From Malone Tumlin on the Power of the Pencil…
Bill Neville or other GSU publication friends: I still have a few of
these great pencils. They are my favorite pencils. Fun times editing the
campus art magazine, poetry journal, and the year book turned magazine.
Campus life was so great. — Malone
Having spent 16 years in a newsroom, most of it at a daily newspaper, I have had the unlucky experience to have covered tragic events, though, fortunately for me at least, none as expansively horrific as what is unfolding in Connecticut today.
As these events have proceeded, reports on Twitter today related that experienced and veteran first responders were having an emotional, gut-wrenching experience in dealing with this tragedy.
I can relate to those reactions.
As a country newspaper editor I had report on the family of five who panicked at the swimming hole and drowned in waist-deep water, the young man who cleaned his shotgun before walking into the back yard and blowing his father to bits, or the high school classmate who returned a broken man from Vietnam, lost what was left of his mind, killed his stepdaughter, and eluded authorities for days before capture.
What my news own coverage experiences have in common with today’s elementary school shooting is the commonality of human tragedy. The difference is the scale of what has transpired. It is unimaginable to me.
Because I knew how the events I covered impacted families, and how they forever altered the course of individual lives, every aspect of covering these stories was disturbing to me personally. Writing the stories was difficult. Editing them was painful. Writing the headlines was sad duty. With my colleagues, we performed these tasks because the public needed to have timely details of these events related accurately. It was never an easy task.
The end of the day was an emotionally exhausting and numbing experience for those of us who merely covered the event, as I’m sure it was for investigators and first responders. Yet, we all got to go home. To this day, I cannot fathom the depth and breadth of the pain and sense of loss for the survivors who mourn the victims.
I hope I never will have that knowledge.
Having a jury of English majors would be about as likely as getting struck by lightning… still the transcript is the transcript.
When English majors hear double negatives:
From Kevin Hudson: For my photographer friends…how about a 1/40 second shot with wide open aperture and 25,000 ISO…from a helicopter…on the edge of a hurricane. Click the cover image in the article for a larger version. (We walked to the edge of darkness the other night…it was so amazing to see the stark difference…uncomfortably quiet and pitch black street by Bryant Park, crazy bright and festive at Times Square a couple blocks over.)
Architecture photographer explains how he got that New York magazine cover shot | Poynter.
Standing for journalism, strengthening democracy | Journalism training, media news & how to’s
CSI Kansas?
Best film synopsis ever? I tend to agree. Dorothy was not the innocent she appeared to be.
The importance of kerning revisited.
Selecting the right font for the job is important on so many levels.
Campus threats are always scary. Always hope for a good outcome. Not always possible with news coverage, though.
Today’s Fail — Fox map does what others have tried but failed to do… get rid of Arkansas and have Alabama and Mississippi switch places. Who the hell proofs these things?
WTVA News Well…someone moved the landmass along with Alabama and Arkansas.
Thoughtful post-mortem on the Red & Black upheaval at UGa primarily from the board’s point of view. Useful to hear more detail from the two board members who resigned.
The irony in all this is that the top down recommendations/orders on how the students can turn around readership deficits is coming from a board with many pros who themselves have not figured out how to turn things around in the commercial press. In short, the money problems affecting commercial journalism are hitting the college press as well.
Duh.
The PR disaster could have been avoided, perhaps, if everyone — students and advisers and board — had been brought into the survival planning process together instead of the grown-ups issuing a directive that students were expected to follow without question with the most flimsy of rationales imaginable — “because we said so.”
Sigh.
Ready to put a bow on this topic for a while.
Money woes sparked flap over UGA newspaper With the student editors who famously walked out last week now back on their jobs at the University of Georgia newspaper The Red & Black, bloggers, Facebook friends and Twitter followers have… DAILYREPORTONLINE.COM
Typographical Tidbit No. 27: Kerning, the space between a pair of letters, is important for a variety of reasons.
Kids, don’t let this happen to you…
Today is the final day of food service at the Landrum Center at Georgia Southern. The cafeteria was s sparking addition to campus life in the mid-1960s, replacing the shop worn and overcrowded dining hall in the Williams Center. My mom was head cashier at food service during this time, which, on at least one occasion included a massive food fight after which she came home with Pimento Cheese streaking her hair. When asked what happened, she said, “apparently the students did not care for supper.”