Stay thirsty (for knowledge), my friend

As I am looking for my next job and trying to decide what to do with the rest of my professional life, I've gotten a few suggestions from friends and family. With more than 30 years of experience in community journalism, some have suggested that I consider teaching, perhaps a class on the community college level.

I suppose I'm sort of a dinosaur in the news business. I filed my first stories using a Royal manual typewriter. Computer typesetting was still a few years off. The internet wasn't even a gleam in the eye of more than perhaps a few computer geeks somewhere. We had no way of knowing back then that one day we would be a mere click of the TV remote or a couple of keystrokes away from instant news, 24 hours a day.

Most of the improvements in how we gather, produce and obtain the news has been great. But if I were ever to present a lecture to a class of future journalists, my first observation would be that in this era of instant news and our need for new things every minute, one of the basic laws of good journalism has been put on the shelf.

The first day of almost any journalism class, regardless of whether it is at the college, high school or even junior high level, the teacher walks to the board and writes the following words: “Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.” It is and always has been the basic law of any complete news story. All six of those questions must be answered. But it is my fear that in this era of filling the 24-hour news cycle with something new and different all the time, when the style of shorter stories was first introduced by the USA Today newspaper, those questions are not always answered. Trouble is, we are bombarded by so many stories in any given hour of TV news or issue of a daily newspaper, few of us realize what we are missing until it is long gone.

A few days ago, the local TV news showed an explosion of a natural gas pipeline in a city. There was a death and a few injuries in the mishap. As the local newsman was narrating the spectacular film footage, he forgot one main fact. He never said where the explosion was. Luckily, a scroll across the bottom of the screen told us the explosion happened in Philadelphia and not downtown Davenport. But the point is, the narrator should have told us!

In my old age, I've grown less tolerant of lazy journalism. Poor judgment is a big part of this trend. In their desire to keep the interest of the viewer, news directors send crews to the scenes of fires and traffic accidents all the time. Most of the time, the crews present some good footage. But sometimes, what we see from an accident scene are precious seconds of views of squad cars ambulances and street signs. Sometimes there is very little coverage of the mangled vehicles.

With the advice of my bosses, early on in my career I started covering personal injury accidents. But we had an unwritten rule that we would not photograph victims, unless it was a shot from far away as crews were loading somebody in an ambulance. But I always made sure I had pictures of the cars involved and sometimes, even shot pictures of skid marks, in case law enforcement needed them in their investigation. If I was a TV assignment editor and my crew came back without any shots of the wrecked vehicles, it would be a long time before that crew got any more prime assignments.

And how often have we heard accident or crime reports where police withhold the names of victims or suspects? Since when did reporters lose their sense of curiosity? The police chiefs I dealt with over the years were very cooperative. But they knew that if they didn't tell me the names of people involved in incidents, they would have to have a good reason why not. They also knew that I had a long memory and would be asking them for the names the next time we met. As one editor once told me, “The only dumb question is the one not asked.”

Another strange thing local TV does is how it covers winter weather. I have lost count of the number of times our local stations have sent out some poor young reporter to a street somewhere and had them stand there, providing three or more live reports in a half-hour newscast of snow coming down. Hey folks, news flash: It's Iowa! It snows in the winter! File one brief report from the scene of the first snowflake in any given storm and then let those poor reporters come in from the cold. Enough already!

In any news operation, print or electronic, resources are a constant concern. After more than 30 years of relying on TV news from the Waterloo-Cedar Rapids market, it's natural for me to compare how it is done there compared to the Quad-Cities stations. When Iowa and Iowa State played in postseason bowl football games, at least in past years, all three TV stations in Waterloo and Cedar Rapids would send reporters to cover the teams for several days leading up to the games. This past season, there was little of that from the Quad-Cities stations.

Living on the border with Illinois, I've had to become adjusted to seeing University of Illinois coverage and learning the names of more small town Illinois schools than I could ever want.

We all have to learn to adapt to changing circumstances. But we should never let our busy lives keep us from expecting complete news stories. If you have a question about a story after you hear it or see it, call the news department and ask for more information. Maybe if more of us took the time to do that, today's newspaper and electronic media reporters would become more responsible.

A little of this, a little of that

True to the title of this blog, this entry will be several rambling thoughts. Hope you can follow it.

I have one final short thought on this whole gun control debate. The Second Amendment was adopted in 1791. I don't pretend to be very good at American history, but I'll bet there weren't too many 31-clip, semi-automatic handguns or Uzis floating around the colonies. I'll also bet there were no major cities with scores of law enforcement people or any army with hundreds of thousands of folks to protect them.

We consider the people who framed our constitution and helped found our government as national heroes and visionaries. In that light, I would hope that if there was some way to magically transport some of those heroes to today, once they recovered from the shock of seeing skyscrapers, computers, cell phones and vehicles, they would ask us, “Why haven't you repealed that amendment yet?”

That's my two-cents worth on the subject for this edition. Now on to a few other things:

I now live in Davenport, within about a half-mile of a very busy, and rather upscale shopping district. I shop at a Hy-Vee on a regular basis and more often than not, I park next to a Cadillac, Mercedes or Lexus. This afternoon, when I returned to my van, I was parked next to a Cadillac Escalade. I've always thought that if I could own my dream vehicle, it might be an Escalade. It's a good bet that if I had one, I'd never consider putting a bumper sticker on it – not even a Bears or Hawkeye sticker.

But the sticker on the car parked next to me might make me reconsider. It read, “My dachsund is smarter than your honor student,” an obvious jab at rightfully proud parents who display stickers informing the world that they are the parents of an honor student.

One of the features I enjoy watching on CNN on weekday afternoons is the Cafferty File, compiled by former Des Moines TV newsman Jack Cafferty. He asks a question, then invites viewers to send in their opinions. He gets thousands of responses in less than a half=hour. One day last week, he had a question about Tea Parting darling Sarah Palin. One of the responses referred to her as “Caribou Barbie.” Sounds appropriate to me.

I'm getting a bit worried that if we have the kind of gridlock and non-action in Washington for the next two years that many are predicting, at least some voters will view their duty to cast ballots in the next presidential election as a joke and instead of writing in “Mickey Mouse” or “Alfred E. Neuman” for president, they might vote for Sarah Palin. Maybe if they write in “Caribou Barbie” the Palin camp will claim those should be counted in their woman's favor and the Supreme Court will have to elect our president again. Stay tuned.

As I write this, the Steelers have beaten the Ravens in the first playoff game and the game between the Falcons and the Packers is underway. I'm pulling for the Packers tonight, undoubtedly much to the surprise of some of my Packer Backer friends. But if they can win tonight and if the Bears can beat the Seahawks tomorrow, it would set up the third meeting of the season between the two arch-rivals next week in Chicago. Once again, stay tuned.

Is it too late for a little sanity?

Ever since the news hit last Saturday of the mass shooting in Arizona, the subject has been discussed over and over again. But I can't let this pass without a word on one aspect of this tragedy that I don't think has received enough mention.
Gabrielle Giffords, who was the apparent target in this assassination attempt, is a bright, young Congresswoman whose personality apparently brings smiles to the faces of even those who are her most staunch political opponents in Congress. She won another term in Congress in a tough race in a district that the opposition had poured a lot of resources in attempting to take her seat away.
Since this assassination attempt involved a federal elected official, it didn't take long for politics to raise its ugly head as factions from all sides pointed the finger of blame at one another. Sarah Palin, Alaska's most well-known fishing expert, apparently published a map before the election with cross-hairs drawn on districts her group wanted to target for election. Some of her nut case opponents tried to intimate that she was calling for physical harm to come to candidates of the opposition in these districts. Somebody in her camp tried to explain this away by stating that these weren't cross-hairs, but surveyors symbols. That might have been the only statement in this whole event that was funny.
Regardless of what I think of Sarah Palin as a political figure, when I saw that map, I thought immediately that the symbols were what you would see in the sites if you were aiming a gun. But I also don't think she was in any way suggesting that the candidates should be killed. She bills herself as an outdoors woman, one who has probably fired a gun or two in her day and cross-hairs were a logical way of telling her unfortunate followers that these districts should be targeted for change, not physically eliminating the opposition.
In years past, I have commented on the need for real gun control in this country. At one point, I suggested that if people wanted to have guns, we should allow them, but eliminate ammunition for all but police officers and soldiers. Then I suggested that hunters could have ammunition, but only a limited amount and be required to buy it like they would prescription drugs.
I've mellowed a bit over the years. Maybe it's being acquainted with law enforcement people and hunters. Maybe it's having deer cross in front of me on the highway several times and wishing that deer hunters would be more successful to keep these critters off the hood of my car. So as my respect for hunters has increased, I have come to realize the good of such organizations as Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever and yes, even some activities of the National Rifle Association.
That said, I still can't understand why some guy was apparently able to walk into a gun shop in Arizona a few weeks ago and walk out with a Glock semi-automatic handgun with a clip that would hold 31 bullets. If I understand how this weapon works, if you load this clip, you can fire it as fast as you can squeeze the trigger.
I have a simple question: Why are these types of weapons available? What hunter needs this? If you feel the need for a weapon for personal protection and you need a gun that fires 31 shots in under 30 seconds, somebody in that army you will be facing will get you before you can empty your weapon.
If you suggest that these weapons should be banned, some folks in the NRA will cry that if you take away our automatic weapons, next you will want to take our shotguns. Excuse me, but this is a bunch of bull! They would have you believe that this was apparently an act of a mentally deranged individual who would have accomplished his task even if he didn't have a weapon of this type. But if he had been armed with something with a lot fewer bullets, especially with the heroes that helped subdue him, there's no way he could have hit 20 people.
The shooting of even one person is terrible. The killing of six and the wounding of 14 others in less than 30 seconds should make all of us call for some sanity in gun possession. If somebody knows why we need the kind of weapon used in this incident, please let me know. In the meantime, let's not be quick to point fingers of blame to one political faction or another and spend our energy bringing some sanity to gun possession in this country.