Journalism Next

Spent the last 36 hours in and around Arlington, TX, home of the JerryDome and University of Texas at Arlington, Stiles’ alma mater. We talked about journalism nonstop for hours; I’ve never considered or discussed journalism with that length or breadth since maybe college, and back then I wasn’t in class that often so maybe I’ve topped myself.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon with the staff of UTA’s student paper,  The Shorthorn, giving a short talk and then training (Stiles on computer assisted-reporting, me on multimedia/video). This morning we took part in back-to-back panels at a Society of Professional Journalists Career Conference for students and young professionals, where we talked convergence journalism (one of my fave topics, as you know). Apologies to the students who had to see us twice. Goodgod.

The Hu-Stiles traveling roadshow often starts with this piece from CBS’ Jeff Greenfield, which is a great introductory explanation of what convergence is, and what it means. (So much for CBS understanding the sea change though, they still don’t allow their videos to be embedded elsewhere so I had to link you instead of show you the story on this page.)

The bottom line is, distinctions between print reporters, TV reporters, radio reporters and others are quickly melting away. We’re all hybrid, multi-platform journalists now – or should prepare ourselves to be – and students should embrace it or be left behind. “It’s the cost of admission these days,” said our fellow panelist, CBS11 web editor Kent Chapline.

Here’s a sample slide… and the full audio from one of our panels is available thanks to a forward-thinking future journalist named Brooks, who is also a Plano Senior High grad. (Go Wildcats.)

My favorite part of Stiles’ slide is “don’t be evil”. He can better explain it, but this is something we both feel very strongly about as journalists. Being evil, to us, means hoarding information because you can. Not connecting audiences to the best resources because you only want them to be on your website. Not telling certain stories because it’s difficult or not sexy or doesn’t tie to revenue goals. That’s evil. Not allowing your video to be embedded other places is evil. Not linking out to other blogs and helpful sites is evil. Not using open source and free journalism tools like Google Docs and Flickr or Audacity because you only want to use your own stuff is silly, and if it’s keeping good info from viewers and readers, it’s evil. Using social media solely to push your own stuff and not have a conversation is not quite evil, but it’s a poor use of social networks.

We, as journalists, are information sharers. In a time when information is everywhere all the time, we oughta be information finders and sorters and filters – people who help provide greater context, explanation, digging – to help new make better sense to people or help it better connect to their worlds. We can’t do it if we believe other finders and sorters and diggers our there aren’t worthy of linking to or promoting or teaming up with. Don’t be evil.

More People Discover Andre Bauer

South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer, with whom I’ve been fascinated for many years, is now making national headlines (again). If you’re unfamiliar with the guy I used to cover, this is what I wrote of him in 2006 :

“SC Lt. Guvnah Andre Bauer is a guy who uses the word “super”, but not ironically. He’s a guy who likes to drive fast and fly planes, and he gets into trouble for both. He’s a guy who barely survived physical death… and now he’s barely survived political death… more than once. I don’t know quite what to make of him. I can’t help but wonder if he’s Powder. Remember Powder? Maybe, like Powder, Bauer was struck by lightning before he was born and now he has mysterious powers. Only Bauer’s power is the ability to come back from near self destruction.”

Which is to say, he’ll likely recover from this:

South Carolina’s Lt. Governor Andre Bauer, who is running for Governor of the state on the Republican ticket, said a bunch of monumentally stupid and ignorant things that would shock even the most cynical person at a luncheon the other day, like:

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”

Let’s be absolutely clear, here: Bauer’s remarks are not appalling because they’re offensive or “un-PC” or a Biden-esque “oops!” They’re reprehensible because this man who currently holds office in South Carolina and is making a bid to run the state is demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that he doesn’t possess even the very most basic understanding of the biggest problem in his state, which is poverty. Deep, ingrained, historical-legacy style poverty.

Read more: South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer Compares His State’s Poor Children to ‘Stray Animals’

Tim Laan Party Planner

Oh hey! We’re back from the trip to Amsterdam to visit Mom. While there we spent one action-packed day checking out the wedding venues. I scraped together random bits of free time to put together a chronicle of our day with Tim Laan party planner, the Dutch professional who’s taking care of nuptial preparation and making sure no one gets arrested during wedding weekend.

Some Recent Outrages

You know how much I love a good outrage. Being outraged is probably one of my favorite things besides profanity and politics. For some reason I am outraged by many things at once right now, which is kind of inconvenient because I can’t concentrate fully on one particular outrage this way. Anyway, a short list:

1.) Another Grey’s Anatomy/Private Practice “crossover event”

Both programs are pretty awful, I know. IMHO, Grey’s peaked at the end of the second season with the whole Denny-LVAD wire drama. It’s been downhill ever since, and I watch for pure pop melodrama pleasure. Stiles banned it from our DVR so I usually have to watch it online.

But the Grey’s spinoff,  Private Practice,  is even worse. Last season, the creator and EP of both shows married the two for a crossover episode where you had to watch PP in order to follow the storyline of Grey’s. It’s an obvious ploy to help the ratings of the lesser program. But also a waste of my time, because if we were interested in the characters and storylines of the other show, WE WOULD WATCH THE OTHER SHOW.

Now, next week, the producers are doing it to us again. Another crossover event. That’s an outrage.

2.) Luke Wilson shilling for AT&T

Here’s the cerebral star of many of my favorite films, including-but-not-limited-to The Royal Tenenbaums. He doesn’t appear to be that interested  in  fame or money, but ended up with both.  Now he appears to be blatantly selling one for the other. AND FOR AT&T, the phone/internet provider that’s locked in a battle to keep the U.S. broadband network from getting upgraded to much faster speeds. This is perhaps more of a shame than an outrage.

3.) Subscription cards in magazines

This one’s just unacceptable. I can’t believe I haven’t written every single blog post about this particular outrage. I can’t open a new magazine without eighteen subscription cards falling out, and then a week later re-open the magazine to find another subscription  card in there. Seriously, what percentage of new subscribers to magazines mail in a little card,  in some instances where postage is required? And in many instances, where another piece of mail must be sent (like a check) in order to activate the subscription?  Since this happens to all of us, I’m sure subscription card litter winds up everywhere. OUTRAGE.

Purgatory

The more I travel, the less I expect a smooth trip or a even a mildly pleasant one. It’s almost inevitable that your flight will be delayed (if not canceled), that you get to your destination but your bags will not, or you will be flying back from Amsterdam when a dude in the rear of the plane decides to light his balls on fire in a failed Al Qaeda plot (we think).

So here we are, in Dallas (when we were supposed to be connecting in DC), headed to London (though the destination is Amsterdam), hanging out in the “DFW Comfort Lounge” (I suppose they’re trying to be ironic). Our first attempt at leaving Austin failed. We were re-routed since our aircraft was stuck somewhere in the tundra. Drove home. Drove back to airport to take off on re-routed itinerary. Made it to Dallas. Found out flight to London was delayed a few hours. Consumed some subpar tacos. Considered the “three tequila flight”. Opted for a post-meal fro yo instead. Found out our flight was delayed again. Now sitting in this so-called “lounge”, watching a retrospective on the “We Are the World” concert from a few decades ago.

Chuck Klosterman said something last year at a book signing about how airports are purgatory — an in-between place where everyone’s waiting to go somewhere but at the mercy of higher powers. Couldn’t have said it better.

UPDATE 9:17pm: Just learned both airports in Europe we must stop at (Heathrow and Schipol) are going to be quagmires… heightened security after the pants-on-fire-security-threat. Time to take that tequila flight.

2009: Hu’s Looking Back

As we prepare to celebrate a new beginning, let’s continue the newly-old tradition of looking back at the year that was. (I don’t think I’ll ever achieve the same pair of “new experiences” from 2005 — the Daytona 500 and that one KKK cross burning. Oh well). We’ll start chronologically and then lose all sense of chronology since my memory just isn’t that stout.

Skipping stones on the Danube River with brother Roger

Never made any new year’s resolutions.
Covered the election of a new Texas House Speaker.
Bought April a fat, happy puppy after scoundrels broke into her house and stole (or let escape) her Maltese, Frankie.
Met two beautiful newborns in the same week.
Got engaged.
Quit my job.
Found a new job.
Helped launched a public media brand with some of the coolest geeks around.
Embraced my love of Twitter.
Spoke at  a dozen panels, meetings and college classes, mostly about Twitter.
Won an award for using Twitter.
Took a trip to Washington, D.C.
Took a trip to Philadelphia.
Took three separate trips to Europe.
Got my home burglarized (again).
Got a photo with Kevin Nealon.
Got a photo with Cheryl Hines.
Got a photo with the dude who played Lawrence in Office Space.
Saw Pearl Jam live, finally.
Celebrated the beagle’s 11th birthday.
Hosted my friend Drew from New York three times.
Said goodbye to my friend Craven, who moved to New York.
Led my Fantasy Football league, until a five game losing streak at the worst time in the season.
Co-hosted two baby showers for my girlfriends.
Got car broken into (again).
Made a bunch of videos.
In a rare fit of motion, ran two half-marathons at the beginning of the year and a full marathon at the end of it, miraculously without getting injured. Well, besides those two times I tripped and fell on concrete – one time in my neighborhood, the other time down by the Danube River.
Finished 2009 with full resolve to not make any resolutions next year, either.

Breakfast Summits

We’re doing TT partnerships with TV stations all over the state and Wednesday is Waco liveshot day. After we’re done, photog Justin and I, plus our friend Reeve, meet for breakfast on the UT campus. It’s always a good time.

The Tiger Takeaway

The Tiger Woods saga-scandal continues this week, and by week’s end it’s safe to say none of us will be surprised to see another mistress – or ten – emerge. I have a day job that keeps me busy, but exploring the kaleidoscope of topics that come with the Tiger Woods story has become pretty much my favorite pastime of late. (Because face it, folks. Running sucks.)

Enter my old Mizzou pal Drew, who I affectionately call Drewbie, because I like to add an “ee” sound at the end of “ee” appropriate names. (This is also Matty’s plight.) Usually I complain to him about my fantasy team. Today we talked Tiger. A lot. Here are Drew’s various takeaways from Tiger’s tale of woe, conveniently in a somewhat chronological form.

1.) Tiger in accident? Yikes.

When the crash first happened it was serious news. The reaction was, oh my gosh, Tiger has been in a major accident. Then it was a minor accident. Then we learn his wife had to punch out windows to free him. This sounds curious on its face. How does that skinny woman pull a large guy out of a large car?

Then you find out he hit a tree and fire hydrant. The second reaction here is, this is not a good story for GM. “GM is always telling me about its ON STAR system, but a it appears a disembodied voice did not talk, assume control of car and call for safety,” Drew says.

2.) Getting to Know Tiger

This guy so closely guarded his private life that he refused to reveal what beverage he chose to drink out of the Ryder Cup upon winning it. But suddenly, because of this rapidly unfolding scandal, we get to know Tiger! After the accident, we learn about call from neighbor.

“Oh snap! Tiger has a black neighbor! I didn’t think this guy would have black person living within twenty miles of him, and he has a black guy living right next to him,” Drew says.

But think about it a little harder. Tiger lives on some sort of estate, right? Whatever happened must have happened in a loud, spectacular way in order for the neighbor to know about it and call 911.

3.) The Discovery of Infidelity and/or Domestic Violence

OK, why did wife Elin need to bash in a window, really? The idea of domestic violence enters the picture. WHAT is it that she is pissed off about? Then we learn the National Enquirer has an infidelity story. (This is around the time I become a regular reader of TMZ.com, which really became the go-to blog for the latest Tiger information.) Now, I know there are some areas in which the National Enquirer cannot be trusted, but for the record I believed them on that John Edwards love child story from the beginning. Here we were again with a powerful guy with mistress story, it was safe for both Drew and myself to follow their reporting. Especially if we were reloading TMZ most of the time, anyhow.

“Then we find out another crucial fact,” Drewbie points out. “That Tiger likes women. Tiger is such a neutral, emotionless, passionless robot most of the time that I had no idea that he had cravings of the flesh! That he was into carnage! You see other athletes and their performance and you get the idea that this or that guy owns his masculinity, has a swagger to him. Tiger had none of that going on.”

4.) Lesson Learned: Scandinavian women are not to be messed with.

“The more this story comes together, the more you realize this is not the heroic act of a wife,” Drew continues.

In fact, I think this is about the time in our conversation when Drew referenced something like 5,000 years of Viking fury that beat Tiger within an inch of his life. She deserves our respect for holding her husband accountable with a big stick.

5.) Women out of the woodwork

This is the part of the story where I can’t really keep up because I’ve been editing video or calling sources or otherwise doing something productive (not that this is not a fascinating and legitimate story in its own right). OK so let’s review. The first mistress woman denies any affairs, but immediately hires LA power attorney Gloria Allred. It seems mistress #1 won’t be saying anything to us.

Hotness

Enter the second one, Jaimee Grubbs. “She’s my favorite of the ten or eleven women,” Drew says. “If you wanted to brand the kind of woman that Tiger likes, you could say it in one word: Grubbs. That is exactly what he is after. This is the one who’s previous claim to fame was being on the VH1 show, “Tool Academy.  I love that. She’s clearly intent on building on the Jamie Grubbs brand. She immediately takes her story public. Not only have a slept with Tiger Woods, I have the electronic paper trail to prove it. And my god, if this voicemail message isn’t the greatest thing ever.” (Listening to it is better.)

Hey, it’s Tiger. I need you to do me a huge favor. Can you please take your name off your phone? My wife went through my phone and may be calling you. So if you can, please take your name off that. Just have it as a number on the voicemail, just have it as your telephone number. You got to do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye.

This is Tiger truly speaking from the heart. Not some sort of practiced statement. We’re learning not only of his neighbor, but of his game. Game-game, not golf game.  “And the directions that she’s giving this woman. How does that help him out at all? This is clearly the ramblings of a desperate man.” This is the part where Drew felt sympathetic for Tiger, in the same way we all kinda felt sympathetic for Mark Sanford after all those nonsense love letters came out.  “No man should have to read his love letters in the newspaper,” Drew says.

I’m not sure this was the part where I felt bad for Tiger. I don’t really feel that bad for him, as I feel all the intrigue right now is partly his own doing by a.)protecting his privacy so fiercely that now EVERYTHING we learn about him is somehow a shocking revelation and b.) He’s the one who hooked up with all those women and betrayed his family. We can debate the need for marriage as an institution and the lack of merits for marriage in modern times, etc etc, but if dude wanted more freedom, he didn’t HAVE TO get married and have babies. Nevermind c.) The guy’s a public figure.

6.) Feeding Frenzy

Grubbs is the first to go public and go for the cash grab. BTW, it’s amazing she kept every voicemail and other communication because it shows she was prepared for this moment since she met Tiger. Clearly, this pisses off mistress #1. Press conference at 2:30pm.

While we’re waiting for all that, something like three or four women come out, “each one getting progressively worse on the hotness scale” (his words, not mine).  All of them fit the standard Grubbs archetype: the Vegas cocktail waitress, barmaid, nightclub hostess. Tiger has certainly pegged a certain type of women.

“When he feels down, [NFL quarterback] Vince Young watches 2006 national college football championship to remind himself who he is. Maybe Tiger should have done that. Maybe he should have put in the tape of the 1997 Masters or the 2008 PGA Championship. You have a billion dollar [part of the male anatomy] and you are effing these dollar store [something that rhymes with no's]. He went very low down on the food chain,” Drew says.

Which bring us to…the woman from Perkins the pie restaurant.

“To be TIGER WOODS and to take your wife to a place where the golf course greenskeeper employees dont take their wives to eat, seems a bit odd to me To take youre swedish supermodel wife to Perkins for breakfast regularly?”

7.) Assorted takeaways

Tiger crashes into a fire hydrant in the middle of the night and now we get to learn all kinds of stuff about the guy within a period of two weeks. These are things we never assumed. Now we know he as a black neighbor. He likes cheap women, easy women. He likes to meet them in Vegas or in Perkin’s. And I also know that Tiger has an allergy to condoms. There’s no excuse for why this guy did not know better. And if your “game” is repeatedly cheating on your wife and subsequently maintaining regular relationships with the mistresses, just to cover his trail he should have covered up.  Just to be safe!

“That had me distressing. That had me jumping to conclusions about why mom went to the hospital,” said Drew.

Meanwhile, what do we make of the kind of women Tiger has been cavorting around with? YOU ARE TIGER WOODS. Shouldn’t we expect Woods to be hanging out with Rihanna?

8.) The Rise of Tabloids

So to review, this is a news story, a gossip story, a sports story, and it’s a business story because the guy’s a global brand. He’s the governor of a billion dollar enterprise. It’s everything. That latex allergy thing was when the wheels of this story really came off for me, but who knows what we can believe? We’re all trusting news organizations that PAY for their sources and stories. This is troubling for us as journalists who do not pay for news in a host of ways, which we can probably save for a separate post.

But quickly here – as journalists who don’t pay, we play other cards to get information, like cunning. Or the put-truth-before-your-own-self-interests card. The News of the World and Enquirer and even US Weekly, from what I understand, they play the we’ll-give-you-$150,000 card. This is why the Associated Press only acknowledges the first two mistresses and is holding off on the last seven, cause they can’t independently confirm them. If you can’t source it you have to say, “the Daily News has added these people, etc.” How do you stay in a story without opeining your wallet? All these outlets are paying.

9.) Looking Ahead: Are we in David Duchovny territory?

“Jaimee Grubbs is… I’m sorry. I could get with Jaimee Grubbs,” Drew says. “The fact that Tiger did this… Tiger and I should not be competing for the same pool of women.”

The Marathon. It Sucked.

The long slog begins

It’s taken me more than a week to properly process the beat down that was the San Antonio Marathon last Sunday.

Long story short, I actually finished it, but it took me more than five painful hours. I have many excuses.

1.) My running buddy, with whom I’d been training since July, got nauseated around mile 15. This led us to stop for about twenty minutes as he debated inside a porta-potty whether he needed to throw up. I told him, F*CK IT, JUST DO IT LIVE! (as Bill O’Reilly would say), but I think he ended up keeping all those Gu energy gels in his system.

2.) The energy drink of choice at the SA Rock ‘n Roll Marathon? Something called Cytomax, which really smelled and tasted more of Pedialite mixed with Honey Cough, by Robitussin. I was really hurting for Powerade.

3.) Did not plan for upper 80’s and thick humidity in mid-November, but that’s really a lame excuse considering I do live in Texas.

4.) Running buddy Eddie from bullet point number one ended up hitting the proverbial wall at mile 19. This was highly unfortunate, as I was already nearing something like a wall. Decided, ultimately, to leave him behind, but this was probably not the smartest decision as I spent the last 7.2 miles feeling alone and angry that I was still running.

Finally, FINALLY made it through, and a lot of thanks go to the strangers who were out there supporting us with awesome signs. My favorites included:

“KEEP RUNNING, WE’RE ALREADY DRUNK”
“This is hard. That’s what she said!”

Emerging from the Hole

I’m not a parent, but I feel like a team of us at The Texas Tribune just birthed a baby. We launched early Tuesday morning, and to follow the metaphor, we know the hard work is just beginning.

Together, we worked 12 to 18 hour days for something like two and a half weeks straight. The developers were given 90 wireframes of designs and features to code, and only three to four weeks to code it. We didn’t outsource the work to Bangalore, and we are a site run on all custom systems – from our content management system, down to the widget all staffers have on their laptops in order to link stories to “TribWire”.

By the wee small hours of launch, my eyes looked like roadmaps, it was Tuesday but I thought it was Thursday, my emotional bandwith ran so low that I would start crying spontaneously, and all of us survived on food being brought in to us so we wouldn’t have to leave the building in order to eat.

I realized how removed from the world I became when someone told me there was a Michael Jackson documentary coming out, and I’d never heard of it before.

The site is now live, and the incredible response we collectively received from the national press and tech geeks and smarmy lobbyists and people who don’t even like politics has been enough to induce tears — this time, the happy kind. This is the hardest I’ve ever worked, but the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done. We mean it when we say this has purpose.

Those of us who graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism know Walter Williams’ creed well. It begins like this:

“I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of lesser service than the public service is a betrayal of this trust.”

Ever since the day I graduated from college and started working in journalism, I’ve observed the slow whittling away of the public service part of what we do in order to meet the high stakes demands of turning a profit. Our founder, John Thornton, who started the Tribune as his personal form of philanthropy, decided that you can’t serve both God and mammon. That journalism plus business equals business, and in starting and being a non-profit-by-choice we can throw every dollar we raise straight back into the product and our mission – journalism that matters.

This whole experience has been nothing short of a series of small miracles. In my personal life, had this not come along, who knows what Stiles and I would have had to sacrifice in order to be in the same city. In my professional life, had the Tribune’s Evan Smith and Ross Ramsey not called, I may have wandered out of this craft that I love. On many, many fronts,  I am so grateful. We’re exhausted but exhilarated.

More than 1,000 people crowded an Austin bar last night to celebrate our coming out. I cried (again) when I saw my friends who I’ve missed seeing so much. Thank you a million, gazillion times for supporting this financially, intellectually and in spirit.

Finally, I think y’all know that part of the reason I love my new job so much is because I get to mess around a little and exercise creative freedom as much as there’s time in the day. Our site developers are so awesomely geeky that I used my little pocket Canon to catch some moments in the early morning hours before launch. Here’s to the boys.