COMM 150, 207, 337, 393, etc. --sportswriting

Cross-posted to all my journalism blogs. -- pe

I surfed into this column by ESPN Page 2 sportwriter Scoop Jackson while I was "reading the paper(s)" on the Web this morning. It was linked to Jim Romenesko's blog on newspapering. I don't follow sports very closely (other than Illinois Statehouse politics). So I'm not familiar with Jackson. But this time he was writing about a meeting he had with high school journalism students in Kansas, and he headlined it, "A Fresh Perspective on Sportwriting." I think some of you will enjoy it.

Jackson says the kids had been studying his writing, and they came at him with a depth of knowledge and interest:

They came with it. Straight -- no chaser, no ice, no water back. They didn't ask about how this person was or what type of person that person was. What's Shaq like in person? Have you ever met Tom Brady? Is AI as cool as he seems? Who do you think is going to win the World Series? Is Derek Jeter really that cute in real life? None of that. They didn't come with the standard, star-obsessed questions that sportswriters usually get when we walk into a school full of young girls cute like Kaley Cuoco and young guys smooth like Shia LaBeouf.

Instead, they asked about the writing. The art of storytelling and meeting deadlines. Angles and ideas. They asked about the seriousness of what it is that we sportswriters do and how we approach our craft differently every day, so that we can continue to generate interest. They came authentic.

And Jackson came back at them with candid answers. I liked the way he said, "that sports journalism, just like sports itself, is a business first -- that the writer's goal is to provide meaningful content and the job of the company that employs us is to make money." My sport was politics, and that's how it was back in my newspapering days -- I was working for a business, and my job was to make the politics meaningful for my readers.

And I liked what Jackson said about writing. Like this:

... I told them -- as I had once written -- that nothing I write will ever be considered for "The Best American Sports Writing" because of how I write, but that should never be a writer's goal: "Learn to enjoy the process of writing and the end results will take care of themselves." My mouth to their ears.

I told them that as writers, we should believe in the craft first, self second. In that order. Always.

He recommended the kids read widely, "that expanding their reading base beyond sports will make them better writers because -- as much as we'd like to think it is -- life is not all about sports." He even suggested a reading list, which I'll let you read in his column.

And I especially liked what Jackson said about editing, and being edited. One thing you get used to when you're a professional writer is having editors change your copy. And one thing you have to learn is the humility to realize when they've made it better. So I liked this bit:

Before I left Blue Valley Northwest in Overland Park, Kansas, Matt (one of the two students who sent me the e-mail that initiated this whole thing), still with the smile on his face that appeared the second I walked from backstage to surprise him at 8:30 a.m., said something to me.

"Scoop, you know the [New England Patriots and coach Bill] Belichick piece you just did? The one titled '22 Questions?' Well, I read it a few times and you actually have 25 questions in the story not 22."

"No sirrr," I said back. "I made sure there were 22 questions in that piece. Trust me, there's exactly 22."

"Sorry," he said while handing me a copy of the story he had marked up, as if he were already an ESPN editor. "There's 25, Mr. Jackson. I counted."

Which I knew he did. He was thorough like that. I knew he was right because I now knew that's who he is. That he didn't want to test me or check me, just make sure that in his eyes and in the eyes of every other student in the school I remained the best writer I could possibly be, that I remained his inspiration -- which is why his teacher knew I should meet him in the first place, why she wanted me to meet all of them.

COMM 150: Gatekeepers, cellphones in Mynamar

As demonstrations continue in Mynamar, a former British colony still better known by its colonial name of Burma (and always called that in Britain), new communications media are serving the people who hope to overthrow a repressive military regime. According to The Guardian, a highly respected paper in the U.K., "the protesters challenging the government are ready to risk their lives so the world can hear their story. Armed with mobile phone cameras, they have become the eyes of the "saffron revolution."

Revolution or not, it's called by that name because it's being led by Buddhist monks, who wear saffron robes. Guardian correspondent David Jimenez, reporting from Rangoon, says:

Today, the regime has calculated that it can again win the propaganda battle if it controls the traditional media. It is wrong. The military had forgotten about the internet and the mobile phone, two weapons with which the protesters have managed to grab the world's attention.
Kyaw, 23, a medical student, says he has sent various videos to the BBC and dissident groups based in Thailand, using the camera in his mobile phone and a very slow internet connection.

"It is risk," he says. "The soldiers arrest anyone who takes photos, destroy their phones and beat them up. But we have to show the world what is happening."

Remember gatekeeper theory? In this case the gatekeepers are the regime, and the protesters are using new media to get around them. Another new media weapon is the social networking website Facebook, where 100,000 members have joined a group supporting revolution in Mynamar.

It's not at all certain at this point who will win. Jiminez reports:

Yesterday, the junta finally reacted, closing down the country's principal internet server - one of the many businesses it controls. One official claimed the shutdown was the result of damage suffered by a major supply cable connecting to the internet.

Internet cafes in Rangoon have been closed and their owners threatened with reprisals.

A London-based Burmese blogger, Ko Htike, said the move meant he would not be able to feed in pictures of "the brutality by the brutal Burmese military junta", but vowed to continue pushing information back into the country.

The regime has tried to counter the impact of information smuggled out of the country with monotonous news broadcasts that nobody follows, and surreal official versions that describe the soldiers as victims.

What is happening now in Mynamar is something that has played out time and time again.

When the Soviet Union fell apart and Eastern European nations like Hungary and what is now the Czech Republic overthrew their communist governments, fax machines were new ... and because they were new, the authorities didn't know how to control their use ... so they were an important medium of communication for the revolutionaries. When Serbian militias moved against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in the late 90s, email and the Internet allowed Kosovars to evade the gatekeepers and tell the world about the repression. Repressive governments always try to control the means of communication ... to act as gatekeepers, in other words ... and those who seek to oppose them always seek new media to get around them.

COMM 207: Assignment for Tuesday (Oct. 2)

This was a spur-of-the-moment assignment, so I'm posting it to the blog. Post your answers in the comments field to this blogpost. -- pe

The assignment has two parts:

• Read back through Chapters 5 and 6 in "Modern News Editing," and find something useful you didn't know before. The key here is that it has to be something useful, something that doesn't make your eyes glaze over ... and/or something you can use in your own writing or editing other people's writing.
  
• Write a paragraph explaining how you will use this pearl of wisdom as you scale the heights of journalistic excellence in your own career.

The purpose of the assignment, frankly, is partly to get you to go back through the chapters. But I also want to get a sense of what's important to you about "Working with Stories" and "Word Watching."

COMM 150: Entertained or informed?

Neil Postman, media critic and author of a book titled "Amusing Ourselves to Death," says "Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world" in part because of television news. (I would add newspapers, magazines and news websites.) "The problem," Postman says, "is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining."

Here's an example the Associated Press posted to the Yahoo! news pages Tuesday. It's about global warming, as complex an issue as the world faces today. The news peg was a United Nations summit on warming. Here's how AP headlined it:

'Arnie,' 'Al' push climate action

And here's the lede, written by AP special correspondent Charles J. Hanley:

UNITED NATIONS - "Arnie" and "Al," Republican and Democrat, shared the world spotlight to press for climate action, adding a touch of star quality to the staid proceedings of a U.N. summit.

The two headliners, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Vice President Al Gore, also highlighted by their presence President Bush's absence from the eight hours of high-level speechmaking Monday on what to do about global warming.

Bush, who did take part later in a small, private U.N. dinner with key players on climate, rejects the idea of international treaty obligations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" blamed for global warming — an idea central to U.N. climate negotiations.

The Republican Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, has taken the lead on emissions caps at the state level, signing legislation mandating such reductions in California.

"One responsibility we all have is action. Action, action, action," the former Hollywood action star said as he helped open the summit, winning warm applause from the assembled presidents and premiers.

The Democrat Gore — a Hollywood figure himself as the lead in the Oscar-winning climate documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" — took his star turn at a summit luncheon, where he cited a lengthening list of global warming's impacts, from the shrinking Arctic ice cap to disappearing lakes in Africa.

"The need to act is now," Gore told delegates to the one-day summit, which drew more than 80 world leaders. "We need a mandate at Bali." ...

Gore was referring the annual U.N. climate treaty conference, scheduled for December in Bali, Indonesia, where the Europeans and others hope to initiate talks for an emissions-reduction agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

See what Postman's talking about?

The rest of the story is solid and substantive enough, and the Bali conference will be important. But the AP's treatment of Schwartzenegger and Gore as celebrities -- complete with references to their movies -- is a prime example of packaging news as entertainment.

Here's a question. You don't have to blog it, but do think about it. Would you be surprised to see this story -- or something like it -- mentioned in the 50-point question on the Oct. 10 midterm? Just askin'.

COMM 207 -- copyediting and proof reading symbols

As we were going over our copyediting exercises in class the other day, I realized the list of editing symbols on page 00 doesn't have all the symbols that people commonly use (see below for what those zeroes are about). I also realized something I should explain better -- there are several systems that people use, and they're slightly different.

In the days of hard copy editing (i.e. on paper or in "dead tree" format), copyediting used to be the word used for editing copy before it was set in type and proofreading for editing the "proof sheets" you got back from the printer's. (Basically, copyediting made more use of corrections between the lines while proofreading was mostly in the margins. Why? Because you didn't have room to write between the lines after it was set in type.) Those differences don't matter as much as they used to now, since most editing takes place on computers. But they do explain why we have two different symbols for some things.

Why am I confusing you with another set of symbols? Because our book features mostly proofreading symbols, and some of the copyediting symbols are easier to use. If you go to Rich Cameron's L - Copyediting webpage linked below, it'll show how to delete extra words by crossing them out and drawing a line over them. His way is easier than using the little curlique (actually an old-fashioned "d" for delete) that book editors use. Cameron is also good on showing the difference between opening and closing quotation marks. Here are some links:

• The University of Colorado has a good summary of both editing (on the left) and proofreading (on the right) marks in two columns. Notice when they put marks in the margins, they draw a circle around them? That circle is a signal to the printer not to set what's inside the circle.
  
• Nancy Edmonds Hanson of Minnesota State University at Moorhead has a shorter list of the more common symbols if you need one you can print out in one page and take with you.
  
• Rich Cameron of Cerritos College has a very clear explanation of copyediting symbols, how they differ from proofreading symbols and how to use them in copyediting. Highly recommended.
  
• We won't use it much in class, but University of Chicago style is the standard for proofreaders' marks used in book editing. All of them are written in the margins, often with a guideline drawn to the word, letter or punctuation mark to be corrected.

A footnote: Those symbols (in the first graf where I filled in zeroes instead of looking up the number) are on page 73. I left it like that, because filling in zeroes like that is a very useful professional writers' trick. If you use it, you don't interrupt your train of thought while you track down the right figure. But of course you do have to go back and fill in the numbers later. If you're easily frustrated, this tip may be worth the semester's tuition for you.

COMM 150: Class, 'marketplace of ideas'

Since we are bound to talk about what's going on in the world in Communications 150, we are going to find issues on which we disagree. And we are bound to give voice to our disagreement. That's good. Arguing issues, in the sense of staking out a position and citing evidence to back it up, is what scholarship is all about. And a university can be described as a "Marketplace of Ideas" -- i.e. a place where ideas are exchanged, and buyers have the freedom to choose the best among competing ideas. The concept is usually traced back to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who in 1919 said:

If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition...But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas...that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.

The idea and its application in the classroom are explained further in the Wikipedia article on the "Marketplace of Ideas." (I will hand out hard copies so you can keep them.) It is also associated with Thomas Jefferson, who wanted the University of Virginia which he helped establish to "be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind, to explore and to expose every subject susceptible of its contemplation."

Also a champion of the marketplace of ideas was the French philosopher Voltaire, who added an important wrinkle: You don't have to agree with everybody else in the marketplace. Famously, he wrote another philosopher (an abbot), saying, "Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.'' But I like even better something Voltaire said in his "Essay on Tolerance" published in 1755:

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.

That's what I want us to strive for in our classroom.

COMM 150: TV, print, pictures and 'The War'

Recently we've been reading excerpts from Neil Postman, late media critic at New York University, suggesting television dumbs down the news -- and therefore the quality of public debate in America -- largely because it is a visual medium that doesn't lend itself to sustained, rational discourse. Hence all the stories on things like Britney Spears' and Lindsay Lohan's drug, alcohol and marital problems, the reemergence of O.J. Simpson as a celebrity defendant (on charges that don't sound like they amount to very much) and George Clooney's weekend motorcycle accident.

But that's too easy. It's almost like shooting fish in a barrel.

Postman has a point, and it's important. One of the best discussions I've seen of it is in, of all places, an article in a fanzine dedicated to Pink Floyd songwriter Roger Waters. Written by John Ackermann, it has one of those says-it-all titles, "Now.........This; or (I've got Thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from)." Ackermann says we get our information about the world from TV. But we're ill served by it:

The thing is, TV is not really a medium well suited to exposition. TV was conceived of , and is, a medium for the conveyance of amusement, or entertainment. TV is a series of programmed visual images and an endless string of pictures. Hence the subtitle of this book, "Public Discourse In The Age of Show Business." Unlike a book, or the printed page, one does not have to really concentrate too long or hard to get the meaning of a picture. A picture is not so much worth a thousand words, more than it renders a thousand words superfluous and useless, although a thousand words would convey far more information and meaning than a single picture.

Very true. But what Ackerman is saying here cuts both ways.

Pictures don't have to lie, and TV doesn't have to dumb it down. This week we have as good an example as we're likely to see in years of what a powerful medium TV can be, as the Public Broadcasting System airs Ken Burns' series on World War II.

Rick Atkinson, critic for The Washington Post, says in his review of Burns' series "The War," it is a "compelling, flawed gem of a documentary, which enriches our emotional comprehension of an event second only to the Civil War in its enduring resonance in the national character."

Atkinson's onto somthing there. Pictures show emotion, and a 15-hour series like Burns' can connect the pictures in a sustained narrative that I believe matches the level of discourse you find in the print media. "War and Peace," after all, is a novel ... but it's basically a story, a narrative. (It also made not one but two great movies, a Hollywood version starring Audrey Hepburn and a Soviet version starring, literally, the Red Army.) It's also the longest book I've ever sat down and read all the way through.

In class today, we will watch the Public Broadcasting Service's extended preview of "The War," the 15-hour series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that is airing on PBS stations nationwide this week. It's available on YouTube if you want to see it again at home. We'll read Atkinson's review in The Post before watching it.

Of the reviews I've read of "The War," Atkinson's impressed me for its awareness of its visual impact:

Watch for the images, not for the history. There is little substantive analysis, about the war or its many subplots. The story of Midway, among the signal battles of modern times, is dispatched in 2 minutes 13 seconds; available footage, or the lack thereof, presumably determines this summary treatment. Scholars will find occasional annoyances ...

Moreover, the largest figures of the war remain rather inconsequential, as though no one above the rank of captain had much to do with events. "Generals make plans, plans go wrong and young men die," the narrator, Keith David, informs us gravely. Just so, but plans also go right and young men still die. And it is the making of those plans that gives war its intellectual coherence, that lifts it above simply chaps biffing about.

These are more than quibbles. But "The War" achieves a cumulative power derived from those thousands of images -- many of them unseen by even the most devoted History Channel viewers -- and by those survivors chosen to bear witness.

Like any good reviewer, Atkinson points out the show's good points and its bad points. Read it and decide for yourself, but I think on balance he finds more good points and the good points are visual. Toward the end he says:

Perhaps "The War" is best viewed as one views an art exhibition, focusing on the pictures and not on the captions or the curator's exegesis. The narrative is just scaffolding for the images, many of which linger long after an episode ends: the vivid color footage of flamethrowers on Saipan; the photo of pedestrians strolling past a smoking body next to a burning city bus; the group portrait of butchered soldiers in the dead of winter, their frozen eyes open and lightly dusted with snow, like macabre Jack Frosts.

Here, too, are enduring brush strokes: women climbing on their knees up the steps of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Waterbury, grateful to God for the Japanese surrender; or the Jewish GI who kept his dog tags with the little "H" stamped on them -- for "Hebrew" -- inside his glove so he could quickly toss them away if captured by the Germans; or the Marine on Peleliu using his bayonet to extract gold teeth from a Japanese soldier not yet dead. A woman from Mobile, recalling the sight of caskets lining a train platform in St. Louis, asks, "How could you not cry?" How not, indeed.

If "The War" is occasionally turgid, so is "Beowulf." Such is the risk of epic. ...

As you watch the preview, see if you agree with what Atkinson says in the review, especially about the visuals. See if you think Posttman's comments about TV as a visual medium fit the the handling of pictures and their emotional impact in this show. How is it the same as what you see on the evening news? How is it different? Post a paragraph or two in response as comments to this post.

COMM 150, 337: Writing, print, TV, "hot" and "cool" media

One of media critic Neil Postman's main criticisms of television news is that TV is better adapted to showing visuals than it is to sustained, logical thought. Therefore, he says, we have lost some of the clarity and precision of thought we had before TV replaced print media as our dominant source of information. To the extent Postman's argument is founded in fact (and I believe largely it is), the difference lies in the nature of print media.

When we read words on a page, we don't have emotional cues like body language and facial expression to help us understand their full meaning. All we have is the words, and that forces writers to be careful of how they present facts through the written word. The late Richard Marius, director of the writing program at Harvard, noted that the difference was already apparent to the ancient Greeks. In A Writer's Companion (1991), Marius wrote:

Reading is hard work. The written words lie there, as Socrates told Phaedrus in a famous dialogue, without the help of a living person to explain them. They must speak for themselves. If we misunderstand them, no voice speaks out of the writing to correct our mistakes. (6)

The upshot: Writers have to be clear and logical. "Good writers," adds Marius, "know how easily they may be misunderstood, how quickly they may fatigue readers, and how hard they must work to convey the meaning they intend."

And readers, as Marius suggested, have to make an effort to understand what they're reading. Some 2,500 years after Plato's dialogues, a Canadian scholar named Marshall McLuhan said print is a "hot" medium for that reason. It requires some work, some mental exertion, some interactivity on the part of the reader. But TV, McLuhan added, is a "cool" medium. All we have to do is sit back, watch the pictures and listen to the audio -- we don't have to construct meaning like we do when we read. Cool. We just sit back and soak up the message when we watch TV.

For a Harvard prof, Dick Marius knew a lot about practical writing. He started as a teenage stringer for the twice-weekly paper in Lenoir City, Tenn., where people let him know about it "loudly and vehemently" if they "could not understand what I wrote about the garden club or high school commencement" (3). A Writer's Companion started as a handbook for writing students at Harvard, but some of Marius' advice for student writers can tell us a lot about the difference between print and electronic media:

The movies, radio, and television have inundated us with speaking by all sorts of people who might find it difficult to write an essay. We hear their words, their tones, and on TV talk shows see their carefully informal and humble grins. ... We are also accustomed to seeing speakers wander from one point to another, break off thoughts in midutterance, say confusing things, and contradict themselves. But we put up with such things on late-night talk shows, perhaps because we are looking at celebrities and they are amusing and perhaps because we don't have the energy late at night to do anything but sit there and look passively at the tube. (6-7)

We also put up with it because on TV, we have all the visual cues. As McLuhan would say, it's a "cool" medium. We don't have to work as hard to get meaning out of it, so we hardly work at all.

Print is a different kettle of fish altogether. Says Marius:

Writing and reading are far more demanding. Readers construct meanings from texts. Texts do not have body language and intonations. They stand alone. Writing represents more extended and more complicted thought than the though expressed in most conversations. The writer develops ideas in chains, one thought carefully linked to what has come before it, be aware what is there now, and anticipate what will come in the next paragraph or on the next page. Reading puts a strain on short-term memory ... (7)

One way of putting it is that we shift from print to electronic media, we are getting away from a written, inherently logical way of communicating and becoming more dependent on a more visual, emotional way of communicating. How does this affect society?

Works Cited
Marius, Richard. A Writer's Companion. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991.

COMM 337, 207: Cat story

An ongoing saga in The Anchorage Daily News as a lawsuit over custody of a cat goes to trial today in Palmer, Alaska. The case falls well within the you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it range. Says Mat-Su borough reporter Andrew Welner:

Thursday, trial began in civil court to decide who owns Carl [the cat], who survived a February 2006 fire that destroyed Fosselman & Associates, an accounting firm on South Bailey Street. Catherine Fosselman, the firm's owner, according to her employees disregarded her car keys and company files to carry Carl to safety that night. She is suing the woman, Staci Fieser, with whom she placed Carl for safekeeping but who has kept Carl since.

Fosselman said she never meant for Fieser to have Carl permanently. She wants him back. And she wants $100,000 in punitive damages for loss of his companionship, she testified Thursday.

OK. How do you play something like this when you have to write it up? Straight. Absolutely straight.

Some great quotes, though. Here's how Welner handled jury questioning:

Prospective jurors were asked Wednesday whether they had any pets and whether a trial over a cat is a waste of court time and resources.

"If somebody had my dog, I'd probably sue them to get my dog back," said one woman.

"I'd rather see them come to court than go to the extremes of violence," said another.

One man said he could decide who gets the cat, but couldn't envision awarding monetary damages.

All three were eventually picked to serve on the 12-member jury, with two alternates, hearing the case.

There's nothing Welner could have added to that.

COMM 150: Bread, TV and circuses

Complaints about television and the commercialization of the Internet are important as we debate the effects of high technology on mass communication and the ideals of a democratic society. But we also might do well to remember people were lodging similar complaints long before the Internet, TV or the mass media ever came along. Often the complaint is registered in terms of "bread and circuses," a reference to the days when plebs (common people) in Rome were provided with a wheat ration and public entertainment after the Republic was replaced by the Roman Empire. According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the phrase comes from the satires of the 1st- and 2nd-century poet Juvenal, who complained the Roman people had given up their rights as free citizens. Here's the passage in English and Latin (if you want to show off):

... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions - everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

... iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli
uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim
imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se
continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat,
panem et circenses. ... (Juvenal, Satire 10.77-81)

How is this different from 21st-century America? How is it the same?

COMM 207: Exciting news! A typeface's birthday

Today's editing exercise will be shortened a little because of a story I saw this morning in The Chicago Tribune. I know you'll be disappointed by that, but this is big! It's huge! Helvetica type, the face you see on everything from airplanes to Beemer ads and your 1040 tax form, is 50 years old this month.

In a syndicated story picked up by The Trib, Vanessa Gezari of the St. Petersburg Times went looking for "signs of age: the slightest sag in a once-pert C, the slope that can creep into the shoulders of an M, the struggle for balance -- almost imperceptible to the untrained eye -- in the limbs of a solidly built K."

But she didn't find any!

"Time has been good to Helvetica," she said. "Very good."

Some people just hate Helvetica (maybe partly because of the tax forms)? But others love it. You should be warned that grown men can get misty-eyed and sentimental about a well-turned typeface. (You also should know your journalism instructor has been a fanatic about typography ever since he worked with master Linotype operators during the 1970s, admired what skilled craftmen they were and learned from them a little bit of the craft of newspaper production.) Gezari's story explains why Helvetica is considered "the typographical signature of the modern era."

Gezari also explains, along the way, what to look for in a typeface and some of the psychology behind typography. There's a lot more to it than you'd think.

One thing the online version of the Trib's article doesn't have is a good picture of Helvetica. But Linotype GmbH, owner of the type house that developed the face in 1957, has type specimens and a brief overview in its online type gallery. Wikipedia has a brief and reliable history of Linotype, indexed under its former (and better-known) name Mergenthaler Linotype Co.

COMM 150: News, paper, books, newspapers and TV

In 1985 Neil Postman of New York University wrote a book called "Amusing Ourselves to Death." It was one of those books whose title tells it all, and it is widely considered to be prophetic. His basic thesis is that we are affected by technology in more ways than we realize, and mass communication technology has changed the way we perceive the world ... even the way we think.

Your assignment: Read the linked excerpts from Postman's book and answer the questions below. Post your answers as comments to this blogpost.

But first, some background.

Print media are rational and linear, according to Postman. "To engage the written word means to follow a line of thought, which requires considerable powers of classifying, inference-making and reasoning. It means to uncover lies, confusions, and overgeneralizations, to detect abuses of logic and common sense. It also means to weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, to connect one generalization to another." That's how it's been since Gutenberg invented printing in the 1450s, but now electronic media are changing that.

At least in the United States, Postman says, television news "abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville."

(Dada was a theory of modern art in the 1920s and 30s. It was kind of like a visual form of punk rock. It wasn't supposed to make sense, and the more shock value it had, the better. And vaudeville was kind of a lowbrow popular theater, more like what you'd hear on an adult comtemporary or easy listening station than punk. But you get the idea. Postman doesn't like TV.)

While Postman concentrates on TV news, he doesn't let the print media off the hook. He says they're getting more like TV in their "superficiality and theatrics." In fact, most media analysts would say the print media -- including newspapers -- have gotten even more TV-like in the last 20 years.

The upshot, according to Postman, is a culture that fed a steady diet of "misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing." He adds:

In saying this, I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?

Like most people with a theory to argue, Postman almost certainly overstates his case. But he's been very influential.

Your assignment: Read the excerpts linked to this blogpost, and answer the questions below:

1. Writing in the 1980s, Postman said Americans had strong opinions about Iran during the "Hostage Crisis" in 1979 and 1980 but very little knowledge of "the tenets of Iranian religious beliefs" or "the main outlines of their political history" because TV news didn't go into that kind of background in enough depth. How would you rate coverage of the Middle East today? How would you rate our knowledge of Middle Eastern religion and history?

2. Postman suggested then-President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s got away with giving "mangled and perhaps misleading accounts of his policies or of current events in general" in part because TV audiences weren't interested in straightening out the facts. Postman said other presidents of the day had similarly misled the American people. Does the nature of the news business in a day of 24-7 reporting allow similar things to happen today?

3. Postman said in 1985, "The result of all this is that Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world." He blamed a steady diet of trivial stories, but also a failure to discriminate between serious stories and fluff ... and a tendency to present serious stories in a fluffy manner. "The problem," he said, "is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining." Do you think the same would hold true today, or have things changed?

COMM 207, 337: Student press furor

Cross-posted to my journalism blogs.

Content advisory. The subject matter of this controversy is offensive to many readers.

A student newspaper in New Britain, Conn., is in the news for a joke about locking a "14-year-old Latino girl" in a closet and urinating on her. The editors say they're within their First Amendment rights to publish it -- and the consensus is they're probably quite correct about that -- but the incident raises questions about professional standards and student journalism.

The cartoon appeared in last week's edition of The Recorder, student paper at Central Connecticut State University. It is difficult to describe, but The Hartford Courant made a creditable effort when it broke the story last week:

The comic strip printed in Wednesday's edition features a triangle-shaped figure talking on the phone with a square figure. When the triangle tells the square that his urine smells funny whenever he eats a certain cereal, the square asks if his urine tastes funny, too.

"I dunno," the triangle replies. "I'd have to ask that 14 year old Latino girl tied up in the closet."

In one of the panels, a chain can be seen over a closet door, and a voice from behind says "I'm hungry" in Spanish.

Underneath the comic, a message from the paper's editors says, "The Recorder does not support the kidnapping of (and subsequent urinating on) children of any age or ethnicity."

This is strike two for the student paper, the Courant noted. Last school year it published what was intended to be a satire praising rape as a "magical experience" for "ugly women."

Central Connecticut State president Jack Miller has come under fire for not cracking down on the paper, but he says he has to balance interests at a public, tax supported university. "While I recognize that the Recorder's right to publish is secured by the First Amendment and a broad range of judicial court decisions, I must say that I am offended by the decisions of the editorial staff, and Mark Rowan in particular. ... I share the concerns of my Latin American colleagues and students and others for the hurt inflicted by the editor's decision to run this offensive cartoon."

I have to sympathize on both counts. The First Amendment does protect offensive speech, but I also think the paper was highly unprofessional.

• The Hartford Courant, arguably Connecticut's most influential daily, summed up its attitude today in an editorial headlined "Recorder Hits The Gong Again." The Courant said controversy can be a good thing if it's in a good cause, but neither the rape column nor the earlier cartoon remotely qualify. "Both used questionable, insensitive and crude humor to demean women. They also appear calculated to generate controversy for its own sake. As such, they're a morally empty exercise; the literary equivalent of sticking one's tongue on a street sign in winter and reading aloud from the First Amendment."
  
  
• The Michigan Daily, a independent student newspaper in Ann Arbor, Mich. Opinion page blogger Gary Garca also noted The Record's past lapses and adds, "The cartoon is not only degrading and humorless, it has no point. Offensive speech just for the sake of being offensive is unproductive and hardly the point of the First Amendment. While some of the responses have been a little dramatic, including that from the university’s president who wants to cut off advertising (which would essentially shut down the paper), this type of material shouldn’t be accepted." [Boldface type in the original.]

One last point. Latin American women don't call themselves Latinos. They're Latinas. If they're aware enough of their heritage to use the word, they'll know "-a" is the feminine ending in Spanish. So the cartoon is not only tasteless and demeaning. It's ignorant.

COMM 207: An "Outfit" you don't wear in Chicago

We're reading about words for class Tuesday, and here's a piece of writing that uses words in a special way. It's a column by John Kass in the Sunday Trib. Kass writes a metro column in which he tries to project a wise-guy, streetwise tone (modeled after longtime Trib, Sun-Times and Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko), and this one is full of inside dope. It's also full of words and word choices that are self-consciously (I think a little too self-consciously) pure Chicago-ese. It's about a man named Raymond John "Rayjo" Tominello, and here's the way Kass describes him.

Tominello, 67, is considered a mathematical genius. He was convicted in 1989 of running the Chicago Outfit's illegal sports book operation under the supervision of the legendary Donald "The Wizard of Odds" Angelini and Dominic Cortina.

In 1989, Angelini, Cortina and Tominello all pleaded guilty, a week after their indictment on federal racketeering charges. Tominello served less than a year in federal prison. Angelini and Cortina have since died. But Rayjo still thrives, at least in real estate.

The rest of the column is about a real estate deal in Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's home neighborhood of Bridgeport. Kass' column gets a little convoluted at times, but it's worth looking at, both for what it says and -- more interestingly -- what it doesn't say.

But I was going to talk about words first. By the way, I love that nickname for the bookie. "The Wizard of Odds."

The "Outfit," in Chicago, is what is more commonly called the Mafia or the mob. So why doesn't Kass use the more common word? My guess is he's slyly patting his readers on the back, insinuating they're so with it and knowledgeable they don't need to have it explained to them. But in case anybody needs it (and some readers will), Kass slips in the explanation in the next 'graph when he speculates that Bridgeport developer Thomas DiPiazza, a mutual friend of Tominello's and Daley's who has consulted with the mayor on other real estate ventures, "has a mobbed-up business associate."

You'll want to read this part carefully, because Kass suggests a little more than he comes out and says. And in the next 'graph after that, he adds:

Of course the mayor will say he didn't know about it. And that may be true. He might not have ever heard the name Rayjo in his entire life, even though they're about the same age and grew up in the same neighborhood. Can't coincidences happen in Chicago?

What's the effect of this disclaimer? What is Kass saying here? And what is he not coming right out and saying?

Kass goes on, with one of the better quotes I've read lately. It comes when he calls Tominello's lawyer for comment.

"I really can't answer any questions. Have a good day sir," said [the lawyer], before hanging up the phone. Tominello did not respond to repeated attempts to contact him, through his attorneys and at his homes. That's too bad. It would have been nice to hear how he transformed his life, from Outfit bookie to Mr. Real Estate with Tommy D.

Kass adds, in the same innocent tone he's used before:

Investing in real estate with guys who know Mayor Daley isn't a crime, not even for a bookie. Understanding Chicago doesn't come by reading official press releases, but by reading the tracks of exotic creatures in public records.

I'm not going to say Kass' column is a hatchet job. It appears to be well sourced, both through interviews with people who have knowledge of Chicago real estate and examination of public records. It's not unknown for real estate developers to have relationships with elected officials. Nor is it unknown for them to have relationships with the Mafia or the Chicago Outfit. And, most important of all, Kass is writing a bylined column. That means he's allowed to speculate.

But I think he's also patting himself on the back, and patting his readers on the back, by hyping Chicago's rough, tough, streetwise image (not to mention his own) and the city's reputation for political corruption.

COMM 207: New extra credit

Look at the correct answers to the last extra-credit question, and rewrite them with the commas in correct AP style. Post as comments to this post.

COMM 207: Trademarks (in-class assignment)

Here's a link to a recipe for a cake that resembles a common pet owner's household product. Revise it for publication in a family newspaper that uses the Associated Press stylebook. See especially the sections on trademarks and brand names. Attribute it to the blogger who posted this version of the recipe. Be sure to follow AP guidelines on the use of trade names. We will discuss some of the issues in class before you start writing. Due in class. Today.

(You may need to surf around her website to find the blogger's real name.

(Oh, and as long as we're talking about surfing around, the easiest way to verify a trade name is to Google it ... oops! ... I meant, perform a keyword search on the Google search engine. See how it works? If you get a corporate webpage as your first hit, you're dealing with a registered trademark.)

Here are some questions to consider:

• Would you run it in a family newspaper? What are the arguments for running it? What are the arguments against?
  
  
• What are the rules for using a trade name? When do you use the trade name, and when do you use a generic? When do you use caps and when do you use lower-case?

Here's a summary of the law on trademarks put up by Iowa State University. It says in part:

If the owner of a trademark has spent time and money in presenting a service or product to the consumer, the owner should be able to protect this investment by being allowed to prevent others from using the trademark and profiting from the owners investment.

Test your copy editor's eye, by the way, on this passage. See the error? It's still a good statement of the basic law on trademarks. And the Iowa State webpage has one of the best explanations I've seen of the reasoning behind it.

COMM 150: Social responsbility of press

Here's an important supplement to the discussion of newspapering in our textbook. It's known as the "social responsibilty theory" of the press, or media. Here are some readings that will help you better understand how the news media are supposed to fit into our system of government and society, and to come to your own evaluation of how well the media live up to their responsibilities.

First, a "History of Journalism Ethics" by Stephen J. A. Ward of the University of British Columbia. It's a good, concise explanation of how the role(s) of the media have evolved since the 1450s into the 21st century.

One thing that's maddening, though. Ward summarizes an important book titled Four Theories of the Press (1956). But he only lists three:

Authoritarian. Prevailing theory when kings and inquisitors censored the press -- or tried to! -- during the 1500s and 1600s.
Libertarian. The English and American theory of a free press owned by private enterprise as a counterbalance to government.
Social responsibility. A 20th-century offshoot of the libertarian model, with more emphasis on the duty of the media to society.

OK, OK. But what's the fourth theory of the press? Read on.

An online journalism course for high school students in Oregon has an excellent summary of the "Four Theories of the Press." There you'll find out the fourth theory was called "Soviet-Totalitarian." (Remember, the book came out in 1956 at the height of the Cold War.) It's basically the same as the authoritarian model.

Also on Oregon's COOLSchool website is a thought-provoking discussion of "Four Functions of the Press." For the record, they are: (1) To Serve the Economic System: (2) To Entertain; (3) To Inform; and (4) To Influence.

How do these functions complement and/or conflict with each other?

"Knowing the functions of the press will help you understand the media and how it works in a free society," suggest Sue and Dean Barr, Eugene, Ore., authors of the curriculum. "Remember, the purpose of a free press is to guarantee free and open debate and discussion. If the media is too cautious, then people come to think the press should make them feel good and bring consensus. There should be a level of discomfort; if no one is ruffled, then the media has failed."

I would add only this: These issues, and how any conflicts among them might be resolved, were all over the midterm spring semester.

COMM 207: Extra credit for Thursday

As an inducement to get more people looking at the blog and answering the daily extra credit question(s), I will try to set this one up so it is not too intellectually demanding. Answer all three questions.

1. In what large German city is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung located?

a. Frankfurt, Germany.
b. New Berlin, Ill.
c. Frankfort, Ky.
d. the Cozy Dog Drive In on South 6th Street in Springfield, Ill.

2. How many spaces do you leave after a period when you're writing copy that will be set in type?

a. one.
b. two.
c. three.
d. as many as you @#$%! well please.

3. Do you see a pattern in the answers to these questions?

a. yes.
b. no.
c. maybe.
d. what questions?

Post your answers as comments to this blog.

COMM 207: AP Stylebook, the parts to know

Here's a list of some of the really confusing and really important entries in the AP Stylebook. Go through the Stylebook and circle the key words and the page numbers. Carry the book with you, and/or keep it in the bathroom for those moments when you want something quick to read and don't have enough time to curl up with "War and Peace." Some are easy to learn. Some aren't.

But you'll learn them in time. The sections below include the most important differences between AP style and the style you used in college papers:

abbreviations and acronyms. It's important. And tricky in places. I wouldn't try to learn it all at once, but I would start using the more common abbreviations. Using the right abbreviation in the right place is one of the marks of a professional journalist's copy.

addresses. Picky, picky. And arbitrary, arbitary. Learn at least the main guidelines, and know to look up the exceptions.

capitalization. In general, you'll use fewer capitals in AP style than you did in English papers. But there are lots of exceptions and special cases.

cents. See also dollars and percent. The principles are related. Write dollars and cents like this: $4 without the zeroes if it's a round number, $4.15 or whatever if it isn't. Cents like this: 15 cents. Percents like this: 30 percent.

composition titles. Basically you put titles in quotes for a newspaper that you would ordinarily underline or put in italics for college papers.

directions and regions. It's all about when to capitalize something like "central Illinois" and when not to. It's basically like the rule you learned in English classes, but it has a couple of wrinkles of its own.

fewer, less You'll make fewer mistakes if you know this, and you'll be less likely to get it wrong, too.

governmental bodies. Newspapers are full of government news. I know, I know. That's why they're losing readers. But till the last dying newspaper goes out of business, you'll be writing about governmental bodies. This item tells you how.

it's, its It's essential for you to put the apostrophe in its proper place.

midnight. Also see noon. The only times of the day you don't use "a.m." or "p.m." You don't use numbers, either. The Stylebook explains why.

more than. Also see over. Use "more than" with numbers of things, "over" with heights.

numerals This is probably the one that's hardest -- and most important -- to learn in the whole book. It's important because the rules are different than they are in more formal writing, and following the AP rules on numbers will mark your copy as being written by a pro. So keep the Stylebook in the bathroom, so your fancy can lightly turn to the section on numerals instead of, say, Tennyson whenever you're looking for a few minutes of light reading matter.

plurals. Did I say numerals was the hardest? Maybe it's plurals. What's worse, numerals and plurals come up all the time. You'll never run out of fun stuff to read in the AP Stylebook!

possessives. AP's rules defy logic. So you'd better learn them. More reading for the bathroom.

state names. The tricky part is the abbreviations, which are not the same ones the Postal Service uses. Learn a few you're likely to use, like "Ill." and "Mo." Look up the rest. I guess you could memorize them, but do you really think you'll be writing that much about Casper, Wyo.?

time element, time of day and times. Picky, picky, picky. But the rules make sense once you get used to them.

titles. Don't try to learn them all. Just know this section is there when you need it. And you'll need it often.

trademark. The principle here is you don't give free advertising to a commercial product. Nor do you want to dilute the value of somebody else's brand by using it loosely. See brand names above, and, for an example, "Xerox," below.

Xerox The stylebook says: "A trademark for a brand of photocopy machine. Never a verb." Why? It's a trademark that belongs to Xerox Corp. The verb you want, by the way, is photocopy.

yesterday AP says: "Use only in direct quotes or in phrases that do not reference a specific day." Why not? It's a relative term, so it changes every day. What's yesterday today is day-before-yesterday tomorrow, and what's tomorrow today is today tomorrow. Clear enough?

We'll look at punctuation separately later. But for now, here's one rule on commas you can start practicing now: When you have three items in a series, don't put a comma after the last one. It should look like this instead: "... ham, eggs and toast." And the rule on spaces after a period is different, too. Only use one space after a period. Not two, like you were taught in school. One. Always. Only one. If you double-space after a period, you mess up the justification (the spacing between words and columns). And you look like an amateur. You don't want to do either, right?

COMM 207: Extra credit question(s)

I promised you I would post my next extra-credit question in a more obvious place than the last one, which was hidden in plain view -- in my response to your comments on the reading we did in class Tuesday.

My questions were: (1) Now that you've read Chapter 3 in our textbook, how much editing do editors do? (2) Were you surprised to learn that? And (3) Do you consider this a trick question?

Congratulations to Jill, who not only found and answered the question, but found something in the chapter I hadn't noticed. She emailed me:

After looking up a few definitions of editor, "How much editing do editors do?" tends to be a trick question. Before taking any journalism classes, I always thought of editors as someone who gramatically corrects articles before they appear in the newspaper. In Chapter 3, I learned there are many different types of editors. The copy editor seems to be the one who looks over the grammar and corrects typos. The other editors are in charge of making sure everything happens exaclty the way it should in the newsroom. One definition of editor I found stated, "ed·it - To prepare (written material) for publication or presentation, as by correcting, revising, or adapting." This is what I had in mind before taking this class. Another definition said, "ed·it - To supervise the publication of (a newspaper or magazine, for example)." After researching this, I found that your question could be considered a trick question depending on which definition you go by. If you are a copy editor, you do a lot of correcting and revising. If you are an editor-in-chief, your duties would include more supervision of the publication.

In COMM 207, we will be dealing mostly with that first sense of the word.

But, now, I promised you an extra credit question. And I promised not to hide it like I did the last time ...

... so here's your extra-credit question for Tuesday:

Katie Couric can wear a blouse of what color in order to silence her critics?

Did everybody see that? The extra credit question is in the paragraph above. If you've read this far without noticing it, you've gone too far. Turn around and check the 'graf above. This time, you can post your answers below as comments to this blog post.

For extra, extra credit, tell me the name of the media critic for The Washington Post who quoted Couric about blouses and the blog about newspapering that linked to his story. You should know this guy's name. Hint: It starts with the same letter as Katie Couric's first name and rhymes with "shirts" (but not "blouses"). He's one of the best in the business.

If you read "Heart of Darkness" in high school, here's another hint. This Mistah _____, he not dead. He's very much alive.

If you're wondering if there's any point to any of this, stop wondering. There is. You should get in the habit of reading media criticism, and you should know the name of the media critic for The Washington Post at a minimum. I just think you're more likely to remember it if you go through dumb little exercises like this to learn it.

COMM 207, 337: Newspapers, news and the internet

Cross-posted to both my masscomm. blogs. -- pe

Here's one from a guy you should get familiar with, media critic Jack Shafer of the electronic magazine Slate.com. This column on how newspapers serve up a steady diet of leftovers from their internet editions is especially timely for students in Communications 207 (editing for publication) because it updates the chapter on news editing and copy flow we read for Thursday, but it's important for all of us.

What does the future hold for newspapers? That's anybody's guess, but you'll be able to guess better after you read Shafer.

And it will affect all of us, even those of you who have no intention of going into the newspaper business (or like me who have no intention of going back to newspapering). The news business still sets a lot of the standards for the communications industry. So it's worth knowing.

Besides, questions like this -- what does the future hold for newspapers? -- have a way of popping up on midterm and final exam essay tests.

Read it, and be ready to discuss in class.

Romenesko's newspapering blog
Here's another link. It's to Jim Romenesko's blog on newspapering and the newspaper business. Everything you need to know (and some you don't!) to keep up with the industry.

Check out, for example, the link to Washington Post metro columnist Mark Fisher's column on the Capitol Hill blogger who "outs" gay politicians. The headline catches Fisher's tone nicely: "Who Among Us Would Cast the First Stone? This Guy." Romenesko keeps track of the news biz for the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. There's a world of information in the FAQ about his blog, which is titled, logically enough, Romenesko.

COMM 207: Read, post, discuss (2nd chance)

Here's another chance for you to: (1) get some more practice posting comments to the blog; or (2) make your first successful post to the blog. For today, I asked you to read the part on ethics in Chapter 2. In class, I want you to read the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists and react to a story that's in the news today.

The Code of Ethics gives four basic principles -- which I summarize as tell the truth, minimize harm, be accountable to your readers (and not somebody else) and clean up your messes -- and lists any number of factual instances where the priniciples might apply.

The story is about a Washington, D.C., blogger who "outs" homosexual lawmakers and policy makers. He says what he does is ethical because they vote against gay causes. Others, including some of the people he's outed, would disagree.

Here's the question: According to your interpretation of the SPJ Code of Ethics, is it right for somebody writing a political newsletter to "out" congressmen over a public issue of this nature? Or should their right of privacy be respected? Please note: I am not asking whether you think homosexuality, politics and/or Congress are moral. The issues I'm interested in are journalistic ethics and the right to privacy. In analyzing the question, it will help you to make a list on scrap paper of which specific parts of the SPJ Code are involved in this story. You may get different parts of the code telling you different things -- i.e. don't publish because ..., do publish because ... and so on -- because that's the way it often happens in the real world.

If you're not sure how to post, ask me. I'll be glad to help you.

COM 150, 207, 337: Career advice for journalism students

Cross-posted to all my blogs.

Found while surfing The San Francisco Chronicle's website SFGate, a "30 piece" by outdoors writer Paul McHugh with a bit of advice for any young people considering making journalism a career." He sums it up in three words:

Go for it!

The column, which ran in the print edition Thursday, was McHugh's last. He's retiring after 22 years on the outdoors beat.

"I'm about to fold my tent and take a hike," said McHugh. "And yes, I do mean that literally."

Like many journalists, McHugh said he's proudest of the stories that exposed abuses and helped correct them:

One great part of a newspaper job is that it awards permission to ask questions and seek answers. I've focused on trying to wield that power well, particularly while facing folks who didn't seem inclined to answer. This job hasn't been only about fun; I've striven to address real resource and public-access issues.

On a few occasions, I've been able to perform investigative work that's at the heart of our journalistic mission. I broke up a cabal of the heedless and malfeasant, helping Asilomar become a well-managed funding source for our state parks department. I ushered an abusive administrator out the door of the California State Parks Foundation, and helped that organization to revive. Fighting for the public felt fabulous. If any of you young folks out there should feel tempted to join the right honorable crusade of journalism, here's my best advice: Go for it! You are needed. Especially if you have the insight and multimedia skills to help journalism re-invent itself for this new century.

McHugh says, "Humanity's age of exploration, of adventure and of existential challenge is far from over," even though the present isn't very inspiring. Again, his advice sums up in three words: Go for it! He adds:

History's overarching lesson, as far as I can tell, is that a time of ease ought to be used in steady preparation for times of hardship or calamity ahead - which will come to us in their turn, as surely as sunrise. If periods of ease are used only to grow soft and indolent, then after calamity returns, you'll have to shoulder more blame than you might want.

Something worth thinking about.

But what's a "30 piece?"
Back in the days when newspapers received their news over the telegraph, the custom grew up of keying in "30" at the end of a transmission. So "30" came to stand for the end of the story, and a "30 piece" came to stand for a writer's last bylined column. Nobody ever types "30" at the end of a story anymore (except occasionally an overeager public relations intern ending their first press release), but it's a bit of nostalgia that still lingers. Like this:

-- 30 --