"You want it to be one way. But it's the other way."
It’s a Buick Roadmaster Deluxe. For sale for $4,000 if you’re looking for a project. It’s been parked at various spots around Mariposa and Alabama streets, a couple blocks from where I ply the radio news editor trade, for at least a month. (Those stacks in the background of the top photo–I’ve been looking at them for the last year and I haven’t yet investigated what defunct local manufacturing operation they might have been part of.)
Working for the news department of a local radio station, I’ve been paying close attention since Saturday night to the incident in which a paroled armed robber shot and killed four police officers. One observation, in the age of disappearing media sources and shrinking newsrooms: lots of good coverage from the journalism dinosaurs, little or none from our next-generation darlings, the blogs. The former have been swarming the story; the latter offer rehashes of what the dinosaurs report. Not to say that new-type media have not been useful: the Twitter stream on Oakland has been a good source for both news links and to sometimes disturbing online reactions (“disturbiing” defined: rationalizations/justifications for the killing of the police officers; more on that later). If one is looking for an object lesson in what news organizations do well that independents and bloggers do not do well–yet, anyway–the reporting in this case over the last several days is a decent example. Below are some notable examples of local coverage from the last day. I’m starting with a story that we at KQED produced yesterday evening. Reporter/anchor Cy Musiker, who began hustling after the story as soon as he heard about it Saturday afternoon, did a great job at capturing the city’s mood. The rest of the links are to stories that appeared sometime Monday.
KQED Radio News: Oakland Mourns Police Officers
Cy’s Monday evening report.
San Francisco Chronicle: Oakland Killer Was Linked to Rape
Chronicle reports, and OPD confirms, that on Friday (day before shootings) the OPD had learned of a DNA match linking Mixon to a rape earlier this year. OPD reportedly investigating link between Mixon and second rape, too. The Chron did a good job with court records and turned up details of the crime (attempted carjacking) that sent Mixon to prison. Good details on his background as known at the time of his trial and conviction. The story also expands on earlier reports that Mixon was suspected of an earlier murder.
Los Angeles Times: Lovelle Mixon’s parole record
Very detailed chronology of Mixon’s contacts with parole officer.
Los Angeles Times (blog post): Slaying of four Oakland officers raises concerns about parole system
“Concerns” is putting it mildly.
San Francisco Chronicle: Gunman had spent years in and out of prison
Contains a few more biographical details for Mixon.
Oakland Tribune: Parolee stood over wounded police officers and fired again
More details on shooting, per OPD sources. Mixon is said to have disabled both motorcycle officers, then fired again at close range to finish them off. Also, the story names the type of rifle Mixon is supposed to have used in his shootout with SWAT officers, an SKS (Soviet origin; see: http://www.sks-rifles.com/ or http://www.hk94.com/sks-rifle.php and prepare to be charmed).
San Francisco Chronicle: Woman says she pointed police to Oakland killer
Anonymous first-person account from woman who says she hesitated before telling an officer where suspect was hiding. Also note the Monday details of neighbors prying plywood from apartment door to inspect shootout scene.
S.J. Mercury: Cop killer was depressed about heading back to prison, family says
A little more detail from family on Mixon’s background, and other reaction across the city. Interesting detail from one resident of shootout neighborhood: “One woman, hosing down her driveway two doors down from the apartment where Mixon was killed, said some of those lives could have been saved. She said neighbors knew immediately where Mixon had run, but they didn’t tell police — who combed the neighborhood — until nearly an hour later. But in East Oakland, lamented the woman, Elaine, who didn’t give her last name, that cooperation doesn’t easily happen. “It makes you feel bad. But you just don’t want to be a snitch. The word, ‘snitch,’ it’s almost worse than murderer.”
Oakland Tribune: Street shrines for slain officers draw crowds, debate
A pretty good writeup on the range of emotions expressed in Oakland on Monday–especially at the scene of the shootings.
Occasionally, we respond to questions. As in the following case:
Dear Dr. Info:
Why does my pee smell like that?
Signed,
Concerned
Dear Concerned:
Without more detail, it’s hard to know for sure. But my guess is that you ate asparagus recently. That’s because studies by the Urine Institute have found that more than 90 percent of questions about micturation odors are related to asparagus consumption. And indeed, these observations appear in literature from ancient times. Achilles complains about the smell of Agamemnon’s “offensive green stream” after a feast of braised asparagus (“The Iliad,” Book XIV) and retires to his tent until the air clears. Much later, Voltaire called the liquid aftermath of asparagus consumption one of the delights of life, deeming the attendant aroma le grand phunque.
Knowing you, you want more than just my guess that asparagus is involved. OK, then–let’s assume it’s asparagus. Now that we’ve done that, we can ask, “why does asparagus make your pee smell like that?”
The answer is surprising (to me, anyway): Although research has zeroed in on certain chemicals and metabolic processes that apparently play a role in producing the funk, there is no universal agreement about the source or the cause; about whether everyone produces smelly urine after an asparagus party or only some people; or whether the real issue is whether everyone has the olfactory equipment needed to smell asparagus pee.
Here are some sources:
Asparagus, in the Wikipedia (see the section on asparagus and urine).
Why does asparagus make your pee smell funny?, from The Straight Dope.
How Does Asparagus Make Urine Smell?, from eHow.com.
In a rare show of endurance and stick-to-itiveness, I have concluded my 10-week program of watching all five seasons of "The Wire." It wasn't easy. I ventured late into the night, consuming piles of burritos and pizza slices, quaffing unpretentious but still premium brews and humbler vintages of red wine as the gritty life of "Ballmer" played out before my slack jaw and uncomprehending stare. But finally, red is black, and the last disc is ready to go back to the video store.
The project was occasioned by wanting to watch Season 5–the one in which The Baltimore Sun is a major player–for the first time. But I wanted to put the season into perspective by seeing everything leading up to it. As the series aired, I saw only Season 4 as it aired. I had already seen the first season on DVD and maybe parts of the third year, too.
Treading where millions have before, I offer a few takeaways:
–If you could see just one season, watch the first. You can chase your tail arguing about which season was the best conceived, best written, best acted, etc., and I'm not certainly above that (see below). But what the first season has that the rest never equal is surprise: A world and characters are revealed with depth and detail and tension rarely equaled on the tube. The best of the subsequent seasons build on the first, the worst of them mimic them in a tired sequel kind of way.
–Best seasons: the first and fourth. The first for reasons already elucidated. The fourth because of the combination of wonderfully tight story lines and the group of kids the season follows.
–Worst season: the second. It seems forced and formulaic; reminiscent of the SCTV parody of "Ocean's 11."
–Best take on the theme song, "Way Down in the Hole": Season 1 (The Blind Boys of Alabama) and Season 4 (DoMaJe, said to be a group of Baltimore kids). Tom Waits wrote the song and his version is used in Season Two; I found it grating to the point of fast-forwarding through it.
–Favorite characters: Bunk, Omar, Freamon, McNulty. Not in any particular order. And oh, special mention to Snoop, one of the oddest and scariest characters ever; and to Bubbles, who alone among all the characters is redeemed at the end.
–Favorite arcane newsroom moment: From Season 5. An editor at the Baltimore Sun asks a rewrite man to do something. The rewrite man, Bill Zorzi (actually a former Sun reporter), retorts: "Why don't you stick a broom up my ass and ask me to sweep the place?" If you spent any time around The San Francisco Examiner in the 1980s, this was a moment of pure deja vu. There was a copy editor there named Tony Stelmok, an old-timer whom a colleague describes as looking like Colonel Sanders. One night, the slotman directed him to trim a story or write a whip (a "reefer" line, for instance, one referring readers to a story on another page), to which Stelmok responded: "Whip, whip, whip. Trim, trim, trim. Why don't I just stick a broom up my ass and sweep the place, too?") As it happens, there is an Ex-Sun connection: Jim Houck, a news editor at the Examiner, became managing editor at the Sun. Given the relative rarity of the formulation "why don't I stick a broom up my ass," I'm betting that Houck carried the Stelmok tirade to the Baltimore newsroom, and eventually, through oral tradition, onto TV.
After work, I walked from the radio station, at Mariposa and Bryant streets, over Potrero Hill, down to south of Market, all the way to the Bay, then up to the Oakland ferry. It’s about three and a quarter miles. The walk does lots of things, and one of them is to open up the city to view.
San Francisco is every bit as striking as self-conscious locals and awestruck visitors say it is. What I’ve come to like about it are the hard edges, the things that make the place a city rather than just a post-card vista: the Muni bus barn across the street from the station; Mariposa Street’s steep climb across Potrero Avenue; the way the 101 freeway cuts into the shoulder of Potrero Hill and sweeps beneath the pedestrian bridge between Utah Street and San Bruno Avenue; the view of downtown and the Bay Bridge from the hill; the way streets are flung straight up the hill, and all the rest of the hills, damn the contours; the shopping center on the site of the old Seals ballpark and the fact the ballpark was once there; the Double Play bar across the street from the same dead ballpark (I’ve never been inside); the giant phased electric classic Coca-Cola sign along the approach to the bridge; the bail-bond gulch across the street from the Hall of Justice; block after block of new lofts and flats that fill the old industrial district; the corner, 3rd and Brannan, where Jack London was born, according to the plaque there; the works and ramparts of the Bay Bridge where it’s built into bedrock and begins its thrust out over the water; the roar of traffic on the bridge, 15 or 20 stories above the bay shore, and everything else about the Bay Bridge, now that I think about it; the bayfront, for now anyway tamed and manicured and turned into a long promenade; the Ferry Building which I’ll always see with it’s cupola-top flagpole wrenched askew by the 1989 earthquake; and a thousand other things that I’ve seen, remarked to myself, and have forgotten until next time I come across them.
And what I like most of all–that I’ve gotten a chance to walk through these places and am doing it still.
Interesting word:
SYLLABICATION: per·verse
PRONUNCIATION: pr-vûrs, pûrvûrs
ADJECTIVE: 1. Directed away from what is right or good; perverted. 2. Obstinately persisting in an error or fault; wrongly self-willed or stubborn. 3a. Marked by a disposition to oppose and contradict. b. Arising from such a disposition. 4. Cranky; peevish.
(From “The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.”)
I read a piece in The New York Times in the last couple of weeks that suggested a common sense way of doing — what would you call it? — historical lexicography, maybe. Or in plain English: investigating when certain words and terms came into common use.
Here’s the technique: Go to Google Books, then search on your term. Sift through the pile of results until you get a rough sense of the earliest references. It gives an approximation of when terms appeared — sort of a quick and easy way of what the Oxford English Dictionary’s researchers and informants have been doing for more than a century in tracking down words to their original uses and contexts.
As I said, you’ll have to sift through a lot of results to get an idea of when your word or phrase appeared, though Google helps with an advanced search that lets you look for publications by date. For me, anyway, the sifting is part of the fun.
I’m curious about when the idea of “ethics in journalism” or “journalism ethics” gained currency. I’m not surprised to find lots written about it, including works that deal with the invention of journalism ethics, published in the last ten, twenty, thirty years. Searching for stuff written before 1970, I find a 1922 essay in the International Journal of Ethics, “Journalism, Ethics, and Common Sense.” It starts:
“Several books and many articles have been published lately on the far from fresh subject of journalistic ethics–rather the lack of ethical standards and principles in contemporary journalism. Some writers have not hesitated to indict the entire newspaper business or profession on such charges as deliberate suppression of certain kinds of news, distortion of news actually published, studied unfairness toward certain classes, political organizations, and social movements, systematic catering to powerful groups of advertisers, brazen and vicious faking and reckless disregard of decency, proportion, and taste for the sake of increased profits. Other writers have been more moderate and have recognized that there are three species of newspapers–good, intelligent, honest newspapers, morally pernicious and intellectually contemptible newspapers, and colorless, indifferent, innocuous newspapers.”
I want to go further back. Here’s an entry for a 1918 publication, “Instruction in Journalism in Institutions of Higher Education,” from the Department of the Interior’s Office of Education. I’m amazed who I find there.
(Washington and Lee’s Department of Journalism says this about the program’s inception: “To help rebuild a shattered South, the college developed several new programs; among them were agricultural chemistry, business and journalism. It is not clear how many young men, if any, actually received the scholarships that Washington College widely advertised, but it is certain that the program lasted only a few years.” A permanent school was established in the 1920s.)
The Office of Education’s account includes the warm welcome Lee’s idea was accorded by the doyens of the profession. “Frederic Hudson, the managing director of the New York Herald, when asked, ‘Have you heard of the proposed training school for journalists?’ promptly replied, ‘Only casually in connection with Gen. Lee’s college and I can not see how it could be made very serviceable. Who are to be the teachers? The only place where one can learn to be a journalist is in a great newspaper office. ”
That reaction puts me in mind of what I still hear from long-time journalists; except now they’re all for journalism education, and they’re decrying all this online stuff that’s breaking down their walls and their bottom lines.
(And as to the original question: the earliest instance I can find of “journalism ethics” — actually “ethics of journalism” — is 1846.)
Here’s the book I was contributing to in late 2007 and through May 2008: “Irish American Chronicle.” (Me, I would have called it “The Irish American Chronicle”; but I’m hung up on articles, I guess.)
Anyway, UPS deposited a heavy box on the porch on Friday. Part of my payment, in addition to a writing credit and that old standby, cash, was nine copies of the book. It’s a coffee table number, and definitely in the popular/pictorial history vein.
I could go into my many quibbles with this kind of book, starting with the suspicions stirred upon encountering a foreword by the noted scholar Maureen O’Hara. But I won’t. It was a nice surprise to get the book, which I’d long ago stopped thinking about. For the most part, it’s well written and edited. I got a chance to research and write about a lot of fascinating subjects: Nellie Bly, for instance, who was both a pioneering (Irish-American) journalist and inventor of the 55-gallon oil drum (check out this article — a PDF file — from the American Oil & Gas Historical Society).
Besides, the book’s got lots of nice pictures. Now I have an entry in the Library of Congress database. And eight books to give away.