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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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Top 10 train songs, dedicated to Railroad Park

So my idea about having a permanent children’s train ride at Railroad Park in Birmingham seems to have fizzled for now.

But it did make me think of train songs.

There’s a milion of them it seems and they are running around my brain.

Proposal to RR Park: I’ll be DJ and play my Top 10 choo choo songs (Plus my two honorable mentions if we have time). On vinyl. At the park.

So, dedicated to Railroad Park,  sponsored by myvinylcountdown.com, here are my top 10 train songs. Plus two honorable mentions. I am judging these on a complicated formula that involves how much endorphins are created  in my brain as I listen to each song.

Now, with the brain monitor hooked up, here we go:

 Honorable Mention: Stoney Larue. “Train to Birmingham”

We’ll start you off with an Honorable  Mention. New song it may crack the list with a little more  time. JA introduced this one to me. Has crying, lying, dying and Birmingham, oh, and a guitar full of blues. Great song. The studio version has a little sad sounding fiddle.

10: Ozzy Osbourne “Crazy Train”

I know i’t old school heavy metal, but I like it, like it, yes I do.

 

9: Cracker “I See the Light”

Not really thought of as a train song but it is in a punch line sort of way. I just like this song. And if you listen you’ll see why I picked it.

8: Grateful Dead: Casey Jones

Classic, but not at the top of my train list.

7: Creedence Clearwater Revival. “Midnight Special”

CCR didn’t have many, if any, bad songs. This train song was one great one.

6: “People Get Ready (There’s a train a-coming)” Curtis Mayfield/ Impressions

I do love it when Rod Stewart sings this song but I have to give this to the original. 

But Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions are hard to beat. Here’s Curtis by himself with guitar, beautiful.

5: Blackfoot. “Train Train”

I saw them live years ago and this was the only song I remember. (Maybe it was the only song they played.) If your kids aren’t head banging after Ozzy, they will be by this one.

4: This Train Is Bound For Glory”- Mumford and Sons, Edward Sharpe – The Old Crow Medicine Show

Good time video almost pushed this higher. Lots of granola and moonshine for this crunchy group of hippie/ roots rockers on a classic, train bound for glory.

3: Bob Dylan. “Slow Train Coming”

Just a good song. Underrated Dylan. Good live version. Alabama angle:

I had a woman out in Alabama, She’s a backwoods girl but she sure was realistic

She said, boy, without a doubt, you got to kick your mess and straighten out, you could die down here, just be another accident statistic

2: Gladys Knight and the Pips. “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

‘I’d rather live in his world than live without him in mine.’ Enough said.

1 (Tie): Johnny Cash. “Folsom Prison Blues.”

Yes, I  copped out and have two as my No. 1. A tie. But I got to those last two and they are such great train songs which  by definition must have a train-whistle ache about them.  After doing this, I looked back and realized I don’t have ‘Peace Train’ by Cat Stevens or some other popular choices for train songs (e.g. Last Train to Clarksville)

But when it came to final two, I could not choose between them. Cop out, yes. But you tell me what to cut. Nevermind, I know which one it will be.

Anyway, it should not be this Cash song. You could do a whole top 10 train songs by Cash alone. And this song might arguably be called a prison song. However, I say, this has one of the most recognizable openings of any train song ever. “I hear the train a coming, it’s coming around the bend.”   The train where people are in fancy dining cars, he laments,  reminds him every day of his lost freedom.

 

1 (Tie)_ Peter Paul and Mary. “500 Miles”

Shuddup. I will defend this No. 1 pick to the ends of the earth or at least 500 miles.

Here is my other honorable mention:  Runaway Train by Soul Asylum and I was considering Clash “Train in Vain,”  then I realized that except in the title, there’s no train a-comin’ in the lyrics. In fact, no train at all unless I’m missing something.

 

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‘Sugar Sugar’: Archies vs. Josie and the Pussycats’ Riverdale version

I  talked on the phone recently with my niece Rachel.  She is 11 and lives in Boulder, CO. Her favorite show is Riverdale, and she loves to talk about  it.

I learned this TV show was adapted from the old comic books featuring Archie and Betty and Jughead and Veronica and Reggie.

I was a big Archie fan when I was Rachel’s age.  I had stacks of the comic books, and I  watched the cartoon on Saturday morning.

K.J. Apa is Archie in Riverdale

I know nothing about CW’s TV rendition of  Riverdale , except that it’s not a cartoon and is very popular with the tween and early teen demographic.

Over the phone with Rachel I started singing “Sugar Sugar’ from 1969.

Sugar, uh uh uh uh uh uh,

Ah honey honey, uh uh uh uh uh uh
You are my candy girl
And you got me wanting you

Talk about a take-you-back-in time little ear worm.  I still remember the words.

“I  like the new version,” Rachel said, interrupting my reverie.

New version? Of Sugar, Sugar?

L-R My daughters Claire, Emily and niece Rachel. Emily and Rachel  watchh Riverdale. It’s Rachel’s favorite.

How could they remake the best song ever by a cartoon character. ‘Sugar, Sugar’ was the No. 1 song for the year 1969.

Here’s what ENews at eonline.com says: “Sugar, Sugar” was originally performed by The Archies, a group of fictional characters from The Archie Show. The song shot to No. 1 on the Billboard 100 chart and stayed there for four weeks, topping songs by the likes of Marvin Gaye, Elvis Presley and The Beatles. 

See what I’m talking about? Archie Andrews sold more 45’s of ‘Sugar, Sugar’ than songs by Marvin Gaye, Elvis, and the Beatles? Also the Rolling Stones and Stevie Wonder. It beat songs like ‘Proud Mary,’ ‘Suspicious Minds,’ Spinning Wheel’ and on and on. (Actually Wilson Pickett did a pretty good soulful version in 1970.)

Archie Andrews. With Betty on tambourine.  And the other wonderful cartoon musicians.

Listen to Archie’s phrasing when he sings ‘Oh sugar, pour a little sugar on it honey,’ deftly  juxtaposing sugar with the sweetness of honey. A brilliant bit of wordplay there.

The real Archie?

What’s not to like: there’s the double-knee crunch dancing of Betty and Veronica; Archie playing a mean rhythm guitar that looks like a Gibson Les Paul; and  all sorts of cartoon shenanigans like Archie and Reggie  turning into a frog or rabbit when kissed.

That kind of splendid imagery can’t happen in Riverdale with live actors, I don’t care what kind of special effects you have these days.

But Rachel insisted the Josie  and Pussycats version at  Riverdale is  by far the best Sugar, Sugar.

In the updated version, they have changed the name of the song to ‘Candy Girl (Sugar, Sugar).’ by Inner Circle featuring Flo Rida, (Vocalizing, I suppose for Josie and the Pussycats). It’s a modern song and the show is a far cry from the Archie of Saturday mornings past.  Parents need to know that Riverdale is a drama about a group of teens that’s based on the classic Archie comics.

According to https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/riverdale#: “The series has a much darker tone than the comics, with events revolving around the murder of a local teen boy, an illicit affair.”

Archie? With a teacher? Maybe things have become, well, real. Maybe too real.

Here’s the new version, with a new rapping intro:

Rachel, my niece,  gives a solid thumbs up to the Riverdale version.

I am partial to the old version, the No. 1 hit in 1969. Maybe the competition will spur cartoon Archie to come out of retirement and get the band back together. (He’s been virtually unheard of since that  bitter break-up song in the 70s:  ‘I Don’t Need You to Carry a ‘Toon.’)

Which one do you like best?

(To comment, click on the headline and scroll to the botttom of the story. For more on the song and the Archies see here.)

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What existed before the Big Bang

NOTE: I wrote this humor piece on Monday March 12, 2018, and published it on my website www.myvinylcountdown.com Tuesday morning. Hawking died Wednesday, March 14  (on Albert Einstein’s birthday. Wink wink.) RIP Stephen. I hope you now know the answers to the  questions you’ve been seeking. 

My blog post:

Perusing my news sources on the Internet, I came across this headline.

Stephen Hawking reveals what existed before the Big Bang

Finally, I thought.

Reading …Oops wow, there it is in the second sentence. The answer the headline promised us. What existed  before the Big Bang:

Stephen Hawking says: Nothing.

Nothing? Nothing existed before the Big Bang. Really?

Clickbait headline for sure.

Physicist Stephen Hawking

What is nothing? Nothing is something, right? At least in my mind. If nothing was not something, why would there be a name for it? And why would we say ‘nothing’ is what was there before something? To ‘be there’, one would surmise that it’s something.

The story  on Inhabitat.com was short but did offer the famed quantum physicist Hawking explaining a bit further. So Hawking goes on to explain that “The Euclidean space-time is a closed surface without end like the surface of the Earth.”

He was, of course,  referring to the four-dimensional conceptual model that incorporates the three dimensions of space with time. He goes through a few more quantum physics hijinx like ‘imaginary’ and ‘real’ time before concluding that:

“There is nothing south of the South Pole so there was nothing around before the Big Bang.”

Apparently this was a widely reported interview. Did you hear the collective expression:  ‘Oh, now I get it.’

Neither did I.

Come on Hawking. Use your words to explain — not alienate.  (Which literally means communicate with aliens).

What if I wrote a story about the news business and  how social platforms are shaping the future of social engagement including virtual reality and messaging apps in order to better monetize content. Don’t like that I bet.

So back to your answer. Nothing.

And your follow-up explanation which I boil down to that last sentence: There is nothing south of the South Pole so there was nothing around before the Big Bang.”

Ok, I don’t want to mess your theory up but did it surprise you there is nothing south of the South Pole?

Stephen, it’s cold.

I’m sure there’s not much north of the North Pole either, no?

Confused? Me, too.

Albert Einstein

So that’s why I decided to call Bert Einstein, third cousin, twice removed from Albert, the world famous scientist who discovered the equation for the theory of relativity, E=MC squared.

Bert, an accomplished scientist in his own right, discovered the equation for the theory of relatives at Thanksgiving:  E=MYaSS, which asserts that the mass of any given relative’s rear end will grow proportional to the  length of  the buffet line, number of desserts, energy not expended and length of stay  (LOS).

(It’s a complicated formula that also incorporates family squabble intensity and gravy.)

So, here’s how my conversation with Bert Einstein went.

ME: Good morning Dr. Einstein. We were hoping today you would sit down and talk about some big physics like your relative Albert pioneered.

BERT: Yes, yes,  Albert had some good ideas. But he was dumber than  a box full of hammers when it came to common sense. Never owned a hairbrush you know.

ME:  OK, Bert, what about this whole Big Bang and what existed before the Big Bang. Scientist Hawking says there was nothing before the big bang, indicating a beginning and end to our universe. But we wanted to see if perhaps you heard Albert discussing this particular question at any time.

BERT: Oh Albert knew all about what existed before the Big Bang. He just never really got around to putting it on paper. You know Albert had 300 socks and none of them matched? He’d spend hours looking for a  matching sock.

ME: Really?  Forget the  socks. Are you saying he knew about what preceded the Big Bang but never wrote it down? This is a big deal. What did he say was there before the Big Bang?

BERT: Well, let me see if I can remember exactly. He said that before the Big Bang there was ‘nothing’ and ‘something’ and ‘everything.’

ME: Wait, wait a minute. He said there was nothing AND something AND everything? How can that be?

BERT: Well it’s a pretty goddamn big universe. Whaddya expect there to be, a  mustard seed?

ME: Well, I guess I still don’t see how something can come from nothing or how there can be everything and nothing.

BERT: That’s why they were all there before the Big Bang, something, nothing and everything.

ME: All where? Where were they?

BERT: Here. And elsewhere.

ME: Your not helping. I got nothing here.

BERT: Well that’s something.

ME: I want everything. I want to know.

BERT: Well, I’ll leave you with this. It’s a circle. God or the universe or the cosmos, it’s a circle. There’s no beginning or end.

ME: Oh. Well,  now that makes some sense. Did Albert say that?

BERT: No I did, after watching Albert all the years doing laundry. No beginning, no ending. Laundry’s never done.

ME:  Well, Bert, you’ve been a big help.

BERT: De Nada

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

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‘I Put a Bean in my Nose’

True story, this week, Birmingham metropolitan area.

Two brothers. Two years old, each. Correct, they are twins.

First boy comes running up to pre-school teacher.

“I’ve got a rock in my nose,” the young one says.

No, really? The teacher is skeptical but concerned.

Is there a bean in this nose? By Jeremie63 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0
She looked up his nose and saw it.

Then she ran her fingers over the outside of his nose. Pebble pops out.

“See,” said the giddy kiddie. “I put it there.”

(Lecture follows about never putting rocks in orifices.)

At this time, brother runs up, equally giddy.

“I have a bean up my nose,” he posits.

No! Teacher approaching exasperation mode.

She looked but could not see a bean.

Are you sure? Teacher asks.

“I put a bean in my nose,” says the chortling darling.

Teacher is concerned but not positive because of boy’s history of tall tales, but brother had a pebble in his nose. Hmmmm.

Teacher rushes child to office where flashlight was employed. Light flooded the nasal canal but still no visual on said bean.

Are you sure you have a bean up your nose? The fledgling otolaryngologists queried.

Shoulders shrugged, hands palms up, smiling, the boy said, “I put a bean up my nose.”

“Here blow your nose,” one said, handing him a tissue.

He took the tissue and did a giant nostril sniffy, not a nosey blowsy.

No. No. No. came the chorus of fledgling ENTs. “BLOW”

Sure as shooting, a bean came flying out.

Sources say there is no truth to the rumors that the bean — an uncooked Pinto  — went through a plate glass window like a bullet.

Moral of the story: Who nose where you bean?