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History of Journalism Part 1, through eyes of 58-year-old lifer (blog version)

A different version of this is posted at AL.com. To see other columns and stories by Mike Oliver on AL.com  check here.

My headline probably should have been everything has changed and yet nothing has changed.

I’m talking about the news business.

I can’t believe the business model changed so much in my 35 years in the business. But not so difficult to see why  if you think about it.

Here’s the old business model in one long run-on sentence — because it just  seems to do a one sentence history. OK here it goes the biz model:

Chop down trees in Canada, take them to the mill and have them made into giant rolls of newsprint, ship the rolls to hundreds, thousands of newspapers where reporters were scraping together information by traveling to murder scenes, sitting through 8-hour court sessions, trying to get into closed meetings of public officials, rummaging through records, getting obituaries ready to publish, and then writing writing writing in somewhat coherent language before sending the stories on a deadline to editors who fiddled around with them a bit and then moved them on deadline to the folks who printed the stories using news presses, running off 10s of thousands of 30-page newspapers  with many dozens of articles written just hours ago, having  trucks to haul them away, to kids on bicycles who throw them in the yards of thousands or collectively millions of people, occasionally accidentally hitting a potted plant on the porch, breaking it into large clay pieces On the ground. Dirt.

Every day.

And the woman walks by the newspaper box drops in a quarter and pulls out a paper. And the man calls the subscription line to complain the paper was 20 minutes late. “How can I get my news before work if it’s late?”

Every day.

Hard to believe that business model failed.

I signed up for this business while the Titanic was in full luxury cruise mode — but I love it, old and new. We’re still proving a valuable service, I think.

Of course, news organizations were slow on the uptake. Profit margins of 20 percent and higher were common and seemingly fueled complacency.

This led to, what may later be seen as survival moves, or, in some cases overkill, laced with greed, as layoffs swept the industry and once giant  news organizations such as Tribune Co., MediaNews Group and Knight Ridder imploded.

Meanwhile reporters have always wrestled with new technology: beepers, portabubbles, trash 80s, video cameras the size of small Volkwagens and walkie-talkies bigger than bricks. These all gave way to hand-held devices that could do anything: take pictures with your phone?

Back in the day, they’d look at you funny if you  used your phone to take a picture, deadpanned comedian Norm McDonald while pretending to dial a rotary phone. “Stand still,” he said, dialing.

With my long career arc in the business I feel I have some perspective. I’m going to compare a day in the life of a reporter circa 1985 with now.

Here’s a typical day in a newsroom, old school vs. today.

OLD SCHOOL:  Early morning coffee, sausage and biscuit and gravy in the newspaper’s cafeteria. Or make your own crappy coffee in newsroom

TODAY: Early morning coffee, breakfast sandwich from Jacks or fancy coffee brought in from Starbucks or a militant coffee shop that makes you feel shame about your coffee decisions. NO CREAM WITH THAT! ONLY EMU MILK! The barista shouts. Or, of course, you can make your own crappy coffee in the newsroom.

OLD SCHOOL: Go to assigned seat adjacent to file cabinets stuffed so thick with documents the drawers don’t close. Turn on table-top video display terminal.

TODAY: Go to any empty desk you can find (hoteling) and set up company issued laptop or your own or both. The gear comes out of your company-issued backpacks, which smell bad because you left a banana in it last week.

OLD SCHOOL: Check the answering machine on your desk top telephone.

TODAY: Tweet. Check emails, Facebook.

BOTH: The meat and potatoes of the day was calling sources, meeting with sources. Interviewing by phone or in person, depending on how many stories you are juggling.

OLD SCHOOL: Trudge to the courthouse or whatever records depository you needed to pick up the material. Type up public records request  and send it via snail mail if the presumed to be public records are  withheld.

TODAY: Go online, get records. File public records request if needed — via e-mail.

BOTH: Write it up. Whether you still scribble in a pad or take a tape recording and use an app voice translator, it is retrieved information that you must now make sense of and tell readers what happened or is happening. Deadlines would be hard old school,  a specific time or times (depending on editions and page placement. ) Today deadlines are 24/7. The time deadline can often be NOW in this environment, depending on the story.

So as I said earlier, nothing has changed but everything has changed.

Rare to find a kid on a bicycle delivering the paper anymore.

And the trucks come to haul them away, to kids on bicycles who throw them in the yards of thousands or collectively millions of people, occasionally accidentally hitting a potted plant on the porch, breaking it into large clay pieces On the ground. Dirt. Rosebud.

 

 

 

 

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The Doors — 519

ALBUM: The Doors Greatest Hits  (1980)

MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$$

Man, what do you say about the Doors? They became a phenomenon while lead singer Jim “Lizard King” Morrison was alive and an even bigger one after he died in 1971.

As Rolling Stone magazine in 1981 famously put on the cover a photo of the handsome lead singer with this headline:  Jim Morrison. He’s hot, He’s sexy, and he’s dead.

It had been 10 years since he overdosed  in Paris on drugs after many months of erratic behavior including arrests for drugs and exposing himself at a concert. But the band’s music was seeing a resurgence surrounding a book and a movie.

I truly believe this Greatest Hits album is all you need. They had the best-worst discography of all time. In other words they had some amazing songs that you wondered where they came from —  because  they would be side-by-side on albums with some truly awful  stuff.

On this album most of the songs are good, even excellent except for the godawful psychedelic tune Not to Touch the Earth, which like Five to One, thankfully not on this album, showcases everything bad about the band, trippy psuedo poetry from Morrison, and psychedelic guitar-organ interplay.

But then there was the good stuff.

Compare the aforementioned horror Five to One to LA Woman. In the latter song the band kicks into a thump thumping blues rift and Morrison’s words suddently make some sense, not profound but propelling what is essentially a long jam song with speedup-slowdown parts.

Drivin’ down your freeways
Midnight alleys roam
Cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman
So alone, so alone
So alone, so alone

Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light
Or just another lost angel, city of night

Mr. Mojo’s rising …

Jim Morrison busted.

The musicians were good. Morrison strained too much on his voice. He certainly thought it was better than it was, but it was effective most of the time and he was the quintessential good looking, hard partying, artsy leaning, rock star. Robby Krieger on guitar was above average. Ray Manzarek on keyboards was outstanding and probably the real brains behind the music.

The thing I  find fascinating stepping back on all this is how good some of the good songs were. Light My Fire is a classic that Frank Sinatra could have sung. So is Touch Me.  And Riders on the Storm is timeless. Roadhouse Blues is a raucous rock and roller, also with timeless feel.

The lyrics are poetry, rarely great or even good poetry, but  fitting right in and often doing their job as lyrics to Doors music.

On glaring omission on this collection is The End, famous for its Oedipal overtones and the darkness of death. It was featured in the movie Apocalypse Now — but it’s a long dark song and I’m not missing it here.

OK, I have to tell you my  prank story involving Morrison and Birmingham News colleague. Ready Tom?

Nah, not yet, going to save that for a post solely dedicated to pranks.

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Is this my last column? (blog version)

This is not my last post. At least as far as I know this minute in time.

Because I have an incurable brain disease my life will likely be shortened; I just don’t know by how much.

So this has  me thinking about my last post.

I’m still getting along pretty well at 58 after my Lewy Body dementia diagnosis about 20 months ago.

Why think ahead to my last post? I don’t really want to think about it. How bad I’ll be when I can no longer type. I may not even know my last post when I write it.

But I’m thinking about it because I want to make the life I have now as precious as I can. With full knowledge of my assets and deficits, financially and physically.

I want to make decisions directly related to those things. I want to provide for a smooth transition for me and my family. Let’s call it transition defense.

Let’s make super difficult times into not-so-difficult times. It’s easier to smile, laugh and be with your loved ones if you aren’t worried about how to pay the light bill after retirement.

Everybody is going to die. There has been no change in the human mortality rate in, oh, forever. It’s holding steady at 100 percent. (Trust me, I keep my eye on this stat.)

Death should be an open conversation. My wife, Catherine, as a pastor who has worked as a Registered Nurse as well, has visited and cared in both of her roles for dozens of critically ill people in Florida, California and Alabama. Too many didn’t leave instructions or at least legally binding ones. She has helped from the patient’s advocate view to make sure the patient’s wishes are kept.

That means questioning our health care systems where doctors are taught to save and prolong life but not how to prepare for death. The system is  set, intentionally or not, to financially incentivize interventions and heroic measures. When the patient is a pain addled  95-year-old person, open heart surgery may not be the best idea . The system  doesn’t  do death well.

Have you thought about it? Like I’m doing here. Got a will? Power of attorney? Does your spouse or someone you trust know about all savings accounts, investment accounts, retirement funds? Passwords?

Heck, I’ve got more passwords than brain cells at this point.

If you have a spouse will they stay in the house? Or downsize? Maybe it’s time to think about downsizing now. Maybe you should look at assisted living facilities or step-down communities that provide increasing care depending on your health situation?

Do you have a financial plan for retirement? Other than waiting for Social Security. Are you at the age where you need to start moving the stock heavy positions in your  IRA or 401(K) to safer havens  like money market, cash or bonds?

Seek advice from a fee-only financial adviser. In other words, one who will take a flat fee, say $300, and build you a financial plan without trying to sell you any investments for which he or she may get a commission. Ongoing financial oversight of your investments generally costs about 1 percent of your holdings.

Have you talked  about death specifically. Funeral. What do you want to do with your body? Cremation? Have your ashes shot out of a cannon like Hunter S. Thompson? Pour the ashes in the ocean.

Do you want your wife or husband or trusted love one to authorize pulling the  plug or do you want your doctor to make every effort to keep you alive? Do you want that at age 85? age 95? Age and condition would be key considerations.

There’s a specific thing called Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) which you would need to discuss with your family. What happens when you become incapacitated and can’t make the decision yourself?

I do know I don’t want to consume a lot of health care resources when I’m too incapacitated to blow my own nose. I would like to say goodbye in a final column, go home and  kiss Catherine, Hannah, Emily and Claire on the cheek then slip quietly out the back door..

‘Night night,” I’d say.