Mac & Me: Two Decades Later

I’m actually a year late. Last year was the 20th anniversary of a pretty major moment in my life: the day I first used a Macintosh computer.

I didn’t realize how big the moment was at the time, because I was not the gadgety techy Internetty geek you know and love today. I was a journalism student at a Canadian college. We were learning the craft the old-fashioned way, using phototypesetters and PMT cameras to build our weekly newspaper. Pagination was a fairly new concept at the time, and we had heard about PageMaker, but none of us had ever used it. And then the Macs showed up. Three of them, those classic little boxes with the tiny black-and-white screens … man, these things were cool.

It’s easy to forget how revolutionary the Macintosh was. My computing experience had been limited to writing games in BASIC on Commodore PETs and on my first home machine, a VIC-20. I had tinkered with an IBM XT, but I never cared much for DOS and, to be honest, during the mid-to-late 80s I was less interested in computers and more interested in getting my hair just right and cruising around in a K-Car. I was a very cool guy.

The Mac was something new. It had a mouse; it wasn’t the first computer to use one, but it was the first to make it work well. It had a GUI, a classic and simple design that set the standard we still use today, whether we’re on Vista, Linux or OSX. And it sure speeded up our production process. Within weeks, the phototypesetting machine had a dust cover on it, and once we got our hands on a scanner that was it for the PMT camera.

But what I liked most about that Mac was its MacDraw and MacPaint software. I was, back then, still an avid artist and cartoonist, and the ability to produce art on-screen — in black and white, of course — was revolutionary for me. (I even considered dumping J-school for a career in graphic design, for about five minutes.)

Looking back, I can see the foundations of most of my interests — personal and professional — in those funny-looking little beige computers. Art, music, journalism, podcasting, web design … all the things I do for fun and money are possible because of what Apple came up with all those years ago. I knew those Macs were something special that first day, and I was right.

Over the years, I would own several of my own, although it has now been five years since I started using Windows at home. Not for much longer, though.

We’re talking about an overhaul of our home computing setup. My kids are old enough now for their own computers, and we’re looking for the right fit. We already have computers all over the place, but a couple of them are getting pretty old and aren’t much good for anything other than a free chess game I downloaded in 1997.

This got me thinking about going back to Mac, putting at least one Mac in the house, on our network.

I admit this is probably more for me than for the kids; they aren’t fussy. They just want to play those online flash games and type up lists of reasons why my cooking sucks. But a new Mac would greatly increase my own productivity. Honest.

Bringing a Mac back into the house would make me pretty happy. It’s just a matter of finding the right one. Wait, what’s this?

Today’s Moron: Rosie DiManno

If you’ve lived in Canada over the past 25 or 3o years, you have read at least one piece by Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno. I’ve read a lot of them. I’ve liked one or two. I particularly liked the piece she did the time she violated Olympic security, snuck into the athlete’s village residences, and wrote about what was going on behind the scenes. I thought that was funny and demonstrated an interesting disregard for the rules. Mostly, though, I have found her work a little too tabloid-based for me. And now she’s proven it.

Rosie never plays it safe. She is paid a serious amount of money to write a handful of columns a week, and she’s given free reign to Be Rosie. She’s one of the few Canadian “personality” journalists whose byline is a brand of its own.

She picked up a lot of new readers today when The Star published her take on the suicide of accused child molester David Dewees. After acknowledging that the paper erred in reporting charges against Dewees, Rosie goes on to point out that since libel laws don’t apply to dead people, she’s free to decide that he was, in fact, guilty, and she goes on to pillory him in paragraph after paragraph of assumption, non-libelous libel and sloppy, self-rightous writing.

The outrage is ripping through the Internet. The fact is, David Dewees was accused of a crime. This does not make him guilty. We know that many men are accused of these crimes unjustly, and we know that we have a court system that analyzes the evidence before passing judgment. We also know that newspapers have to be very careful about reporting these things; this is where the word “alleged” comes into play. This is basic journalism. And while it doesn’t apply to dead people, and Rosie is right about that, there’s still a thing called decency. She ignored that today.

Maybe David Dewees did it. Maybe he didn’t. The world will never know for sure, and neither will Rosie DiManno, despite what she tells you. She has, with one piece of writing, kicked print journalism in the balls and sent its already teetering reputation down into Fox News territory. I’m a print journalist with more than 20 years in the ink, and what she wrote made me grit my teeth and shake my head. It will take a long time to recover from her stunt.

It gets worse. The news aggregator site reddit.com picked up DiManno’s column, and within a few hours almost 1,000 people had chimed in with their comments. Most of these are typical reddit slams, loaded with childish attacks, but some of them include some well-written letters to DiManno pointing out their concerns. These writers are repeating what they say are responses they got when they e-mailed Rosie to complain. Some of them posted screenshots of their correspondences. Others just quoted Rosie’s responses to them:

“Oh great, the pedophile constituency heard from.”

And another:

“Ah yes, the pro-pedophilia constituency heard from. Your email is being forward to police.”

She sticks to a theme there, and in many others: if you are upset about her assumption of a dead man’s guilt, you must be in favour of pedophilia. Cheap, nasty and amateurish, it avoids the issue people are pointing out in their complaints. It’s the kind of response I would expect from college newspaper hacks, not from a writer for the country’s largest newspaper.

Note: This is nothing new, really.

How About A Little Respect?

One of the first things we learned in journalism school was how to write about death. It’s a tricky subject. Most of the time, reporters are not writing for the people in their stories. They’re writing for readers. Every print reporter has had this question from a source:

“Can I read that over before it runs?”

And the answer is always no. See, if you give your sources say over what goes in the paper, you’re opening a dangerous door. One of the best arguments made in favour of reading my stories before they ran came from a major-label publicity person, representing a very, very major rock star, who told me she could lose her job if the wrong information got out, and she just wanted to confirm some details. I still said no, and I told her why: If I were to let her check the story, we would have to let everyone, and that would mean elected officials and other people over whom newspapers maintain a watchdog role. We can’t protect taxpayers’ interests if the mayor has final say over what is written about him.

But when it comes to writing about death, we know what we write is going to be saved, studied and read by people in a state of grief, so a different kind of sensibility comes into play. I know a reporter who recently wrote a compelling obit on a local person, checking and re-checking every fact and putting her all into it, only to have the desk make minor changes that ended up being major mistakes. That clipping will be a part of the deceased’s legacy for generations to come, and it has errors in it.

Which brings me to that rule I mentioned early on: never refer to bodies as people. “The body of Mr. Jones was taken to hospital” is the way we write it. This is a strange one, and I had trouble with it, but it was explained to me by a great teacher: Implying that a dead person is in any way participating in what is going on is an insult to their memory.

Of course, most of the dead people I wrote about were crime or accident victims, but the same attitude applies. These people had families and loved ones, and their feelings matter.

I just read this headline: Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan returns home. I’ve been seeing a lot more of those, especially in the wake of major Canadian newspaper chains’ decision to move away from the standardized Canadian Press style. Yes, anyone reading that would know the dead soldier didn’t get up and come home. But if there’s even a subtle chance of that misinterpretation, it should be addressed.

Granted, that headline came from a radio station website. But that’s the problem. Written news is moving away from newspapers and onto TV and radio websites (and vice-versa, as newspapers adopt video and podcasts). The old rules of style, grammar and spelling are being abandoned, and the invasion of textspeak and netLOLwhateverspeak are further tainting the language. I’m not against this. Language evolves, as I’ve said before, and so does style. But editors should take a moment, once in a while, and think about who will be reading what they write.

The cynicism that often accompanies stories about public figures should be locked in a drawer when it comes to stories about death. And that old rule about how we write about dead people shouldn’t be ignored. Particularly when writing about our soldiers.

The 10 People You Always Find In A Newsroom

It has now been half a year since I worked in a daily newspaper newsroom. Sometimes I miss it. The work, that is. But not always the people. I made a lot of great friends over my two decades in the business, but once in a while I remember the bizarre archetypes that make up newsroom staffs.

A reporter I know once described newsrooms as “Sitcoms watched by aliens.” That makes a bit of sense. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I can break the basic types down for you. You’ll probably recognize the same personality types from your own workplace, but to me, these people are what makes newsrooms tick.

Some of these overlap. Many people have elements of two, three or more of these. But everyone has elements of at least one. :

1. The Lifer: “This is the way I’ve always done it.” This is the person who was hired as a reporter in the late 60s, early 70s, usually right out of high school or with a smattering of unrelated post-secondary education. Decades later, he or she is either in a position of authority earned by longetivity rather than skill, or toiling away at the same desk, going by the non-title “Senior Reporter.” This person has no interest in learning new technology or new ideas, and sticks with the same basic three-day crash course on reporting picked up decades ago.
2. The Star: “That’s something I picked up when I interned at the Times.” You don’t see these people for long. They blast through the newsroom, heralded by an editor who says “Get ready for something special from this one.” He or she usually has at least three degrees, and probably a Master’s. One of the degrees will be in something really off-centre, like evolutionary biology. His or her resume will be full of volunteer work, overseas experiences and internships at the best papers in the world, but no explanation as to what led to your little rag. And they know everything. Just when you start thinking you could get along with this person, he or she moves on to a job at CNN. Years later, you notice a familiar name as press secretary to the prime minister.
3. The Artist: “It doesn’t make sense to you because it’s good writing. I have an English degree, you know.” This type of reporter, editor, photographer or designer believes the standard rules of newspaper journalism don’t always apply. Flowery writing, artsy photography, experimental designs … all are well and good, until it’s 15 minutes to deadline and your reporter is online looking for T.S. Eliot quotes to round out a story on a fifth-grade spelling bee.
4. The Faker: “How do we get a world wide web?” Closely related to the Lifer, the Faker has managed to disguise his or her inability to do the job by playing office politics. Sadly, this puts many of them in senior management positions. Many of them were hired in the 80s, which means they missed the advent of computer-based newspaper production, and have advanced only far enough to be able to send out a mass email full of inaccurate information and spelling mistakes. They have no interest in news about current trends, and have been known to pull reporters off stories about cyber porn “because nobody was actually hurt.” This is their way of saying they don’t know what it means.
5. The Night Owl: “Oh, are you going for coffee?” Every paper has the guy — and it’s almost always a guy — who chooses to work the overnight desk. He lives alone, his hygiene is suspect, and he knows everything about all the other employees. Nobody is certain what he really does, but he always appears to be stressed and overworked. Once in a while, you see him during the day, out in the real world, and you aren’t sure it’s really him.
6. The Hack: “It was every parent’s worst nightmare.” This type of reporter is the opposite of the Artist. He or she has no interest in the craft, and exists solely to meet the quote of five Ws in each story. Who, what, where, when, why. After a while, you start to think he or she has a dozen or so cliche-ridden article templates on the computer, and just plugs in names and dates as the story requires. Occasionally, staffing issues require this reporter to cover something different, resulting in an incomprehensible hodgepodge with key details missing.
7. The Soldier: “We’re not supposed to do it that way.” This person does exactly as told, when told, no more, no less. If the boss tells the staff “Try to limit smoke breaks to 10 minutes every few hours,” this person will glance pointedly at the clock and sigh when you come back at the 12-minute mark. If you start noticing marked-up newspapers in the boss’s mail slot, with errors of style highlighted, you know who did it. The Soldier is known for never answering a question directly, and for never making a decision.
8. The Rookie: “My shift ended an hour ago, but is there anything else you need me to do?” For the first few months on the job, new reporters want to soak up the excitement and glamour they think the job holds. After about the eight-month mark, after six turns-out-t0-be-nothing hour-long drives out to minor car accidents in the boonies, they tend to start drinking heavily.
9. The Weasel: “I told her to change it, but she didn’t.” This person takes pleasure in others’ mistakes, and will go out of his or her way to make other people look bad. If you make a glaring error, and this person spots it pre-production, he or she will stay quiet, but run to the boss as soon as the paper hits print. This is meant to cover up a lack of skills of his or her own. Weasel editors also like to change reporters’ copy, often for the worst, without saying anything about it, which ends with reporters being asked to justify something they didn’t write. Like the Soldier, the Weasel never makes decisions and never answers questions directly.
10. The Expert: “Call Herb at the Blue Room Tavern. He worked at Ford in the 60s and would know how to get ahold of Lefty Smith. Once you get ahold of Lefty, ask him for Joe Tucker’s phone number, and he’ll tell you which house it was.” This might be the Lifer, but not always. It’s the reporter or editor who soaks up local information like a sponge, and spends off-time browsing city directories and reading back issues of the paper. This leads to an encyclopaedia of knowledge about who’s who and what’s what in the community. The only problem with the Expert is the roughly 75% accuracy rate; once you start relying on what you’re told, you open the door to huge, glaring errors. Nothing makes a reporter feel worse than being told “You got the wrong Bob Walker.”

The sad part is, I have been, at one time or another, every one of these people.

Today’s Moron: Todd Meany, Fox News “Reporter”

As a print journalist for the past two decades, I have mixed feelings about TV reporters. I’ve known some who were the real deal, but I’ve known others who were hired for their looks and presence, not their ability to, you know, like, be, like, journalists.

And then I heard about this guy, who reports for Fox 8 in Cleveland. I won’t say much more. Just watch the clip.

Journalism is in a rough state these days, whether it’s print or broadcast. It’s tough enough being taken seriously as a reporter when front pages are for sale to advertisers and job cuts have left newspapers and broadcasters scrambling to offer basic community coverage. This kind of report, which is fine for a comedy show or a kids’ program, fails its viewers.

And people wonder why Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are being treated like actual journalists …

Iran and the Media

Did you know we’re in an election frenzy here in Canada? Did you know we may be going to the polls, again, this summer if Iggy pulls the trigger? And do you care?

No, of course not. And why would you, when Iran is imploding in the wake of a blatantly stolen vote? I’ve been watching things unfold there, nodding as I read pundits who say “this is democracy in action” and “why didn’t Americans rise up like this in 2000″ and “Weren’t we just advocating the bombing of these people?” If you want to learn more, Google it. I’d post links, but WordPress isn’t fast enough to keep up with this ever-changing story.

To be as clear as possible, let me say this: I have very little interest in the Iranian political situation right now. If I stopped to concern myself with odd politics in other countries, I would get even less sleep than I do now. What concerns me about Iran today is the scary lack of coverage of the issue in the U.S.

I’m lucky enough to live in a country with a public broadcaster. For all its faults, the CBC is governed more by ideas than dollars, and it’s my go-to for radio and television news. The same goes for the Globe and Mail, one of Toronto’s four daily newspapers, and the only one that still offers impact journalism on a global scale.

Americans aren’t so lucky. The major news organisms are ignoring Iran this week. Why? I don’t know. But it makes no sense. Journalists who report based on anything other than the right to report the public shouldn’t call themselves journalists. It’s shameful. Other news organizations, like Bloomberg, are covering the crisis, but they lack the accessibility of TV “news” networks.

On a positive note, social media and the Internet are doing the job CNBC, Fox News and CNN couldn’y. Log on to Digg, Reddit or Twitter, and what you see is Iran Iran Iran … You know what? Someone else explained this better than I can. Let me quote:

We are witnessing two revolutions here – one, the “green revolution” in Iran which may or may not be a success, and the other the technology and news information revolution. We are witnessing the unwitting suicide and slow death of the news media as we know it, as they cave to ratings and apathy rather than getting out there and covering a real story, as they aid and abbet the numbing and dumbing down of the American people.

If you were reading the Dish this weekend you were living in a different universe from someone watching Fox or MSNBC. There is very little difference between no information and misinformation. That is what the American people are getting – a starvation diet of no news and lots of empty carbs. Fatty, salty food with no nutritional value. And we’re too damn apathetic to demand better. There is a great divide in the decisions we make as an informed populace vs the decisions we make as an uninformed or misinformed one. The people I know who rely on the MSM for their news consistently know less about what actually happened than my blogger friends do, and have less nuanced opinions about these events. That’s a damn shame if you ask me. It leads to the support of bad policy.

… E.D. Kain