The Queue

Out of Context Comment to a Friend

2012-02-09T10:24:00.001-05:00

If you can't live up to the dreams you had when you were young, dream new ones. Worrying about what coulda or shoulda been can do nothing but bring you down. My life hasn't turned out as I'd planned, either. But I'm not finished yet. Neither are you. Maybe we can't be what we once wanted. But we can still decide to be what we want now.

Depression?

2012-01-31T09:46:00.004-05:00

At the doctor's office the other day, his assistant is going down a list of maladies asking if I have ever had them. "Depression?" She asks.

Just for fun, I almost said, "Depression? No more than anyone else whose life stinks." But I had a day at the DMV ahead of me and I didn't want to have to talk myself out of a psych ward to get there.

Speaking of the DMV, the reason drivers licence photos look so terrible is not the web-cam-quality lens, the terrible lighting, or that they have you stand nearly flush against the background. It's that the DMV experience sucks the life out of you, and the hollow shell that remains is what they immortalize on the document that most identifies you to the world.

My Job

2012-01-28T10:26:00.002-05:00

A friend saw me doing a live shot yesterday and posted on my Facebook page that I had an interesting job. I liked my reply, so I share it here.

"The job is rarely the same day twice and I love that it is a license to learn. I often feel like I'm walking into the unknown, with the stresses and frights that come with it, and the rewards that come when I can find my way out of the dark."

Nope. Not Tennis Balls.

2011-12-04T00:34:00.003-05:00

Pretty Good Week

2011-12-01T19:31:00.005-05:00

In the last week, I smash success with a side business project, had an original song of mine play on the radio, and learned that a Sunday newscast I anchor more than doubled its viewership in the last year.

First, I delivered a completed video biography for a customer of my documentary production company. Comments from the client included, "This is outstanding! I feel like I am watching an A&E Biography." And, after the film showed at a family gathering Friday to celebrate the subject's 70th birthday, "The Documentary was a HIT! Words like 'awesome' and 'unbelievable' were used to describe it."

That same night, a co-worker at the station who hosts a show on Sarasota's community radio station, WSLR played my instrumental tune Pulse and then used it as his background music for the rest of the show.

This happened because of another co-worker's breakup. When he left his live-in girlfriend, he stashed his guitar in the photographer's room at the station. One night, after I had finished my story, I went in and started playing for the first time in months, thanks to the all-consuming effort on the documentary mentioned above. Another co-worker walked in and made the mistake of not asking me to stop. So I serenaded her for a while until I ran out of songs that I — and my fingers — could remember.

That was a Friday. After the early newscast Saturday, the woman who runs our studio cameras on the weekend newscasts told me that she heard that I played and asked me to strum some songs for her.

By the next week, the legend had grown. On a computer in the photog room, I pull up the a video of me playing Pulse I had posted to YouTube.

The guy who also has the radio show played the song for his wife at home! She suggested that it would make a good music bed for his monologue. He decided to play it all the way through once before looping it in the background behind him.

Yeah, I know. It's only community radio, but it's still radio. And it was cool.

Then today, we got a memo with our November ratings results and the Sunday early evening newscast I anchor more than doubled its viewership compared to last year ‐ with no on-air promotion.

I am, of course, far too elegant to do something like a touchdown dance. But so elegant that I would not write and record a song in which I sing about doing a touchdown dance.

Reliving Old Glory

2011-11-13T20:43:00.009-05:00

Glory is an overstatement. I anchor news on the station where I work. So that our station's sports guy could stay and cover the entire Buccaneers game in Tampa, I volunteered to do the sports for our early newscast tonight.

I did sports for years before switching to news so it's not new — except the part about doing sports in addition to doing the news. Sparing you the details, my split attention combined with technical trouble set me up for disaster, which I think I marvelously avoided.

I'm Back! And I Didn't Have to Get Fired First!

2011-10-08T23:04:00.002-04:00

It has been more than a year since I last wrote here. The fine and kind people who agreed to pay me to write stories made me agree to stop writing here.

But I just got emailed an addendum to my contract about social networking. It says, "the Station recognizes Employee may use websites and blogs and social networks." It even capitalized "Employee."

Of course, it also says that if I say anything disparaging about the station, its sponsors, its vendors, or puppies¹ that they can toss me and my contract off the roof of the building.

As you can imagine, this doesn't leave me much material left to work with. You know there is no end to my loathing of puppies². But where I come across something that warrants my commentary that won't risk my paycheck, it appears that I am allowed to post it here.

I don't know how often that will be, if at all. But I wrote this, didn't I?

¹ I am not really prohibited from disparaging puppies.
² I do not really loathe puppies.

Signing Off

2010-09-27T16:46:00.002-04:00

I got a new job and I don't want to blow it by saying something stupid on my blog. Actually, while that's true, my new employer requested that I shutter the blog. So this will be the last entry for a while — unless I find a different stupid way to become unemployed, which I will studiously attempt to avoid.

As much as I've enjoyed this outlet for my observations, opinions, photographs and even music, blogging has caused more trouble than it's worth. Honesty is not the best policy when writing about your job, or anything else that an employer could misconstrue as bad-mouthing or another bitter expression.

Even if it weren't a condition of employment, it would be wise for me to stop spouting my private thoughts to a public audience. I appreciate the freedom of expression, but it is not free, and the cost right now would be a job that I greatly look forward to doing.

So, goodbye for now. Thank you for reading.

Plumbing Lesson #1

2010-09-15T22:42:00.002-04:00

If you have only two bathrooms in your home, do not attempt to repair more than one toilet at a time. Doing so could require you to use a third "bathroom," otherwise known as "the back yard."

21st Century TV Job Searching

2010-09-03T16:24:00.002-04:00

I thought I had moved for the last time but I may get on the merry-go-round again.

Freelance work has dwindled to where the emphasis is on free and I have begun looking for work in earnest, even considering jobs outside of the Tampa area. I like living here and I like freelancing here but work here has evaporated.

Several of the outlets for which I have done regular work have gone belly up and I have not found new ones to replace them. I haven't given up on my video biography business but it has not produced a reliable income.

Fortunately, threat of destitution is far off but I'd rather avoid making it a contest.

I also thought I had left television news behind as a full-time occupation. When I moved to Florida in late 2004, it was more important to choose where I lived than what I did for a living. That was easier when there were more available options for work.

While I have long embraced the new media -- I built my first web site in 1997 and encoded my first online video the next year -- that have become the buzzwords of traditional news outlets, TV news as a business is getting younger and cheaper. I am not and I wonder if there is still a market for someone with my skills and experience (read: age).

Maybe. Instead of mailing videotapes, many job ads now ask for online links to examples of your work, such as those on the video page at JohnMcQuiston.com. This not only saves money and time, my web site's stat counter eliminates the mystery of whether anyone sees my work.

It can also compress the time someone will respond. It used to be that you'd send a tape First Class. That would take 2-4 days. The the tape would become part of "the stack" that you hoped a station's news director would find time to watch. If you ever heard anything, it could take weeks.

Now a news director can open an e-mail on his BlackBerry, click on a link, watch your work and call you that day. I know this because twice now news directors have called me within hours of my sending an e-mail to them. I was not prepared for that and I hope I didn't blow my chances at what sounded like decent opportunities stumbling through my shock.

Another news director asked to see more of my news anchoring. I dug a newscast excerpt out of my computer, encoded and uploaded it to my site, created a page for it and sent him the link. I offered to mail a DVD if he prefers.

Here's what he'll see:

Yes, that newscast is five years old. There are clips of my traffic reporting from as recently as June so anyone can see that I still have some hair and can still perform on camera.

If you know anyone who needs a standout storyteller who has reported and anchored every kind of story from hard news to fluffy features, sports and even traffic, please point them to me.

Movie Review of the Year

2010-09-01T00:03:00.003-04:00

As seen on a Yahoo movies user review of The Expendables.

MANGASM!
by Chris (movies profile) Aug 13, 2010

Seriously after seeing this movie if you don't wanna eat a bowl of raw steak, while lifting weights.. inside of a hooters, inside of a strip club and then want to go blow stuff up. Then you might as well go see Eat Pray Love because you might not be a man.

The Expendables is the shoot-em-up, beat-em-up, blow-em-up starring Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham and Dolph Lundgren. The review above expressed the general sentiment of users.

Arkansas Radio Reporter Fired for Florida Hat

2010-08-17T19:26:00.000-04:00

This will seem like homerism, since I live in Florida and, in fact, own a Florida Gators hat. But this is ridiculous.

Hence the ridicule to follow.

An Arkansas radio station that bills itself "Hog Sports Radio" fired one of its reporters for wearing a Florida Gators cap to a news conference with Arkansas Razorbacks football coach Bobby Petrino.

Renee Gork is a University of Florida alumna. She says she grapped the Gators hat without thinking because it was raining outside. It wasn't a stunt, a protest, or an attempt to provoke Petrino.

No matter how rushed she was or how wet your hair might have gotten, this was extraordinarily poor judgment on Gork's part. First of all, any Florida-themed apparel gets buried at the bottom of the closet the second I move into my Arkansas abode. Second, wearing any university-logoed cap to a college football news conference, friend or foe, is entirely unprofessional.

However, her punishment should have ended with the embarrassment she must have felt when Petrino finished a reply to a question from Gork by saying, "and that will be the last question I answer with that hat on."

But fired? C'mon. This seems backwards even for Arkansas.

"This radio station is Hog Sports Radio," KAKS general manager Dan Storrs told The Associated Press. "We are very biased. We support the Razorbacks 100 percent."

And you take your support for a college football team far too seriously.

I get it. You make your living kissing up to the U of A. It doesn't help that cause if one of your employees wears an enemy's hat to cover a Razorbacks event. But there's loyalty and there's idiocy. This goes beyond even that. Storrs had turned what should have been a reprimand and a local chuckle into a national embarassment.

For him. As if people don't already think of Arkansans as intolerant rubes, this just reinforces it. Unbelievable.

Tampa TV Reporters Fired For YouTube Video

2010-08-17T18:02:00.004-04:00

WFTS-TV fired three people and disciplined four others for creating a mock newscast and posting it online. The spoof, anchored by Kerry Kavanaugh (left), reported that a Ch. 28 employee was one of Tiger Woods' mistresses. It was apparently meant as a gag gift for the woman's birthday. Click here to read details from the St. Petersburg Times.

Fake newscasts and blooper reels are as old as TV news. Before YouTube, they were the products of harmless fun that only a few people would see. You edited them on tape, gathered the intended audience into an edit booth and showed off the results in person. Tapes were inconvenient to copy, at least compared to copying-and-pasting a bit of text, so you were relatively assured that your inside joke would stay inside the group with whom you shared it.

Now, editing happens on computers, and you get a video file that is all too easy to upload to the Universe. Once there, you lose any control over who sees it and shares it. If it goes "viral," it can cause a fatal illness to your job, if not your entire career.

That's why I feel bad for those who lost their jobs. They thought they were doing something funny for a friend. It's the brain surgeon who thought he or she had to share the video on Facebook and YouTube whose career ought to be kaput.

Firing seems excesssive punishment. The station's GM told the Times that the video could risk the station's credibility, which I understand to a point. But I saw the clip before it was removed from YouTube and if the only people still watching TV news are ones who couldn't immediately tell that this was a fake story, I'm not sure that the business has much credibility left, anyway.

Meanwhile, I remain grateful that the bulk of my broadcast career happened in the ante-YouTube era. My on-air mishaps haunt me enough in memories. I'd hate to think how I'd feel if they were conveniently available for anyone to view.

Sarasota Jungle Gardens

2010-08-08T15:48:00.004-04:00

The words "Sarasota" and "jungle" don't often appear in the same sentence. Sarasota Jungle Gardens is a tourist attraction where I once shot a freelance story. In fact, here's the video:

I went back yesterday with a couple members of the local photo group to which I belong. No alligators bellowed. I see gators in the wild occasionally anyway so I focused on the parrots and flamingos.

There are more shots of parrots in from this shoot on my photo blog.

Today's Irony

2010-07-25T15:19:00.002-04:00

When the narrator of a novel relates an anecdote and adds, "I am not making this up."

Lowry Park Zoo Photos

2010-07-24T21:49:00.004-04:00

I spent Friday getting rained on while feeding mosquitoes at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo. Also, I took some photographs. I was disappointed that the tigers and cheetahs got the day off. But, don't worry, I still got to pay the full admission price of $20.95

There are landscape (horizontally oriented) photos over on my photo blog, not here only because they won't fit. Be warned there is monkey porn.

How VJs Are Changing TV News?

2010-07-24T08:46:00.010-04:00

The money savings that one-person TV news crews promise is convincing more stations to use them. Instead of a reporter and a photographer, a one-man-band shoots and reports the story him or herself. These one-man-bands (OMBs) are variously called video journalists (or VJs) and multimedia journalists (MMJs), depending on whose pig the lipstick is being applied.

Former CBS News reporter Deborah Potter writes on newslab.org that one-man-bands are changing not only how news is gathered but how it looks on the air.

Potter cites an unpublished dissertation by Kutztown University's Mary Angela Bock which reports that the challenge of shooting and reporting one's own work often forces OMBs to go for the easiest stories to turn, rather than those most interesting to viewers. "Because they work alone, VJs will be more apt to look for quick and easy access to story elements," Potter quotes Bock as writing.

Another problem with OMB work, Potter notes, is the physical demands of the job. Even common doorways can prove formidable obstacles to the lonely journalist larded with equipment.

Seriously. Those are the two salient points in the article, which seemed a veiled argument against OMBs. I hope that the 500 pages that Bock says her treatise spans includes more compelling information because the items cited do not detail accurately how increased use of solo news crews affects the news you see on TV.

First, OMBs are not the only ones who go for the low hanging fruit under the ever-increasing pressure of producing news for broadcast at 11 and for the web right now. It's not because they work alone that they pursue easy elements; it's because they have deadlines that come sooner than they once did. So do two-person crews and they're just as guilty of the "one-stop shopping" syndrome.

You can make a better argument claiming that former photographers new to reporting either seek or are assigned features because they lack either the confidence in themselves or the trust of management to tackle meatier stories.

And as someone who has shot plenty of my own stories (the homepage of my website, JohnMcQuiston.com, features a story I shot myself), I have never found a doorway that was a serious impediment. The physical strain argument overlooks the fact that the major station groups — including Gannett, Hearst and Scripps Howard — that have adopted OMBs to some degree have all bought small and relatively cheap cameras for them to use.

Their physical load is less than that of a traditional photographer.

Potter notes that Bock "reports that the National Union of Journalists in England is starting to hear health complaints–such as exhaustion or back problems–from VJs who have been on the job a few years."

I hope Bock also reports what percentage of VJs make such complaints, how many traditional news photographers make similar complaints, and whether the National Union of Journalists opposes the use of VJs. That would added needed perspective.

If you want to argue against OMBs, here it is: When one person does the jobs that used to belong to two, it's not going to be done as well. Looking for shots is a different pursuit than digging for facts and when you have to do both, they're going to suffer for it.

That's it. The rest is like the mumbo-jumbo of the Atkins diet when the bottom line is that you lose weight because you consume fewer calories. Conversely, the advantage of using OMBs is that they cost about half of two-person crews. Anything more is just the aforementioned porcine lipstick.

The most obvious thing you see with OMB work right now is that it's new (or so old as to seem new) to many of the people doing it. You have life-long photographers suddenly trying to write and read narration for a news story. Reporters get two days of training with their new camera and out they go to turn a story with it.

Of course it looks like left-handed writing by right-handed people.

This will change as aspiring reporters learn that shooting their stories is not just something they will have to do in college or in their first job out of school. Stations won't be trying to teach people to write with their other hand. They'll arrive already ambidextrous.

Will they produce work as much or as good as two-person crews do now? Almost certainly not. Would it be ideal to have teams of two collaborating on a story? Almost certainly yes.

But OMBs didn't cause the Shirley Sherrod fiasco. And they're not going away. An article about how to do better work under the circumstances would do much more good than one apparently wishing the circumstances where different.

Conversation With the Cat

2010-07-23T22:58:00.006-04:00

Said I: "Annie, you have to eat your food. If you don't eat it, it's not food. It's just stuff that somebody bought for no reason."

Said the cat:

Annie continues to be a finicky eater, which is not good when a supercharged metabolism caused by a hyperactive thyroid is literally starving her to death. Yet she often insists that I feed the food (even the gooey canned food) to her by hand.

Yes, there is medicine for the thyroid but it takes several weeks to have an effect. Meantime, I cannot afford to get into a contest of wills with the cat. Nor, apparently, can I engage her in a contest of wits, as I try to tell her that it's not cat food if the cat doesn't eat it.

She seems unswayed. She will eat with enthusiasm if I hold the food in my hand. Unfortunately, I sometimes go out of the house, leaving the cat to feed herself from the bowl, which seems to be anathema to her now. I don't know how she's lasting.

Massive Mix Six

2010-07-15T16:27:00.002-04:00

So titled because there were five previous versions. However, if I rework the song I'll probably keep the title.

The drums and vocal sounds come from samples. I played the rest of the sounds on either my synthesizer or guitar and mixed them all together using free Sony's Acid Express program.

The Movie "Airplane!" is 30

2010-07-05T11:39:00.002-04:00

"I speak jive."

The idea behind that came from the movie "Shaft." Airplane's creators (three self-described "Jewish boys from Milwaukee") had seen it but did not understand the dialogue.

I Thought I Was Done With Soccer Too

2010-06-28T17:22:00.003-04:00

But I forgot something.

I'm not an expert but it appears from the little bit of the World Cup I've watched that soccer is a sport in which the players are not allowed to use their hands and the referees are not allowed to use their eyes.

You don't have to be an expert to see the numerous blunders referees have made in the second largest sporting event in the world after the Olympics. Replays show them quite clearly.

That became a problem in the game between Argentina and Mexico. Replays of Argentina's first goal clearly showed that the player who scored it was offsides. The goal should have been disallowed. It wasn't just clear to TV viewers at home. Monitors at the stadium showed it to fans and the two teams.

Mexico was not happy. Their angry confrontation with the referee at halftime threatened to blow up into a brawl between the two teams.

Soccer's worldwide governing body is an outfit called FIFA. I'm sure one of the Fs stands for football. The other must stand for an F-word that teams feel after another bad call has victimized them.

FIFA doesn't seem to mind the botched call. What's one more?

Anyway, to FIFA, the problem in the Mexico-Argentina case was not the goal but the replay! ESPN quoted FIFA spokesman Nicolas Maingot as saying that replaying the incident was "a clear mistake."

One that won't be repeated, he promised. Problem solved!

Yes, because it is the replay's fault that the refs punted the call. But if they don't show replays of a bogus goal, isn't that like announcing to the crowd that it was a bogus goal?

Nevermind that. And don't try to fix the injustice. Try to fix people seeing it. What is so outrageous to us seems much more prevalent in the rest of the world. It seems to be an accepted part of the sport, judging by FIFA's actions.

It's something Americans' sense of fair play would never tolerate. A sport so rife with corruption, organized or not, will never catch on here.

That and it's soccer.

College Newspaper and TV Newsrooms Merge

2010-06-28T14:50:00.003-04:00

The seismic shift in news media has begun to reshape journalism schools. The University of Kansas has merged the newsrooms of its student newspaper and television station. The University Daily Kansan will move into a newsroom where KUJH-TV studio is located.

A cynic will say that now the TV people won't have to go as far to get story ideas from the paper.

KU says in a news release that the merger will "provide journalism students with greater opportunities to tell their stories more dynamically across print, broadcast, online and new and emerging media."

In other words, the TV people won't be going to get stories from the paper because they'll be the ones writing stories for the paper. And the newspaper reporters will be producing stories for TV.

"The students will benefit from learning in a true multimedia environment," said Terry Bryant, lecturer in journalism and media lab manager. "The variety of skills they master will serve them well when they become professional journalists after graduating from KU."

If the students think this is theoretical, heretical or just radical, they should take a look at WFLA-TV and the Tampa Tribune, Media General-owned outlets which operate from a single newsroom with reporters and photographers shared between the two media.

WFLA-TV photographers have been given Nikon DSLR still cameras with which they shoot photos for the Tribune. More than occasionally, photographers will write and narrate their own TV stories. Newspaper reporters turn stories for TV. TV reporters write for the paper.

Convergence is not just a crazy idea in some bean counter's head somewhere. The debate about whether this should happen is moot. More and more large market TV stations are hiring what they call multi-media journalists — those who shoot their own stories and tap out a text version for the station's web site while they're at it.

If that's the real world, it's good to see journalism schools begin to prepare students for what they're in for when they get there.

World Cup Soccer: USA Loses, ESPN Mourns

2010-06-28T13:55:00.002-04:00

I watch soccer like I watch figure skating -- once every four years whether I need to or not. Any more frequent viewing will come only at the invitation of a pretty girl who promises much kissing afterward.

It would have been fun watching the USA advance. Now it will be fun to watch ESPN try to jam soccer down Americans' throats with the likes of Ghana vs. Slovakia. Good luck with that!

It said a lot about the state of soccer in the U.S. that play-by-play announcing for the most significant match in this country's history was called by an Englishman. How many college (American) football games does ESPN and ABC broadcast each autumn weekend and not one of those guys could handle calling a soccer game?

ESPN/ABC color analyst John Harkes sounds just like tennis commentator Mary Carillo. Voice, delivery, phrasing, everything. It took me a while to realize she wasn't in the booth and that she's in London covering Wimbledon.

Be Ready To Evacuate Or Beware Citizen Journalists?

2010-06-25T14:46:00.001-04:00

Recently I wrote about people's ever-increasing need to be wary of news stories they read. In the race to be first, sometimes accuracy gets lost in the rush.

And that's just among mainstream media. Many more so-called news sources exist, whose authors who lack the knowledge or interest in backing up their stories with pesky little things like facts.

Here's a great example.

Today a Facebook friend posted a link to an article that suggested that officials were ready to trigger plans to evacuate Tampa Bay because of the Gulf oil spill.

The article reads as if composed of a dash of fact and two cups of conjecture. It doesn't cite any officials saying that they're considering evacuating the area. Where's the story coming from? I dunno. The article does not even include a byline. I posted on my friend's page, "I wish the article cited sources. As written, it reads like speculation."

My friend had shared the link from another person. That person replied with a link to another article with a nearly identical story, as if the fact that someone copy-and-pasted the article adds credibility to its contents.

At least this version, which appears to be the original, had a byline. But the author is either a terrible writer or an awful reporter. She lets a reader infer that because "plans are in place" for an evacuation that those who could order one have their finger poised over the "go" button.

In a reply on Facebook, I wrote, "Is there a plan in place? I sincerely hope so! There is a plan in place for evacuation from a hurricane too. But there is no evidence cited that those who could order an evacuation have even considered it."

The article appears on examiner.com, which pays writers on a pay-per-click basis. Whether the writer inadvertently failed to label a commentary as such or whether she deliberately distorted facts hoping the story would go viral, I don't know.

It was clear from the comments on my friend's Facebook page that more than a few people were willing to take the story at face value, believing what "they" say without question who "they" are or even if they exist.

As I concluded my Facebook reply, "Please, please, be skeptical of what they say. They are usually just making stuff up."

Suspect Suicide Caught on Video. Do You Air It?

2010-06-07T17:00:00.001-04:00

Media aren't the gatekeepers of information they once were.

The story about a porn star suspected of murder hurling himself off a cliff as Los Angeles police tried to subdue him is a great example. Though police failed to grab Stephen Clancy Hill before he fell to his death, he was captured on video.

Do you air it?

It's not pleasant to look at but it's not nearly as graphic as the Budd Dwyer gun-in-mouth suicide televised live in 1987. Airing the video might counter accusations of police brutality. Hill was black and the LAPD is not known for just treatment of minorities. Rodney King, anyone?

It has the makings of a great debate.

One rendered totally moot by YouTube.

As stations and now newspapers and radio stations with their video-enabled web sites gnash their teeth weighing the merits, viewers have already decided for themselves if they want to see it. Those who do have no trouble finding it online.

If you're a news director or an editor or just an idiot arguing on a message board you are debating as an exercise. Your verdict has little to do with what news consumers actually see. That itself introduces a new dynamic in the decision-making process. I wonder how it will change news outlets' thinking (A) about showing the video and (B) covering the story?

Interesting times.

Eye to Eye

2010-06-01T18:37:00.009-04:00

Sandhill cranes are used to people on golf courses. They also know that golf carts often mean available food. They have no compunction about stealing anything they can reach, though many people feed them voluntarily. This all means that you can get very close and the bird will just stand there looking at you.

If you happen to have your camera handy, especially if said camera has lens that will zoom to 300mm, you can get a close-up shot like this:

And, yes, that was the closest thing to a birdie I got all day. I shot a 96.

Floyd Landis Falls on Sword, Tries to Stab Armstrong

2010-05-25T14:15:00.003-04:00

The answers from Floyd Landis raised the same question about Lance Armstrong:
How could anyone so dominate a sport so dominated by drug abuse if he weren't cheating too?

You've heard, seen or read the story by now. If not, here you go.

Floyd Landis, winner of the 2006 Tour de France, who lost his title after a positive drug test, finally admitted that his consistently vociferous denials of drug use were all lies. He doped throughout his career, he confessed.

In falling on his sword, Landis was not content to kill his own reputation. He claimed that Armstrong helped him cheat, even storing "clean" blood in Armstrong's refrigerator.

Armstrong was as dogged by drug use accusations as fellow cyclists en route to seven consecutive Tour de France titles. And he has been as vocal in his denials as Landis once was. A denial he had to trot out again, with added attacks on his former teammate's credibility, after Landis' announcement.

Unlike Landis — and so may other big-name cyclists felled by drug tests, if not killed by drugs themselves — Armstrong has been able to maintain innocence by repeating, almost mantra-like, "I have never failed a drug test."

Perhaps it is for that he deserves the greatest congratulations.

It is clear that the question is no longer whether Lance Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs, the question is only whether he was a superior doper among equal competitors or a superior competitor among equal dopers.

NOT the "Female Viagra"

2010-05-24T17:23:00.001-04:00

"When men show up at the pharmacy to pick up prescription drugs for sex problems, they have several options. Viagra. Cialis. Levitra. That hasn’t been the case for women with similar problems."

So begins a CNN story about flibanserin, a drug designed to boost a woman's libido that the FDA is considering. A story on CBS News' website calls it, "female Viagra."

The problem with these comparisons? While they're both pills and they both relate to sex, flibanserin does not treat the same kinds of sex problems that Viagra treats in men. It is not the "female Viagra."

Viagra can make a man able to have sex but it doesn't give him the desire for it. In fact, Viagra's maker, Pfizer, was forced to pull ads that intimated that the drug rejuvenated a man's sex drive. Viagra, Cialis and Levitra do nothing for libido.

It may not seem like a big deal. But it's another example of media outlets demonstrating that they don't understand the things they're reporting. This one doesn't require a lot of technical or medical knowledge to get right. You just have to pay attention.

THE Campaign Ad of 2010

2010-05-18T21:54:00.006-04:00

I know that there's a lot of time between now and November so it could be too early to make such a pronouncement. I also know people not paying close attention will scan this post and think I am taking a political stand here. I am not. My comments are not meant as either endorsement or derision of Dale Peterson's candidacy or his campaign tactics.

So listen up!

I am curious about whether Peterson, hoping to win the Republican nomination for Alabama's Agriculture Commissioner, is a product of today's anti-incumbent political climate or is merely capitalizing on it. And whether you can virtually command people to vote for you.

So listen up!

I'll say this: Peterson's ad didn't leave much room for parody. Good satire makes you pause and think for a moment before deciding it's not real. How much farther out than this can you get before your spoof is too obvious?

I did learn how indispensable firearms are for agriculture. Apparently you can't grow cotton without a shotgun.

So listen up!

Yes I Do Deserve Your Best

2010-05-18T16:40:00.005-04:00

I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.

— Marilyn Monroe

A friend posted that on her Facebook page and I wanted to comment but refrained. She's going through a rough time and I didn't want her to think my thoughts were directed at her.

So they go here instead.

My first thought was, it depends on how bad the worst is and how good the best is. And how much of each there are. Then I thought, screw that. Anyone who says I don't deserve her best, regardless of the prior qualifying statement, probably isn't worth the effort.

Even Marilyn Monroe.

Advice to Reporter Advising Candidate: Don't

2010-05-18T14:50:00.004-04:00

Media consultants help politicians better deal with reporters and communicate on camera. Basketball players have coaches, why not public servants? And who better to coach you on how to deal with reporters than a reporter?

(If you are looking for media training, I know a guy.)

The problem is when the media consultant is a current reporter who is covering the candidate's campaign, especially when the candidate names the reporter while introducing his campaign staff.

This happened in south Florida where congressional candidate Allen West says in the video below that West Palm Beach TV reporter Angela Sachitano "does our media relations."

The Palm Beach Post reports that Sachitano's boss at WPTV-TV, Jeff Brogan, doesn't believe the relationship compromised her journalistic integrity but that her work for West was "inconsistent with our policy."

It was also inconsistent with having a brain.

Look, if you live somewhere long enough you are (I hope) going to know a lot of people. One of them may run for congress. You might even give him some tips on how to perform better on camera, what reporters are looking for and how to answer their questions.

But if you're a real journalist, does anyone need to tell you to stay away from his campaign appearances? Or to inform your bosses at work that you're friends with the guy and shouldn't do stories about him or his opponent?

Full disclosure: I worked with Brogan at WCPO-TV in Cincinnati from 2002-2004. Please do not construe this post as casting aspersions on him.

The Story vs. The Facts

2010-05-07T17:04:00.003-04:00

Do media need to get the facts right or just the story?

There is a difference. If you tell me that two plus two equals five and I report that, I have reported the story correctly but I have reported the fact incorrectly.

Is that OK? Should we be happy to get the story straight, even if its information is wrong? The news director at WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh seems to think so.

Last Friday, the WPXI reported that former Pittsburgh Steelers player Santonio Holmes was escorted off a commercial flight at Pittsburgh International Airport. Turns out that Holmes was not escorted off the plane. He was merely admonished for not turning off his iPod prior to landing. He left the plane with the rest of the passengers.

The station later updated its story without clarifying that its earlier report was untrue.

"The story changed and we changed it," WPXI news director Mike Goldrick told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "We didn't feel like we needed to correct it because we don't feel like it was wrong. The story we got, we reported, and when the story changed we reported it."

"The information we had at the time was right. The information changed," Goldrick said.

I guess that depends on what the definition of information is. The facts the station had at the time were wrong. The facts didn't change. Holmes was either escorted off the plane or he wasn't. Unless there were two separate flights, Holmes was not escorted off the plane earlier in the day and left it on his own later.

It happened only one way. If you reported something else, you got it wrong, no matter how accurately you reported the story you heard.

Now that the news cycle is no longer 24-hours but second-to-second, we can expect a lot of stories to change as first reports increasingly become less factual. As getting it first takes more priority over getting it right, people will become more skeptical of media reports. They'll need, like reporters once did, independent confirmation from another source before they'll believe what they see, hear or read.

When that happens, what will separate the mainstream media from ordinary bloggers?

Rush Movie "Beyond the Lighted Stage"

2010-05-07T15:21:00.003-04:00

A new movie that began shooting almost 40 years ago comes out soon. "Beyond the Lighted Stage" documents the slow rise and steady popularity of Rush. No. Not Rush Limbaugh. Rush, the rock band.

If you are of a certain age, and a fan of what was once called Album Oriented Rock, chances are the soundtrack to your life story includes at least one Rush song.

There was nothing like them. Who else sang about black holes? Trees as allegory? And I'm glad I never listened to close to the words to "The Necromancer." I don't even want to know what that's about. And they played with a technical precision unmatched by most of their contemporaries.

Rush had its critics. Ken Tucker, commenting on its lyrics, wrote that drummer/lyricist Neil Peart had the best deal because "he gets to write this caca but doesn't have to sing it."

Fortunately for the band, critics have little sway over record sales. But radio airplay did so it was a dose of irony that gave Rush its first mega-smash on AOR stations. "The Spirit of Radio" decried the very thing that most stations had become.

"Integrity, yeah, integrity!" Yeah.

That song came from the album "Permanent Waves," which was the first Rush album I bought (on cassette tape!). Some of their earlier work was a little too out there for me, as it was for the legions who ignored it when it first came out, but "La Villa Strangiato," a 9-minute instrumental from the LP (or cassette, in my case) "Hemispheres," was always a favorite.

Rush's 1981 release "Moving Pictures" continued Peart's trend of more accessible themes, though I never found any meaning in the band's most famous song, "Tom Sawyer." If that was the song that sparked Ken Tucker's comment about Rush's lyrics, I wouldn't argue, but it's one of the coolest sounding songs ever.

That was the last Rush record -- and I actually bought the vinyl version of this one -- that I bought. After that their music veered too far into electronics and preachiness for my taste.

But I enjoyed Rush's 2003 concert DVD "Rush in Rio" and will probably buy "Beyond the Lighted Stage" when it comes out on DVD too, especially if it delves beyond their struggles to find an audience and into their creative process. Even on the songs I don't like, I can appreciate the artistry that went into making them.

CNN's Rich Sanchez Ad-Libs a Tease

2010-05-05T16:32:00.003-04:00

Apparently not knowing what "ad-lib" means. Sanchez is a one-man blooper reel. Here's the latest example as he does a Ron Burgundy, blindly reading whatever shows up on the teleprompter.

Tip for wannabe teevee news anchors: When it says, "Up Next... Ad Lib... A Tease," you're not actually supposed to say that. You'd think that would be unnecessary advice but, as you can see below...

I Should Put Something Here...

2010-04-02T17:06:00.001-04:00

...So anyone who checks it will know that I have not forgotten its existence.

Blame Facebook and Twitter. I post something there in a sentence or two and it's complete. In fact that's all you can do on Twitter. I only have to put one thought together instead of a series of them.

I am trying to maintain my video biography company's blog but even that gets less attention than it should. There is no good excuse. Unless laziness has become one.

Be assured that I haven't forgotten about the blog, or the fact that occasionally people read it. If I think of something to write and can stretch the thought beyond 140 characters, you'll be the first to know.

I'll post notice of it on my Twitter feed.

Back to the Track

2010-03-20T17:37:00.002-04:00

The bicycle racing track, that is. I stayed longer but seemed to get fewer good shots than last time. One reason was that the schedule was different today. The riders actually do more jumping during practice so that's more photogenic than the races. Most of practice was over by the time I started shooting today.

Named in the News

2010-03-15T17:59:00.003-04:00

And I didn't have to get arrested first! My video production company, the Philip Randolph Parker Co., got a mention in the March 2010 issue of the Osprey Observer, a monthly newspaper in Hillsborough County, Fla. The article about PRP is on page 12 of the first section.

I never spoke to the reporter. She e-mailed some questions and also took — with permission — copy from our website as well as from the news release I had sent. (Previously published on my company's blog.)

If you click on the image, the photo might show up large enough that you can read the copy. I have not noticed a surge in traffic to our web site since the article came out last week but being featured in a news publication, no matter how small, without paying for it lends an air of legitimacy to our cause.

I haven't seen an online version but if one appears, I'll link to it.

Shooting and Photos

2010-03-13T17:20:00.004-05:00

I did a freelance job Thursday and Friday for a Canadian production company. I don't think they want me to share a lot of details but it's a demo for a reality show that was one of the more unreal experiences I've had in video production.

Granted, my background is news so I'm not accustomed to staging events for the sake of the show much beyond asking people to interrupt an action so that we can re-set the camera in a different place so we can edit the shots together in a sequence.

That wasn't the case here. I know that there's precious little that's real about reality TV shows but I felt bad for the subject because she's not going to come off in a way that even remotely resembles how she really lives. And I'm not sure she'll be flattered by the portrayal, though to a lot of people there's no such thing as a bad appearance on television. Being seen is flattery enough.

They paid at the end of the second day of shooting and I got to work with a Sony HVR-Z1U camera and came away impressed.** Good picture, easy to use, not too heavy but enough heft to hold reasonably steady and the image stabilization worked well. Overall it was a good experience and proof that among all the spam and scams there are legitimate paying jobs to be found on craigslist.

Today I took another Sony camera, my A100 DSLR to a local BMX racing track and shot a few frames. The photo group I shoot with plans to go there next Saturday and the folks at the track say they'll outfit us with passes so we can go into the infield to get a greater variety of perspectives.

**Yes, I was actually hired as a camera operator and it surprised the people on site that videography comprises very little of my paying work. But they weren't disappointed. "The footage looked great," the field producer told me on our second day. They had reviewed the first day's tapes and sent some of the video back to their bosses in Toronto before our second day of shooting.

Oscars Re-Cap From A Guy Who Hasn't Seen the Films

2010-03-08T16:04:00.006-05:00

I am surprised to read that last night's Oscars telecast had the show's highest ratings in five years. It wasn't very good. Still too long, something still doesn't click with the hosts and too many acceptance speeches that are no more than shout-outs to agents and lawyers.

They could cut the show from three-and-a-half hours to 40 minutes if they banned the words "I want to thank" and agents' names. If they cared about the TV audience, show producers would tell the nominees, "You have been nominated. This greatly enhances your chance of winning. Have something to say in case you do."

This will never happen, of course. The self-absorbed are rarely self-aware. It is fitting that Hollywood's biggest night is Hollywood talking to itself.

I sat through most of it anyway, hoping that the Oscars telecast will substitute for watching the films themselves. I haven't seen any of the nominees. Remember that as I recap some of the thoughts I had as I watched.

However much time Kathryn Bigelow spent in hair and makeup for was worth it. She had a lot of face time with "The Hurt Locker" winning six of the nine awards for which it was nominated, including the two biggies -- best picture and best director.

She bested ex-husband James Cameron for the best director honor. Success may be the best revenge but I can't feel sorry for the mind behind Avatar.

"The Hurt Locker" has made $21 million worldwide, which means that not even all the Academy members who voted for it paid to see it. Avatar made $21 million in the time it took Bigelow to recite her list of thank yous and Cameron can boast that he has directed the top TWO highest grossing films of all time.

Film critic Roger Ebert opined on his Twitter feed, "Guys half drunk, watching at home: 'That Kathryn Bigelow is a fine woman.'" In my case, no inebriation was required to share the sentiment.

At least she looked good. The woman honored for costume design wore an outfit that made me wonder why people who win awards for dressing the actors can't seem to dress themselves.

Another standout outfit was the one Miley Cyrus wore when she presented an award. She interrupted the hurried delivery of her lines to acknowledge her case of nerves. I'd be nervous too if my dress was designed for someone whose torso was five inches shorter than mine and was barely winning a valiant fight to keep my breasts covered by pulling them down to my belly button.

Whether Quentin Tarantino won any awards for "Inglorious Basterds," it was enough to see people in formal wear saying "bastards" numerous times on national television.

Good thing for best actress winner Sandra Bullock that voting closed before Oprah Winfrey's stirring tribute to newcomer Gabourey Sidibe. Oprah envisions a huge future for Gabby but I don't see a lot of film roles for morbidly obese people. Maybe she can star in Avatar 2.

Though denied best actress, "Precious" won for best adapted screenplay and for Mo'nique as best supporting actress. I am sure it is a wonderful film that I will never ever watch.

Some of the best movies are the least enjoyable. I am glad they are made, I admire the people who make them and I ask their forgiveness that I watch films not to immerse myself in misery but to avoid it.

Avatar wins for best cinematography and for best visual effects? One is for capturing beautiful scenery, the other for creating it. It doesn't make sense for one film to win both.

Neil Patrick Harris sang the show's opening number. He is a good singer among people at karaoke night. He is not a good singer among professional singers. If they couldn't have gotten a bigger name than Doogie Howser to perform that song, they should have gotten a better singer.

Humorist Dave Barry was listed in the show's writing credits. I bet he doesn't admit that publicly again.

Shooting Motorcycles

2010-03-08T15:58:00.003-05:00

With a camera, of course. A state park in Hernando County features an area open to motorcycle riders.

I shot about 800 frames of the same five shots. There's a montage with more photos on my photo blog, if you want to see more. That's not a ploy to funnel traffic to that site, it's layout is simply designed to show larger images than this blog's.

Don't Drive Through Standing Water

2010-02-26T14:42:00.003-05:00

But if you're gonna drive through standing water, drive a train.

Tiger Woods Talks

2010-02-19T16:31:00.006-05:00

And in 13 minutes doesn't say anything. I hope this didn't surprise you if you watched Tiger Woods read his prepared statement this morning at PGA headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

Tiger is notorious for his articulately expressed nonsense in interviews. Stay safe. Avoid controversy or even anything interesting. Can you remember anything Tiger has ever said?

That's why I thought it was so funny that every major TV network would broadcast his monologue live. OK, so I also thought it was funny that networks would broadcast any reading aloud from a piece of paper by a guy who hits a little white ball for a living.

Tiger apologized. He praised his notably absent wife. He said he had been in rehab. Rehab for what, he didn't say. And he played the religion card, though instead of Jesus, it was Buddha he found, in homage to his Thai mother, for whom he also famously wears some shade of red in every final round of golf he plays.

He played every note written for his orchestrated appearance, pausing dramatically, if obviously, more than once before looking directly into the camera to say how sorry he was. It looked like he had directions written on his script. Whatever he's been doing since since his Thanksgiving incident that began as a minor car accident and turned into a career crash, it hasn't been taking acting lessons.

This event was theater, all right. Bad community theater. Unless the role was that of a guy saying what he thought he should say to save his bacon.

He did look sincerely, sincerely sorry — that he got caught. We still don't know a whole lot about Tiger, which may be good because what little we do know is almost disturbingly creepy, but we know enough to see that image and appearance matters almost as much to him as winning major championships.

That's why Woods mentioned his "friends at Accenture," the company that was the first to drop its endorsement deal with him, as he took time to explain the timing of his public statement. Fellow PGA pro Ernie Els was among those who criticized Tiger for selfishly upstaging this week's PGA event, sponsored by Accenture, by staging his show while the tournament was happening.

Woods was well-aware of this and other things that have been reported. That was evident in the things he addressed in his speech. By the way, one of the biggest lies pro athletes repeat is that the don't read or listen to stories about them. Baloney! Woods seems especially sensitive to it judging by the lengths he goes to shield himself from answering questions.

And, lately, the plentiful supply of writers wanting to give him advice.

"Tiger Woods is the first person in history to run his car into a hydrant and set himself on fire," Rick Reilly wrote in a column for ESPN.com as he became the 2,187,243rd person to throw his cents into the Tiger well.

Reilly then listed the things Tiger needs to do to get back into fans' and — more important — sponsors' good graces. Do an interview with Oprah. Take a break from golf. Stop throwing clubs and swearing on the golf course. Sign some autographs for fans. And the self-serving call for transparency: "Let us into your life a little. Do the 'A week on the road with Tiger' story. Give a home interview once in a while."

Conspicuously absent from Reilly's suggestions was the one most obvious to me: He needs to stop having sex with women who aren't his wife.

That would be my start. Tiger gave at least lip service to the idea, promising that the behavior that caused this tawdry mess would never happen again.

Tiger Woods does not need to hit the talk show circuit or sit for an in-depth interview for Sports Illustrated or 60 Minutes. He doesn't owe me an explanation or an apology for anything. I didn't watch today looking for one. He didn't take money from me. He probably broke the law when trying to drive while zonked on Ambien, but if the police didn't pursue it, my problem is with the police, not with Woods.

I watched for the entertainment value. Just how phony was he going to look? Now that the facade has been torn away, he's not going to be able to control his image the way he once did — hugely successfully. But it was fun to watch him try.

Much less successfully.

And I'm sure the TMZs and National Enquirers of the world are going to heed his call to leave his wife and kids alone. Good luck with that! Add that to all the other things he should have considered when he treated his marriage as nothing more than another photo-op designed to burnish his public persona.

The only outright lie I think he told today was the one in which he held his wife Elin blameless in the car crash. If not the fury of the 6-iron wielding woman scorned, what made him jump in his SUV for a getaway while sacked out on sleeping pills?

He said that he was not going to provide such details to the public about his private matter. He didn't even say when — or definitively if — he was returning to the pro tour this year, which surprised me. Golf is the only thing real about this guy. Plus, this fiasco begins to fade as soon as Woods wins another major championship.

The only thing Tiger Woods wanted to say was that he was sorry and it didn't even look like he really meant that.

Forgot to Mention

2010-02-02T18:52:00.002-05:00

I've been taking a lot of pictures. See more on my photo blog.

Here's What's Up

2010-02-02T17:55:00.004-05:00

I recently got a smart phone. And, yes, I've already made the jokes myself about how my telephone has more intelligence than I do so you can save yourself the effort.

Said phone is currently my only access to the Internet unless I venture either to the nearby public library or farther north to my parents' house. Yes, there are also numerous cafes with WiFi but if I wanted to pay $5 every day to log on, I'd just go ahead and get Verizon FiOS. And I need to spend less time online, not more.

I mention this to explain my lack of regular updates here on the blog. Well, that and not having a lot to report. Especially now that I've shared the smart phone news.

Yes, I could thumb-type little missives on my phone but I don't get a sense that anyone is holding his breath waiting for my next entry. If I did, I'd send that person an e-mail directly advising better use of his lung capacity.

I will brag about completing my annual mission to avoid junk food and to work out every day in January. This marks five years in a row I've accomplished this. Granted, some (OK more than some) of the workouts lasted less than ten minutes but at some point I pulled out the weights and did some work with them. Every day. All month.

With hit-or-miss freelance work now tilting more to the miss side, I added two more aspects to the New Year's challenge. I also played at least some guitar and piano each day of the month. Again, we're not talking hours of practice, here. Even I can stand to listen to myself play for only so long before nausea sets in.

This would explain why my high school friend Jamie doesn't e-mail me any more. Through alignments of planets and stars that would baffle Stephen Hawking, she may be the only person who has subjected herself to hearing me perform music in person twice. She is probably doing all she can to ensure that she has heard the last of me. Literally.

That doesn't count Mrs. Schneider, the teacher of the four piano lessons I had when I was 17. She was paid the princely sum of $4 per lesson and, by golly, she earned all of it. It also doesn't count my brother Jim, who listens to anything I post here but that's recorded and — through a generous amount of computer enhancement — sounds almost like music.

I did have a story I wrote about the Venice Gondoliers Barbershop Chorus air on WEDU last week. The station doesn't have video online that I can embed here but you can click here to watch the episode. My story comes about 14 minutes in.

Don't worry, that's not a request. I just put the link there to prove I wasn't making that up. You can watch the show's end credits if you don't believe me. Or you can just continue not believing me. That might be easier.

Last Friday, I did interviews for another WEDU story. Riverview High School in Sarasota (not to be confused with Riverview High School in Riverview) has a marine biology program. It even got a license from the state to operate a fish farm right in the classroom. Grants funded construction of the tanks, adapted from concrete burial crypts!

That reminds me. I should be transcribing the interviews instead of writing on a blog.

Recent Facebook Posts

2010-01-17T10:05:00.005-05:00

These are bon mots to which I have subjected those foolish enough to be my online friends. Why should you be spared?

John has reduced the mountain of laundry to a mole hill. Granted it's a luxury condo tower sized mole hill that could accommodate a heckuva lotta moles but it's a mole hill nonetheless.

Tracy, I'm sorry about the rumor-mongering. I didn't think anyone would take me seriously when I told them that all those Will and Grace re-runs had finally caused a violent gastrointestinal reaction.

John played golf today. He did not make any pars or birdies but he did hit a roof, a gutter and an air conditioner. Ugh.

Jim, I'm an ass. You know that. The difference back then was that I was an ass with more hair who thought he was funny.

John is tired of sympathizing with people up north. Wants to empathize instead. That's when they're cold and I feel sorry for them as I walk outside in shirtsleeves. This is not just Florida cold. It's actual cold cold.

USF Hires Holtz

2010-01-16T11:45:00.002-05:00

I interviewed Skip Holtz when he was at the University of Connecticut and I worked at WFSB-TV in Hartford in the mid-1990s.

UConn started 5-0 in 1995 and I went to the campus in Storrs to do a story. He had the same kind of wit his famous father, Lou, has but without the lisp. That weekend, Holtz' team lost. I went out the next week and interviewed him again. UConn lost again.

At practice the following week, I thought I was joking when I told the school's PR guy for sports (the official title is Sports Information Director) that maybe I had cursed the team. But there was no humor in his voice when he told me that if the team lost again, "don't come back."

Then again, that could have simply been his usual demeanor. The lack of warmth I felt in New England was not limited to the weather.

Speaking of chill...

One thing the University of South Florida gets in Skip Holtz that it never had in Jim Leavitt is someone who understands that being a head football coach at a major college program involves a lot more than coaching football.

Leavitt never grasped the public relations aspects of the job. He antagonized the local media — at least the TV stations — from the outset with a big-time attitude even as the team operated out of trailers and had yet to play a game.

USF invited local media to cover the first fall practice of the team's inaugural season in 1997. I worked at WFLA-TV at the time. Apparently no one in the sports information department informed Leavitt. After the stretching and warmup drills, Leavitt came over to the assembled cameras and asked if we had gotten everything — his way of dismissing us.

True enough, most major college practices are closed to the media. However at the time USF was not a major college program and we had been told that we would be able to shoot practice.

An unfortunate PR guy had to feel our wrath. "We might have to endure this in Tallahassee or Gainesville," I told him. "But not here. If this is how it's going to be, we won't come out."

And we didn't. We gave cursory coverage of games and showed up for the free lunch, I mean, weekly news conference, but we never gave the program the kind of attention we would have had we been welcomed.

And that's all on Leavitt. Even after USF had joined the Big East and made a run up the national rankings, his team was rarely fodder for local sports talk radio the way Florida, Florida State and Miami were.

Nobody cared. People did not develop the kind of passions about USF that they did about the other major programs. Part of that is a function of time and tradition. But much more of that is Jim Leavitt's alienation of people who could have helped him build interest in the program.

It may be fitting that USF football became a top talk-about story for the first time when the story was Leavitt's firing.

Now Leavitt is left with trying to extract a severance check from USF. He claims he did nothing to deserve his dismissal. The grabbing and slapping of walk-on running back Joel Miller never happened, he maintains, even in the face of the University's investigation which revealed otherwise and Miller's own admission that he originally denied the mistreatment to protect his coach.

I have heard suggestions that Leavitt needs to come clean about what happened. It's too late. Leavitt has cast his die. God-Kings do not bow to anyone. There is nothing to apologize for, he says through his lawyer.

It was this kind of coverup as much as the crime that cost Leavitt his job. Had he acknowledged his mistake soon after it happened, it might never have become public, let alone topple him from his throne.

Instead he stonewalled. The man who is reported to have proclaimed himself "the most powerful man in the building" failed to see that there were other buildings and that the most powerful man in the building that counted was not even a man. It was Judy Genshaft, USF's president.

Leavitt has already lost one job. His continued insistence of innocence will cost him a chance to redeem himself elsewhere. But I don't see him changing course now. And I can't see him getting another head coaching job at a major college program. Not now. Maybe not ever.

I Haven't Disappeared

2010-01-09T13:33:00.004-05:00

It just seems that way because I've had little to report.

A story for WEDU is in editing right now. It's about a men's choral group called the Venice Gondoliers. That's Venice as in Venice, Florida, south of Sarasota as opposed to the one in Italy.

One of the thrusts of the story is the benefit to the members' mental health. Many of the guys are in their 80s and are still all there upstairs.

It helps them in two ways. One is that having to memorize music and lyrics for dozens of songs works their brains out. Secondly, it gives them someplace to go, something to do and something to look forward to.

I hadn't planned that to be one of the angles I took. Its something they mentioned during interviews and I was lucky enough to notice it.

The other major effort right now is in trying to figure out how to market my new video biography service. I completed the demo story for about a friend of mine's parents. He was thrilled with the results. At least that's how I'm reading the following quote he wrote on a Christmas card he sent me:

"We can't begin to thank you enough for what you have given our family. Your work is remarkable!"

Here is one of the chapters from the story (used with permission):

So I have the equipment and I have the examples that prove that I know what to do with it. Now it's a matter of getting the word out. I'm going to have to spend money on advertising. The biggest challenge may be convincing people to have something produced that won’t have its greatest value until after its subjects have passed away.

A life story video is not made for its subject(s). It is for the people who come after them, some of whom they have not met and maybe never will. In fact, most people who contact us are interested in producing a personal documentary about their parents or grandparents.

Even then some people struggle to grasp the importance of preserving their loved ones’ life stories. That is understandable. In this instant gratification world it is hard to think about something that will mean the most to you 20, 30 or 50 years later.

Yet if people will spend thousands of dollars on a casket that gets buried with them and is never seen again, there is a compelling argument for making a similar investment in something that people will treasure because it can bring their loved one’s faces, voices and stories back to them whenever they want to see them — forever.

A life story video also serves as a key part of a family history. With a video biography, stories of one generation are passed down to descendants in its own words.

Daily lives are hectic and it can be hard to see past the end of the week let alone look years into the future. For those who have the forward thinking to do so, they’ll see that one of the greatest gifts you can leave future generations of your family is the story of your life, told with your voice.

Of course, my professional interviewing, script writing and editing will make it easy for them. My business' site Personal-Documentary.com has new examples of my work if you're curious to check it out.

It also has a Facebook fan page, which I hope will help spread the good word. If you have a Facebook page and are so inclined, please become a fan.

One Man Band

2009-12-25T18:02:00.005-05:00

It's a term used in music to describe someone who plays multiple instruments and used in television to describe someone who does a production by himself.

In this case, it's both — though I got help from some recorded drum loops and overdubbed bass for this one.

Note that this was shot on a consumer camera in about 30 minutes and does not reflect the quality of my professional work.

Dusted Off The Camera

2009-12-20T10:39:00.002-05:00

And went to take some photographs. Tampa Bay Downs, the local horse racing track, has opened for the season. I'm not a betting man but I occasionally gamble a gallon or two of gas on whether I can capture the action at the track.

Then on the way home I stopped and squeezed off a few shots in downtown Tampa.

Noodling

2009-12-10T09:18:00.002-05:00

And a little fun on Sony Acid (the music software not the LSD). The sound quality from my digital piano could be better. So could the sound quality from my playing.

A Walk Among the Tombstones

2009-12-07T21:59:00.003-05:00

A cliche to be sure but what is a cliche but a well-said phrase that we are too lazy to restate? The tombstones in question here are sometimes cracked, broken and even scattered. Tampa's first mayor is among the city's luminaries buried in Oaklawn cemetery.

You can see a slide show of more images on my photo blog, to which I send you not to drive up its traffic but because its format lets me display larger images.

Outsourced Sports

2009-12-07T16:48:00.005-05:00

WPTV-TV in West Palm Beach has canned its sports staff and handed its sports coverage to a local radio station, according to the Palm Beach Post.

Axing sports departments was once the province of bottom-feeding stations throwing in the towel on a segment of the audience it was never going to reach. But West Palm's NBC affiliate is a long-time powerhouse in that market, just like WFLA in Tampa was when it decided it could get by with just one on-air sports anchor. Instead of outsourcing to a radio station, WFLA shares sports reporters with the Tampa Tribune — which, like WFLA, is owned by Media General.

WFLA does still have a sports photographer. The Post article does not explain how a radio station is going to put together video highlights and stories or how a guy whose afternoon drive radio show begins at 4 o'clock will do TV segments at 5 and 6.

Not that it matters. One reader comment to the WPTV story sums up a growing attitude toward sports among many stations: "nothing personal... but ch 5’s sports was a minute or two of headlines... my 8 yr old could do it and for $100 a week... welcome to the new economy."

The TV station probably figured that no one was watching that "minute or two of headlines" so why not put someone on who will promote his appearance on the radio all afternoon. Click here to see a clip of the radio host Even Cohen who will now tackle TV duties.

We Got That B-Roll!

2009-12-04T11:08:00.002-05:00

This will make more sense — and be funnier — if you have worked in television. But maybe not so give it a try for ten seconds. If you hate it, I'll refund your purchase price.

Murdoch: Media Must Get Online Readers to Pay

2009-12-01T19:26:00.004-05:00

More than a decade after the term was coined, tradition media have not learned how to avoid becoming roadkill on the "Information Superhighway." The question facing journalism in a free market is how to make enough money from it to pay the people who produce it.

"Technology makes it cheap and easy to distribute news for anyone with Internet access," says media mogul Rupert Murdoch. "But producing journalism is expensive."

The obvious solution, he says, is to force readers of online news sites to pay for the privilege. That works for entities such as the Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch now owns, but the WSJ generates content for which readers will pay a premium. The stories you read there aren't available anywhere else.

How many other media outlets can say that? Even the WSJ, which once charged for access to all of its content, now gives a lot of it away for free. People can find most stories in too many places for any of them to be able to charge money for them.

Ads don't seem to be enough. People who are willing to let commercials interrupt their TV viewing get offended when ads pop up in front of what they're reading online. But just because ad revenue from websites don't make up for what newspapers and TV stations have lost from tradition ads doesn't mean that an ad-supported model won't work for a strictly web-based outlet.

Eventually, some enterprising reporters — in more than one sense of the word — will come together to form cooperatives that will take advantage of the cheap distribution channels now available without any of the baggage (printing presses, delivery trucks, broadcast TV towers and too many middle managers) that are sinking traditional media.

Ba-da Bing but no Boom

2009-11-27T15:34:00.003-05:00

Bing made a big splash but left little ripple effect. Microsoft's attempt to edge into Google's hegemony of the search engine market has not made much of a dent, at least not among visitors to my sites.

I wrote back in June about the challenge ahead for Microsoft. To say that Bill Gates & Co. still have an uphill climb understates the Everest that lies ahead.

So far in November, 85% of visitors to this blog who arrived using a search engine got here through Google. Six percent used Yahoo; four percent bing. For JohnMcQuiston.com, it's 90% for google vs. 8% for bing, with Yahoo mopping up the remaining 2%.

Google is only slightly less dominant among searchers who land at Personal-Documentary.com. Seventy-nine percent use Google, six percent Yahoo and 2 percent bing, tying it with Google Puerto Rico.

TV News is Dead

2009-11-26T13:04:00.006-05:00

So says a guy trying to sell it a resuscitator. "Burn down the buildings," says Michael Rosenblum on the Mark Joyella's LocalNewser blog. Rosenblum is a consultant who claims that his VJ newsroom model, in which traditional two-person reporter/cameraman crews become one-person do-it-all video journalists, will cut costs and increase content.

I have nothing to fear if the buildings burn down. Though I've spent most of my career on camera, I own cameras and am happy to do freelance jobs as a one-man-band, especially since it means I don't have to share my fee!

However, I'm struggling to understand Mr. Rosenblum's math when he claims that local stations have two-hundred newsroom employees yet put only eight cameras on the street. First, where are these local newsrooms with 200 people? Second, where are these newsrooms that have only eight cameras?

But if you market yourself as a media messiah, you need the faithful to feel the doom. Before you sell the cure, you have to sell the disease.

Not that TV news doesn't have its ills. But it's interesting that the lynch pin of Michael's solution is to get rid of the photographers — half of the people who are generating video content — when it's not too many people on the street we have but too many special projects producers, executive producers and anchors who only anchor that bloat newsroom staffs.

Michael would be cheered to learn that stations have gotten rid of sound men.

Unfortunately for Michael — and for the increasing number of TV stations that have decided that two-person crews are a luxury — operating a video camera is not equivalent to using a pencil. That is evident in the video on this page, in which Michael is nearly in silhouette thanks to a distractingly bright computer monitor in the frame and no light on the subject.

If no camera light was available, it would have taken approximately ten seconds to find a darker web page to display on the monitor and another ten to put the camera's iris on manual and open it up to brighten the subject's face so it wouldn't look like we were trying to hide his identity.

This matters because video quality affects how viewers judge the product's credibility. If you don't have 20 seconds to get the camera shot right, how can I think that you took the time to get the facts right? If your video looks amateurish, the reporting will too.

Competent camera work doesn't require a PhD but it does take more than two days of training and a week of practice to master. In a business based on video, I'd look for other fat to trim before I started cutting the source of my best pictures.

Forget Hiring "Proofreader's" -- Just Read Some Guy's Blog

2009-11-01T17:47:00.008-05:00

Update on CNN's "Obama's (sic) celebrate first Halloween at the White House" story: CNN has corrected the error in the headline. Perhaps not coincidentally, my web counter shows a visitor from the CNN Political Ticker blog admin account this afternoon.

Click image for larger version.

I'm happy to help. But disappointed that they needed it.

Maybe They Need to Hire More "Proofreader's"

2009-11-01T07:45:00.008-05:00

It looks like misplace'd apostrophe's have become a national epidemic.

Click on image for larger version.

CNN story:

Obama's (sic) celebrate first Halloween at the White House

Apparently even headline writers at CNN don't realize that plural words don't use apostrophes before the S. Or as they might have written, "plural's don't use apostrophe's before the S."

Update: CNN has corrected the error. Perhaps not coincidentally, my web stats counter shows a visitor from the CNN Political Ticker blog admin account this afternoon.

Radio Host Sileo Suspended -- For Being Wrong or for Biting Feeding Hand?

2009-10-30T15:34:00.010-04:00

A Tampa radio station suspended its morning host for reporting a story about the owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. WDAE-AM host Dan Sileo claimed that the Glazer family, which owns the Bucs, had lost $475-million in Bernard Madoff's ponzi scheme and might be forced to sell the team because of it.

Listen to it here: WDAE-620 AM audio clip, posted by the St. Petersburg Times on its website when it reported Sileo's suspension.

The team issued a statement flatly denying all of Sileo's claims, including that the team was for sale and that the Glazers had invested with Madoff. "The report is baseless, irresponsible and slanderous," the statement said. "This type of behavior by Mr. Sileo and his company Clear Channel will be dealt with in the appropriate manner."

Sure enough, later yesterday, the station issued a retraction of Sileo's story still prominently displayed on the homepage of its website today.

Click Image for Larger Version

And what say would the team have over what a radio station reports? WDAE is the flagship station for the Buccaneer Radio Network, a designation that WDAE's owner, Clearchannel, wrested away from WQYK back when the Bucs used to win games and their radio contract was a coveted property.

Was Sileo suspended because of his story's subject or because he apparently got its facts wrong? Believe it or not, screwing up a story is not illegal, provided that you report it in good faith believing it to be true. Dan Sileo is not a reporter, he's a talk radio host -- and not a very good one of those for my money -- but he enjoys the same protections a reporter does.

But I wonder: Could the Glazers have dictated how "Mr. Sileo will be dealt with" if WDAE were not the team's radio broadcast partner. Would Clearchannel have issued such a public retraction and suspended Sileo so quickly?

Titillation for Ratings?

2009-10-29T23:03:00.003-04:00

Ah, ratings sweeps periods. Those times when stations pull out all the stops to lure viewers. Or in this case, take off all the tops. WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C., offers this special report demonstrating with graphic detail how a woman does a breast self exam, nipples and all.

Remember, you are not to watch the video embedded below for any reasons of prurient interest. You are to watch only out of your concern for saving lives from a horrible disease. Or to judge the journalistic merits of such a story.

Unlike me.

Here is the link to the text version of the story, which I am certain you will want to read to get more details.

The video is informative, without a doubt, probably even to people who have breasts. I am equally sure that public education was not the primary reason for doing that story.

Do noble ends justify less altruistic motives?

She Shall Return

2009-10-25T09:48:00.009-04:00

A couple people have found this blog by Googling Meredyth Censullo. She is the vacation averse traffic reporter on WFTS-TV for whom I very occasionally fill in.

One of those occasions was this month when she went on her honeymoon. She's back, still happily married ('cause a week on a boat with someone can change one's view), and returns to work full-time Monday morning.

She actually returned last week but had training at the station Thursday and Friday. The station is training all of its newsroom employees to work solo as Multi-Media Journalists.

Using small JVC cameras that cost about $3,500 and record on SDHC memory cards, the station will have someone report, shoot and write a story, edit it on a Mac laptop with Final Cut Pro video editing software and upload the video back to the station — all by him or herself.

This is something that more stations, even in larger cities now, are trying as a way to cut costs without losing content. WUSA-TV in Washington, DC switched completely to one person news crews last year. WUSA's owner, Gannett, also owns WTSP here in Tampa Bay. That station has a few MMJs but still uses mostly two-person crews.

It's not new to me. All the stories I've posted here that I did for zootoo.com, I shot, wrote, narrated and edited myself with my own equipment. I also shot and edited all the pieces I reported between 2005 and 2009 for the Dodge Sports Report, a high school sports show that aired on the state-wide Sun Sports network here in Florida.

Before that I produced several short documentary films after I bought my first digital video camera in 2003. Let's not forget the one-man-banding, as we used to call it, I did in my first small market job from 1988-1991.

I was MMJ before MMJ was cool.

But, anyway, if you wondered what happened to Meredyth, nothing did. I mean nothing other than getting married, which I grant is a fair distance from nothing but I think you get what I meant. She shall return to her regularly scheduled program and I shall return to a normal sleep schedule.

Medically Necessary?

2009-10-24T08:57:00.005-04:00

I'm having a colonoscopy Monday. When I called my insurance company to find out what the co-pay would be, the customer service rep asked if the procedure was medically necessary.

"No, ma'am. This is for fun. I'm having a recreational colonoscopy."

OK, I didn't actually say that. And if you think about it, insurance companies give it to you up the rectum as a routine practice so the question is not as ridiculous as it sounds.

Yes, I know: You're still thinking, as any normal person would, "Medically necessary? Are you kidding? Why else would anyone undergo that procedure — especially the two days of starvation mixed with the intentional overdose of laxatives necessary beforehand?"**

Because insurance company customer service reps are not normal people — they have sticks where their colons would be — I had to explain that the procedure was ordered by my doctor to help him pay his children's tuition at Duke University.

**Now you know how my weekend is shaping up. Want to join me? I have a refrigerator full of fruit juices, Gatorade and root beer. We'll make it a party! Just stay out of my stash of magnesium citrate.

I'm Lazy

2009-10-13T07:40:00.004-04:00

No, I didn't forget to blog. I didn't forget that I even had a blog. I, as the title more than suggests, have simply been too lazy to write.

Good morning from the studios of WFTS-TV, Ch. 28, in Tampa, where as far as I know typing this does not violate the station's computer policy. The station has a Facebook page and numerous Twitter pages, including @tampabaytraffic, which I am charged with updating when I'm here, so I know the station uses social media. I don't know if something as old school as what blogs have become still counts.

I am in the midst of a nine day stretch filling in for the station's morning traffic reporter, Meredyth Censullo, who is honeymooning in the Mediterranean.

(Pause to congratulate myself for correctly spelling Mediteranean.)

My performance has not been flawless but I have not committed any gaffes worthy of YouTube infamy. This, despite rustiness from little on air work since leaving WTSP in April and the crushing fatigue that waking at 3:20 a.m. causes.

That's when I get to sleep even that late. I awoke at 2:22 a.m. today to the sounds of the cat hacking up a fur ball. That's the second time in a week Annie has made sure that even the paltry four to five hours of sleep I get will not come uninterrupted.

(Pause to congratulate myself for correctly spelling uninterrupted.)

(Pause again to consider that I better double check that because I see that Internet Explorer doesn't spell check like Firefox does.)

(Pause one more time to breathe a sigh of relief that I had not congratulated myself incorrectly, thus rendering myself even more of a doofus that I do already for congratulating myself for spelling.)

I'm not going to worry about whether I have spelled doofus correctly.

Where was I? Right. Talking about cat barf. You probably welcomed the digression. I'm glad that it's only hairballs she's coughing up. The little pretty kitty seemed bonier than I remembered when I returned from my recent trip but she has been eating well and keeping the food down. I'll have to work more hairball control food into her diet.

I have made slow progress on the family documentary story I've been editing. Fifteen of 16 chapters are complete. A couple of them are up on personal-documentary.com, including Chapter One, which is on the home page. The other is the first video you see on the "Watch Our Work" page.

Once I finish the last chapter I have to edit the prologue, which is video I shot of the subjects working their vending tables at Clearwater Pier. I shot that video more than a year ago so despite having a list of the shots, I'm going to have to go back and look through the footage again to see what I have.

The story is coming together well but I need to get some more photographs to better illustrate the story and it might need music in some places.

First, I finish work here and go home for a nap.

Air & Space Museum

2009-09-29T22:20:00.004-04:00

My brother Jim and I went to the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum at Dulles Airport. Our visit included a 30-minute guided tour that lasted two hours and 20 minutes.

Our guide was very thorough.

He explained that 10% of the Smithsonian's pieces are displayed at its museum in DC, another 10% are on loan to other museums and until the facility at Dulles came along, the rest were stored in a Maryland warehouse.

Now they're not. Here are a few shots, including some of the Enola Gay, one of the Concorde and one of a bald guy somehow related to me who turns 42 next week.

On the drive to and from the museum from my brother's place, we drove on Rt. 50 past one of our childhood neighborhoods in Chantilly, Va.

Pictures from the Road

2009-09-29T08:41:00.006-04:00

As my brain slowly regains normal function after an arduous two weeks working on the road, I'll try to extract interesting tidbits from the trip to share.

One of the aims of the Legal Rebels Tour was to incorporate many different kinds of media in the daily updates. Besides the video I shot, the ABA Journal folks wrote text posts, uploaded volumes of photos to their Flickr account and made photo slideshows using a free online service called Animoto.

Simply choose which photos you want in what order, pick your song and Animoto does the rest. Here's an example from the last day of the tour. I took only one of the photos. I did, however, provide the music.

A lot of the services the ABA Journal incorporated into the trip cost little or no money, including the Animoto and YouTube. Their Flickr account costs about $25 a year.

They also incorporated a Google service called Latitude, which uses GPS information from your cell phone to plot your exact location on a map. You can embed the map on your page, as seen on the main Legal Rebels Tour page.

Google Latitude could also come in handy for tracking wandering politicians like Gov. Mark Sanford.

Twitter Gag

2009-09-27T16:59:00.003-04:00

Media outlets often decry the lack of transparency in the organizations they cover. This is ironic since they seem not to grasp the concept.

An editor at the Washington Post expressed personal opinions on his Twitter feed and the paper responded by closing the curtain on staffers' personal expressions on social media.

This post on PaidContent.org includes the complete text of the new policy, which the Post did not reveal itself.

In the Post's view, the problem is that Raju Narisetti, one of its two managing editors, tweeted, “We can incur all sorts of federal deficits for wars and what not but we have to promise not to increase it by $1 for healthcare reform? Sad.”

And: “Sen Byrd (91) in hospital after he falls from ‘standing up too quickly.” How about term limits. Or retirement age. Or commonsense to prevail.”

That's not the problem. The problem is that the Post apparently believes that keeping its employees' biases secret from the public is how to maintain a pretense of objectivity in its reporting.

All journalists worth the the title try to keep their opinions out of their stories. But one's worldview can't help but shape their vision of stories.

Revealing reporters' and editors' personal views better informs readers about stories. Few even reasonably observant people still believe that any but the most basic who/what/where stories are free of bias.

It's not a conspiracy to spin stories a certain way. It's that pure objectivity is impossible because, like beauty, objectivity is in the eye of the beholder.

The problem, and this may be the fear of many news outlets, would be if openness about personal opinion revealed that an overwhelming percentage of the staff shared the same biases. But that, too, is something readers should know.

Lift the veil. Open the curtain. Let in the light. Transparency is good.

Greetings From a Tired Traveler

2009-09-23T16:38:00.006-04:00

Greetings from the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., as my freelance job with the American Bar Association's ABA Journal continues. It's Tuesday, which I know because I checked. Otherwise the days have been tough to track.

Some of the days have been long. Yesterday was one. We had a shoot in Manhattan yesterday afternoon, got in the SUV and drove here to D.C. The editing, rendering and uploading took until nearly 3 a.m. because we decided to post a 30-minute conversation in its near entirety.

That takes time. But it was worth it. It featured Steve Brill, who if you're interested in media at all, is always worth the listen. So here you go.

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

The interviewer was David Lat, creator of the legal tabloid blog AboveTheLaw.com. Roughly 600,000 people generate 8-10 million page views a month to that site, which is at least half a dozen more than this blog gets.

Lat was an interesting guy, which we don't get a great sense of since he was content to let Brill do almost all the talking and Brill was more than content to do all the talking. The Legal Rebels Tour website focuses on Lat and his role in new journalism, legal-related or not.

The editor and publisher of the ABA Journal, Ed Adams, gave me a mention on that same website.

The salient point:

Maybe the smartest decision we made before hitting the road was to hire John McQuiston, a freelance videographer with extensive experience both in front and behind the camera at local TV news operations, as our video guru. He’s made rank amateurs look semi-pro.

Unfortunately, the effort to earn such plaudits has made it difficult for me to put my own thoughts together for you to read here. So my apologies for the scattered thoughts and lack of story. Right now the 140 character limit that Twitter allows is the extent of my coherence.

Going to Letterman

2009-09-21T12:33:00.001-04:00

Going down Broadway yesterday as I walk from Central Park to the Museum of Modern Art, I stop to take a picture of the Ed Sullivan Theater, where David Letterman tapes his show. The front door was open. I go in and see that they're signing people up for the ticket lottery to see a taping of the show. It's free so I sign up for tonight's show.

We're starting work early Monday so if it goes as planned, I'll be finished in time to go. I take the clipboard the assistant gives me and put my name and contact info and the date and time of the show I can attend. Dave tapes two shows on Monday and takes Friday off.

After I hand the assistant (probably an intern) the clipboard back, she asks me some questions. How often do I watch the show? Not often, I'm dumb enough to confess. What parts of the show do you like -- any of the bits? Mostly I like the monologue and Dave's interaction with the guests.

If I'm not disqualified yet, I'm sure I will be when she asks if my phone has voice mail. I don't know. I'm using a borrowed BlackBerry Sprint gave us because it is one of the sponsors of the project I'm on. I assure her that if someone calls, I will answer because the phone is always on me, and I point to it hanging on my belt.

She writes "not sure if he has voicemail" on my form and I figure that will doom my chances. She thanks me and says someone will call if I get a ticket. Like it matters. It's a TV show I rarely even watch. I like Dave but if I don't get in, it won't break my heart.

I go on to MoMA and forget about it. I'm in the museum, wondering how long I have to stay to justify the $20 admission ticket, when the phone rings. It's CBS, which I know because the same number shows up on caller ID when CBS News calls me, however infrequently, to do freelance work.

Believe it or not, that's who I thought it was. Never mind that I've had this phone for a week and it's going back in another week, I thought something had happened in Tampa and the CBS Early Show wanted me to go to the scene.

It is not, as I'm sure you realize more quickly than I did. It's the Letterman show. They're calling to tell me that I've won a ticket and to give me instructions on where and when to show up.

It happens that we start work early today so I'm going to finish in time to go.

Absent

2009-09-21T06:30:00.001-04:00

So much for my grand plans to document my northeast adventure in photos, videos and, of course, volumes of verbiage here on the blog. I have been shooting video and photos -- though I did not bring my SLR with me for lack of luggage space and I will not make that mistake again if I have to carry the camera in a body cavity -- but time to put all the material together and detail it has been elusive.

I have worked long hours on most days, though it has gotten better here in New York, in part because our subjects have been only a short cab ride away so we're not spending significant parts of the day commuting.

I'll write more here when time and thought permit. Meantime, I am posting regularly on Twitter @ JohnMcQuiston and on my Facebook page @ facebook.com/John.McQuiston.

Legal Rebels Tour - First Video

2009-09-14T18:54:00.004-04:00

I'm told that today was, in fact, the first day of the Legal Rebels Tour. Yesterday involved no touring, I guess, and no interviews with any of the people the ABA Journal has identified as Legal Rebels.

So it didn't count. And yet there's a video to show for it. This is from Sunday, the day we landed to begin, but did not launch, the Legal Rebels Tour.

If you were looking for me, sorry to disappoint. I'm working behind the scenes on this one. You did hear me narrate the opening but this is the ABA's show and the folks you saw in that video are the ones you're going to see if you follow the Tour online at LegalRebels.com/tour.

If you are supernaturally bored, at times we are riding in our rented Lincoln Navigator, you can watch a live webcam stream of our travels. That's right — you can watch people ride in a car! Live on your computer!

At least you will know where I am.

The other three people are Ed Adams, Editor and Publisher of the ABA Journal, Molly McDonough, the Managing Editor of the ABAJournal.com and Rachel Zahorsky, a reporter for both the print and online versions of the ABA Journal.

And because I have to go edit now, I don't have time to ensure that I spelled their names properly.

Legal Rebels Tour - Day One

2009-09-14T06:46:00.002-04:00

It's actually day two now but yesterday began with a 4:30 am alarm setting, a 7:10 am flight to Boston and ended when I finished editing the first day's tour diary at 8:20 pm. I planned to shoot and post my own video diary but I hope you'll forgive my laziness this one time. As opposed to all the times you haven't forgiven it.

We begin today in Lexington, Mass. Forget Lexington and Concord and all that American Revolution stuff. The youngest of my three travel companions from the ABA summed up 21st Century perspective when we passed the sign announcing our entrance into town. "So this is where Matt Damon's from."

(The young lady who uttered that is very bright -- went to graduate school AND law school.)

Lexington is full of history but not so full of restaurants, and we wondered if people here still grew their own food as we drove our rented Lincoln Navigator in a fruitless (and vegetable-less) search for food until we finally passed a small cluster of downtown shops that included eateries. I'm sure that Molly was not distracted by hunger -- or fatigue -- when she nearly crushed another car while swerving the Navigator across traffic into a parking space.

Sprint is one our sponsors and it has loaned me the very cool Blackberry on which I laboriously type this while I pass time I should be using to sleep but, for reasons unknown, cannot.

Takeoff

2009-09-13T06:01:00.002-04:00

5:50 a.m. I'm at gate E69 at Tampa International Airport. It's me and a guy in a Red Sox cap currently waiting to board the 7:10 Delta flight to Boston. I don't think I'll be lucky enough for the plane to be that empty when it takes off.

Boston is the first leg of something I've mentioned called the Legal Rebels Tour. This means, of course, that I will miss most of the NFL's opening weekend. But sacrifices for the sake of work must be made.

Security was less of a hassle than I thought. Not that I'm particularly suspect but I have a lot of electronic gear in my carry-ons and I expected a thorough inspection.

So I enjoy the free Wi-Fi here until boarding.

A Week From Today

2009-09-06T15:18:00.018-04:00

I embark on the Legal Rebels Tour next Sunday. There will be four of us on the two-week-long excursion that begins in Boston (after a 7:10 a.m. flight from Tampa for me!), winds south to New Haven, New York City and, finally, Washington D.C.

The other three are from the American Bar Association's ABA Journal. (That's "bar" as in lawyers rather than taverns.*) The tour has its own website LegalRebels.com, which explains much better than I could exactly what a Legal Rebel is and the purpose of the tour. It also has that cool rendering of my photo. You can't even tell that I took it myself in my living room.**

I'm not sure what three-card monte is but, according to the crew bios page, I'm gambling my meal money on the game so I'll be spending any spare time I have on the tour learning how to play.

Editors. God love 'em! The rest of my bio was the one I provided. They were kind enough to leave in the mention of personal-documentary.com so maybe a curious onlooker will stumble onto my site from there.

*Sorry, Jim.

**Photo enhancement by BeFunky.com.

Dear St. Petersburg Times

2009-09-06T12:21:00.010-04:00

I applaud you for offering video coverage of high school football largely abandoned by the local television stations, but your efforts demonstrate why you can't just hand a microphone to anyone and expect professional results.

To get to the first game story in the example below, a viewer must suffer through two bits of on-camera awkwardness, the first of which even a cameo by the classy Tony Dungy can't rescue.

I hope other viewers got through more of that than I did. I know times are tough and you don't have the budget to hire professionals to tell video stories. So I offer some consulting tips to your reporters free of charge.

Microphones may seem too sophisticated for a novice to operate but they are not. Simply point them toward the person speaking. I did not realize that this took practice to master but you have not yet perfected this skill.
If you are not funny, do not try to be funny. Oh, people will laugh. But for the wrong reasons.
If you are not funny, do not ask celebrities willing to do cameos to play along with your bits. Viewers will feel embarrassed for the guest and antipathy toward you.
If you are not funny, do not ask the athletes you are covering to play along with your bits. Viewers will feel embarrassed for the athletes and antipathy toward you.*
If you are not funny — and even if you are, which is not an immediate danger here — keep the bits short. They won't be any less painful to watch but at least the discomfort will end sooner.
Don't mumble your narration over the highlights. I understand that the whole video thing was probably not your idea and you're only doing it because your editor told you that there are a hundred hungry journalists waiting in line for your job if you don't want it and that the effort you put into writing and recording the narration is whatever you have left after writing the version of the game story that will appear in the paper. But it doesn't have to sound like that.

*Also, there are no circumstances under which you should do a bit in which your legs are spread and your crotch is pointed at the camera.
I'm sure more thoughts would have occurred to me had I been able to watch more but to share them I'd have to charge a consulting fee. You don't want to pay consultants.

That would make you just like TV stations, who have to pay people to tell their reporters how to do their jobs because they are too cheap to hire professionals who already know.

If you get nothing else out of this, please, please remember the crotch at the camera thing.

Anchors to Skank-ers

2009-08-30T10:04:00.007-04:00

I can't take credit for the headline. It came from The Latest Word blog in Denver. See, the two apparently aspiring Playboy Playmates are actually television news anchors posing on the September cover of Denver Magazine.

Did their bosses at KDVR-TV recoil in horror when they saw it? Fire them for violating their contracts' morals clause? Accuse them of bringing "the station into public disrepute, contempt and ridicule"?

No. They put more images from the photo shoot on the station's website.

Any publicity is good publicity, right? At least no one will accuse them of knowing what the Enola Gay is.

Granted KDVR appears to target the Jerry Springer audience and you do have to shout your to be heard over the chorus of crying children in the double-wide. The station's sassy attitude shows up in the poll question on KDVR.com asking what suspended Broncos wide receiver Brandon Marshall should wear to the season's opening game.

The answer choices are:

We're not talking about people who claim to be carrying on Walter Cronkite's legacy here. So it's not a terrible surprise that the collective response, as summarized by Denver Post television critic Joanne Ostrow, is, "so what?"

True enough, as more people share more of themselves on line — through blogs, Facebook and Twitter — and as TV stations use those same tools to try to reach their audiences, stations are going to have to allow employees more freedom to express themselves outside of station controlled outlets.

That's quite a change since 2003 when I had to insist on language inserted into my contract with WCPO-TV that allowed me to have my JohnMcQuiston.com website. The standard contract specifically prohibited employees from having any web presence without the general manager's approval.

I don't know how a station could do that now.

Who knows? If audiences don't mind, stations will grow more tolerant of people's extra-journalism pursuits — especially since they don't seem all that encouraging of their journalism pursuits. Maybe one local TV weather guesser won't need to hide a co-starring role in the movie "Assault of the Killer Bimbos."

Don't Forget Your Tripod

2009-08-29T19:41:00.004-04:00

And that's your photo tip of the day. I failed to bring my three-legged helper on a shoot this morning at Tampa's Lettuce Lake Park. I went with other members of the Riverview Digital Photography Meetup Group.

The long path leads to...

Spiders!

I put a slide show of more images on my photo blog.

Yes, He's Obviously the Problem

2009-08-25T08:07:00.006-04:00

KTVE-TV in West Monroe, Louisiana fired a news anchor for a Facebook post. Photo from that party when he should not have tried the mushrooms? Something racist? Sexist? Something embarrassing to his station?

Sort of.

According to the Dead Pelican (how's that for a source!), Griffin Scott wrote August 14 that he "knew what the Enola Gay was and that makes me the only person under 40 who knew that in our newsroom. Not sure whether to be proud or not."

Five days later KTVE fired Scott, making it unanimous that no one in that newsroom under 40 knows what the Enola Gay was. His termination letter explained that his comment, "brought the station into public disrepute, contempt and ridicule and that it is otherwise jeopardizing the success of the station and the company."

Of course. Because the disrepute, contempt and ridicule heaped on the station could not possibly come from having a newsroom full of people who don't know what the Enola Gay was* but, if forced to guess, would say it had something to do with same-sex marriage.

No, the problem is obviously the guy who pointed it out. What have I said about TV stations being like the emperor in The Emperor's New Clothes? For them, it is perfectly OK for the emperor to stand there naked as long as everyone nods in unison about how fine his clothes look.

It's that kid, who points and says, "the emperor's naked!" who ruins everything.

So instead of doing anything to address the issue that really does cause people to view TV newscasts as an unintentional comedy of errors, the station fires the guy who didn't know he was blowing the big secret.

Talk about shooting the messenger. Whistleblower laws should cover this guy.

*If you don't know what the Enola Gay was**, Google is your friend.

**A nitpicker pointed out that the plane still exists. However since the act which made it famous and its active use ended more than 60 years ago, the verb tense in its context is correct.

You Shouldn't Wear This Haircut, Either

2009-08-25T08:04:00.000-04:00

Video explaining what not to wear to the gym.

Catching Up & the $80K Personal Documentary

2009-08-21T11:27:00.005-04:00

Stuff has been happening. I've been too lazy to document it here.

Let's see... I'm vice president of my homeowner's association. After the election, the new board members were asked to stand up and we received a round of applause. I said, "We should enjoy it now. That will be the last time anyone applauds the board."

Sure enough, it's been a lot of work. I volunteered to create and write a community blog, which is where my online writing has been directed recently. If you want to read about parking issues and Chinese drywall (which, fortunately, my unit does not have) visit the St. Charles Place blog.

I've got a freelance job coming up next month with the American Bar Association. Its magazine, the ABA Journal, wants to integrate video into its website more. Some of the details are still secret but I'll be doing some traveling and producing video pieces from the road for a project called the Legal Rebels Tour.

That, in turn, has made me fear that my laptop with which I'll need to edit the video pieces will explode at some point during the trip so I've been shopping for a new one. I thought about buying a small emergency backup camera too but I might trust my Canon GL2 to continue its reliable service.

I've made significant headway (more than 21 minutes) editing the family documentary I've been working on. There are a couple of clips up on personal-documentary.com if you're curious to see them.

They interweave historical archive footage that puts the subjects' lives in context of their time. I need to do a better job about asking people about events that were current at various points in their lives.

Speaking of personal documentaries, I came across an article in the street.com about a Chicago TV news anchor who has started a similar business. Only he charges $80,000 and up per project!

I'm glad to publicity for the personal documentary. The more people hear about it, the more interest it generates for all businesses who create them. But I'd hate for people to think that if they're not spending $80,000 they're not getting a quality production.

I can produce them for less than a quarter of that. Like company featured in the article, I shoot and edit them with broadcast quality high definition equipment. I even have a background as a television news reporter, though not in as high profile a job as Robert Jordan, who anchors news for WGN-TV, and I would match the quality of my personal documentaries with any I've seen anywhere -- and, believe me, I have looked.

If you find evidence to the contrary, please point it out to me. I'd like to see what I can do better.

And, lastly, I've even played some guitar lately.

Pennsylvania & New Jersey Gardens

2009-08-08T10:17:00.010-04:00

Here are more images from my recent trip to Pennsylvania. They include some of the gardens I shot, their designer, her cat and a table in her house. This is a downsized version of the slide show and the compression has slightly distorted some of the images. See it normal size on my photo blog.

OK, I'm Back

2009-08-07T15:15:00.009-04:00

Not that you were waiting.

I just returned from a trip to Pennsylvania that was part business, part pleasure. While there I designed and built a website for a friend's landscape architecture business. I took all the photographs for the site except for three "before" pictures.

Click Image to View Larger Size

That's the gallery page. I was really pleased how the whole site turned out. My friend wanted something simple and elegant. We agree that she got it. I'm not an expert website builder but I know enough HTML, CSS and Flash to get by. It helped to have some stunning scenery to photograph.

I also attended a reunion gathering for members of my high school's swim team. Everybody and their brothers were there. At least everybody who graduated in my class who was on the team. Even my brother. One of them, anyway.

Some of them I hadn't seen in nearly 20 years. It was good to see them again. Even better since no one tried to fit into a Speedo.

Camera Found

2009-07-27T18:46:00.004-04:00

I played golf with my father today. When I met him at my parents' house, I saw a small case on a bureau by the front door. Inside was a little Canon SD500 point-and-shoot camera I thought I had lost. I had actually left it inside my dad's SUV probably on some previous golf outing.

It must have sat in there for two or three months. Its battery still held a charge and its memory card still held empty space. So at the risk of leaving it in his SUV again, I brought it with me when we played at Lake Jovita in San Antonio.

That's Dad in the video with his golfing buddy Steve making a couple of cameos.

Yeah, the video's not great and the audio has a background hum. The LCD screen is fried so I have to use the tiny eyepiece to frame shots. The camera zoom function doesn't work any more, either, at least not shooting video. And the camera is difficult to hold still. But since I had given up the camera for lost, it's like I got a new one. And I like being able to shoot video with something that's about the size of a cigarette pack.

Now Here's Some Journalism

2009-07-25T20:41:00.003-04:00

If you think television news is a vast refuge for the vacuous, homeland of fluff peddlers and capable of nothing greater than relating the superficial and superfluous, take this from the Fox affiliate in Los Angeles, California, USA:

Now that's journalism!

Another Ybor City Shooting

2009-07-18T22:41:00.002-04:00

Yes, I know. I should find a new venue. I had signed up for an event called the Worldwide Photowalk. Scott Kelby, a photographer who writes digital photography and Photoshop books, hatched the idea as a book promotion. It now includes 24,000 camera toters in events around the world.

(My Firefox spellcheck is telling me that "toters" is not a word. It also believes that "spellcheck" is not a word. Hmph! Don't make me go back to Internet Explorer!)

Anyway. After last week's walk with the Riverview Digital Photography Meetup Group (glad I don't have to put that on a business card!), I didn't want to shoot in the middle of a Florida July afternoon at a place I've already shot numerous times.

But I had signed up. And, if nothing else, I show up when I say I'm going to show up. Give or take ten minutes. I knew there would be more people about at 4 p.m. than at 8 a.m. but I need to take more initiative about asking people if I can photograph them. I missed some good people shots.

Yet my fixation with railroad tracks continues. Here are a few of the vertically oriented shots.

Instead of the copyright notice © I finally thought to use that space to plug my photography website, photoquist.com. I'll learn me this marketing stuff yet.

Secret Outback Blacklists

2009-07-17T07:56:00.008-04:00

I'm going to have to resist using exclamation points after every sentence as I write this. It really is that outrageous.

I stumbled across an entry in a Canadian law blog that may be the next site added to the blacklist in question.

The Australian government -- yes, Australia, not China or Myanmar but Australia! -- plans to ban more than 1,300 websites. More than that, it wants to prohibit even linking to them.

"That’s not just like banning books," writes blog author Ezra Levant. "It’s like banning books, and banning saying the banned book’s title."

Right now it's only a pilot program with cooperation by Internet service providers. But if this voluntary test run works, it could become law, for which violators would risk a fine of $11,000. Per day!

That's not the best part. In a Catch-22 that would make Joseph Heller proud, and maybe Adolph Hitler too, the Aussie authorities won't reveal what sites are on the blacklist. That would, of course, be against the law. So you can't know that you've broken the law until you're arrested for doing it.

I'm guessing most of the sites are NSFW and many may be illegal. But how would you know? The blacklist was compiled in secret. Unless it leaked, which it has. The website Wikileaks.org published the entire list.

And I was right. There are a lot of sites whose very names will turn your stomach with disgust. Then there are sites like cdpoker.com and fulltiltpoker.com, which are online poker sites. Not my thing but worth banning? Oops. Linking to those sites myself might have earned me place on the blacklist as well as an $11,000 fine. Today.

If I lived in some backwoods bush like Australia, that is.

The Sydney Morning Herald, which apparently has more time to scan the list -- and less fear of what its links might lead to -- than I do, found a dentist's website. The article points out the problem when perfectly innocuous sites make the blacklist: Their owners get lumped in with the child pornographers and other criminals because some bureaucrat somewhere, who doesn't have to answer for his actions, added them to the list, perhaps accidentally.

Incredible. If this actually becomes law you wonder:

Can the Sydney Witch Trials be far behind?

Too Funny!

2009-07-16T15:28:00.004-04:00

Does the headline and verbiage in the screen capture below look familiar? (Click on it to see it normal size.) If not, scroll down a few entries on this blog.

I'm going to let them figure this one out on their own.

See the copy on their website here.

The "Feed Me!" Purr

2009-07-15T21:45:00.002-04:00

You know cats purr when they're happy. And I've read where cats will also purr when they're distressed to calm themselves -- it's even been reported in cats who are in labor. "Reverse purring," I call it when I think Annie's doing it.

Now some British researchers say that cats have different purrs for different occasions. And that people can tell them apart. Video from the Associated Press via the St. Petersburg Times website.

On the Map

2009-07-14T08:17:00.003-04:00

Along Hill Brady Road in Battle Creek, Michigan, you'll find an industrial park that you enter by turning onto McQuiston Drive. No kidding!

View Larger Map
Unfortunately, the park is home to an auto parts plant that is shutting down.

Dear TBO.com -- AGAIN!

2009-07-13T12:33:00.003-04:00

An item on your website (http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/jul/12/shot-in-ybor-city-97713/) was copied in whole from an entry on my blog (http://mcqueue.blogspot.com/2009/07/shot-in-ybor-city.html).

Brief excerpts are welcome with a link to the rest of the article or essay on my blog. Please edit the item on your site accordingly.

At least this time you couldn't swipe the photo slide show.

This is the second time this has happened (that I know of) and it needs to stop.

-------------------------

I did send this message, as well as the previous one, to TBO.com staff through the contact page on its website. My website stat counter tells me that someone from Media General (TBO.com's owner, which also owns WFLA-TV and the Tampa Tribune) has seen my original complaint.

Let's see if they act.

Update (7/15/09): TBO.com has removed the posts and promises it is trying to figure out how entire articles were being quoted in its blog roll.

Just Don't Hurt Yourself on Live Television

2009-07-13T09:47:00.004-04:00

Bang your toe on the coffee table? The expletive that escapes your lips immediately afterward may help you feel better. I am totally bleeping serious. So are researchers at Keele University in England, who say that you may be able to increase your pain tolerance by swearing.

Dear TBO.com

2009-07-11T21:34:00.002-04:00

An item on your website (http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/jul/08/i-thought-it-was-a-butter-knife-57773/) was copied in whole from an entry on my blog (http://mcqueue.blogspot.com/2009/07/i-thought-it-was-butter-knife.html).

Brief excerpts are welcome with a link to the rest of the article or essay on my blog. Please edit the item on your site accordingly.

Shot in Ybor City

2009-07-11T20:29:00.004-04:00

Just photos. I went to the historic Ybor City section of Tampa this morning to take pictures. I didn't have a model this time, though I caught at least one bum still sleeping off the night before. I'm not sure that counts as someone posing.

There's something about shooting places that are often crowded while they're empty. Ybor City is party town Friday and Saturday and probably a lot of other nights, a fact which you can smell the following morning.

I Guess United Didn't Count on the Guy Havning Another Guitar

2009-07-10T22:42:00.005-04:00

A Canadian musician who says United Airlines heavily damaged a $3,500 guitar, gave him the runaround and ultimately gave him the finger when he complained is getting the last laugh.

And more. He turned his tale of woe into a tune of wow -- as in an Internet sensation with more than 600,000 hits on YouTube so far.

According to the Associated Press (via MSNBC), Taylor, the maker of the guitar, has offered to try to restore the damaged instrument. And -- guess what? -- now United wants to make it up to him.

Now?!?!?

Would this be the PR equivalent of locking the barn doors after the horses have escaped? When will these morons learn? It's not enough now that any disgruntled customer can vent his frustrations about you on his blog and create a stain on your reputation that you may never rub out of Google searches.

You have to tee off a guy who writes songs for a living? A guy who, enraged and inspired, can create a sensation that makes you look like a colossal jerk in front of the whole world? OK, so it's only 1% of the world so far but this viral party may just be getting started. Oprah wants him on her show.

That's what these idiots have to grasp who don't care about their customers. It used to be that if you screwed one guy, who cared? How many people could he tell?

Now?!?!?

Motivation

2009-07-08T20:09:00.003-04:00

I mentioned my struggle writing the family documentary on which I'm working. How's this for a kick in the pants: I got an e-mail from a St. Petersburg Times reporter who stumbled across my personal documentary site (www.Personal-Documentary.com, if you don't know) and thought it might make a good story idea.

Although I'm happy with the site now, if I could get a couple clips from this current project up there, it would make an even better impression on anyone who visited. Should I get a mention in the Times, that should bring a lot of traffic. It would be good to have my best foot forward.

It might not happen. I confessed in reply to the reporter that I had not started marketing the business and I did not yet have any paying customers. I did include several possible angles for her to pursue if she was not deterred by my opening admission.

In fact, there they are:

First, in the YouTube era people are much more conscious about capturing and sharing themselves on video. A personal documentary is a richer ore in the same vein. People can have their life stories professionally told and preserved on video. They're also using more multi-media in the events of their lives.

Wedding receptions now feature "how they met" film clips. Funeral services often include a memorial tribute video. Anniversary celebrations and birthday parties, including bar and bat mitzvahs, are now sometimes incomplete without the "how they got to this point" video.

Those who would not subject their friends or loved ones to sitting through home movies can hire someone like me who can turn a rambling recollection of memories in to a memorable film.

Second, the same advances in technology that have made consumer grade equipment better and easier to use have also brought professional equipment into more people's price range. Camera and editing equipment that would have required a second mortgage on my house just a decade ago cost me less than $10,000. It has already paid for itself in freelance work.

What that means is that someone like me who knows his way around a camera as well as script writing, narration and editing, can work as a one person crew for smaller jobs. That, in turn, brings the cost of production down into an individual's price range. Not that these productions are cheap. You're talking between $5,000 and $9,000 depending on how complex the project is. But it's still a lot less than if you had to hire a producer, camera person, narrator and editor separately.

Last and probably least, I'm a former TV news and sports reporter looking for a new way to put his video storytelling skills to profitable use. I don't have to tell you how the media landscape is changing and how many people displaced from traditional media outlets have to find other places to ply their trades. The term "enterprising reporter" may now entail a different kind of enterprising.

I tell people's stories. This is my enterprise.

I'll let you know if I hear anything back.

My personal documentary site as well as JohnMcQuiston.com are both getting traffic from links embedded in e-mails. While I do now include both sites in my e-mail signature, I don't think that can account for it. The visitors are coming from places, according to my StatCounter, where I have not sent e-mails.

That means that some good soul is spreading word around about my sites for me. I'm curious to know who and why. And I'd like to say thank you.

I Thought It Was a Butter Knife

2009-07-08T11:36:00.004-04:00

I gashed my left index finger open while slicing a bagel Monday. Perhaps low on concentration after the 3:30 a.m. wakeup call to report traffic on WFTS that morning. It looked like a closed eye weeping blood.

It felt like I had gashed my finger open with a knife.

I was visiting my parents at the time and luckily my mother has more Band-Aids than Walgreen's. A little Neosporin first and I was good to go. You can golf without your left index finger. At least you can do my approximation of golf without it. Same for playing piano.

Guitar? Not so much.

No such mishaps on the air at WFTS, though. That was the good news. I had a highlight during one of the local cut-ins we do during ABC's Good Morning America. A semi truck had crashed, overturned and caught fire on I-75 near Brooksville, about 50 miles north of Tampa. The wreckage blocked both the southbound lanes all morning.

The station's helicopter pilot had done reports from the scene but had to fly back to Tampa to refuel. The earpiece that lets the producer talk to me was working intermittently so I caught only that "we don't have Captain Al." I knew we had recorded video but didn't know if I was supposed to talk about it or not.

The anchor tosses to me. I show the location of the accident on the map and say casually, "we may have video of the scene." That's a cue to them to roll tape if they have it but I keep going in case they don't. A couple seconds later, the tape pops up and I smoothly explain that the cleanup continues as well as the investigation into the crash that killed the truck driver.

It looked it went according to script. Only there was no script.

I still know how to do this.

Progress on the family documentary project I'm trying to write is slow. I don't know why. I still know how to do this, too, but it's a task making myself sit there and plow through it. I don't have a deadline but I do need to get the project done so I can add excerpts to my Personal-Documentary.com website.

It's time to get going on this.

The $151 Photograph

2009-07-02T20:25:00.011-04:00

Business is slow enough that the free in freelance is time. I was glad when I got a chance to do some volunteer work for the WUSF Radio Reading Service. I was less glad when I took a wrong turn on the way there, drove over a sidewalk and got a $151 citation from the USF campus police. $151 I could have spent on something I wanted.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Afterward I went to the USF Botanical Garden. I had brought my camera thinking I'd try to snap some shots in the butterfly garden. Of course, by the time I got finished with the police and did my reading, it was after 4 p.m. I stiffed them on the $5 entrance fee. I have already pledged enough to the university for one day.

So the picture below of the largest insect I have ever seen cost me $151 to take. I don't even know what it is. I just noticed a funny looking yellow color on a flower and went to investigate.

Trust me, that bug may have been three inches long.

It could have been worse. I got rained on and rushed back to my car. As I sat waiting to see if the rain would pass, I noticed two people coming out of the botanical gardens' gift shop and head to the the only two other cars in the lot.

That's when I realized the place was closing. Had the rain not sent me fleeing to my car I'd have been locked inside the gardens until 9 a.m. tomorrow. Just late enough to completely miss my shift doing the traffic at WFTS.

I can't afford to miss any paying work. I have a check to write. At least I won't have trouble finding time in my schedule to go to traffic school.

This Was Once Me

2009-06-25T16:28:00.004-04:00

And it could be you! Back in 2006, I answered an ad similar to this one on craigslist* and later became the fill-in traffic reporter at WTSP-TV. The station gets its traffic information, as well as the person who delivers it on the air, from NAVTEQ Traffic subject to the approval of the station's news director.

Reply to: job-yrxfu-1239208693@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-06-25, 1:13PM EDT

Job Opening: On-Air TV Traffic Reporter – Part-Time
Location: Tampa

NAVTEQ Traffic is the leading provider of personalized real-time traffic information for drivers across the U.S. Currently we are seeking ambitious, intelligent TV professionals who want to join our winning team. The TV Traffic Reporters serve as an information provider and personality for local News Programming in top markets across the country.

Traffic or Weather experience is preferred, but a great personality and previous on-air experience can go a long way.

DUTIES AND REPSONSIBILITIES:

•On-Camera Reporting
•Preparation of traffic reports
•Assistance with traffic info gathering
•Develop understanding of local highways and traffic patterns
•Other related duties as required

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS: Candidates should be comfortable in front of a camera, have good communication skills, experience with computers, ability to multitask, ability to learn quickly, and work in a deadline driven environment.

Interested candidates should respond with a traffic demo and resume ASAP.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY: NAVTEQ/Traffic.com is an Equal Opportunity Employer. M/F/D/V.

WFLA-TV also gets its traffic from the same company. I don't know for which station the lucky contestant would ply his or her trade. Right now, both WTSP and WFLA use voice-over only talent as fill-ins when their on-camera traffic reporters are absent.

WTVT (Fox 13) does the same thing and that's what WFTS did before it hired me to back-up Meredyth Censullo. I filled in for a second time today, again without calamity, and I have a few days scheduled in July.

It's difficult getting into any rhythm when I'm on so rarely but what I lack in practice I make up with focus. When you're on every day and multiple times each one you can get sloppy. It's not intentional; you just don't pay as close attention to everything as you should. When it could be weeks, months, or — in one case at WTSP — nearly a full year before your next appearance, you tend to value the opportunity more.

Plus, you don't want to go a year replaying a blooper-reel moment in your head.

*I buried the lead. An apparently legitimate ad appearing on craigslist!

Most Editors Are Failed Writers

2009-06-22T22:27:00.000-04:00

So are most writers.

- T.S. Eliot

This Makes Four

2009-06-22T17:49:00.006-04:00

I survived my first day of fill-in work at WFTS-TV without producing any material for the station's blooper reel. That, as always, is the primary goal. The job was substituting for traffic anchor Meredyth Censullo on the station's morning show. Long-time blog readers will think, "Hey! Didn't you fill in for her when she was on WTSP's morning news show?"

Yes, I did. And when it became official that I was going to follow her from there to WFTS, I asked her not to get a job in another city because I don't want to move.

I awoke at 3:12 this morning — twelve minutes before the time I set on the alarm and three hours after I had finally drifted off to sleep. I wasn't worried about fatigue. Adrenaline and fear, I knew, would power me through the morning.

It's always strange working with a new set of people in a different studio. Adding to the oddity is that WFTS's building resembles the one in which I worked in Cincinnati. Scripps-Howard owns both stations. That eeriness will hang over me for a while, I suspect, especially since this gig will be only a once-in-a-while job.

You always face the wondering by your new, if only occasional, colleagues. "Where did this guy come from and what are we in for?" The station had tried a weather person already on staff as a traffic fill-in. That lasted exactly one apparently disastrous day.

While I wasn't brilliant, it had to become clear to people at the station that they wouldn't have to hold their breath hoping that any traffic mishaps would happen only on the roads and not in the studio. The computer mostly behaved and I mostly knew how to operate it properly.

If you're keeping count, WFTS is the fourth station in Tampa Bay on which I've appeared (WFLA 1997-99, WTTA 2004-05, WTSP 2006-09 and now WFTS) reporting or anchoring either news, sports or traffic. It's my fourth station even if you're not keeping count. I've also done field producing and writing for WEDU-TV, Tampa's PBS affiliate and some fill-in sports talk radio hosting at WDAE-AM.

This list obviously stands as testament to my versatile skill set, immense talent and apparent inability to hold a job.

I'm scheduled to work again Thursday and then several days in July. I probably won't detail a lot of my experiences so that they don't cause me trouble like discussions of my work at WTSP did. I'm trying to work on the "inability to hold a job" bit.