Personal, Writing, Editing & Journalism

Update

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The end of the year approaches.  Herewith the final general update of 2007 for the widely read and closely parsed Chronicle of Jason.

  1. Hooray for me!  Today I received word that my entry on "interpenetrated design" was final-accepted for inclusion in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods.  The write-up was 900 words of the driest prose I’ve penned in some time, but the assignment will be a valuable addition to my publication history, and I did learn a bit about the subject, too, during my literature search.  I’m especially grateful to the project’s editor for his patience as I worked through the drafting process; I dragged a bit, but now that I’m done, I’m suddenly motivated to do more professional writing.
  2. December was a fairly poor month, health-wise.  The cold lovingly shared by my nephew at Thanksgiving had transformed into a low-grade sinus infection; when that had cleared, a cold came back — the single worst experience with draining sinuses that I’ve had since childhood.  I even broke down, due in part to Sheila’s superior nagging, and purchased over-the-counter drugs to manage the snot flow.  All is better now, though.
  3. Christmas was delightful.  The aforementioned nephew was a little angel at both family Christmas parties, and it’s always a pleasure to see how my four "Indiana cousins" grow and develop over the years — they’re great kids.  And Robert and Sue are as charming as ever. 
  4. I think Tony is mad at me; I refused his last-minute plea to go to a Traverse City casino with him for New Year’s Eve.  "Only $500," he said.  I think I’ll buy new tires instead, since the Grand Cherokee of Power is dog-tracking like nobody’s business, which isn’t good during a Michigan winter.
  5. Had lunch with my cousin Callista on the 26th; she’s back in town briefly for the holidays.  Her first semester as a grad student at UW-Madison went well, and she’s adjusting to her new life there quite adeptly.  I’m proud of her.
  6. I’ve had some great opportunity to "sell" my workgroup at the hospital.  Our coding department, which is now under the aegis of my senior director, allowed me to do a show-and-tell with that department’s director and managers last week.  They are intrigued at the prospect of accurate quantification of staff productivity, and the theoretical model we’ve developed for registration can be applied to their area with little difficulty.  If this works, it could be a significant publishing opportunity.
  7. Had a conference call two weeks ago with the leadership team for the Quality and Productivity section of the American Statistical Association, for which in January I will "take office" as the 2008 publications officer-elect.  Interesting group, and a great professional opportunity.
  8. I bought a Fred Thompson T-shirt last week; it arrived today.  I like it — it has a profile of Sen. Thompson, next to a phrase: "Kill the Terrorists, protect the borders, punch the hippies."  I’m wearing it right now, as I type this at Kava House.  Hee hee.  UPDATE:  I just had a three-minute drop-by at my table by a guy named Tom who saw the shirt and chatted a bit about the primary season; he, too, is a FredHead.
  9. I’m now officially confirmed (insofar as I’ve submitted a deposit, anyway) for SCUBA training in Key Largo in the first week of March.  The folks at Silent World seem like the right fit; I figure that open-water diving there, and advanced OWD in Michigan over the summer, will get me much closer to my goal of divemaster certification in the next year.  Also, I’ve been exchanging e-mails with the proprietor of a skydiving school in the area — he tells me that the total costs for being ready for class A licensure with the United States Parachute Association is only about $1,400 for materials and 16 or so jumps (for training; you need 25 jumps and demonstrated proficiencies to sit for the licensing process).  So, I’m going to add that to the list of ’08 goals, too, but the school won’t open for the season until early April.
  10. Vonnie says the Ireland trip in August is still on.  I’m suddenly not that worried if the trip is canceled, because the annual Joint Statistical Meetings will be held at the same time, and I’ve submitted an abstract to deliver a concurrent paper at the conference.  So, I need for Ireland to be canceled, or the abstract to be rejected, lest I be somewhat screwed.

Done.

Politics & Culture, Writing, Editing & Journalism

Punditry, and other crimes against reason

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For the sake of argument, let us concede that the first and most sacred duty of the press is to inform the public. Reasonable people might then suggest that the information presented by the mainstream media ought to be as objective as possible, relaying facts and leaving commentary to editorial writers and to the people themselves. But then, it doesn’t appear that the reasonable people are in charge of America’s newsrooms.

I’ve lost count of the number of loaded, negative adjectives describing the Bush administration in stories that putatively are intended to relay facts about the nomination of Gen. Hayden to serve as the new CIA chief.

Those who have spent time in a newsroom are hip to the technique of “angling” a story — that is, to find some aspect to a story and to emphasize that aspect during the writing. Finding an angle can bring context and meaning to personal-profile and human-interest stories, but in the setting of straight news reporting, the less steep the angle, the better.

Yet political pieces datelined from the District of Columbia seem to share a uniform angle — that the GOP is in trouble, that the Bush administration is in chaos, that the economy sucks, that Iraq is a quagmire from which there is no escape.

Perhaps these things are true; perhaps not. Regardless, news coverage of the federal government should not be written as if these things are conventional wisdom beyond all doubt. To do so is to display the very sort of bias that makes readers question the veracity and the fairness of the press.

It doesn’t require a genius IQ to understand that recent shifts in technology and ideology are leading to systemic changes in the way America’s fourth branch of government responds to the world around it. Blogging and conservative talk radio have altered the dynamic of the people’s relationship to the press. That the press seems incapable, in a broad sense, of adapting to the changes to its environment does not mean that the “mainstream media” is destined to collapse. In time, that-which-is will supplant that-which-is-desired as the central motif of news reporting. And that will be a good day, when it finally dawns.

But for now, the shrillness of the thinly veiled commentary in D.C. news stories suggests that agenda-driven news reporting is still very much the rule of the day in our nation’s newsrooms. This is problematic in that much of what gets reported will therefore be greeted with skepticism by people who are sensitive to press bias.

It seems, to this former newspaper editor, that the desire to effect outcomes desired by the class of people who gravitate toward journalism as a profession, is proving too tempting for too many. I can sympathize with this, as I’ve been in that boat. When I was a columnist, and when I became an opinion editor, I had my own agenda that I allowed to influence what I wrote and what I allowed to appear on my pages. It wasn’t until I became an editor-in-chief, and had to deal with well-intentioned by nevertheless slanted reporting by my staff writers, that I became sensitive to the need to maintain the reputation of the franchise through well-reasoned and balanced commentary and through news stories that not only avoided inappropriate angles on a per-story basis, but also through news stories that collectively demonstrated a high degree of objectivity. It wasn’t enough to strip editorial comments from news stories; I started tracking the subject-matter of the news pages over time to determine whether we had a content bias.

In fact, we did — we fell victim to “press release syndrome,” which in its most acute phases reduces the news department to covering those things which are fed to them by publicists savvy in the art of media relations. Consequently, we did a lot of pro-gay, pro-environment stories and barely covered things like the state budget, religion, or law enforcement. And trying to get the news department to look beyond the staff’s collective political sense was very difficult.

The problem was that they didn’t believe their beliefs were open to question. Of course we should protect the environment, they’d say. Of course we should support the rights of gays and lesbians to get married to the people they love. Theirs was the default, normative position, and to deviate from it was the real act of politics. Conforming to it was just common sense. And hence, their default position was never really understood to be a political position, and hence they truly believed they were being fair and objective.

So also with most of the inhabitants of America’s newsrooms, I suspect. It takes a certain type of person to be an effective journalist, and conservatives don’t often fit that bill.

But the preferences of the press and the preferences of the people are no longer in sync, and the profusion of alternative media sources is undermining the credibility of the mainstream press.

Will the trend reverse itself? Probably, in time. But until then, we are at great risk that truly significant stories will be over- or under-valued, depending on the reader’s political proclivities, simply because of the source of the information. It’s hard, for example, to expect many conservatives to get upset by a press-driven Bush scandal story after Rather’s memo fiasco and the relentless and fruitless attempt by many commentators to tar Bush with a very broad brush. But if a real scandal should come along, will the fact that the mainstream press will trumpet it mean that the president’s supporters will therefore minimize it?

Press bias has consequences. We may soon be moving into a political climate wherein real matters of substance are obscured because of politicized reporting, and that does not bode well for that first and sacred duty of the press to present the facts as they are and not as reporters and editors may wish them to be.

Personal, Writing, Editing & Journalism

WWFD?

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I’ve lately grown into the habit of working on my writing-related work from a local coffee shop.  It’s refreshing to get away from the distractions of home; at the coffee shop, I can simply plug in and type.  With mocha and free wireless Internet.  Heavenly.

Occasionally, this new venue provides ample fodder for the people-watcher in me.  As I type this, I am listening to two people engage in what they no doubt believe is a deep and meaningful theological discussion about the various charisms of evangelical Christianity vis-a-vis traditional Islam.  Might be interesting were it not for the conversants’ utter lack of comprehension about the subject.  In fairness, at least they’re trying; sometimes it seems that too few bother nowadays. 

Anyway, to the point.

We need to escape the box of comfort in which we prefer to dwell.  I had this collision with the obvious a few days ago, when it occurred to me that part of my hesitation to really focus on my writing lay in the somewhat irrational belief that if I managed to be widely published, then I might not fully learn my limits as a writer.  Unreflectively, it was psychologically safer to prepare to write, than to write and then to deal with the consequences. 

It’s not easy for someone unaccustomed to serious challenge to accept the possibility that I will try my hardest but still fail, or that I will do mediocre work and find success.  Silly?  Maybe.  But I’ve led an easy life, and leaving that comfort zone to find my true limits requires a discipline and a courage I’ve not often had to muster.

Perhaps that’s why one of the few truly powerful motivators in my life has been WWFD — What Would Frank Do?  Frank is my grandfather, who passed away too early, last fall, at age 72.  This man grew up on a farm in rural Michigan; served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War; raised three daughters; served several terms as the elected treasurer of his township — usually unopposed; ascended the ranks from floor-sweeper to vice president for the only real employer he ever had.  He was tough but kind, the sort of man who never had a cross word for anyone but had a physical and a moral strength that inspired respect.  He had a reputation as a great communicator whose honesty was beyond question, even among his few opponents.

He achieved success in life because he was disciplined, and as such, his life has been a reproach to me.  Now that he’s gone, I sometimes wonder what he might do were he in my place.  And sometimes, I get a bit embarrassed by the comparison.

But leave the comfort zone we must.  And so, here I sit, pretending that I’m writing by writing a blog post about writing.  At least I can console myself that it’s a step in the right direction, provided I don’t probe too deeply into the psychology of it.

Because my ideal life is to spend my days on a hobby farm in the countryside, supporting a comfortable lifestyle through the magical power of the written word, it makes sense that I should actually write something.  Another collision with the obvious.  The plan, therefore, is twofold.  First, I want to do some freelance journalism — research-based articles, columns, features, whatever — especially for commerical and trade mags.  Second, there are two novels lurking in the back of my head that have been begging to be written for several years, and now’s as good of a time as any to unleash them upon the world. 

I am not insensitive to the objection that might be lurking in the mind of my friend Duane as he reads this.  He tells me, not unpersuasively, that a writer writes without regard for whether he’ll be published or see a dime in royalties.  Writers are impelled to commit word to paper, even if no one ever sees the paper; that’s what differentiates a true writer from a hack. 

I think he’s got a point.  And that’s partly why my trademark lack of discipline might be on the verge of defeat (at least in this regard) — for I truly love the craft.  Not just the idea of being a writer, but actually thinking about character development and plot and turns of phrase and research.  Not being published hasn’t really been an issue; I’ve written all sorts of things never intended for release.  Plus, some of my fondest memories from my time at the Western Herald involved conducting deadline interviews or finessing a particularly contentious editorial topic or digging into the university budget to find out for myself whether the administration’s rhetoric matched its pocketbook.

So now that I’m plotting the intensification and commericalization of my writing, the discipline issue arises.  It’s scary, in ways that are simultaneously trite and immobilizing and invigorating.

All I can do, I guess, is take it one graf at a time — all the while, steeling myself with the accusation:  WWFD?