Are we “too cool” to stand up and put our hands over our hearts for “The Star-Spangled Banner”? Or is it just that many of us don’t know what to do (you see that a lot at baseball games)?
Does being “working media” mean we are exempt from showing respect to the society that gave us the freedoms we enjoy as journalists?
From “Death Of Print” comes a piece that I’m sure will launch a bunch of discussions, including one I saw on Fark.com. It’s called “Five Ways The Newspapers Botched The Web.”
The piece mentions Knight Ridder and AT&T’s “Viewtron” service, which lasted three years beginning in 1983 before KR pulled the plug. It also mentions the defunct New Century Network and KR’s Real Cities Network.
Anyway, the links are above, as well as this little Simpsons clip you might snicker at.
…or no one will read them the right way. And someone like me will post your screwup on the Internet for everyone to see and learn from.
Case in point: This year’s edition of “The Pride,” the yearbook at Countryside High School, here in Clearwater, Fla. This is the name of the book, as it appears on the cover:
Did you read that the way I did? “Tyked”? When I saw it, that’s what I thought, until a CHS student corrected me.
It’s supposed to say “Inked.” This is why critical thinking and self-editing are important. The way the Y’s strokes come together (the thin stroke across the top is missed because of the two thick strokes, which come together as a Y, and one thick stroke continues as a descender) would fool the casual reader into thinking it’s… a frilly Y.
The lesson: If you’re going to be fancy, at least be clear and legible first. Form must always follow function.
For the last 10 weeks, we’ve had the pleasure of working with Jenna Schoenefeld, a photojournalism student in Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication.
If you look through our paper (our Web site is www.pinellas-news.com; please overlook the site’s dire state — it needs serious attention that it hasn’t gotten since before I got here), you’ll see her work. She’s not only shot enterprise stuff, but she’s been a quick study on shooting major-league baseball, and the ins and outs of shooting in dimly lit Tropicana Field.
I think she’s going to be a junior at OU this fall. She’s from St. Louis, where the beer may be brewed, but the profits are no longer kept. (No matter, she’s not quite old enough to drink yet. Heh.)
Keep an eye on her. She’s got a good eye for “moments.” Maybe one of those moments will be when she’s snapped up by some metro paper!
I’ll have to come back and edit this to at least get a picture of her posted. Man, these photographers — as much as they’re around cameras, you’d think they’d see the receiving end every once in a while!
Earlier this year, the building that housed Hearst’s Clearwater Sun was razed — 18 years after the paper’s final edition was put to bed in 1989. Some memories from former Sun journalists may be found here.
The 50,000-circ. paper was squeezed out of existence by larger competitors to the south (St. Petersburg Times) and the northeast (The Tampa Tribune). But before it cranked out its last pages, it was the first to report that Scientology came to town (under a pseudonym) and the 1980 collapse of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which connects St. Petersburg and Manatee County.
Continue reading ‘Reminiscences of Clearwater’s late newspaper’
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