Behind the Headlines

I’m working on story (yes, even on this most gorgeous of days - at least I can sit outside with my laptop) about siblings who decided to enter into the Navy. They leave this afternoon in order to ship out to boot camp tomorrow.

In doing a little research about the Navy, I came across the Life Accelerator - a short quiz where your answers are supposed to help guide you in a career choice. So, I took it. First was a list of hobbies that the test taker is to mark like or dislike. Then a variety of career options and so on.

My results indicate I’m “a persuader” mostly, followed closely by innovator, do-er and problem solver. Last on my list was planner - which anyone who knows me would probably agree. What is striking about the list is “News and Media” as a possible career choice kept popping up. Looks like I’m pretty much where I should be. Then it occurs to me, journalists are probably the most indecisive bunch when it comes to career choice.

Yeah, there are people who are sure they want to be journalists, but what is generally appealing is that going into the field offers so much variety. One day you may be learning how to work marionette puppets and the next talking budget projections for the next five years.

You can find the Life Accelerator - which, be warned, is designed specifically for Navy information, here. Of course, there are tons of career tests out there - just Google “career test” and take some of the free ones. Let me know - where are you at? Do you think these things work? Do you now have the sudden urge to join the Navy?

Or maybe just temporarily maim it.

I just submitted a story about National Turn Off Your TV Week ending on Sunday. These are the kinds of stories I love and hate working on. It’s definitely interesting, but has certainly robbed my viewing of it’s guiltless innocence. I read all the statistics, I talked to parents, I spoke with a sociology/anthropology professor, but still, when I went home yesterday after doing all this, I turned on my TV. It’s not that I can’t live without it… I could if I needed to. It’s just that I’m a TV girl, living in a TV world.
For years in college, I didn’t have a television. When we did get one, it was old and got 1.5 channels somewhat clearly. When my roommate Chuck moved in he insisted on getting super cable. It was like having Vegas in our living room for about two weeks before the novelty wore off. When I would come home Chuck, who took pills that looked like lentils, would be sitting in the same spot, watching TV still or again. When he wasn’t there, an indent indicating his dedication remained. When he dropped out of school soon thereafter and moved out, we cut off the cable. That was the only time in 10 years that I actually had access to cable in my house.
When people flew planes into the World Trade Center, another roommate in a different apartment and I listened to it on the radio. We carted our neighbor’s tube over to try to see what was going on. Without cable we mostly got static mixed with a few alarmingly clear shots of the chaos in New York.
When I moved from Marquette to Minneapolis a month later, I had nothing. I was given a little TV by an aunt and uncle, one that had to be changed by the dials, and cable was still beyond my reach. At least there without hook up 7 or so channels would come in crisply. MTV2 would come in on the weekends just in time for Sucker Free Sundays. Most of the time it was Telemundo.
When I moved back to Michigan, and then tucked into a remote corner of Monroe County, cable was finally mine. It’s been about one year exactly since I moved to the county and got cable. It’s odd how quickly I slipped into watching or having the TV on most of the time when I’m home. And I’m a reader.
The concept of Turn Off Your TV week is great - the point of drawing a person more consciously into their habits is a strong one. But it’s more difficult than I initially thought now that I rest in the warm bosom of my TV and its wide array of opportunities. In some way I feel like I’ve stored up enough non-TV life to earn a free pass on watching Golden Girls reruns if I damn well please.

That said, I now have to take a more deliberate role in selecting to watch it rather than just defaulting and searching to find something, anything to entertain me.

I was a presenter yesterday at a local career day for elementary schools students.

Fellow reporter Ray Kisonas told me to get the kids involved right away otherwise they will not pay attention to anything I have to say.

So I asked all of them about reading and what kind of stories they like to read. I received typical responses from kids- stories about family, friends, animals and fantasy.

I thought, okay, this is going fairly well. So I asked them if they read the newspaper and every student said yes. I proceeded to ask them what they see in the newspaper.

They shouted: car accidents, fires, people getting arrested, drug busts, dead people. One girl even said the newspaper does not contain one positive article.

For a minute I think my mouth fell open and my mind went blank (probably because this was my first solo career day presentation and partly because I had no idea how to respond).

I told the students while all of the things they mentioned were featured in the news, there are a lot of positive stories about people doing good things.

Then one student said- Well my mom tells me all reporters lie, so you could just be lying to us right now.

Before I could say anymore, the office announced it was time for the students to move to their next session.

Do all children think there is nothing in the news but negative stories, do they not see the positive stories or are their parents influencing what news they hear?

Now that the literary events for this year’s Big Read program are over, organizers are setting up plans for the next go-round.

The book that was chosen this year was Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. They are now discussing more than a dozen possible titles for Big Read 2008.

The idea is to follow the mold of this year’s program, including book club discussions, marquee events, film showings, etc. Any thoughts?
Here’s the list of books they are choosing from:
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
My Ántonia by Willa Cather
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Hey everyone, the trees in downtown are blooming. Downtown Monroe, Dundee and Luna Pier are the only locales I’ve been to in the past two days, so I’m not sure what else is happening around the county.

Does this mean the mayflies can’t be far behind?

Last year our fabulous designer and copy desk leader Stacy and I determined we wanted to make a movie starring mayflies. We wanted to call it Mayfly-a, like Mothra. Partial inspiration also came from Mansquito, the Sci-Fi channel original “horror” flick about a giant man-mosquito.

Then we realized that mayflies don’t even have mouths. Maybe this year a mutation is afoot…

I know with all the coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, this is just a minute detail, but I needed to say something about it.

The multimedia package the killer submitted to the news has been all over the place. I’m not sure what my stance is on that yet. We need information, generally the more the better, but sometimes enough is too much, blah blah blah. But, the thing that has been really bothering me is that every time the video is referenced, it’s referred to as “chilling” or “menacing”. In news stories. Matter of fact. Like there is no debate on the subject.

Perhaps I’m just desensitized, but I really didn’t find the ramblings of the guy all that menacing or chilling. I find his acts both. And heinous and unbelievable and monstrous. But I don’t think prescribing an emotion or adjective to the video/pics is necessary. If it truly is chilling, then why sell it to me, why not just let me see for myself or describe it objectively?

Over the weekend, I logged onto MySpace to check it out since I hadn’t been there in awhile. Oy.

What I found still has me a little shocked. Not the content and the solicitation and so on and so forth - I’ve been one of the defenders of social sites like MySpace for awhile now because they’re only as dangerous as you let them be. But because I found out that one of my cousins is pregnant. Not just a little pregnant, but giving birth in less than three months, the baby already has a name and they know his gender pregnant. Through a series of random events and clicks I found this out.

My first thought: Is this for real? What a weird joke. Nope. It’s real; it has to be.

Second thought: “Mom, did you know about this?” Yeah, she says, I just found out and forgot to tell you. No one really knew until last week.

I’ve heard of people finding out they were no longer dating because their person had changed their profile to “single”, but this was a little different. People have been scraping out of break ups for forever, but a pregnancy those involved are happy about?

Wow. MySpace as the messenger. I’m not sure I really like that, but I suppose it’s better than not knowing. I guess it just shows the pervasiveness of the Internet, and networks like this, in passing on news that was once considered personal and merited at least a phone call.

This is good news, I think, but it leaves an awful lot of questions unanswered.

I just came across Mark Morford’s rant on the individual’s place in preserving the world in the San Fran Gate. It kind of touches on how hip being green has become.

Read it here.

(Warning: The language may be objectionable to some.)

A couple of event organizers have made some very worried comments to me during the past week or so about “we’re not getting as many reservations / participation as we would like.”

Late April and early May is a busy time for fundraisers, festivals, rummage sales, educational programs and charity events. I’m working on the Community Page lists for the next two weeks, and it’s amazing how many events are already on file. All of these events are competing for time and attention with family and school events such as children’s sports, prom, spring musicals, First Communions, weddings, Mother’s Day and graduation parties. This means slow ticket sales or reservations while your potential benefactors and audiences juggle their other activities.

The best advice I can give is make sure The Monroe Evening News gets the notice early so we can schedule the Community Page announcement on the best possible day … and ask your committee members to keep promoting the event via word of mouth to convert that publicity and awareness into ticket sales.

A story from businesswire.com, giving “all purpose” a new meaning:

MINNEAPOLIS–When Cookie severely fractured her leg, Mary Jane Martinez fashioned a cast from a Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day All-Purpose Cleaner bottle. Martinez, a happy farmer from the Missouri Ozarks, is hero of the mantra “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” Eight weeks after the break, the Mrs. Meyer’s cast came off to reveal a well-healed leg. Good thing, too, as Cookie’s kid is due in just a few weeks.

The real Mrs. Meyer, Thelma, is dedicated to creating earth-friendly and cruelty-free household cleaners containing plants found in her garden in Iowa. The company’s entire line of aromatherapeutic household cleansers is hard-working, yet gentle on the earth.

By the way, why is there snow in the Ozarks in this picture?

Kermit’s lament years ago was truer than he knew. It ain’t easy being green - sometimes. But, it’s getting easier.

It seems like green is the new black. As in, being “green”, as in being environmentally conscious is now the more fashionable thing to do.

In covering Earth Day stuff for a few years now, it feels like this year it’s really taking off. I don’t know that Al Gore can be credited for inventing environmental awareness - much like this ‘internet’ he speaks of - but I think the movie he put together may have something to do with it. Just general interest in the Global Warming debate, maybe, has sparked something.

Also, the trends in the American culture seem to recirculate every 30 years or so. With the war in Iraq drawing comparisons to Vietnam, it seems somewhat instinctual - and pardon the pun - natural that we would turn an eye more toward living organically and sustainably, a movement that really gained steam in the 70’s.

Like so many things borrowed from the past though, perhaps this is more than a trend, maybe it will become our way of life, rather than our fad diet. Hey bell bottoms and hip huggers infiltrated their way into everyday dress, were repurposed and renamed and have stuck. Who among us doesn’t have a pair of boot cut or flare leg pants?

My parents and siblings are all laughing at the story line currently running in “For Better or For Worse,” which is one of the daily comic strips in The Monroe Evening News

The plot in a nutshell: mom and dad have a full house with an adult daughter who has temporarily moved home, a married son with his wife and children who also are living with them while looking for their next home, and a younger daughter who’s frustrated at her lack of privacy and space.

There is a two-bedroom house in the neighborhood that’s up for sale. At first, married son was looking at that property. Now, mom and dad are considering buying that home as their retirement home, and selling the family home to married son.

A similar situation happened with my parents and one of my sisters during late 2003 / early 2004 – three generations living under the same roof while a house swap was in the works.

Oh, yes, it was quite comical.

And they were all REALLY glad when everybody got settled into their respective new homes.

The guys who work in our sports department – Ron, Jeff, Niles and Jason – with occasional help from Doug - have the craziest work schedules of anybody in the newsroom with the exception of the photographers.

The sports department’s day during the work week starts before 7 a.m. Throughout the morning, they are taking phone calls from coaches, compiling scores, reviewing photos and getting the day’s sports reports ready for everyone to read in the afternoon.

But they’re not in the office during early and mid-afternoon. They’ll be back in the evening.

The sports writers work odd hours because their job is to track schedules and results and write feature stories for local recreational, high school, college and professional sports. Most of these events take place after school, on the evening or during the weekends. They personally attend some of those events, sending blog reports from the scene or making sure a story deadline is met for the next publication. To get scores and reports from other meets and games in time for the next edition, they rely on a complicated network of faxes, e-mails, deliveries and phone calls from coaches and athletic directors.

So it really irks me when a customer stops by my desk during the sports department’s break and complains about the sports writers being out of the office during the afternoon. I have even heard more than one customer say, “I wish I had those kind of hours.”

Umm, I really don’t think so.

“Yeah, but, he’s the loveable kind of screw up.”