“Here’s some simple advice: Always be yourself. Never take yourself too seriously. And beware of advice from experts, pigs and members of parliament.”
— Kermit the frog

I noticed this story on the Beacon’s site about Kent pushing for a sin tax on alcohol. I mentioned this previously in a post as one of the city manager’s proposals.

I still have mixed thoughts on the whole thing. I mean, sure a number of the calls the police and fire department get concern students, and sure there was always a spike in public intoxication and underage drinking arrests on weekends. But come on. It’s basically a tax aimed at the college kids who probably spend more on alcohol in a week than most other adults do in a month.

Add this on top of the smoking ban, which bar owners say negatively impacts their businesses, and you’re pretty much going to kill some of those local bars. Kids can easily drive to Akron or Ravenna and stock up on alcohol. They could easily host parties instead of going out to the bars with friends (increasing noise complaints, litter, etc.) In fact, many kids already pre-game and arrive at the bars drunk because they’re too cheap to pay for drinks all night. I’d be willing to bet this would have, if not a signficant impact, at least a noticeable impact on the amount of alcohol sold.

Maybe that’s the point?

As an aside, are there really 42 bars in Kent? That has to be the highest number of any single business in Kent. I don’t even think there are 42 restaurants in the city, and I could probably only name a dozen of the bars. Maybe. Weird.

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the journalists I really respect is Connie Schultz. If you don’t know who she is, you should aquaint yourself now. (I recommend reading her book “Life Happens,” which I have an autographed copy of that if you’re nice I might let you borrow.) I’m glad she’ll be returning to the Plain Dealer now that her husband’s campaigning is over.

Why do I respect her? Well, for starters, she tells it like it is. She doesn’t sugar coat life, and she definitely isn’t afraid to step into potentially controversial subject areas. She’s one of the few things I really liked about the Plain Dealer. (I have a love/hate relationship with that paper. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to connect to it in a way I do with the Beacon. But that’s a personal issue I won’t take with their star columnist.)

Also, she’s a really nice person. I met her last summer when I was sent to cover her visit with the Hancock County Dems in Findlay. She went around the room and shook hands with each person. When she came around to me (easily the youngest person in the room by a decade, maybe more), I told her I was a reporter. She was genuinely interested. Our exchange went something like this:

Her: How long have you been with the paper?
Me: Oh, I’m only here for the summer as an intern.
Her: Where do go to school?
Me: Kent State.
Her: OH!! I went to Kent State!
Me: Yes, I know.
Her: Do you work for the Stater?
Me: Actually, I’m the editor this fall.
Her: OH!! I was editor of the Stater!

And so on. Of course I knew who Connie Schultz was. I knew she was a Pulitzer Prize winner, and that her name still held reverence as a Kent State alum. I knew more about who she was than any other person in the room that day. And I wanted to choke when she was introduced as Mrs. Sherrod Brown. I also took it as an insult when my editor removed the line about her being a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist from the story that ran. Yes she was campaigning for her husband, but that didn’t diminish who she was. If anything it lent credibility to what she said. But I digress. It wasn’t my call.

However, it was a great feeling knowing that I was following in the footsteps of an amazing woman when I took the helm at the Stater. I know plenty of former Stater editors, not just from my time there but from long before. One of them was even my feature writing professor. Being able to look to such people was an inspiration, a testament to what I could do with my degree. So much potential.

Anyway, there’s an interesting story at the PD about her balancing life as the wife of a senator with life as a columnist. Worth reading. One quote, on her role reversal:

“Connie shifted almost overnight from being a well-known, award-winning journalist and an extremely independent woman to a secondary role as the candidate’s spouse,” explained Brown’s communications director, Joanna Kuebler. “It was like walking around in somebody else’s shoes.”

I know CNN wants the world to know about the $1.25 million it raised for charity by selling a Hummer. But why is this story the top story on their Web site STILL?

I saw it there probably this time yesterday afternoon. I saw it there last night. It’s still there now.

I can’t figure out why it’s still the most important story. It never really was. I thought it was my cache or something acting up, but no, the other stories are definitely different. It seems they have this one as a sticky or something at top. Is it just for the PR? I don’t know. But it’s weird.

UPDATE: As of 11:48 p.m., CNN has a different top story. But guess what, the first word on that story is also CNN, as in CNN debunks false report about Obama. (And the CNN Hummer story is still in the top stories list.) Yeah. Slow news day?

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”
— Winston Churchill

I don’t even like football, but you do have to admit it’ll be cool to be situated in between (aka: in the fan coverage area of both) the two Superbowl contenders this year. Lafayette is a bit closer to Indianapolis, but definitely still close enough to Chicago to pick up a significant number of fans.

Maybe it’s only cool because I’m used to being in the shadow of the Browns, who are usually pretty bad and even if they weren’t their colors are ugly — I mean brown & orange are both ugly alone, together the combination is hideous. I’m just sayin’. — so I wouldn’t be able to support them. Yes, I judge sports teams by superficial things like their colors and logo. I know nothing about sports, what else would I be qualified to judge them on? I am after all the girl who went an entire semester making her football picks for the newspaper based entirely on which school or team had the best Web site. (The sad part is I didn’t end up with the worst record.)

I’m kind of inclined to root for the Bears, but ONLY because of the Obama video I linked to a few weeks back. (Which isn’t nearly as cute given his and Clinton’s recent announcements. I’m behind them both. I say run together. A black man and a woman as a major party ticket would shatter plenty of glass ceiling even if they didn’t win. Plus, it would open it up for Oprah’s bid in 2012. lol.)

Reflections on Mindy McAdams’ post on how j-school grads don’t get it.

As a prospective student looking at Kent State I attended a scholarship competition that included a luncheon with a member of the faculty. I enthusiastically told him I was interested in online journalism. Even today I remember his response as if it came 10 seconds ago, “If you want to write for the Web, you should do the electronic media track, radio.” I scoffed and told my mother as we drove home that afternoon that he was crazy.

Four years later, that’s probably the best advice I ever ignored. It came from a professor who went on to be one of my mentors, though I doubt he remembers ever saying it, and in hindsight I’m sure he, too, is glad I didn’t take it. I wouldn’t be half the journalist I am today if I had.

Still, any of my friends or professors can tell you that last fall I preceded just about every discussion of my pending graduation with the caveat, “If I find a job…”

It’s not that I wasn’t prepared. (See my previous post.) I was. More than prepared. Willing to do anything in journalism. Willing to move anywhere. Willing to learn anything an editor asked me to. My resume was solid; short of a major metro internship, I don’t know how I could have improved it. I knew HTML and CSS and could shoot photos and edit video. My Photoshop skills rivaled and in many ways surpassed my photo-j peers. I was implementing convergence in the newsroom I presided over. To top it off, I was a reporter with solid writing and editing skills, as well as interviewing and research adeptness. There was only one skill I left j-school wishing I’d had time to learn better and that was Flash, and even there I knew more than most.

But I’m from Akron, where the newspaper I grew up reading and loving was sold, bought and sold again this year before having a fourth of its newsroom gutted. Plus, let’s admit it, reading Romenesko is depressing. Not only was I entering a competitive job market in a field undergoing a transformation, but also every day it seemed I would be competing with a dozen or more newly unemployed people who had the one thing I didn’t: experience. The odds seemed stacked against me.

Then I had a breakthrough. In November I went to a job fair. I attended discussions where I heard what my j-school counterparts were (or in many cases weren’t) learning. I interviewed with editor after editor, each receptive to my skills and ideas. They, several of whom I had contact with since, saw the potential that even I didn’t. They helped me realize what I couldn’t have known without talking to editors actually in the field: I got it. Apparently, too many of my peers didn’t. I was the prototypical new j-school grad, or as one editor later told me after a job interview, “the most prepared recent graduate for today’s job market” he’d ever seen.

That confidence helped carry me through the final month of school with minimal “if I find a job” talk. It also helped me score several interviews and land my once unfathomable first job before my degree was even two weeks old.

I don’t know where the students McAdams discusses are coming from, but I do know it’s not from my school. Because even the professor who once looked at Web journalism as a novelty, easily pushed to the side of the curriculum, has come around. He, too, gets it.

I agree with everything she says students need to learn. But I realize what many of those students don’t: even with a degree and a job, I still have so much learning to do. That’s what makes the future exciting.

Other things worth reading: What Rob Curley, whose speech at KSU last spring probably sealed the deal on online journalism for me, thinks students should know (also his thoughts here).

I saw this post on Lifehacker that referred to a post at NextPath: “13 Things I Wish I Learned In College.” I was intrigued. As a recent college grad, obviously I’m encountering things in the “real world” I never knew or thought to ask about before… But not many.

(OK, number 12 and 13 on the list weren’t covered in my classes or in my work at the paper. But I did cultivate a strong enough relationship with my professors that I know I could call them up and they’d give me their honest advice.)

I have always felt I was prepared for life after graduation. Although I took my “studies” seriously and performed well in the classroom, performing on cue skills like writing a 15-page term paper the night before it was due, B.S.ing an essay question and cramming for a 150 question multiple-choice test the morning of, I also learned the practical skills that you actually need beyond the hallowed halls of higher education.

I realize that my major was in many ways far more practical-based than most. For one thing, from day one of college I was interviewing and writing stories. Day one. That was a trend that only continued as the classes became more intense, and I learned to juggle my life as a student with my life as a reporter and editor at the student newspaper. (Personally, it wasn’t so much juggling as acquiescing that as much as I’d rather focus on being a better reporter, I was in fact at college to get a degree, and to get that degree sitting through Microeconomics and Cultural Anthropology was a necessity.)

My DKS peers and I often joked when we saw kids just hanging out in the student center or sledding on Blanket Hill that we wondered what it was like to “be a normal college student.” But, I guess, if not feeling overwhelmed and unprepared for my chosen profession, as many of the commentors on those posts say they were, was a trade off, I’m glad it’s one I chose to take. Granted I come across things that I may not have done before (especially as I’m beginning a new job), but I definitely have the skills and background to figure them out and the backbone to ask for help when I need it.

I guess it goes back to what I said all along, college is what you make of it.

I don’t know if we’ll ever learn that some things, race in this case, shouldn’t be satirized.

I just saw a story on the AP wire about the Princeton student newspaper publishing a satire column poking fun at Asian stereotypes.

Oh boy. Having personal experience with the sensitivity race brings to the table, especially in opinion pieces, especially when you’re trying to be funny, I can say I’m glad it wasn’t me. But I wish we could learn from each other’s mistakes. The editor is quoted:

“Using hyperbole and an unbelievable string of stereotypes, we hoped to lampoon racism by showing it at its most outrageous,” the note said. “We embraced racist language in order to strangle it. At its worst, the column was a bad joke; at its best, it provoked serious thought about issues of race, fairness and diversity.”

For background, in Fall 2004 a column was printed in the DKS basically poking fun at black stereotypes and repeatedly using a derivative of the n-word in an attempt — and knowing the writer, who is also a stand-up comedian if that tells you anything, I believe it was very much his intent — to get the conversation about those stereotypes started.

It got the conversation started all right. It got the conversation attention in the local media. It got the conversation rolling with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission. It even got the conversation going over at Romenesko.

And what I and my fellow journalists learned as we sat on the couch in the Stater newsroom discussing it the next day was that we didn’t get it. The conversations about the potential reaction that should have taken place before it was published instead took place after. We talked a lot about our own reactions and experiences, about what our other friends and professors were saying and what the other media outlets and our professors thought. We learned from it and became a more sensitive news organization because of it.

Just wish it was a lesson we could pass along to anyone else who, like the Princeton paper, didn’t get to partake in our too-little, too-late conversation that fall.