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By George

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

With apologies to George Orwell:

Winston gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two Victory Gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose, only to be absorbed by crumbs from two Rick’s Bakery cookies. A just dessert for submitting to a biometric fingerprint scan, not for national security, but a private employer’s time clock. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

A vuvuzela blast.

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The Future Just Showed Up: Like

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

The following is my column for the September 2010 edition of monthly newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

Last year I asked my Facebook friends on my “Wall,” where conversations are texted (Is this English?), “Why are people so upbeat on Facebook?” I’d been on Facebook a few months, having been sold on it by NSNC veteran Dave Lieber (who pushed the social networking site in last month’s edition of The Columnist newsletter), and was amazed by the civility and cheerfulness. When people reported devastating news, if they didn’t spin it up, then the Wall responses were nothing but empathy and affirmations.

My query received a wide range of answers. Two resonated. One was that people intuitively want Facebook for uplift and you have to give it to get it. The other explanation was fear — fear of being disliked or rebutted … or worst, ostracized in Facebook by being either “hidden” or “removed.”

So I was hit by a bucket of ice water when a friend of over 10 years blasted me on Facebook in mid-August, over a column I “shared” by providing its Web page address. Worse, his comments got “liked.” The piece was by Robert Niles in the Online Journalism Review, “This Year’s Advice for Journalism Students.”

In his piece Niles — who early in his career had a reporting stint at the Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind., site of the NSNC 2010 conference — updated the usual spiel of networking and specializing by noting that the depth of students’ online presence now will be judged by potential employers.

Of course he meant watch the silly talk and embarrassing photos, but mainly, Niles seemed to be saying that being published is being published, even if you’re doing it yourself. In other words, clips are clips. So post well. “When you read, watch or listen think always, ‘Would others find this interesting?’ That’s how you find the material you’ll need to fill your blog, Twitter feed or whatever else you publish online.”

Some professionals, perhaps the more traditional newspaper people, i.e. older, are threatened by that, in the same way authors debate that while talent can be developed, writing cannot be taught to just anyone.

Let me quote the online dialog that was posted after my link to Niles’ column.

My friend X—-: “Horse sh*t. I didn’t start by sucking a sportswriter’s golfballs as an intern and puking accolades to pay for the privilege. I got my foot in the door (Continued)

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Cultural Muscle

Sunday, August 8, 2010

A month ago, the Walton Family Foundation offered money to Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center if it would build a second, larger auditorium 35 miles north in Bentonville, rather than enlarge itself into a complex a la Lincoln Center, with an accent. The idea had merit in some ways — the growth of the northern part of the area plus a major museum is going up there — but otherwise a folly, explored in Brick, with faults in audience-building and economics. Last week, interestingly, was the deadline set by the center for communities, property owners and others to submit their own expansion plans.

Northwest Arkansas Newspapers reported the most polished proposal came from a team effort of the city of Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas, summarizing that as follows:

“The Fayetteville-UA proposal was one of 25 site expansion ideas the Walton Arts Center received by a Monday deadline involving locations in Benton and Washington counties. Proposals from individual landowners largely amounted to offers to sell property to the arts center. Other chamber or municipality proposals offered multiple options for land and public support.”

Fayetteville’s proposal was a detailed package proposing a specific land-use design for the existing location, as well as three alternate concepts that could be considered. It was also the only proposal offering up the potential for funding totaling $33.4 million, according the proposal documents. The funding would come in the form of donated property, construction investment in future public parking facilities, street improvements and the construction of a $6 million multiuse theater, among others. The UA also offered the use of Bud Walton Arena and Razorback Stadium for performances.”

The online newspaper Fayetteville Flyer reports:

… the University of Arkansas has offered to make Bud Walton Arena and Reynolds Razorback Stadium available for Walton Arts Center programming. With seating capacities of 19,000 and 69,500, respectively, those facilities would add possibilities for large concerts that the city says could draw audiences from as far away as Dallas and Kansas City. Such performances would provide an additional revenue stream for the performing arts center complex.”

(The full UA-city brief can be seen as a PDF as published by the Flyer, which has no fee wall.)

Take that, Walton Family Foundation!

Is that unfair? Poking a bully with a stick is fun. The way to do this is have another bully standing with you. UA has bulldozed level the playing field, and complicated the issue with logic and clout. (Continued)

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Mosque, Ow, on the Hudson

Friday, August 6, 2010

Some blasts from the vuvuzela. I used to play instruments, not just blow my own horn.

While avoiding graven images, there’s no writ against craven puns.

Mosque, ow, on the Hudson? Saying where houses of worship do not belong raises all sorts of red flags, no matter the neighborhood, no matter the religion. How could a house of prayer in the vicinity of New York’s Ground Zero not be a splendid idea? Besides, Moscow on the Hudson is recalled as a delightful movie from 1984; I wonder if it’s dated?

Ground Zero? Ground Zero Mostel!

Now there’s a Jewish radical with humor and chutzpah. I remember Zero Mostel best for appearances with Jim Henson’s Muppets. He is quoted as saying of Henson: “He has the best possible actors. If you have a disagreement with them, you can always use them to wash your car.” Ground Mostel, a real New Yorker.

* * *

Foodie program: Tomatoes no longer are tomatoes. A couple of the major frozen pizza brands, I saw when shopping this week, state in their ingredients list, “tomatoes (water and tomato paste).” In reaction I bought a Wal-Mart Great Value (house brand) pie. Its sauce ingredients start as, “Water, Tomato paste.” As it should be.

(Continued)

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We Are Don’s Draper

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

I watch Mad Men religiously. Of all the plot points, the least should be the main one, the secret identity of its lead, Don Draper. Most of the other characters don’t know, but the audience got the gist from the get-go.

It became a non-issue for me after reflecting on the opening scene of the first episode of the fourth season, July 25: It’s referred to with a wink, when a reporter asks him, “Who is Don Draper?” Most of us have similar transformations of identity, which while often more dramatic than Don’s, don’t have the arc of story for TV, books or movies. Maybe it’s because the changes are in how we redefine happiness and success, not the name on the driver’s license.

Yes, I’m another fan of the cable AMC series, though a latecomer, drifting in toward the end of the second season, then becoming hooked. We’ve rented DVDs of Seasons 1 and 2 to catch up.

Bert Cooper, the Cooper of the 1960s-era Sterling Cooper ad agency in Manhattan, is right when he said three years ago, in the penultimate episode of Season 1, that Don’s hidden identity, if he has one, doesn’t matter. The boss might know the truth. Sneaky Pete Campbell knows it but can’t get it confirmed.

Don’s old self doesn’t matter, because those of us who grow up have changed costumes at least once — we’re all drapers.

The audience learned Don’s identity in the first season. It constitutes plot because if his identity is blown, the life he built as creative director at what now is Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce collapses. Don was a Depression orphan named Dick Whitman. Dick’s mother, a prostitute, died in childbirth, his father a john. His guardians were hicks. In Korea, the real Lt. Don Draper is blown up in an accident just after a sniper attack, and the injured Pvt. Whitman has enough wits to trade dog tags. He barely met Draper, but his life can’t be any worse than what Whitman faces should he return home.

The real Don Draper had he survived might have made a dandy car salesman, moving on to copywriter then a Madison Avenue man (Mad Man). Dick Whitman might have had the same post-service career track, under his own identity.

A new man rose from that war, whatever his name.

The show has plenty of flashbacks, showing the child Dick, the young car salesman Don, but none in between. Was he a high school hotshot or the continuation of the timid boy? Maybe we’ll be shown, but it doesn’t matter. The big transformation happens at the end of adolescence, with others further on. [Don’s now ex-wife Betty has yet to leave her teen (Continued)

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Newspaper, Paper or Plastic

Sunday, August 1, 2010

My first “President’s Column” for columnists.com.

Thank you for electing me president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Didn’t you hear? I have not published a running column since Sept. 16, 2001.

Instead I’ve written at www.benpollock.com/brick for nearly seven years. After the first year, the water warms up. Blogging is how I’ve coped with the recession and the panicking publishing industry. We’re all attacking this differently. The iceberg appeared so suddenly. As president, I’ll help the NSNC help you.

We cannot reverse the value of your home, though.

I joined the NSNC in 1991, toward the end of its First Wave: staff columnists but also writers like me, editors or reporters with columns on the side. Through conferences and newsletters we gave one another advocacy, support and education, leavened with irreverence.

In the mid-1990s the Second Wave began to roll in, free-lance columnists from veterans to novices. The First Wave hung on, with more staff columnists joining. High jinks ensued.

The Third Wave has started. We added online-only columns to the annual contest. Then we welcomed blog-columns, where entries must be bound by commonly accepted journalism values and honor the three-century history of newspaper columns in tradition, format, spirit and variety.

Important: The NSNC needs all three waves. The NSNC serves columnists everywhere at all levels of experience, in all media and formats, through education, support and advocacy. A column is a running series of essays, from personal to persuasive, employing research and reporting or extending to fantasy and satire. Written columns are the most common, but audio and video essays are no less valid. Journalism standards and ethics are observed in columns.

A column is a column in essentially any media. It’s a technical term, medium, meaning canvas, stone, paper, pixels etc. Newspaper as a medium is abstract. It always has had different forms.

Decades ago, neighborhood sheets would be run off on mimeographs (Google it) and be called X. In San Francisco and Liberia, a few journalists now write news and comment on chalkboards calling them X. Our papers call their websites online X. Salon.com and Slate.com update several times a day like multiple-edition X — they’re all newspapers.

So we columnists board the good ship NSNC — lifeboat or yacht — and watch for icebergs. Maybe I’m thinking arctic because it’s past 90 and not even noon yet in Arkansas.

– This column was first published in the August 2010 edition of The Columnist,
the monthly newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

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Uphold, or Hold Up, Standards

Sunday, July 18, 2010

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Sunday, July 11, 2010 — Indiana University feels bigger than my hometown’s University of Arkansas. Yep, 1,933 acres versus 345 acres. It has a journalism school not a department, a music school not a department. It is a handsome forested campus, full of sculptures (even a huge Calder) and fountains. Come October it must be something.

The 2010 conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists ended with the annual general membership meeting. It had the usual agenda — the executive director reviews numbers from the budget (holding the course), of members (only slightly down), of contest entries (up a bit) — plus committee reports and (drum roll) election of officers.

Views and details on the conference are linked at a special page in Columnists.com. No one probably will write up the business session. Still, the page is being updated as new blogs and columns come in, and will be archived indefinitely.

NSNC Oath of Office

NSNC Oath of Office, Sunday, July 11, 2010. Photo by Bonnie Squires

With no nominations from the floor, we elect a slate, conference chair, secretary, vice president and president. The last job on that list now is mine through summer 2012. I claimed all weekend that I’d vote for any write-in candidate, serious if they were, but none offered.

Now I start pleading for impeachment. The self-deprecation is getting old, but I did not seek this job. Helping the NSNC as a board member for five years has been a blast. But it has had a few resignations, due directly and indirectly to the Good Depression, so here I was Sunday, neither “acting” nor “interim” but letterhead-official.

What’s unexpected is how confident I feel.

The membership meeting aims for 90 minutes because people always start leaving for the airport, and President Samantha Bennett wrapped it up in 60, including a non-agenda discussion on the society’s advocacy role. I had ready an inaugural address, about what I said at the Thursday board meeting, but I scuttled that in favor of writing it up for the NSNC newsletter. I’ll post it as a Brick, too. But I did organize a mock Oath of Office, perhaps to join the Sitting Duck and Mystic Tie traditions.

NSNC Education Foundation Secretary Dave Lieber administered the oath. First lady Christy Pollock held an Ernie Pyle volume, on which I placed my left hand. In my right I hoisted a fountain pen. It was loaded.

I, (name), do soberly swear,
To advocate for the craft of columns, in the field of journalism,
To abide by the Code of Conduct of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists,
To represent the National Society of Newspaper Columnists as (title).
How great Art –
– Buchwald.
Thy Will –
– Rogers.
So help me, Erma and Ernie.

-30-

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Compassion Works. So Does Anger

Friday, July 16, 2010
Grounds of Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center

Columnists tour Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center in Bloomington, Ind. Photo by Christy Pollock

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Saturday night, July 10, 2010 — The learnin’ part of the Saturday portion of the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists ended at noon, unless you’re a columnist (published or not). The usual field trip either can be written about or learned from. Lunch and and tour this time were both, a visit to the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center.

• • •

The hour “On Creativity” featured not a writer but a veteran jazz composer and musician, David Baker, chair of IU’s jazz studies department. He was right, the chops of creativity are about the same for any of us.

Baker has three rules, and they seem to come from the motivational world.

  1. From a late pastor, A.W. Tozer: “Time is a resource that is nonrenewable and nontransferable. You cannot store it, slow it up, hold it up, divide it up or give it up. You can’t hoard it up or save it for a rainy day — when it’s lost it’s unrecoverable. When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection.”
  2. “Excellence is not an accident. It comes from hard work and vision.”
  3. A riddle: “I’m your constant companion,” and continues with good and bad traits, such as “I will push you onward or drag you down to failure.” and ends, “Who am I? I am habit.” Good advice from “author unknown,” but it’s office-poster copy.

Baker says he needs a deadline for composing. He finds word games helpful, he’s especially fond of anagrams, as they keep his mind sharp even musically. “Compose at a regular time. in a regular place, have all necessary materials at hand.” “I don’t get locked in any single element. Anagrams help in this. The goal is to state what you’re intending with the greatest possible economy. Anagrams help me see things from different angles, to find the best one, to find an unusual one.” “I’ve written over a thousand pieces; that’s not an overestimate. Some were awful and thank goodness have never been performed.”

Another good quote that Baker recited, and I didn’t catch its author, “Any music that is not heard live is doomed to extinction.”

Baker mentions he teaches a course on Duke Ellington. At the Q&A, I noted that Ellington and Pyle were contemporaries, coming into prominence in the 1930s, and ask how he makes Ellington relevant in 2010 to non-music majors and non-jazz fans, which we could use with Pyle, increasingly obscure with time.

“To teach Ellington, it helps to show what was contemporaneous with Ellington at the time. What we know and what is less known of those times. He didn’t live in isolation.”

• • •

The columnists couldn’t convene in Ernie Pyle’s home state and his home university without a panel on the renown newsman. Lauri Lebo is researching a book on Pyle’s life in the 1930s — before the World War II writing that engraved his name in history. Owen Johnson, an IU professor, is a longtime Pyle scholar. Moderating was longtime NSNC member Mike Harden.

They reviewed Pyle’s life. Johnson has a solid biographical essay online. In the 1930s Pyle traveled the country with his wife and wrote columns on small-town America. The panelists had a fun word for these pieces, “vagabondage.” I have a book of these, and they recall CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt’s “On the Road.” But Kuralt died 13 years ago. That’s three generations of journalism majors (Continued)

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Creatives, Columnists and Cunning

Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Ed Grisamore accepting Will Rogers Humanitarian Award

Ed Grisamore accepting Will Rogers Humanitarian Award at Oliver Winery, Ind. Photo by Christy Pollock

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Friday, July 9, 2010 — “Get Schooled” was the columnists’ theme this year, our conference hosted at a university for the first time, Indiana. Appropriately, our informal welcome Thursday night was at one of the town’s oldest college hang-outs, Nick’s Pub.

The meat of a conference like this is made up of lectures and panel discussions, and this meet was one of the most abstract held by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. A few people were disappointed and I could see what they meant, but most loved it. Russell Frank of Penn State called it mind-expanding. For the first time, My Beloved attended nearly every session, because the schedule looked promising and it fulfilled that.

What was it? First, what it was not. There were neither one-hour how-to’s on writing and publishing or state-of-the-business/craft analyses, which are our norm. Bloomington’s Mike and Mardi Leonard instead found people to talk about creativity itself, with a couple of insightful tangents.

This and the next Brick are on the long side, but they’re not complete. More than ever this year, reportage and comment can be found at a special page at Columnists.com. The page is being updated as new blogs and columns come in, and will be archived indefinitely. It’s not just that every conferee got something a little different from the next fellow from the presentations, but also that the writing is fine.

• • •

Leading up to the conference every year, one program whets my appetite. This time it was “Choosing the Right Words,” with three published novelists who are former reporters or columnists.

Scott Russell Sanders, a novelist but mainly a memoirist. For him (and me) columns are essays: “Montaigne created the word essay, defined as a trial, an attempt, and it also survives in the word ‘assay.’ It looks for understanding that we don’t yet have,” he said.

Historical novelist James Alexander “Jim” Thom, participated with his wife in all conference events. Thom finds a famous moment to weave fictional pieces through: “The historical incident defines where I can go in my story, its boundaries.”

“We columnists — and I am a former columnist also — are the first historians of anything that happens,” Thom said. “Compare something present with something in the past. To get the reader’s attention, you have to connect [it] with the big picture.”

The celebrity role was played by Michael Koryta, whose latest novel, So Cold the River, has been well reviewed this summer. He cited storytelling techniques, the narrative toolbox, pointing out “the visual points of contrast: “All this [the tools of the novelist] can be helpful to columnists. Showing place, story and character in short fashion.”

“As long as the protagonist wants something, even just a cup of coffee, the audience will go along,” (Continued)

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We’re No. 37. Yeah, School!

Monday, July 12, 2010

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Wednesday, July 7, 2010 — It was a travel day, where I wouldn’t normally post anything, but some one-sheets in the airport terminal surprised me.

A college or visitors’ bureau — I forgot which and couldn’t find it again on the return to the airport on Monday, July 12 — mentioned it was No. 16 in the country for some best-of poll. In a poster, mention means boasting, else why would it be in the corridor welcoming you to the region?

Proud of 16th place?

Another placard, for West Baden Springs (Ind.) Hotel, proclaims it is ranked No. 15 as a destination hotel by Conde Nast Travel. Ooh, 15. Say I’ve got a couple or three thousand bucks to fly to then use the facilities of a resort spa. Wouldn’t I aim for one of the 14, probably hit a Top 10? (Caught my eye because we did stay there Sunday night the 11th. We were very happy with everything about the place, a top-shelf spa-resort whose staff are professional without being snooty, and my is that rare.)

Indiana Southeast University wants airport travelers to know it has the ninth best part-time MBA program.

These are bragging rights? I’ve never seen anything like that, not on highway billboards or news articles I edit.

Here’s a trick from Arkansas, which places often in two lists — among the most poor, most illiterate, most uninsured and the other list comprising the least wealthy, least literate and least sufficient medical insurance.

Round ‘em off.

The resort hotel, if it were in my home state, would be in the top 15. Think of all the resorts around, and that’s high praise. The business school would shout it’s in the top 10. Colleges like being in the top 10.

On a scale of 1-1,000, Brick has a Technorati Authority of 110. No. 1 most weeks is Huffington Post with a TA of 921. If you poke around in there, most blogs have an authority of 1.

On the other hand, a town up the road, Rogers, is No. 10 on the CNN/Money list of 100 Best Places to Live. Doesn’t need an “in the top 10,” not when there’s thousands of similar cities considered. Doesn’t need fluffing at all.

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