5 Newsroom Tips to Improve Your Blog Today

Updated 9:51 a.m. Dec. 21, 2008: Reader response requested.

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Very talented writers publish excellent blogs every day, but the training received by most members of the blogosphere came in the time it took to fill out the forms to create the blog.

This lack of training is little problem for people sharing recipes or documenting the first days of their newborn child. However, many bloggers aspire to make a living at the craft, and financial independence is extremely unlikely for untrained hacks.

The print newspaper is dying a rather fast death, but formal journalism training benefits storytellers. With that said, here are five news tips for Bloggers:

1. Don't bury the lead

If you pick up the newspaper or call up the New York Times online, you will notice that few stories are told chronologically. That's because boring stuff usually happens at the beginning. Journalists get to the point. What makes this post interesting? Get that up front, or your readers will move on. In traditional news writing, the first paragraph is called the lead (often spelled "lede" to differential it from the hot liquid metal, lead, from which papers were originally printed).

And good leads contain the most important information.

Embarrassingly, burying the lead came to mind because I got called on it last week by a friend and fellow journalist. D'oh. How could I have been so careless?

2. Write compelling headlines

Clever, well-written headlines draw readers into the story. This was true on newsprint 100 years ago, and it's true today. Every word counts. Take the time present the most important facts compellingly.

A good headline cannot save a bad post, but a bad headline can prevent a good post from ever being read.

When I worked the copy desk at the Albuquerque Journal, I viewed every headline as a contest -- a contest that I wanted to win. Every day I wanted to hear a colleague say, "great headline."

Most people think that reporters write headlines. They don't. At best they suggest headlines, but in my experience they don't even do that. Headlines are written by copy editors, who know the font size and the number of columns that the headline needed to cover. And they have lots of practice at writing good headlines.

Blogs usually have a single-deck headline of a fixed length. Although this is limiting, it is not an excuse for lazy writing (more advice I need to remember, too).

Bottom line: Never, ever write the headline first. The best headlines are written at 10 p.m. when the reporter has been home for four hours. And they are never written before the story.

3. Make every word count

One of the biggest blog problems is excessive prose. Even when newsprint was cheap, there was a fixed newshole. And when it was filled, you stopped. This blog post can stretch to infinity. That's not an advantage.

As an analogy, consider what a former friend used to say to robust women with bare midriffs.

"Just because they make that in a size 13, honey, doesn't mean you should wear it."

Likewise, don't writer every word that comes to mind because you can.

Try to write tight. Sure there's endless space, but extra words are bad. You're probably blogging during spare time, and you don't have a rim and slot editor to trim fat. Be concise anyway.

4. Add color to your stories

I'm not a gifted writer. On my good days, I am a trained writer who tries hard. When I see a writer use powerful, concrete language, I am moved.

You can feel it when just the right detail is added to a story. What is the single aspect of a person or a situation that is crucial to the reader's understanding? Find it. Write it.

Remember that a picture is worth, more or less, 1,000 words. Only you can see what you're trying to say. Fight for exactly the right words to convey that scene to the reader.

5. Avoid adjectives

Excessive adjectives are the comforting crutch of the lazy writer. Sure, even well-trained, dedicated need some colorful descriptive adjectives. But if you're using a lot of them, then you have simply failed to find the right nouns and verbs (hopefully the humor is not lost in this paragraph).

Mark Twain is reported to have said, "When you can catch an adjective, kill it."

Did you really need to say, "violent explosion"?

This would supposedly differentiate it from a peaceful explosion.

We may talk of "future plans," but there's one adjective too many in that sentence. Unless your time machine surpasses mine, future plans are the only plans.

Catch them and kill them.

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I'll be a better writer tomorrow for having reminded us both of these ideas. But surely, you are sitting there thinking, how could he have forgotten ...?

So, tell me. What is the sixth blog improving tip that I should have included?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Learning good writing is not like learning to ride a bicycle (more on clichés another day). Good habits are forgotten. And writing well takes time. Take the time. Your readers will thank you for the investment.

Newspapers RIP; Detroit Raises White Flag

I started my career as a newspaper reporter for the Las Cruces Sun-News. Before that I interned for The Modesto Bee, and I was the editor-in-chief of New Mexico State's student newspaper, the Round Up for two years.

The Round Up is/was/will forever be the best job that I ever had.

When I left NMSU with diploma-in-hand in 1997, I was as "print" as you could be. Man, did I love newspapering.

Read about how cult members become completely devoted to their cause, and that is how I felt about the institution of the daily newspaper.

It was my calling.

Veteran newsman Mack Lundstrom only intensified that love during my Dow Jones Newspaper Fund internship boot camp at San José State that summer. If you ever wanted to love a newspaper, just spend a few hours talking to Mack. He's still my hero.

Many fluke events led me away from the daily newspaper, but I have missed it nearly every day. And it has been especially sad to watch the industry die as the business model implodes.

But I have to admit that I wasn't ready for what I saw today on Twitter, posted by @MarketingProfs:

Detroit newspapers quit print home delivery: http://tinyurl.com/5k4vxj

What? How is that even possible? What? OK, maybe in 2018, but 2008? Twenty-bleeping-oh-eight?

It read like a headline from the Onion. But it was painful nonfiction.

According to the Wall Street Journal story:

The Free Press and the News would be the first dailies in a major metropolitan market to curtail home delivery and drastically scale back their print editions. Other newspapers are contemplating similar moves in response to the erosion of advertising and the rising costs of printing and delivery. In October the Christian Science Monitor said it will stop printing a daily newspaper in April and move instead to an online version with a weekly print product.

Insane. Just insane.

I get it -- and I'm even part of the problem with this blog, my Facebook and Twitter pages (follow me on Twitter). And I subscribe to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal only on Sundays. But I just cannot explain the gravitas with which this hits me.

Being in my mid-30's makes me feel antiquated and irrelevant, but this makes me feel as if I have one foot in the grave.

No home delivery -- even on most days -- is a white flag of irreversible consequence.

Internet, I love you. But you took just 14 years to deliver a coup de grâce to my first love. And for that I can never forgive you.

Say it ain't so.

5 Questions: Author, Educator Bob Schaller

Today marks the beginning of a new weekly feature for Communication, Cognition, and Arbitrary Thoughts. I've decided the Weblog needs an infusion of new energy. So each week, I'm going to post a "5 Questions" feature with someone interesting.

I got the inspiration from Bob Schaller, who writes a number of "20 questions" features. Since Bob writes much faster than me, I decided to stick to 5. I also found it appropriate for him to be the first featured individual.

Bob Schaller is an accomplished author, educator, and journalist. He has published more than 35 books, including a recent biography on Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps titled, Michael Phelps: The Untold Story of a Champion (available at Amazon.com, $6.29). He is a staff writer for SwimNetwork.com. Currently a doctoral student in mass communications at Texas Tech, Schaller has worked at newspapers in Nebraska, Colorado and California. He also writes for Splash Magazine, published by USA Swimming.

1) What’s the most important characteristic for a writer?

Schaller: To respond to criticism well, to apply it, and always get better. The best experiences I have had always involve editors who take me out to the proverbial woodshed. My talent is marginal, but my work ethic is exceptional. I like that feedback because it makes me better. Also, write across different genres, not just one or two. If you want to make a living at it, that's essential, and it's also a great way to get better. There's a narrative arc even to explicating a technical writing project like explaining a digital camera. Though that's different from a biography, it involves a lot of the same critical-thinking and writing skills. Passion is awesome, and people should have that in whatever they do. But a lot of people who love to write simply aren't that good at it. It's tough, because writing is so personal -- we can all do it at the basic level. But to do it professionally is a whole new skill set. Hey, I can hit a running 12-footer, maybe even more often than Kobe, but the Lakers haven't called. Still.

2) You’ve taught print journalism and are writing a text on online communication. What must journalism students know today that wasn’t taught 10 years ago?

Schaller: There has been a move away from teaching -- in my brief experience -- storytelling skills. The new media present new challenges, and they require different skill sets to tell a story well across media. There are some basic components to journalism and storytelling that ring true across media -- get it right, be clear and concise, etc. -- but doing it on video, print, or audio are different skill sets. It'd be hard to be good in all three, but it shouldn't come at the expense of developing and honing one's skills. Being a jack of all trades and master of none means a small market, or limited opportunities. Or at least get good at one before moving onto the others. I like the idea of the multi-media journalist, but a lot more thought, planning and better learning outcomes are going to have to be developed before the new media journalist is part of the working world -- and curriculum. A big part of that is a lot of the good folks in academia left the "real world" before the Internet. It'd be hard for anyone to teach something they never experienced. The real-time news cycle is a foreign term to those who left the field before they had the pressure of which story to post, or hold, and when to update a Web site, how the news cycle changes fact checking and editing. Knowing how to use the bells and whistles on this new engine is awesome, but not if you are spinning your wheels. Everyone can produce media -- that's awesome -- but not everyone wants to read or hear what EVERYONE else to say. That was the big myth with the citizen journalist, that anyone would care about what others have to say. All the "interactivity" is nasty comments appended at the end of story and below YouTube videos. People want to express themselves -- cool -- but a rant or vulgar diatribe is not a form of journalism whatsoever. Now, if they have rhetoric skills, it's a different conversation -- speaking of which, those should be taught, too.

3) What do you wish that more freelance writers knew?

Schaller: That you are a contractor as much as a writer. You'd better market yourself if you are going to put food on the table. You can't believe in writer's block and be a real writer. Sometimes the words find you, but sometimes you have to find them -- I have repeated that several times teaching, because it's a craft. Someone goes out in the real world and Joe's PR Firm needs a release written by 5 p.m., and you say, "I can't do it, writer's block." Goodbye. Next.

Being a freelance writer is a great life, a life of dreams. But your name is your brand, so you'd better attach it to projects you are committed to do, and do well. Also, there's this myth about freelancing that you have no boss. Anyone who signs a paycheck to you is your boss, and if you make them mad once, you run the risk of never writing for that Web site or magazine again -- worse, it might extend to ALL the editors in that person's network, because we all know that word travels fast in these times. Also, don't ever miss a deadline. I try to "comically" beat deadlines -- to get the assignment done well and turned in as quickly as possible, so fast that the editor laughs because she or he "can't believe how fast'' I turned it in. Because when they need something under the gun in the future, they will remember you for that. And usually, with we-need-this-fast assignments, the pay is correspondingly higher because of the urgency.

4) You have amazing networking skills. What is the biggest mistake that recent graduates make in networking?

Schaller: Thinking people owe them something. I tried to help someone here, and they were so mad they didn't have an answer that week, that person stopped talking to me even when we passed in the hall. Think I will help that person again? Not likely. Also, remember that everything you do is an opportunity to network. Even if you are working for a poverty-level wage at a nonprofit (which is awesome, that's just not me), you are going to deal with big companies. Make connections, send a thank you -- send a resume and work sample. No is going to move you up unless you move yourself up. A lot of people love filling out applications online, and that's cool if it is asked for, but that's just getting you in line -- I want my students and friends at the front of the line so they get a shot, and what happens from there is up to them. Another important thing is that people think the opportunities are endless. They are, but if you get an interview, don't give it anything other than your best. You have a million arrows in your sheaf, but you only get one shot at most targets. Miss once, and that often is it. Also, don't ever react to a perceived (or even real) disrespect if there's a networking opportunity. Sometimes, people don't mean what they say, or they are having a bad day and take it out on you -- they'll remember the person who took the high road for all the right reasons, and you might get a job, and an apology, down the road. If you react, you just got to feel good for a second, and doors have closed. I'd rather chug a gallon of pride than throw away a five-figure freelance gig over ego.

5) If someone were to write a biography on Bob Schaller, what should the title be?

Schaller: Dumb luck uncovered: How do these things happen?

Thanks, Bob!

End of World Looming? India Says "Perhaps"

LUBBOCK (not India), Texas -- A disturbing column in the New York Times forwarded to me from doctoral student Wendy Maxian makes me think that the next aluminum foil-headed prognosticator might be right.

As former friends continue to face layoffs in journalism, I cannot help but cringe over local news being staffed from a continent away.

I checked in with one of his workers in Mysore City in southern India, 40-year-old G. Sreejayanthi, who puts together Pasadena events listings. She said she had a full-time job in India and didn’t think of herself as a journalist. “I try to do my best, which need not necessarily be correct always,” she wrote back. “Regarding Rose Bowl, my first thought was it was related to some food event but then found that is related to Sports field.”

It was once written that all politics are local. I never imagined that the corollary would be that no journalism is local.

The only way this works is if newspapers (whatever form they will take) are some sort of cheap aggregators, and all genuinely local information comes from blogs.

In which case, even a hack coder such as myself can probably write a better program to aggregate news -- and do so more cheaply than $7.50 per thousand words.

Sigh.

Fourth Estate Checks Tyranny from Other Three

I believe in journalism. I believe in the Fourth Estate. I believe that there can be no open and free society without an active and vibrant press.

And I'm worried.

Because journalism looks quite ill. Gravely ill. It's always been a business about shedding light, but now there is not much business left. And without the dollars, the light goes out.

My wife forwarded me an article from Time magazine titled "The Nightly News, Not-for-Profit."

The newspaper industry is in a bad spot. Actually, run a correction on that statement — newspapers are in a "time to panic" spot. The business model is collapsing, ad dollars are disappearing, newsprint prices are at a 12-year high and the Internet is just giving news away for free. On July 2, the Los Angeles Times announced it was cutting more than one-sixth of its newsroom staff; the Tampa Tribune said it would cut 20%.

These are huge cuts just 11 years after I graduated with a degree in journalism. The work is just as important as ever -- even more important than ever given the current state of American affairs.

The Time article outlines that problem that investigative reporting is slow and minimally productive in terms of column inches. It's exactly investigative reporting that we need now.

The Internet has fueled the 24-hour-news cycle that makes it more important to have new news than to have solid news. I attribute most of the failings of journalism during the past decade to the rush to publish.

I firmly believe that Watergate could not have happened today. No editor has the resources to turn people loose for that long.

And bloggers are well meaning, but most are like me and have a day job that gets most of the attention. How many bloggers have time to do real in-depth investigative reporting?

We're in trouble if this ship sinks the rest of the way. And any talk of a new business model is just about that: dollars. The truth does not get mentioned very often.

As Duke University economist James T. Hamilton puts it, "Newspapers used to be owned by people who were willing to trade off profits for the notion that they were doing the right thing." And with profits disappearing, doing the right thing is becoming increasingly important.

Lapdog Journalism Wholly Unacceptable

It's been several years since I earned my paycheck as a working journalist; however, I remember a thing or two about how it is supposed to be done.

Rule 1, it seems, it not to take a single source at face value. Check. Double check. Dig. Ask the other side. Ask a follow-up question. At any rate, here is what should not happen:

Anchor: There seems to be some controversy out at city hall.

Mayor: There is no controversy. Everything is great. We asked some people, and they, too, said it is great.

Anchor: Great. Now let's take a look at the weather.

I hope you see the problem. This is lapdog journalism. If this is the only service to be offered by journalists, then there is little need for the First Amendment.

Journalists should be watchdogs. They should ask the questions that the public cannot. They should hold public officials accountable. They should not, however, simply roll over.

Yet I've seen too egregious instances of lapdog journalism this week alone in Lubbock.

Sad.

Propaganda Sadly Alive and Well in America

When I started my journalism career, I attended a lunch paid for by Memorial Medical Center, then the sole hospital in Las Cruces, N.M. I was flat broke at the time, and my wife was pregnant with our first child. Nonetheless, after the event, I wrote a personal check to MMC to pay for the lunch to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

The evidence suggests that one cannot believe a single word ever uttered by a military analysis on U.S. television news since before the start of the war in Iraq.

Critics will write this off as bashing by the liberal media. But if you take the time to read all 11 pages of this story, I cannot imagine how you fail to be moved. Everything that is good and sacred about the First Amendment is brought into question herein.

From Sunday's New York Times:

Message Machine
Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
By DAVID BARSTOW
Published: April 20, 2008
The Pentagon has cultivated “military analysts” in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the Bush administration’s wartime performance.

Peter Arnett Talks about War Coverage

Thursday night Peter Arnett was at Texas Tech to talk about his career as a war correspondent.

The lecture was far longer that scheduled, but I quite enjoyed learning more about this Pulitzer Prize winning journalist's career.

I, of course, learned of Mr. Arnett during his work with CNN during the first gulf war.

[Late add] I learned a lot during the talk. Mostly I learned how little I know about the Vietnam War. Mr. Arnett showed photographs of Buddhist monks in the political act of self-immolation. Given that I have taken photojournalism classes in my life, I am sure that I have seen these photographs before. But I was too young to understand.

There's something horribly profound about a man setting himself on fire in political protest.

One of the benefits of a university life is interesting lectures. It's something that I do not do often enough. As with so many things, life seems to get in the way.

Ink Stained Hands and the Fourth Estate

Wednesday I sat in on Robert Wernsman's newswriting class at Texas Tech. The To-Do list still overflows, and I'm still going out-of-town twice in the next couple of weeks. I didn't have a spare hour. But I needed the experience.

It gave me what master's student Wes Wise called "some good ol' fashioned religion."

As I've written here before many times, I was a print journalism major at New Mexico State. Along the way, I made a lot of relatively small choices. And then somehow I ended up on Madison Avenue rather than 50 Rockefeller Plaza.

I'm not sure about the meaning of life. But I am pretty sure that it is closer to the latter than the former.

Somehow the newsrooms in which I've worked seem a million miles away.

Next week I'll be speaking to a class at NMSU. The week after that I'll be spending the afternoon with a former journalism mentor in San José, Calif. So I'm nostalgic, I guess.

Tonight I'll be listening to Peter Arnett give a lecture at Tech. So more journalism nostalgia for me.

This blog is, I suppose, one of my last ties to journalism. I treat it a bit like that, although I don't do either the background research that I should or the editing that I should. There's not time with the real life, and all.

Corporate Greed Continues Toll on Fourth Estate

It is both a long and short journey from a daily newspaper journalism job to being an advertising professor.

It was an unplanned journey. I didn't intend to end up here.

The journey was hastened in September 1997 when I started at the Las Cruces (N.M.) Sun-News. At the time, the paper was owned by MediaNews Group and run by William Dean Singleton.

Quickly Singleton became Public Enemy No. 1 to me. If the First Amendment had its own secret police, Singleton would just disappear one night. Everything that happens within MNG makes it appear to outsiders that his avarice knows no bounds.

If you've seen the movie Pretty Woman, think of the character played by Richard Gere. He basically bought up businesses through arbitrage, chopped them up, and left the victims for dead.

From the outside -- and a little more than a year on the inside -- it seems as if William Dean Singleton is nothing more than the newspaper's version of Edward Lewis. Slash and burn.

I admit that it remains possible that Singleton cares about any tenet of journalism, but I have yet to see evidence of any of it.

When I was a journalism intern at The Modesto (Calif.) Bee, I interviewed for a job at the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times. That paper -- then a Knight Ridder paper -- seemed like a great place to work. Instead, I returned to New Mexico for personal reasons. But just 11 years ago, it seemed like a great place to work.

Fast forward a few months more than a decade, and things are different. MediaNews Group now owns the Times. A friend works there now. No surprise that he just endured a round of buyouts that were backed by threats of layoffs. Slash and burn.

Across the Bay, there lies the San Jose Mercury News. I loved that paper. The Merc. One of the most important mentors of my life used to work at the Merc. We toured it during my Dow Jones Newspaper Fund training in 1997. I would have given almost anything to have worked there.

Back in New Mexico, I dreamed of getting enough experience to be hired at the Merc one day. But the Sun-News was not the advocate for the First Amendment of which I had dreamed as a journalism student at New Mexico State.

Instead I went to work every day in a run-down former Safeway store that assured violated numerous safety codes. My editors were great, but they were hamstrung with a tiny budget and a corporate structure that asked only how many ads have been sold.

As my wide-eyed idealism ran into the brick wall of corporate avarice, I pondered graduate school. I returned to study the economics of media industries. I wanted to know whether these corporate policies were as bad as I feared. Along the way, I changed direction.

Yet I still wonder whether the sad state of modern journalism was greatly hastened by the slash and burn policies of avarice that left consumers no good content to choose. I cannot believe that this greed has not taken a toll. It has with me. For the first time in my adult life, I do not subscribe to a daily newspaper. The quality of the local paper is simply too poor to justify my time.

Back in San Jose, things are not going so well. The blog post that started this missive was titled, "Insiders Take on the Slow Decline of the Mercury News." (See more at Mercury Falling here). It's hard to imagine all of these cuts in that glorious newsroom. It seems fitting that a Pulitzer Prize medal should be somewhere in the corner weeping.

Oh, did I mention that the Merc is a MediaNews "property" now?

During a recent lecture at Tech, someone said (I forget precisely whom) that when the last Baby Boomer dies, the print daily newspaper will die with him or her. That's probably true. And sad.

Admittedly I am partial -- and this clearly sounds alarmist -- but I cannot help but feel that the loss of real newspapering is a bigger threat to this nation's future than any terrorist.

I think I'll drive over to Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy of the New York Times just to feel nostalgic for a day.

BBC Illustrates Mortgage Mess

Although this is already a bit dated, I encourage you to take a look at the BBC's graphic depiction of the problem with sub-prime mortgages.

Separate from the issue is the fact that I think this is an excellent example of new Web-based journalism. The BBC is using the medium to its advantage with visual examples over gray blankets of text.

Some of the graphics are even interactive.

Thanks, Wes.

Things I Miss About the Education Beat

Yesterday I remarked to a new acquaintance that I missed the education/health care beat at the Las Cruces Sun-News.

She asked what I missed.

Here's a slightly edited version of what I wrote:

• Mostly, I miss my editor, Harold Cousland. He died in 2001, unfortunately. Everyone should be so lucky as to have a first editor like Harold. He was positive and supportive. He was a great teacher. Harold hired me when I really needed a job in Las Cruces. I started with then cops reporter Keith Allen, and we became friends. Keith now edits the Sierra Vista Herald. Maybe he's looking for an education reporter.
  
• I miss the beat. I think the education/health care beat is the best in Las Cruces. City and county are awful because of [redacted to avoid libel], and I don't have the temperament to be a cops reporter. Because Cruces is growing, it is fun to cover education. ... Contrast that to Manhattan, Kan., where I got my master's degree. They were voting on which schools to shut down. That's more painful.
• I miss sitting in a boring ass school board meeting staring at an agenda wondering how in the hell I was going to find something about which to write. Then all of a sudden someone mentions that the new block scheduling at LCHS made it so not all of the kids could sit down at lunch. I wrote a little story, and controversy erupted. You feel like the Fourth Estate on those days.
• I miss the elementary school physical education teacher about whom I wrote a feature story. He changed lives. Same with the alternative high school teacher who made history come alive. Meeting those people inspired me.
• I miss sitting across from Mike Scanlon. He was a good mentor. I miss Frances and -- sadly I forget her name but can vividly see her face -- gossiping about obits and Sound Off.
• I miss the Organs and the sun. I miss feeling like I made a difference. I miss covering the health care problems of rural Hispanics. I miss driving to Sunland Park to cover some arbitrary thing that wasn't on my beat.
• I miss Ruth Padilla (long gone) from Memorial Medical Center. Whenever I flaked off a whole day and lost a story or whatever, I could always call Ruth at 3 p.m. and say "I need a story," and she'd have something respectably newsworthy.
• And although it was later on the sports beat, I miss the LCHS girls soccer team. One of those players from 1998 inspired me so much, we named a daughter after her, and we're still in contact today. She's teaching English in Spain right now.
• I miss walking up the street to eat lunch at that little hamburger place, which was new then. I miss the Corner Deli.
• I miss saying things like "never pick a fight with a guy who buys ink by the barrel."
• I don't miss Safeway, working Christmas, or making $9.72 an hour. I don't miss memos about avoiding overtime, and I don't miss Charles Brunt trying to make me write a story about the teen dance club [I won and never sat foot in that place]. I don't miss corporate henchmen coming to town. I don't miss the weird upstairs men's room.
• And the green chile. I really miss the green chile.
  
• But, mostly I miss the good times. And we had some good times.
  

Happy Birthday, Dictionary

UPDATED 6:16 p.m., two typos fixed: Note to self, if you write about copy editing or dictionaries, proofread really carefully.


I don't have many prized possessions. Actually, to be truthful, I don't have many unprized possessions. I am a pack rat of the first rank.

Among the myriad junk that I have collected over the years, however, a few things stand out.

It may be silly, but one of these things is my Webster's New World College Dictionary, third edition.

My copy turned 10 years old yesterday. It was a Christmas present from my parents in 1997. Luckily, I had the foresight to jot that down on the inside cover at the time. Otherwise I might have forgotten.

December 1997 was an exciting time. I was one semester away from graduation from New Mexico State University, and I had just learned that the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund had selected me as a summer 1997 intern.

Dow Jones is a very competitive internship, and I wanted it badly. Moreover, my Dow Jones internship had a Bay Area tie -- and I was in love with the Bay Area (I still am). First, I would train for two weeks at San José State University, and then I would work the summer at The Modesto Bee as a copy editor.

And to be a copy editor, you needed a dictionary. Not just any dictionary, mind you. You needed the dictionary. You couldn't have one editor spell the world "traveler" with one "l" and the next spell it "traveller." You needed a uniform tie-breaker. (My dictionary prefers the single "l").

First we turn to the Associated Press Stylebook. That was our bible. I miss it, really. I used to know that thing inside and out. When the new edition came out while I worked at the Albuquerque Journal, I went through it entry by entry charting the changes. We distributed the list in the newsroom. I think that I still have a copy somewhere. Anyway, I digress.

The Stylebook covered a lot of ground. But it did not cover all of the ground. And when it fell short, the Stylebook pointed to Webster's New World College Dictionary, third edition, or as we called it NW3.

Since I was going to be a "big boy" journalist in a few weeks, I needed a "big boy" dictionary. Before I had time to buy one myself, my parents gave me this one for Christmas in 1997.

The dictionary that you see above finished out the year at NMSU's student newspaper, The Round Up. It made the road trip to San José. It spent 10 weeks at The Bee. Then it road tripped back to Las Cruces, where it sat on my desk as a reporter and then sports editor. Then it moved with us to Albuquerque. And I won't bore you with all the trips that it made through graduate school. However, it is bicoastal, having lived in both California and New York. Here it sits today in the middle, Texas.

Late in the evening of Christmas Eve this year, I was sitting beside the fireplace reading Walden, which I of course should have read many, many years ago. On my lap was NW3, as the 1840s Thoreau tends to use words not used today. And while I scanned that dictionary, somehow a spark went off in my mind.

And all of a sudden I stopped. Looked up the way you do when you're scanning memory, and I thought "I think this dictionary is 10 years old."

So I flipped to the inside cover, and sure enough in my embarrassingly childlike handwriting was "12/25/97." In a couple of hours, NW3 would indeed turn 10.

I am sure that a lot of dictionaries are given. And I am sure that a lot of dictionaries are begrudgingly received. Perhaps none was so welcomely received as this one. It's been a real friend during this past decade -- a better friend indeed than several humans who would label themselves as such.

There's a new edition out now. Maybe two. I need to buy the new one. Words change. Languages are alive, after all.

But don't worry. NW3's not going anywhere. Sure, the cover is held on by duct tape. Sure, the corners of the pages are discolored by thousands of searches. But this dictionary is like part of the family. And it will always remind me of a time marked by boundless optimism.

Thanks for the dictionary, mom and dad. As presents go, it was tops.

Career Began in Northern California

Ten years ago this month I was assigned to The Modesto (Calif.) Bee as a copy editing intern. It's a great newspaper. And I loved it there.

My assignment to Modesto came as a quirk. Having gone to school at New Mexico State, the decisions committee at the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund slated me for the Tucson Citizen.

I still remember the phone call clearly (but probably not as well as I think). Dr. Bill Tillinghast called to offer me the job. I trembled with excitement as I heard the news. I wanted that internship more than anything I ever wanted in life.

Dr. Tillinghast explained that I would attend the center for editing excellence at San Jose State for two weeks (read about a related memory) before heading back to Tucson.

I'm still not sure what came over me. I told Dr. Tillinghast that I might never leave the Bay Area once they got me out there.

He paused.

"We have an opening in Modesto, " he said.

"Where is Modesto?" I asked.

"About 90 miles east of San Francisco," he said.

"I'll take it," I said, pumping my fist in the air.

Life took a left turn in that moment. My love affair with the Bay Area only grew. In 1997, the goal of living in the Bay Area nearly consumed me.

So off I went.

Things went well. My dad drove out with me. We visited San Francisco together. It was amazing.

Dad flew home. I went through boot camp with Dow Jones (the greatest educational experience of my life), and I moved to my apartment in Modesto. My wife, Emily, joined me in Modesto after her summer class.

I had an interview with the Contra Costa Times, an east Bay paper. Life was awesome.

My wife became pregnant about that time. Although I had finished my degree at NMSU, she had a year left. There was no way that I was going to be apart from my first born. Life took another left turn.

So I picked up the phone. I called Harold Cousland at the Las Cruces Sun-News. I asked Harold for a job. Ten weeks before I competed with his paper as the editor of the NMSU student newspaper, the Round Up. That day I wanted a job.

Luckily Harold had a job for me.

So on August 31, 1997, I loaded all of my belongings into my white Pontiac Sunbird, and I headed south on Highway 99.

I left Northern California in the rear-view mirror that day, and I have not been back since.

In the interim, a decade went by. I tired of journalism's long hours and low pay. I wound up with a Ph.D. and three daughters.

In two more days, I'll fly into San Francisco again. In many ways, it will be as if the decade never passed by.

We Have Lost Sight of Free Expression

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black once said, "No law means no law."

The words "no law" seem rather straightforward and impossible to confuse, but in the history of the court, only Justice William O. Douglas routinely joined Black in this literal interpretation.

It's easy to defend the speech of those with whom we agree, and it's difficult to defend the speech of those with whom we most vehemently disagree. But this country is far poorer when we fail to do so.

But too often these days, we seem to fail to do so.

What to Be When You Grow Up

I'm not sure what I'm going to be when I grow up. For today, I am an assistant professor. It's a great job, so who knows.

I've never known what I want to be when I grow up. Most of my students don't either. And that's OK, I tell them.

When I arrived in Las Cruces, N.M., in summer 1994, I was a political science major. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with that. But I had liked the political science classes I had taken at a community college in Phoenix (Paradise Valley Community College).

I already had given up on medicine once I discovered that I do not like being around sick people. So that was out.

Political science did not feel right. So I would stare at the NMSU undergraduate catalog. I would go through all of the majors. I would start over. I would chuckle at "soil science" almost every time.

As much as it is not like me, I would actually pause on wildlife science and ponder becoming a park ranger. It was a phase. I used to want to move to Montana or some other Big Sky state. It was a reaction to living in crowded, sprawled Phoenix for two years.

Anyway, I usually would pause on journalism and mass communications. I'm from a media family, and it was in my blood, it seemed. Then I would look at average starting salaries based upon major. And then I would get depressed.

I wandered into Milton Hall one day and met Dr. J. Sean McCleneghan, who was just then stepping down as department head. We spent a bit of time talking majors that day. Knowing how many credits I already had accumulated, "Dr. Mac" explained the benefits of staying a political science major. We talked about a minor in journalism.

But as with most things, I was "all in."

It's getting close to 13 years later. Mass communications has given me an amazing ride. I've covered Oscar De La Hoya and the Dallas Cowboys. I covered a university president, athletics director, and a head basketball coach all being forced out.

I covered a Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole. I coordinated coverage of a Democratic presidential candidate, Bill Clinton. I met Dole several years later after I coordinated public relations efforts for a lecture he gave at Kansas State University.

I took pictures and asked questions of Garth Brooks at a news conference. I've seen a photograph I took go out on the AP wire and appear on Headline News. I co-hosted a radio talk show, where we interviewed then-governor Gary Johnson and then-mayor Reuben Smith.

Mostly, however, I have worked with a damned great group of people. And more than anything, these relationships are what I cherish.

This week I have spent getting back in touch with some of these people. It's been great. The group of fools with whom I put out a newspaper have gone onto some pretty amazing things. Four have either made it through or are about to finish law school. One has an M.B.A. and is a vice president of a company. They work on both coasts. A bunch live in Chicago.

Several are married. Some are expecting children. It's been cool to catch up with them.

And somehow my career has ended up here. And I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. And I hope that I never do. As long as I meet some equally cool people along the way.

Chinese Food Interesting Memory Trigger

The International House at San José State University provided sleeping quarters for journalism interns for two weeks in summer 1997.

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Last week I pulled up to the stop sign at Sunrise Point Road and Mission Road in Las Cruces, N.M. It made me think of a similar stop a decade earlier.

In May 1997, I packed up my white Pontiac Sunbird to head for San José, Calif. My dad was my travel partner as I headed out to participate in the center for editing excellence as part of the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund internship.

Some of my college buddies had come by the house the night before and written farewell messages on the cars' windows. That gesture made it even more difficult to head out to California -- especially considering that my wife, Emily, was staying at NMSU for summer classes.

My dad and I drove to Bakersfield, Calif., that day and onto Modesto the next day. My actual internship was with The Modesto Bee, and I had to find an apartment before heading to San José.

It was one of many great road trips with my dad, but as always it was over too soon. I dropped dad off at the San José airport and headed over to San José State for my two week copy editing boot camp.

On the first day, we were given a stipend for food. We tried a lot of inexpensive restaurants in the eclectic neighborhood around SJSU. I found a little hole in the wall Chinese restaurant on San Fernando Street just a few blocks from Dwight Bentel Hall, our newsroom for the time being.

As tends to be my habit, I get into habits, and I must have eaten at that little place eight or 10 times during the two weeks. They served a great kung pao chicken with zucchini that I could never find after leaving the silicon valley.

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Ten years later I am living in Lubbock, Texas. My life took many twists and turns during the past decade, most of which I could never have imagined while embarking on a journalism career 10 years ago.

One day over the winter, I heard my colleague Tom Johnson talking about Chinatown restaurant here in Lubbock. We tried it, and sure enough, they have what I would call San José-style kung pao chicken.

As you might surmise, that was on the dinner menu. When combined with last week's stop sign and today's chat with a student about graduation, I have been flooded with memories. It's been a great 10 years, and 1997 was a great summer. But the thought that comes up again and again is, "where in the world did 10 years go?"

Toddler Story Packs Powerfully Sad Media Effect

Today we finish data collection for a study investigating (the cognitive processes behind) how television colors your perception of social reality. I say this to illustrate that I study how the media make you think it is a "mean world," to use a term popular in the literature.

I just finished reading an absolutely horrific story on CNN.com. I'd link directly to the story, but that would mean I would have to go back and look at the page.

And I cannot.

The summary is that Pittsburgh police allege that a man left his 2-year-old toddler outside to die in the cold.

That's extremely sad.

But then I read the next part. The part about little footprints around the body, suggesting the toddler got up and wandered a bit before succumbing to the cold.

And then I lost it. I couldn't even look at the page.

If you don't have kids, you won't really get it. But if you have kids, you will understand how a story such as this reaches right into the core of your being and shakes something primeval. A whole new chamber opens in your heart when you have kids, so to speak.

I was raised a male in America, so I can pretty much witness any atrocity and not shed a tear. It's an adaptive thing, really. But if you start telling me a story about someone hurting kids -- and that almost always comes from the media -- I cannot take it. It's the worst kind of torture. You cannot hear that and not think of your own children.

The funny thing, to me, is that my knee-jerk reflex to this story is to want to go get my kids out of school and hug them. Because it's a sick *$&#ing world. And for that moment, I just want to know that they're safe.

Percentage-wise, it's a pretty safe world. But the fact that even one person might have specifically tried to freeze their kid makes for a pretty twisted world.

Sure, my kids have driven me to the brink of insanity. They can push every button that I have. But I cannot imagine ever wanting to seriously hurt any of them even for a moment.

Emotion drove me to click on the link to that story, and stronger emotion drove me to click away from it. That's why I study media psychology. But I sure wish I hadn't read that story.

Mean World: Local TV No. 1 News Source

It is often said that if you typed up the entire script for a 30 minute television newscast, it would equal fewer than two pages of a daily newspaper.

This, in part, is why I am a print guy. I read the Avalanche-Journal almost every day. In contrast, I watch local TV news less than once a week (in some irony, it is on now).

Recent data suggests that I am alone. The Gallup Poll reports that, "Local TV Is No. 1 Source of News for Americans" (I believe this link will become pay only in a few weeks).

According to self-report data, 55% of Americans get their news from local TV news every day, whereas only 44% get news from local newspapers every day. Nightly network news is third with 35% of Americans.

There are so many interesting issues inherent in these data. Foremost is the weak link between TV news exposure and learning from the news. Some studies have even found a negative correlation between TV news exposure and current events knowledge (for example, see work by my former Ohio State colleague Gerald Kosicki).

Inseparable from this is the linkage between media usage and socio-economic status. In general, "elites" use print media, whereas those with lower incomes tend to get their news from television.

I get most of my news from the Internet (although most often the Web sites of print newspapers). Only 22% of my fellow Americans get news from the Internet every day, another connection with socio-economic status (the so-called digital divide).

The dominance of TV news is troubling for multiple reasons. First, there is my own bias (yeah, print!). More concerning is the brevity with which news items must be covered on television. There's no time to talk about a story for five minutes.

Covering issues with brevity makes issues especially susceptible to how they are presented (for example, framing). It logically follows that if I get only a few sentences about a given issues, then those sentences will be especially influential in my thinking about that issue.



Interestingly, this trend is static over time (see above chart courtesy of Gallup).

I was involved with studies examining the cognitive processing of local TV news while at Indiana University. In one study (Lang et al., 2005) , we found that faster pacing (i.e., more frequent camera changes) increased evaluations ... especially among younger viewers (you can find a link to this channel changing research study here).

Perhaps most helpful to local news producers are Annie Lang et al.'s "7 rules" for making news memorable without sacrificing factors that influence positive evaluations (Lang, Potter, & Grabe, 2003).

No matter how memorable local news can be, it's still not your daily paper. As a society, there is some cause for concern that the majority of Americans learn about the world from local newscasters.

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References

Lang, A., Potter, D., & Grabe, M. E. (2003). Making news memorable: Applying theory to the production of local television news. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 47, 113-123.

Lang, A., Shin, M., Bradley, S. D., Lee, S., Wang, Z, & Potter, D. (2005). Wait! Don't turn that dial! More excitement to come! The effects of story length and production pacing in local television news on channel changing behavior and information processing in a free-choice environment. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 49, 3-22.

Role of Weblogs in Academic Careers

Some incidents occurred today that made me think: Is this Weblog really a good idea?

More than a year ago, my colleague Dr. Robert Potter pondered about whether Weblogs might jeopardize a career. He talked about a Chicago Tribune article (the link is expired, the archives cost money, and the piece is not on Lexis-Nexis) titled, "Did blogging doom prof's shot at tenure?"

As I have discussed before, there is a constant tension over what to include. I know that if I am a complete industry wonk, I will lose readership. Our field is great, but it's not fascinating every day. So I post stupid pictures from my trip to Mexico.

More importantly, I talk about the good times (here and here). And mostly my professional life is really good. But it's not always good. So I talk about the bad times, too (here and here). I also criticize the field (here and here). And therein lies the danger.

I teach advertising. I grew up in an advertising agency. My parents still run an advertising agency, and I was there last week helping out in a very small way. But I am trained as a journalist. I bleed ink. I get excited by the smell of a printing press. And I profoundly believe in the Fourth Estate.

And that means balance. I have to tell both sides. Whatever this Weblog is worth, it is worth nothing to me if it's just some public relations organ. It is what it says it is: Communication, Cognition, and Arbitrary Thoughts. Rob Potter introduces his Weblog saying he will, "also likely comment on what life is like for a professor who teaches undergrads in Electronic Media Programming Strategies, Advertising, and Media Management."

I believe in that. I believe in public science -- and I talk about my work here -- but I also talk about my life. Some people who read this are my Ph.D. buddies who will be going through these same trenches in a matter of months. They might learn something and avoid a mistake if I give a complete picture. Heck, you might be some completely arbitrary person trying to decide whether graduate school is for you. And this is where I think the truth matters. The whole truth.

But I might want to be a department head, a dean, or even the president of a university some day. And perhaps complete honesty is not the best policy. I would argue the other side, but I saw my friend and former NMSU president J. Michael Orenduff fired for supporting free speech.

It's too late for me, really. I wrote an opinion column for two years at the NMSU student newspaper, the Round Up. And I said some incredibly stupid things (hey, I was young once). And although my columns are not online, they exist on microfilm and in the Round Up morgue (and I have copies). If anyone wants to crucify me for my ideas, ammunition exists. Yet only these thoughts can be found on Google.

So it comes down to this: I believe in the First Amendment. I believe in ideas. I believe in the right to be wrong. And I really, really believe the right to update your theories in the face of new data (we call it science).

Sure, someday down the line, something I've said here might cost me a job or a promotion. But that's probably not a job I wanted anyway. I'm a real person ... complete with faults (just ask my wife). If someone hires me, they're hiring the whole person. If I pick up a life of crime, I understand that they might want to rethink my employment. But if someone does not want me around because I admitted that some days just suck, then I probably do not want to be around.

This goes beyond a self-centered rant. I believe that Weblogs are still defining themselves. I believe that it is an open question about how much personal information belongs here. And I think I'm right that the entire Weblog medium calls for more than pure wonk content.

Nonetheless, it's author beware.