journalism

Thank you and farewell, Dr. Grams

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , ,

About 8 years ago, I set my mind to repair two Lionel trains that had belonged to my dad. I took to the Internet, and about the only repair advice I could find was to track down The Beginner’s Guide to Repairing Lionel Trains by Ray L. Plummer.

Ray L. Plummer was a pen name for Dr. John A. Grams, a journalism professor at Marquette University and a prolific author. Using either name, he wrote a total of 9 books and 129 magazine articles about Lionel and similar vintage trains.

Dr. Grams died this week, aged 77.

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Why publish in Classic Toy Trains?

Dave Farquhar Personal, Toy trains , , , , , , , ,

On one of the few remaining train forums where I do anything but lurk, the magazine Classic Toy Trains came up in discussion. Someone said, “It ought to call itself Classic Lionel Toys and be done with it,” and the discussion progressed from there.

Being that my next published work will be in that particular magazine, I thought I’d address some of the concerns/comments that came up.

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Why total freedom of expression is a reader’s worst nightmare

Dave Farquhar Writing , , , , , , ,

A longtime reader asked me about news writing, and writing in general, after complaining about the sorry state of writing these days. I think a lot of things are in a sorry state, and the writing is a reflection of that. But maybe if we can fix the writing a little, it’ll help everything else, right?

Kurt Vonnegut once said writers should pity the readers, who have to identify thousands of little marks on paper and make sense of them immediately, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after studying it for 12 long years.

He says to simplify and clarify.

As writers, we’d rather live by Zeuxis’ mantra that criticism is easier than craftsmanship. But one way to avoid criticism is to make sure the readers understand what we’re writing in the first place.
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Of cameras and manhandling

Dave Farquhar Journalism , ,

If you haven’t heard, Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.) is the new Internet meme.

Two younger men, claiming to be college students, approached Etheridge on the street as he left a meeting. They asked if he supported Obama’s agenda. Etheridge demanded to know who they were, manhandled one of them, then finally walked away. Although he succeeded in disabling one camera, the other camera was rolling. After some editing, he became a You Tube sensation.

This is a very clear-cut case.Some are speculating the two "students" were trying to trap a Democrat in an embarrassing situation. In this case, the motives don’t matter. The two men were on a public sidewalk. They had every right to be there, cameras rolling or no.

Etheridge wanted the two men to identify themselves. However, this is a courtesy, not a right. When I was reporting, I always identified myself. I told my sources my name, the name of the publication I was working for, and, usually, the subject of the story I was working on. A few times I flashed my press pass, but usually nobody cared. Such courtesies lend credibility, but a journalist isn’t required to disclose any of that.

What did these two men say? "We’re two college students working on a project." Credentials like that will get you the brush-off about 99% of the time, and for good reason.

So what’s an appropriate brush-off? Say "No comment," then keep on walking. Make an excuse, like you’re late for another appointment, and keep walking. Hand them a business card and tell them to call you some other time.

Or, just answer the question. The question was whether he supports Obama’s agenda. The answer, of course, is, not all of it. Etheridge represents the second district of North Carolina, and the president does not. Since they’re both members of the same political party, there should be some overlap, but two representatives from adjacent districts who are members of the same party will disagree at times. Assuming they aren’t letting the party dictate everything to them.

Saying that takes less time and effort than grunting "Who are you?" a half dozen times and manhandling someone. And if they really are students, it gives them the material they need and they’ll leave you alone. If they’re political operatives for a rival party, it shuts them right down.

I started in journalism school a long 15 years ago. You Tube was a technical impossibility then, although it was something we expected would exist someday. Back then, the saying was that you should never do anything you wouldn’t want to see plastered across the front page of the New York Times.

There was another saying too. Freedom of the press is for those who own one.

A lot has changed. Today you can buy a video camera that fits in a shirt pocket for $70. Every computer sold in the last 8 years came with at least basic video editing software. And anyone can upload to You Tube.

Anyone can register for a blog and write whatever they want, and Google will index it. The overwhelming majority of it will be ignored, but there are legions of bored people out there. Never underestimate their ability to find stuff.

In 1995, there were serious barriers to entering journalism. Today, the traditional institutions like the New York Times are losing influence, but anyone who wants to practice journalism can do it.

I guess the saying today ought to be "Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want to see on the home page of You Tube."

Cameras can be used to restrict freedom and privacy. But they can also be used to prevent (or at least expose) abuses of power. This is still pretty new stuff, and a lot of people are having trouble adjusting to it.

Etheridge is trying to spin this as a mistake made at the end of a long day. That sounds plausible. But it’s a mistake that’s going to be around a long time. He’s up for re-election, and there’s no doubt in my mind that his opponent will use it in political advertisements from now until November.

Until this week, Etheridge looked like an automatic re-election. But video footage of an authority figure going all WWF Smackdown on two young men after asking a simple question has a way of changing things.

Why working fast food and retail was good for me

Dave Farquhar Careers , , , , , , , ,

One of my former high school classmates is concerned. Her seven-year-old’s life ambition is to work at McDonald’s.

I told her not to worry. I didn’t work at McDonald’s, but I spent 2 1/2 years working another, nearly defunct fast-food chain, and that motivated me more than anything to go to college. And then, working two years off and on in retail motivated me to finish college.

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Barfy.

Dave Farquhar Personal, Servers and Networking, War Stories , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I started my professional career doing network administration at the University of Missouri. (I generally don’t count my stint selling low-quality PCs at the last surviving national consumer electronics chain towards my professional experience anymore.)

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How far we’ve fallen

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

It’s job interview time again. I haven’t lost my job, at least not yet, but I’m not waiting around to see if I’m going to. I’m hitting pavement, talking to potential employers, whether they’re connected to what I’m doing now or not.

So, it was off to the mall to buy some clothes this weekend for the interview because all my dress clothes are from 1991. They fit (I wore them to my last interviews in 2005), but when your clothes are old enough to vote, it’s probably time for something new.What I found at the mall was depressing. There were lots of vacancies, including places I remember having something the last time I was at the mall. That might have been October, but October isn’t that long ago. And I’m not talking as someone who owns clothes that are old enough to vote. In business, October is yesterday. I’m still dealing with projects at work that started around then.

I also found people with college degrees working retail. Not 2-year degrees. I’m talking 4-year degrees from good schools.

At a job fair today, someone scoffed at my journalism degree. Frankly I’m getting tired of apologizing for my journalism degree, especially from people who wouldn’t know how to spell "journalism" correctly, or at least don’t know that paragraphs generally have more than one sentence in them. Engineering isn’t the end-all of life. And a journalism degree from the University of Missouri isn’t a cakewalk. It’s one of the top three schools in the country, and there’s a reason for that: It’s hard.

And I won’t apologize for it because that degree allowed me to write an O’Reilly book at the age of 24.

I also won’t apologize for it because if I’m not deemed worthy to keep the job I’ve been doing for three years, I should be able to make enough as a freelance writer to keep the utilities on and keep food in my son’s stomach without being a burden on the taxpaying public.

And finally, I won’t apologize for it because I’ve survived in this industry since early 1997, in spite of having a degree in a seemingly unrelated field. In the mid 1990s, no four-year university was teaching what I do. Want to guess what the best sysadmin I’ve ever met majored in? Interdisciplinary studies. That’s a polite way of saying "nothing." But the people who come from all over the country to hear him speak couldn’t care less what he majored in.

But I’ve gotten off track. I guess I’m in a bad mood because this week I also had to sit in a meeting where I listened to someone tell 20 people that they won’t be retained, and 20 temporary employees who’ve been with the company for a month will be retained, "because they’re doing a helluva job."

No, those temps will be retained because they’re cheaper. The people in that room have busted their butts for that company for years. But in some cases, the management doesn’t even know those people’s names or job titles, in spite of the number of years and long hours they put in.

Of course you don’t want to let a temp go. You shouldn’t want to let anyone go. But that’s always a risk when you’re a temp. I was a temp twice. Once I was let go myself. The second time they kept me, but let go another temp from the same company who started the same time I did. And I knew from the start that it was a possibility.

But I think the thing that depressed me the most was seeing the long lines at that job fair, where I applied for my current job and tried not to show offense when someone ridiculed my journalism degree. The majority of people who showed up at that fair won’t get jobs. And you could tell from the looks on their faces that a lot of them knew that. But what else were they going to do? They had to try.

I don’t know how much longer this is going to last. A local economist on the news Sunday morning said he expected 6-18 months. That means he thinks things will be bad at least until July 2009, and perhaps as long as July 2010.

And from what I can tell right now, my best bet for recession-proofing my career is Sun Solaris 10. Should I find myself with ample free time in the near future, I’ll probably try to spend a lot of it learning that.

Everybody is creative

Dave Farquhar General , ,

When a 15-year-old came around asking how to continue his hobbies during a time in his life when finances and time are a bit short, I had a simple suggestion for him: Work on developing his creativity.

Creativity has another bonus: It’s also one of 10 traits that can make you rich, if that’s important to you.I remember in an annual review I received several years ago, a manager said I come up with creative solutions to problems. I’m still not sure if that was meant as a compliment or not, but I took it as one. That ability to find odd, not-so-obvious solutions to problems saved my first employer a lot of money in a time that it really needed it. We needed to replace a project that had cost about $100,000 to create, and we had $25,000 to do it.

I did it. It required us to do things as a department that we’d never done before. We had some hiccups along the way, and we finished with just one day to spare. It was stressful. But we did it.

Up until I was about 20, I never really thought of myself as creative. I could always write, but I never was all that good at drawing and painting or playing musical instruments, which are the things we normally associate with creativity. As a junior at the University of Missouri, I took a class titled The Graphics of Journalism, taught by Dr. Birgit Wassmuth, who is now chairwoman of the Department of communications at Kennesaw State University. Dr. Wassmuth argued that everyone has creative ability, but not everyone has tapped it to its potential.

I think I got a B+ in the class (yes, MU has a plus/minus system) and I really had to work for it. It was one of the three hardest classes I took, and I don’t think many of the people who took that class would disagree.

It was a basic class that almost everyone had to take. If you were going to be a graphic designer it was a necessity, but for everyone else, it was basically intended to teach you enough skills that in an emergency, if you had to grab a camera or fire up a desktop publishing or a graphics program, you’d be able to do a decent enough job to not make your employer look like a fool.

There’ve been times when I’ve had to do all of those things during writing projects. But the biggest value in that class came in life itself.

Often there are times you have to do something and you don’t have the ideal materials on hand. It always helps to look at something and consider alternative possibilities. In my professional field, there are always 20 ways to do something. I’ve worked in the past with people who always do things “by the book,” but that can be a problem, depending on who wrote the book. Was it written by someone who’s been working with that particular subject matter for 20 years, or was it written by someone who’s only seen the product in a lab environment, not in the real world? A lot of Windows books are written by the latter type, and I’ve seen by-the-book types make decisions that box them in based on that.

But even better is the ability to look at a pile of stuff and think of answers to a simple question: What can I do with this?

The younger you are when you start doing this, the better. I guess I started early; It was nothing to me to look at a box of my friends’ toys, pull out a couple of broken toys, and make something else out of the broken pieces.

When I was in between jobs a few years ago, I looked around the house for ideas for ways to make some money until I found a permanent job. At first my phone kept ringing, so it didn’t look like I’d have much trouble finding something. But then the phone stopped, so I had to think of alternatives. My first couple of ideas didn’t pan out. The third one was a home run, and besides keeping the light on, it gave my wife an alternative to teaching, which was important because she was unhappy. Now she has a lot more flexibility and she doesn’t have to deal with parents and administration wanting her to be a pass-everyone babysitter when she wanted to be a serious teacher.

What she’s doing today isn’t for everyone, but she’s much happier now, and even in the early stages it provided enough income for us to keep the lights on until I could find a permanent job with benefits.

I guess I had the tendencies even when I was in grade school, but it wasn’t until college that someone really taught me how to cultivate it. So even though I’m not working at a magazine now, which definitely was where I would have wanted to be in 2008 if you’d asked me while I was in college, that class probably changed my life more than any other class I took in college. Knowing how to harness creativity got me out of some bad spots in life.

So I think it’s a good idea for everyone to take a class or otherwise learn how to make something, whether it’s art classes, woodworking classes, cooking, or something else.

Knowing what to use when you’re in the middle of making something and you realized you’re out of butter is a useful skill. And I don’t think it’s always a good idea to take the easy way out and borrow some from your next door neighbor.

Sometimes workarounds aren’t quite that easy, and sometimes there’s more at stake than a batch of bread.

The most thorough article to date on the decision not to prosecute

Dave Farquhar net.culture ,

Steve Pokin, the journalist who broke the original Megan Meier story, published an account today of the decision not to press charges.

Some of the things in the article trouble me.It troubles me that Jack Banas interviewed Lori Drew and perhaps Curt Drew, but didn’t interview Ron Meier at all, and talked only briefly with Tina Meier.

His justification: He has a property destruction case pending against Ron Meier. In a way that’s considerate of him–he could have used the opportunity to get Meier to testify against himself–but I can think of one way around the problem. Interview Meier with his attorney present, so that if Meier were to start to incriminate himself, his attorney could cut him off.

If I can come up with this workaround, then a prosecuting attorney ought to be able to as well.

It bothers me that each time something Drew said contradicted the many news reports that have been written, it means the news reports are wrong. It was obvious from the very first police report that Drew was trying to cover her tracks–in the report, she stated that somehow others were able to get access to the Myspace account and send messages to Megan. That’s an indirect quote, but it’s pretty close to the wording in the report.

The Meiers’ story has been remarkably consistent, even when they are visibly exhausted. The police reports on Smoking Gun aren’t forthcoming, and they aren’t consistent with what Drew is saying now.

I know from personal experience that when a traumatic event happens, your memory of it is generally very good–nearly photographic. Sometimes people refer to them as “flashbulb” events for that very reason. I can tell you every little detail about the car crash I was in four years ago, just as plainly as it happened yesterday.

So if someone has difficulty consistently recounting the events of a flashbulb incident, that suggests to me that he or she is lying.

I don’t know about law enforcement in St. Charles, but in journalism, if I’d ever come to one of my editors with an important story and I only interviewed one side, and I relied solely on two old interviews of one of the other participants (Ashley Grills), something bad would have happened next. Really bad.

For that matter, Grills and Drew dispute whose idea it was to create the account. Each say it was the other. Both women had different reactions to Megan Meier’s suicide. Drew felt less guilty after she heard Meier had attempted suicide before. Grills threatened suicide herself and ended up getting psychiatric treatment.

All of that is solid evidence that Grills has a conscience, ability to feel guilt, and knowledge of right and wrong.

Both Grills and Drew have track records of deceit and changing the story afterward. So which liar should you believe?

The safer bet is to believe the one with a conscience. She’s less likely to lie now.

Finally, I take issue with Banas’ statement that Drew never intended to “harm, stalk, endanger or harass.”

The police report Drew filed last year stated that some of the communication was of sexual nature.

Let me ask a question. If it turned out that Michael Devlin had made such a statement, would Devlin be in court right now, facing charges of harassment?

If it’s harassment if Michael Devlin does it, then it’s harassment if Lori Drew does it. Period.

Besides that, in a story published in The Age, an Australian newspaper, a neighbor states that Lori Drew told her about the fake account, laughed about it, and said she would “mess with Megan.”

So an Australian journalist halfway around the world found someone willing to say this was intentional harassment. Yet Banas won’t give this neighbor’s testimony equal weight with the testimony of an already established liar and deceiver.

I don’t live in St. Charles County but a friend of mine does. He tells me Banas has three more years in office.

This is precisely what recall elections are for. If you live in St. Charles County and see a recall petition, sign it. If you don’t see one, call the St. Charles Election Authority at 636-949-7550 and ask how to start one.

And failing that, I wholeheartedly endorse whoever is running against Banas for St. Charles County Prosecutor in 2010. Whoever that might be.

I’m sure I have company.

The Megan Meier Myspace suicide, 10 days later

Dave Farquhar net.culture , , ,

It’s been about 10 days since the story first broke about 13-year-old Megan Meier being harassed online by a 48-year-old neighbor posing online as a 16-year-old boy and eventually being driven to suicide. The blogosphere has gone nuts, the story has national and even international attention, and while none of this will bring Megan Meier back, at least there’s been some progress.On Monday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch named the 48-year-old impersonator. From what the story said, the family gets very little peace, and the neighbors don’t care much for them. Their life wasn’t good even before the story broke, and it hasn’t gotten any better in the past week.

Comments on various blogs indicate the impersonator’s phones have been disconnected. As widespread as that information had become, their phones probably never stopped ringing. This harassment is illegal, but I still have a hard time feeling sorry for them.

The original police report showed up on The Smoking Gun. Reading it made me even madder. The part that bothered me the most:

Despite the recency of the suicide and several neighbors recommending she not contact the Meier family (especially on Thanksgiving), Meier stated she and her husband attempted to contact the Meier family three times, “banging on the door” even though Mr. Meier had already told them to leave. [She] wished the current tension be documented in case any of her property is damaged. Further, [she] insisted on contacting the family to “inform them of what she knows.” [She] stated she “just needed” to tell them to relieve herself of the “responsibility” and apparent guilt.

Relieve herself of responsibility and apparent guilt? Document the tension in case of property damage?

How about a good old-fashioned apology?

At least one company that advertised with the impersonator’s coupon magazine, a carpet cleaning business, stated in public that they will be ending that relationship. They had already committed to being in the next issue, so they may appear in it, but that will be the last.

Two businesses expressed indifference, according to one commenter, but all it takes is a few businesses pulling their ads to make it difficult to pay the bills.

A blog surfaced on Sunday, titled Megan Had it Coming. It claims to be written by someone who knew Megan.

I read the single post there, and I have serious doubts that the author is 14 years old. The spelling and grammar are much better than the typical 14-year-old, and the paragraphs tend to be more complex than I would expect from a 14-year-old. The paragraphs for the most part follow the structure one is taught to use in college.

That said, some of the elements of the writing are too bad for a gifted 14-year-old. I could write that well (or better) at that age and I know several other people who could too. But the logic is extremely flawed. I believe any English teacher who saw a student capable of writing like that at age 14 would hammer on the child’s logic. English teachers aren’t satisfied with that quality of work from someone who exhibits this much ability at 14.

For these reasons, I believe the author is older, and probably had at least the introductory composition course in college. She (I believe the author is probably female) may not have done all that well in the class, or she may have been intentionally making mistakes in an attempt to appear to be a younger and less sophisticated author. When I was a journalism major at Mizzou, I was a go-to guy for people who were having trouble in their Introductory Composition class, so I read a lot of those papers. This piece really reminded me of those papers.

Let me also say that the most difficult thing for an author to do is to appear to be something that he or she is not. So if a piece of writing doesn’t look or sound like that of a 14-year-old girl, then it probably isn’t.

I agree with the author that Megan Meier wasn’t perfect. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and assume everything she said about Megan is true. The Megan she portrayed reminds me of pretty much every girl aged 12-14 I remember growing up with. Some girls stay that way a lot longer. I definitely remember elements of that kind of behavior in two ex-girlfriends, both of whom were in their early 20s when we dated. A few girls I knew got over it early, and I remember having trouble knowing how to react to them, because they were so different.

If Megan Meier deserved to die because she was self-conscious, oversensitive, shallow, fickle, difficult to be around, and prone to overreact, then that means virtually every teenager in the world deserves to die. Those flaws are the very essence of that phase of life. It’s all a phase, and most people grow out of it. It’s not a cause for deserving death. It also doesn’t mean that someone who exhibits those characteristics is automatically going to commit suicide.

It’s a terrible logical fallacy.

I also disagree with the assertion that Megan deserved this fate because a 48-year-old vs. a 14-year-old isn’t a fair fight, no matter how you cut it. I would have far more sympathy for the impersonator if the impersonator had been another teenager, acting alone.

The author tends to talk down, as if she’s already outgrown this phase, and even if a 14-year old was already through all this, I don’t think she would have enough perspective to comment about it this way. I can’t really put my finger on specific phrases, but the whole piece gives me a sense of looking back at 14, rather than being in the thick of 14.

I have no way of knowing who the author of this one-off blog is. Given writing samples, I can usually figure out if a piece in question was written by the same person, but I have no writing samples to compare. The author could be the original impersonator who is now vying for the title of most hated woman on the Internet. It fits her pattern of behavior. It could also be one of the many contrarian random trolls who are popping up on any blog that mentions Megan Meier and her impersonator by name.

My friend who lives in the area observed that the blogger referred to a local sports complex as “Tri Sports.” The proper name of that complex is the Renaud Spirit Center, and the address is 2650 Tri Sports Circle. Tri Sports Circle is one street over from the street where the Meiers and the impersonators live.

So the author of this piece is almost certainly local. Given that the impersonator has few or no friends left in the neighborhood, and given how the author of this piece went out of her way to defend the impersonator, I believe the author of this one-off blog probably is none other than the same mind that brought us Josh Evans, the fake-16-year-old boyfriend.