Wow, it's been a while!
Did not mean for so much time to pass between posts. Been a busy couple months, in a good way.
Been a relatively warm but altogether dry summer. In late May and June, we went more than 20 days without rain- highly unusual for that time of year. I even had to water my outdoor potted succulents. Twice.
I've been swimming somewhat more regularly, and I've been trying to polish off my (admittedly limited) Vietnamese.
Hard to believe this coming weekend is Independence Day weekend. I feel we just had high school proms and graduations, and now we are halfway through summer (OK, technically summer just started, still...)
Also, finished a few more books, including one I've been slugging away at for probably close to two months (and another I finished a couple months ago).
7, A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking. This was a challenge, and while this book is short took me a couple months to finish. I did enjoy it, and do recall a good deal of the science from high school. Also, Hawking could be really funny, and he does admit in his book when an idea he had turned out to be wrong. I admit, though, there were parts of this that went over my head, try as I might to fathom them, like string theory.
8. Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman. I started reading his poems, a few at a time, as part of my reading series, and finished a couple months ago. Big accomplishment- Whitman was a prolific writer! I can see and appreciate why he is considered so vital to American poetry. I can also see why this books is often challenged in schools (not agreeing with censoring it but I can see where feathers would be ruffled). Whitman ultimately comes across as a patriot and an optimist, confident in the powers of exploration and innovation. As his poems go on, there's an interesting shift from an almost agnostic view to a position that a god exists. All in all, his poetry has aged well (there was only one poem, really, that made me cringe).
9. News for the Rich, White and Blue, by Nikki Usher. This book is so hard to evaluate. Much of it is good- solid, data-based conclusions as to why newspapers and news media is drifting more and more to being accessible only for the "blue" areas and by the wealthy. Usher goes into why the current models (especially the ad-based model) doesn't work anymore, and why most papers are going to struggle on a subscription and online ad model. The best example she gives of a Miami paper that did stellar coverage when Fidel Castro died- their metrics skyrocketed- but their work did not generate a single additional dollar. News for the Rich, White and Blue was a chilling read. Unfortunately, where this work falls flat, is in the chapter on solutions. This makes me wonder how well Usher understands the industry. One solution I agree with: newspapers (and businesses in general) need to have paid internships if they want more diversity in the newsrooms. But several other solutions are deeply flawed. The main ones: drop coverage of smaller events and meetings. Concentrate all efforts of investigative journalism. Rely more on "citizen journalists" who would be paid a stipend to go to meetings, take notes, and send them off to the paper (sort of like a court reporter).
I'll take the second item first: I'd love to see news media do more with investigative journalism. It's badly needed, and that's where the industry tends to shine brightest and make the most lasting impact. The problem? It's also by far the most expensive and time-consuming. A quarter of a million dollars is actually on the low side when it comes to how much doing a deep dive can cost. With smaller papers on squeezed budgets and the larger chains only concerned about ROI, this, unfortunately, is just not going to happen unless a LOT of foundation support crops up.
The first point- about forgetting about the smaller events- was the most irksome. The flaw can be summed up like this: Watergate was a bungled burglary- until it wasn't. No, I did not say that, and I don't recall who did- but it fits.
I've lost track of how many times a mundane meeting wound up being a big story locally, but I don't think I could ever top what happened to a friend and former colleague. He had three stories go viral nationally within about two years. All three also generated a month plus worth of stories that the Almighty Algorithm gods found especially delectable. All three stories stemmed from events that Usher would have advocated not bothering with. To be fair, two of those stories we would have found out about and could have done follow-ups, but it would have involved scrambling to play catch-up. The third and arguably most consequential story? Had my friend not been there to see what transpired and to ask the hard questions before cover stories could be concocted and spin created, we would have never had that story. It would have been neatly swept under the rug, with no way to verify what actually happened.
The reality is you aren't going to find the big stories without shoe leather on the pavement, even for the routine and mundane. If you want to find the big stories, you need to know the communities, the people who make it tick and the issues that will divide them and bring them together. By ignoring the smaller things, you risk missing the forest for the trees.
The third idea- the concept of citizen journalists - is actually one idea I like in theory. It would increase interest (and understanding) of journalism and news coverage. It would get people more involved in their communities. It could bring previously unheard voices to the forefront.
The problem? This was done before.
The idea of Citizen Journalism was all the buzz in the early 2000s. In fact, another friend and former colleague started a non-profit to train citizen journalists and provided a platform for publication. I took his workshops, out of curiosity, and they were solid. His nonprofit produced some great journalism. The problem is, once the grants dried up, it disappeared. So did many other efforts nationwide. Little to nothing remains of this grass-roots effort now. From what I've read about the current attempts to restart this, I doubt it will last. I wouldn't mind being proven wrong, but there are a lot of issues and obstacles that scuttled the first efforts that haven't been addressed in the current day.
Currently reading: I Am Malala, by Malala Yousefzai, All the News That's Fit to Click, by Caitlin Petre, and Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann.