Holiday reading list

For your holiday reading pleasure, find the following links to some award-winning magazine essays and articles:

1) Steven Brill’s essay, “The Rubber Room,” focuses on the New York City teachers who don’t teach but can’t be fired.

2) Bethany Vaccaro’s piece, “Shock Waves,” concerns a family dealing with their brother’s brain injury, caused by an I.E.D. explosion in Iraq.

3) “The Goldstone Illusion” by Moshe Halbertal details the ridiculousness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

4) William M. Chace’s  “The Decline of the English Department” ponders why fewer and fewer college students major in the humanities.

5) “Is Food the New Sex?” by Mary Eberstadt examines the flip-flop of food and sexual mores.

6) Malcolm Gladwell’s “Offensive Play” looks at the lingering effects of football violence.

(I culled the list from David Brooks’ column in the New York Times.)

Boot Etage komplett

I’ve finished laying the boat’s floorboard. I went ahead and put a coat of primer on the forward section — although that won’t be the final color. It is distinctive, though.

Next will be the dashboard — easier to do that before finishing the deck on the bow. I need to buy a steering wheel. I like some of these on ebay.

I’m traveling with the family to North Carolina this week followed by a trip next weekend to Memphis for the Liberty Bowl. My East Carolina Pirates will be facing the Razorbacks of Arkansas. Argghhh!!!

Is there a Santa Claus?

From the New York Sun, Sept. 21, 1897:

… Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding…

– Francis Pharcellus Church

Merry Christmas to all… and to all a Good Night!

Unbelievably responsive journalism from the AJC

Less than two hours ago, I criticized an AJC news article for failing to be careful in their reporting on an allegation of sexual misconduct regarding a high school counselor. The article’s lede read that the counselor had been “arrested for fondling a student…” I noted that the wording was too definitive, since he hadn’t been convicted of anything. My blog fed my post to both Facebook and Twitter.

I just received a message via Twitter from the AJC. It read: “Thank you for bringing that to our attention. The problem has been addressed. http://bit.ly/60dDwo”

The article’s lede now reads: “A Cobb County high school counselor arrested for allegedly fondling a student has declined to resign.”

Wow! Talk about embracing the new media environment. Three cheers for the AJC and their digital journalists. When I’m finished with my dissertation, I plan to write an article for American Journalism Review highlighting these and other changes the AJC’s been making. They should be a model for the newspaper industry.

Sloppy journalism from the AJC

The story reads:

A Cobb County high school counselor arrested for fondling a student has declined to resign.

Frank Robinson, 45, has been accused of touching the intimate parts of a 17-year-old female student, who was in his office at Lassiter High School. Robinson turned himself into police Saturday morning, and was released from jail later that day on $5,000 bond.

He hasn’t been convicted of anything, so the lede is far too definitive. A more accurate wording could have been “he was arrested on charges that he fondled…” or something else that makes it clear that it’s just an allegation. The fact that he’s not resigning makes it clear that he’s not admitting any culpability.

Some good news about newspapers

Dan Kennedy writes that the newspaper industry isn’t doing as bad as we may think:

At a moment when the newspaper business is hanging by a thread, it seems strange to suggest that maybe things aren’t that bad. After all, as the Newsosaur, Alan Mutter, points out, 142 American newspapers shut their doors in 2009, and nearly 15,000 jobs at US newspapers have disappeared during the past year.

Yet if you had believed the headlines, you would have expected the mediascape to look a lot worse for print.

Last December, Tribune Company, whose holdings include the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, filed for bankruptcy. Wall Street bad boy-turned-online provocateur Henry Blodget was predicting the New York Times‘s parent company would run out of cash. Right on cue, the Times Company threatened to close its second largest newspaper, the Boston Globe, which at one time was projected to lose $85m this year. And Hearst similarly announced it might shutter the San Francisco Chronicle in the face of mounting losses.

As 2009 draws to a close, all of those papers are still alive, if not especially healthy. The largest papers to stop printing in 2009 were a pair of second-ranked city dailies, always vulnerable during a recession: Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, which went out of business, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which moved to be online-only. For most folks living in other large metropolitan areas, surprisingly little has changed.

If you don’t have time to read the rest, he has three basic points:

1) Newspapers are reasonably profitable –  but many of them have loads of debt that makes things look worse than they are.

2) Newspapers had gotten fat with staff, particularly when viewed in the new media environment.

3) Newspapers are finally learning how to attract readers and advertisers to the Web.

A little good news for the new year, mayhaps.

Das Boot Updaten

I’ve been working on the boat for the past few months off and on. Here’s the progress so far:

I’ve laid the floorboard on the bow. This will be storage space under the top decking, so I didn’t worry about it looking that pretty. Just need to putty up some holes and paint it before I top off the bow.

With the help of a good friend, I’ve laid the floorboard supports from the back of the boat to the dashboard (well, where the dash will be.) This took a little while because the instructions weren’t really that clear on how to do it. I even called the boat plan designer and he told me that much of the cabin construction was “up to the individual builder.”

And, I’ve added those strips that go down the sides to form the walls.

So, I’ve made some reasonable progress. Before I leave for my post-Christmas excursions, I plan to finish the floorboards. I’ll need go to Home Depot to buy some more plywood. Not sure about the thickness — thick enough that it won’t sag when people stand on it, but thin enough that it won’t unnecessarily weigh down the boat. Any suggestions?

$1 million charity CEO

Here’s some more fantastic public record reporting from Atlanta Unfiltered:

Dr. John Seffrin, CEO of the American Cancer Society since 1992, earned $1 million-plus last year thanks to a hefty deferred pay package, tax records show.

The Atlanta-based non-profit, which eliminated 140 positions this year, paid Seffrin a base salary of $685,884 for the year ending Aug. 31, 2008. It also kicked in about $360,000 more toward his benefits and deferred compensation.

A supplemental retirement plan sets aside deferred compensation, paid in addition to employees’ standard pension, for Seffrin and other Cancer Society executives. The non-profit reports that income each year to the IRS, even though the recipients won’t collect it until retirement. That amount includes employer contributions as well as growth in the retirement plan’s value.

Seffrin earned $947,687 in salary and benefits in fiscal year 2007 and $810,796 the year before, tax records show. His 2008 earnings reflected a 29 percent increase over 2006.

I know the arguments — these charities have got to pay heftily to compete with the private sector. But, you know, I just don’t think I could accept a million dollar per year salary at a charity for cancer research.

Politifact and truth-seeking

The St. Petersburg Times’ Politifact is a pretty good Web site. In fact, it won the Pulitzer Prize. A regular feature fact checks a healthy collection of quotes from figures on both sides of the political spectrum. Editors then determine their level of truthiness. Pretty good reading and apparently pretty free of bias. Here are a few good ones:

“President Obama’s proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions,” but China and India will still be allowed to increase their emissions.” — Sarah Palin

“Today and every day, an estimated 14,000 Americans will lose their health insurance coverage.” — Tom Harkin

The Climatic Research Unit e-mails show that the science behind climate change “has been pretty well debunked.” — Tom Inhofe

President Obama has “the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year.” — Karl Rove

Depending on your political sensibilities you may already suspect which statements are true and which are lies. Click on Page 2 below to find out where they stand.

Watch out Slanket and Snuggie…

There’s a new sheriff in town … “The Cuddler.”