community Journalism: Chris Waddle, director of the ComJ program, and various Star editors and staff members have assigned us to explore various aspects of the community and to discuss, on paper, how we would cover that aspect. We meet on Fridays to brief and debrief.
  

So there you have it. That's what I do each weekday morning. And each weekday afternoon and evening I'm reading LOTS (I'd say TONS, but that's hyperbole) of books and scholarly articles and am trying to keep it all sorted and stored (notice the anagrammatic words there?) in my mental repository. Lately, I'm ashamed to say, I just throw it in and slam the door and hope it won't all come spilling out next time I open the door to throw something else in ...

Until next time....

P.S. Scroll to the bottom for a couple of new slide shows...

Bama Blog Aug 1

August 1, 2007

Greetings all--

First off -- Most of you asked that I stay in touch during this year of graduate work in Alabama. But some of you may not have meant that you wanted to receive my periodic ramblings. That's OK. Just email me and I'll take your name off the list.

Second -- Don't feel you have to reply. Although, if you do, I'll relish hearing what you've been up to. I may or may not be able to answer. Can we both be OK with that, knowing that some communication is better than none.

So this morning's Star carried a feature story – front page first section – about the local bookmobile. Written by one of my fellow interns. She rode the bookmobile Monday and wrote about her experience. Described the bookmobile librarian in this manner: “She's spry at 56.”

Now I don't know about you, but “spry” is a word you use to describe people who are 96 and still maneuvering on their own two feet. Being only a couple of years shy of that ancient age of 56, I'm trying not to totter too much in the newsroom.

As you may have guessed, my fellow interns are mid-20s. Matter of fact, so are most of the staff writers. My editor is 31. One nice young man who asked me today about freelancing is in his “second career, too” – he recently got out of the Marines. Yes, I'm bemused by it all...and enjoying every minute. Each of these young people are not only intelligent, they're also skilled at dealing with people. The future is in at least as good hands as it's ever been.

So far I've written about teen museum volunteers, weather-related traffic fatalities, a police academy graduation, a three-part series on Calhoun County libraries, two stories on a local charity golf tournament, a school board meeting, and am working on dress code changes, a 5K run, and an AIDS event. Plus a couple of other shorter write-ups. I'm learning to deal with photographers who have their own policies and procedures, with the phone system, with computer routing my stories, and with deciphering various accents.

Outside of work, I'm fairly settled. Still don't have much in the way of furniture, but it makes it easy to vacuum. No TV, but I don't miss it. Have gotten a couple of movies from the library and watch them on my laptop. Banks and libraries close early around here. Other than that, there's a 24-hour WalMart not far up the street.

Got a letter from the local Emergency Management Association. And there was a note taped to my door about free tone alert radios. They warn in case of tornadoes. And there's a siren that has malfunctioned at least once since I've been here – for two solid hours between 1 and 3 a.m. warning of a non-existent disaster in the making. The other time the siren would go off – there are four different tones all together – is “in the unlikely event” of a catastrophic event at the Anniston Army Depot where they are in the decade-long process of incinerating hundreds of thousands of chemical weapons. I think my life expectancy in such an unlikely event is about three minutes.

Aside from that, the area is quite beautiful. The Star's offices have lots of windows. My desk when I am a student will look out toward a woodsy area. I'm told the deer come up to the windows sometimes. Hope to do some exploring soon and take some pictures.

Some of you may not have gotten my new address:

P.O. Box 4005 /Anniston, A 36204-4005

Phone is 256-xxx-xxxx

I love and miss you all.

Mom/Grandma/Anne