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I’m Your Vehicle, Detroit

Saturday, July 2, 2011

DETROIT — Six days after returning home, two of the June 23-26 columnist conference’s field trips burn in me, tours of the Motown Historical Museum and the new heart-of-downtown home office of Quicken Loans.

Hitsville U.S.A.

The museum, informally called “Hitsville,” is in the two original houses in which Berry Gordy created the Motown recording label. Poverty, youth and convenience apparently led Gordy to set up in a residential block, eventually buying most houses there, each with a different business function. This also was a Malcolm Gladwell Outliers sort of monument: Its original stars (and writers and producers) were born within a few years of one another and many grew up in this neighborhood.

The one negative is this museum is it’s like a presidential library. You get only the good stuff about Gordy. He was no monster but neither was he a saint. The exuberance of the exhibits and most of all, the staff, overwhelm that predictable flaw. Museum visitors are organized into groups, guided to see a mini-documentary film then led through the rooms by guides who, besides lecture, sing and dance. By the end of the 30-40 minutes all visitors will have been persuaded to sing and dance a bit.

How else besides participating can one understand the genius of the analog sound effects Gordy used? (No one was recorded.) The most interesting is a 4×4-foot square hole in an upstairs ceiling exposing an unfinished attic. Singing or clapping under it created an echo — scratch that, created reverb, which would be recorded and used as a track. “Hey, young lady,” the tour guide said to a columnist, and he got her to sing the chorus of “My Girl” in the well. Little had we known that Tracy Beckerman could not only fill the room but sing on pitch. In the studio itself, he led the men in a Temptations-style clap and kick, and the women in a Supremes-like clap and shimmy.

Unlike most museums, we were not herded at the end to the gift shop, which I resent. But this is one time I might have bought a souvenir if I had had the time.The private museum allows no photography; there’s few photos online. But here is an AP picture of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee doing the guys’ step in the studio.

Quicken Loans

Quicken Loans hosted a lunch of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in its new headquarters, the top floors of the CompuServe building in downtown Detroit. Its executives want a lively urban atmosphere to enliven their young staff. They want to do right by Detroit and help revitalize its center, hit so hard this past decade. And the real estate there, plus government incentives, on this scale, is very affordable. Click here for a Detroit News report and a Detroit Free Press article. Quicken Loans had been in a suburb, overlooking a parking lot and a Costco, we were told. Now, staff had a view of the city skyline, the Detroit River and beyond.

It’s reminiscent of the high-tech campuses of Silicon Valley and Austin, but instead of sprawling horizontally, it’s vertical, several stories (20th through 23rd floors?). “We” are supposed to want to work in such environments. They’re said to be designed for creative people like us. My Beloved loved her Alltel Financial Services in west Little Rock and in other years IBM Global Services offices around the country.

When I am downsized from newspapers, this is what I am supposed to covet.

Door off hallway at Quicken Loans headquarters, downtown Detroit -- Rick Horowitz photo

Door off hallway at Quicken Loans headquarters, downtown Detroit -- Rick Horowitz photo

I was creeped out.

Give me dirty carpets and crumbs (Continued)

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Paneling for the Benchley Den

Friday, July 1, 2011

This column also was published in the July 2011 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

Once again, an NSNC columnist conference astounded its audience with information and fun. The June 23-26 session in Detroit catered to would-be and published book writers, gave fresh tips to free-lancers (and in “custom content” not just columns), took on humor and twisted its elbow, and even looked ahead to political coverage next spring.

Here are the overall lessons learned from “Rebound in Motown.”

  1. Branding is real, and it works. We’re writers so find a synonym — style, specialty, etc. — if you don’t like the artifice of brand.
  2. Straight columns need research, even humor and personal columns are enriched by research as well.
  3. Humor columns require jokes. Many nice people on the panels danced around the popularity of anecdotal columns to write, mention they don’t read well and rarely sell well. Jokes require punch lines, and punch lines require meticulous crafting.

Mirror: How did you find Detroit, Mr. Pollock?

Myself: The city of Detroit was about as I expected, yet better. It had its decline later than other Rust Belt cities and so its renaissance began later. It’s not quite fair to compare it to a place like Pittsburgh — yet. Businesses and residents are returning to the heart of Detroit, and we saw that.

The “better” part was how solid the street planning and old buildings are. The architecture of the high-rises is from many of the best decades of American design, built by people with the money to not blame budget overruns for any short-cuts. The streets are wide. There’s a lot of outdoor sculpture. Grand statues of great leaders. It’s like Kansas City, another Midwestern city famous for its public art.

Mirror: But what about its reputation?

Myself: I lived in Little Rock for many years. Just last May, Arkansas’ capital continued its surprising reputation by continuing to stay apace with Detroit (Continued)

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Roger and Me

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Roger Ebert receives the 2011 Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists

A version of this Brick is published at columnists.com.

Roger Ebert accepts NSNC Lifetime Achievement Award 25 June 2011

Roger Ebert accepts the 2011 Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award 06-25-11. Photo, by Cynthia Borris, of Ebert's projection on a screen. He spoke via Skype from Chicago to NSNC meeting in Detroit.

DETROIT, Saturday, June 25, 2011 — Following is the acceptance speech of Roger Ebert for the NSNC’s Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award. Ebert’s physical condition prevented him from accepting in person, but he “spoke” live via Skype from his home in Chicago, using an electronic voice from his Macintosh. He then answered three questions submitted beforehand.

Ebert provided this transcript:

“By appearing this way on new media, I feel, in a way, I am letting down the team. But [conference host] Brian O’Connor and I have spent some time rehearsing with Skype, and I hope this will be an acceptable substitute for the glory of print. So anyway, hello in Detroit!

“It is my great honor to accept this award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. I grew up regarding newspaper columnists as the most noble and brilliant of human beings, and nothing I have seen since, has caused that opinion to change. It is our job to take the events of our time and consider them with intelligence, and wit. In these days of  trashy celebrity, gossip which threatens to overwhelm the media, our job is more important than ever. So on this day when you meet in Detroit, I thank you. And I salute you.”

“Question. Has the Internet and the explosion of online movie and review sites diluted or enhanced the influence and stature of film critics?

“My answer: I think this (Continued)

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Folio the Leader

Saturday, June 25, 2011

“Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
– Attributed to Tom Lehrer

DETROIT, 8:47 a.m. EDT, Friday, June 24, 2011 — Hear ye, hear ye, (swat newspaper) I am Ben Pollock, president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. I hereby call the 35th annual NSNC conference to order!

[Swat paper? The NSNC doesn't have a gavel, and I thought it would be fun to use a rolled-up newspaper in its stead. I had hoped to roll together the Friday Detroit News and Free Press, but inspiration struck at the elevator bank. On a table there as now usual were about four USA Todays. Gone are the days when a USA Today was slipped under every hotel room door.]

Take that, Gannett. I’m using USA Today as a gavel. Gannett, USA Today’s publisher, laid off 700 news employees on June 21 from among its many newspapers, so this is for them! (Whack! Whack!)

Your conference host, Brian O’Connor, will welcome you to Detroit in two minutes. I am welcoming you to the conference. I am glad to see you all here!

First, let me assure you that Brian has created an incredible schedule. You will be educated in writing and how to move your writing out. You will rock to Motown and be inspired by its art and decades of fomenting culture that has spread coast to coast and indeed the world. If you blink, you may miss something. If you go to bed before midnight tonight and tomorrow night, and sleep in just a little, you may miss value. You sure might miss some fun.

As the Ford slogan might go for us, “Have you written a column, lately?”

[It might seem self-serving (Continued)

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A Columnist’s Scrapbook

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

The following is my president’s column for the June 2011 edition
of the monthly newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

The NSNC Conference, three days out of 365, is a highlight of my year. Apparently, I mustn’t have a life. Actually, I do have a grand life, and NSNC has been a huge part of it. So there.

The conventions are a blast. I have a huge amount of fun, meet extraordinary people I wouldn’t know otherwise, and learn a lot, narrowly and broadly, about writing. Every time.

Detroit will be my 13th conference, going back 20 years; I’ve had to skip a few. With that many, I’ve gathered five secrets of getting the most out of them. The tips aren’t secret, and they work elsewhere.

  • Know your limits
  • Set your goals
  • Be flexible to ignore your limits and goals
  • Don’t be shy
  • Take notes

This is a weekend workshop, not a cruise, though a few years have included boat rides. Which is to say, we’re the envy of other journalism groups so far as imparting solid knowledge amid informality and improvisational prankishness.

Besides the speeches and hijinks, you’ll get column material from our host cities you can’t have expected. You travel to NSNC conferences. For a vacation, call AAA. Paul Theroux said it better: “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been; travelers don’t know where they’re going.”

Limits. Stamina is a better term. These 60 hours pass quickly. As I want to get the most from them I tend not to stay too late in the hospitality suite. Goals: You come to our conference mainly to learn. You might gain more insights if you flex and stay past your limit in the suite, or (Continued)

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Axis of Nice

Sunday, May 1, 2011

The following is my president’s column for the May 2011 edition
of the monthly newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

Had a bizarre dream the other night, that World War III had started. I saw Dianne Feinstein, she having moved up from senator to secretary of state or vice president, holding a news conference. She announced the U.S. ambassador to Turkey had died in a suspicious plane crash.

A column might be found in that.

In writing down the dream, it became a “hmm note.” This was advice from the 1991 conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, held in Huntington, W.Va. The convention, my first, had great speakers, yet the Hmm Note concept came informally from columnist Bill Tammeus, then of The Kansas City Star.*

We ended up at the same airport gate Sunday afternoon for our Midwestern flights. Bill was alone in a row of black chairs, writing a column. He was not writing notes in the narrow reporter’s notebook, nor an outline, but full paragraphs with a ballpoint. Some stores still sell paper and pens.

I asked him the novice’s question of how he got ideas. Bill said he tried to write down every time he came across something new or unusual, or when he’d think something that seemed clever, anything that would cause a “hmm.” Not as in, “Hmm, that would make a good column,” as might be expected, but simply, “Hmm, that’s interesting.”

Hence, Hmm Notes. Most would not pan out, but the rest become columns.*

Columns and blog posts can come from anywhere. The Hmm Note is just a good tool to keep in the writer’s toolbox.*

Fuel Up on Facts

How are Hmm Notes used? First, let them rest. Five minutes is enough for some, others can age years, cached in a filing system. Then, start writing and see where it goes.

While brainstorming, though, it’s not long before I need fuel. A sandwich, a coffee refill. Often I need to fuel up on facts, even for humor pieces.

Fuel now often starts with cautious use of Wikipedia, then Google for identified sources to cross-reference.* This can be the time for a quick phone or email interview with a specialist.

There’s other tasks involved in the writing: The choices made for frame or voice and attitude or tone make or break a good Hmm Note. Framing is my favorite tool.

As frames, Art Buchwald would drop a serious argument into a couple shouting on a disco floor, or two gents on a park bench beset by pigeons.* (This column is in a mirror frame. Am I disguising a political discussion as a how-to piece or am I using a political discussion to illustrate a how-to piece?)

Last, deadlines hang over us all, even bloggers: Jots often face obsolescence. Isn’t it silly now to argue over President Obama’s birth certificate?*

Here’s that brainstorm on my dream: Is the United States in World War III already? And would it be taking the role of Germany in the 1930s? (Continued)

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Get to Know Your reDistrict

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Copyright 2011 Ben S. Pollock

Proposal to move Fayetteville to 4th District

Proposed 2011-20 Arkansas congressional districts, as set by HB1322 (number updated). Map courtesy tolbertreport.com.

The strongest proposal before the Arkansas General Assembly to reapportion the state’s four congressional districts involves a serious attempt to gerrymander. The question before the body is what does the amphibious gerrymander eat? Houseflies — and votes.

The aim is to divide the state into four roughly equal populations. My Northwest Arkansas (3rd District) has grown rapidly since the 2000 U.S. Census and that redistricting, based on the 2010 count, puts it roughly on a par with the Little Rock area (2nd District). The other two parts of the state roll through the miles to find voters. The 1st and 4th districts are very poor, the 2nd and 3rd have pockets of poverty but overall are loaded.

The state hasn’t had this obvious an attempt for political advantage come this close to success in some time. To follow geography, or at least county lines, could mean to drop Sebastian County (Fort Smith is the main city) south into the 4th. Perhaps Baxter, Marion and Boone counties (the city of Harrison is in Boone) could tumble east into the 1st District. Either option, however, surrenders some Republicans in Northwest Arkansas to rural areas, which worries — Democrats.

After the 2010 elections, only the 4th is held by a Democrat, Mike Ross of Prescott. (Don’t tell me you don’t know where Prescott is.) By putting the predominately Democratic city of Fayetteville in the 4th, Ross or a Democratic successor will be more secure. The heck with Districts 1-2-3, the GOP can have ‘em.

But isn’t Arkansas more pragmatic than partisan and a strong charismatic Democrat would sway enough Republicans to win anywhere in the state (proven for anyone whose name rhymes with Chill Minton)? That would require confidence that Democrats don’t seem to have anymore.

Yet, what logic there is about the proposal nicknamed the Fayetteville Finger — the gerrymander is shaped like the digit — does makes passage likely. Besides logic, what’s needed are majorities in the two houses of the Legislature in Little Rock.

Look at this map. It’s embarrassing. You don’t need to be a Rorschach inkblot reader to see the resemblance to (Continued)

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Brakes

Friday, April 1, 2011

The following is my president’s column for the April 2011 edition of the monthly newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists

A huge columnist controversy — looking to be the worst in years — began in mid-March, only it turned out to be so puny it ran its course in days.

It seemed a microcosm to our desperate economic times and the end of newspapers as we know them: A metro daily surrendered its independence to an advertiser; a columnist resigned in protest.

While that is what happened, the tempest in the teapot shrank to where there was plenty of room for milk and honey, which cooled the tea off, let me tell you. So sit over here and let me pour you a cup.

Chrysler Crisis

Scott Burgess is auto critic of The Detroit News. Sometimes he’s reporting, but in the first-person, making it a column. He analyzes trends, making him a commentator. He also critiques the new models. Most of the time, he’s reviewing, which shows how close the two genres often are. In a March piece he panned the new Chrysler 200, introduced with a stunning Super Bowl commercial narrated by hometown rapper Eminem, comparing the model with the renaissance of Detroit. Burgess noted technical specs with confidence and also sparsely for the lay audience, yet he was as colorful with similes as any Broadway critic.

A car dealer complained to the paper about the print version, and editors put on the brakes, toning down the Chrysler 200 column for the paper’s online edition. Burgess resigned in protest, and news of this went viral, (Continued)

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Hail to The Chieftains

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Before The Chieftains review — which it’s not, because I lost my Lamy Al-Star pen following a disaster of a restaurant meal so I couldn’t take notes — a roundabout.

I try to be a jack of all journalism tricks. I even covered a lecture and poetry reading by ex-NBA star Tom Meschery in about 2000 at the University of Arkansas for The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas — almost sports reporting. In about 1982, I photographed a workshop in Irving, Texas, taught by jazz guitarist Lee Ritenour. Later I realized I heard little and saw little, except for notes I made for the photo-page captions and what came through my Minolta’s lens. In the 1990s, reviewing occasional plays and classical and jazz concerts for the Arkansas Democrat then Democrat-Gazette, I found that deadlines changed my appreciation of the stage. It wasn’t just plot and character, but more story and acting. Was that a dramatic pause or a missed cue? Are those French horns in tune? Reading books evolved with reviewing a few a year.

We all do this though, without writing. Honey, did you like the movie? We exchange experiences and opinions. Maybe it’s that the critic needs specific sentences immediately, not fuzzy impressions, especially if the show is over at 9:45 and the copy desk needs the 10-12 inches by 10:30. Notes are necessary.

In the last decade, outside of Brick I’ve written no reviews. I still jot a rare note during a show. I fear I’ll forget. Yet in the last decade I have forced myself to sit back, just absorb. You leave the theater then glowing, with a total impression, hard to summarize and, too soon, hard to recall. So when I buy $48 tickets for us to see Randy Newman on Jan. 22, at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, I want to leave with something besides, “Duh, rockin’ show, durn, he’s funny.” The value of a top-dollar entertainment only starts with the two hours in a dark auditorium. It continues with memories and any enrichment afterward. On Newman, the first revelation was as a young man he wrote 3 Dog Night’s “Mama Told Me Not to Come”; when he sang it that night you realize, with that croaky voice and singsong pacing, who else? (Continued)

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Point the Way, Bruce Walker

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Attending the musical wake of Bruce D. Walker on Sunday brought up a lot of sadness in the midst of so many cheerful tunes by local songsters. Standing in several of the eight corners of George’s Majestic Lounge (front bar/stage and garden bar/stage) I saw dancing and clapping and heard hoots and whoops. Embracing the folks I knew there, though, we exchanged quick shouts (we had to yell due to the loud bands) of “isn’t it awful” with teary eyes.

Bruce founded Flying Possum Leather in 1976 on Fayetteville on the “High Street” stretch of Dickson Street. He made and sold sandals and belts and other leather goods, most famously perhaps a guitar strap he got patented as it does not stress the instrument’s neck. Bruce would have been 58 years old in June, but around 6:30 a.m. last Monday, March 7, his shop caught fire. He was already at work, and died of smoke inhalation. His dog Bugsy, who went everywhere with him, survived the blaze (relatives have taken him in). In a preliminary investigation, Fayetteville police called the fire’s cause accidental.

I’ve bought one pair of Birkenstock shoes (regular, closed heel and toe, for work) from Flying Possum, and had a couple of pair of Birks resoled or recorked by him, and My Beloved had done similar business with him, as well as buying a Walker Strap. Yet Bruce got around; he was a young hippy turned prominent local, if eccentric, merchant. We’d howdy at the downtown Square three blocks south or maybe a sentence or two at the bench in front of his shop.

Bugsy, a quiet, sweet, medium-sized mongrel, wandered through George’s, accepting pats and head scratches. The children there swarmed him at times.

Dog in a bar, call the authorities! But many authorities were in the roadhouse at some point during the seven-hour concert (1-9 p.m. roughly, including a funeral in the evening) , having shut down the parking meters for the day so more people would be encouraged to come to George’s and honor Bruce.

Sunday on Dickson was so Fayetteville. Twenty bands, special T-shirts printed up, donation of food by nearby restaurants. All that organization in just four days shows how tight the community is, and how much all loved Bruce.

Bruce — slightly built, scruffy bearded fellow with kind eyes and strong opinions — embodied Fayetteville.

Bugsy wasn’t the only animal in the lounge, but he was acknowledged. The elephant in the room as usual stayed invisible.

Bruce’s death and that of his business might be harbingers of a Fayetteville transformation (Continued)

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