Kerri Kasem and I talked recently about the disease that contributed to the death of her father, world-famous Top 40 disc jockey, Casey Kasem. He died in 2014 of complications of Lewy body disease.
Like myself (and countless others) the elder Kasem was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s. That’s one reason we need much greater awareness of this disease, which affects more than 1.2 million people nationwide, according to the Lewy Body Dementia Association.
Given that we had a similar mission — raising awareness of a little known and little understood brain disease — Kerri, co-host Ashley Marriott, and I talked for a podcast found on her KPOD her podcast website.
I wrote the AL.com post not as a request for some pat-on-the- back or attaboy because our profession faces danger at times. As one of the commenters on my column wrote, we knew we what we were signing up for.
Well, that’s true to a degree. At 22, graduating Auburn University in 1982, I probably had no idea I’d be called into an active prison riot a few years later.
For this column, I wrote about some specific cases, that I had personal experience with to vividly show that violence against journalists, or anybody, is not a joke, Milo. This shit is real.
For the opinion column, I got some reaction from fellow Chauncey Baily Project cohorts Josh Richman and Tom Peele to talk about that project which investigated the shotgun shooting death of a journalist in Oakland, Calif.
Oaklanders know the story too damn well. Someone with a shotgun out to kill a reporter.
The 2007 killing of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey on a city sidewalk was the last slaying of a domestic American journalist over a story.
Until Thursday.
The only thing surprising about the newsroom killings of five Annapolis Capital-Gazette employees is that it didn’t happen sooner. Jarrod Ramos, the alleged shooter, had a longstanding complaint with the paper over a story about his conviction for harassing a woman.
Ramos’ animosity ran on for years through two failed lawsuits in which he represented himself. Then, Thursday, he blasted his way into the paper with a shotgun and killed four journalists and a sales representative.
It came days after Yiannopoulos called for death squads for journalists. He says he was kidding and wrote those words only in a private text. But then he posted them on Instagram.
It was a minor news story, this tragedy at the doorstep of the Oakland Tribune.
But it was a gut check for news people who every day write about and present such tragedies. These stories dot our paper, usually summed up in a few brief paragraphs, daily doses of dead bodies — shootings, stabbings, fatal car wrecks and, occasionally (though not often), a public suicide like this one.
But this one was different — it came to us. On a Friday afternoon, the suicide of Mary Jesus jerked us into real life in real time.
That was her name, oddly, Mary Jesus. And, ironically, she was upset about a possible eviction and being homeless for the holidays.
At 1:50 p.m., feet dangling off the ledge, she slid off the seventh-floor roof holding her nose with thumb and forefinger — as if she were taking a plunge into the water. She hit a light pole on the way down, twisted and slammed face-first into the concrete sidewalk near the building’s front door.
Six floors up, through open windows, reporters and editors in the newsroom heard the eerie, collective gasp from the crowd of onlookers. It was an unearthly, anguished sound of more than 100 people simultaneously drawing air. And then, there was the sickening thud.
People still want news. People still complain about the messenger, sometimes focusing on that more than the actual news delivered.
In Alabama, where I started my professional career in newspapers in 1982, I was regularly hit with criticism from readers that me or my paper, the Birmingham News, were not to be believed because we were the liberal media. I’m not into labels and that’s part of the reason I’m writing about this, but I think most objective observers would describe the Birmingham News during the time period I was there 1982-1986 as a ‘conservative’ paper.
I left the News in ’86 to go work for the Orlando Sentinel in central Florida.
Same thing in Orlando. In the 1990s, the paper, the Orlando Sentinel, was often described by people I encountered as “socialist” and “left-wing.”
Rachel Maddow and Chris Mathews
Our key columnist at the time, was Charley Reese, a quixotic, quiet, friendly man with a national reputation who railed against Abraham Lincoln and praised Robert E. Lee.
It was said at the time that Pat Buchanan, a former Nixon speechwriter, once said Reese (RIP) was the only columnist farther right than himself.
I don’t even think it helped when I pointed out that at the time the Sentinel had endorsed Republican presidents for years.
But when I got to California it was a whole new ball game.
I became a ‘tool of the man’ and worked for ‘big corporate media.’
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.
How many were there at the Alabama Booksmith in Homewood to get a book signed? Looked to be about 200. Amazing.
Sorry I couldn’t stay. Greg Garrison, his son Wes, and I were on the way to a debate sponsored by AL.com, and we would have slowed your two-hour signing process way down.
You and me made note of not seeing each other in a long time. Last I remember was lunch at Niki’s West, your favorite Birmingham dining spot. But that was a few years ago.
Mike Oliver, Rick Bragg at Alabama Booksmith in Homewood
We talked about getting together and having a sit-down talk to catch up. I joked we could spend two hours alone talking about our ailments. And, hell, we’re only 58.
This writing thing, or more specifically, the living thing, hasn’t always been easy but I want to compare your memories to mine over a cup of something, probably coffee.
The goal: Find lots of stuff to laugh about.
I want to reminisce about when we went on tour of West Jefferson Correctional Institution and had lunch with the inmates. Yeast rolls and butterbeans. There was Juicy and the Captain.
Walking out in the yard, the inmates shouted at us: “And the walls came tumbling down.” This was in the wake of the St. Clair prison riot in 1985 and the reason you and I went on this tour of West Jefferson. It led to a story on how the riot went down and prison conditions, which alas, haven’t changed much.
By the way, that Biblical quote (and John Cougar-Mellencamp song) shouted by the prisoners: You turned that into the opening of the story – another Rick Bragg special.
I remember when we got in some pretty big trouble for publishing the inmate’s list of demands.
I remember when we wrote together you’d tap something on the keyboards of our old VDT’s, look at me with a smile, stand up and say: I’ve got to walk that one off.
We can reminisce about the series of stories on foster children lost in the system which won some awards and a big luncheon thank-you from the National Social Workers Association.
We can talk about going to see Tom Petty in Atlanta. Road trip with several other Birmingham News folks, Dennis Love maybe? We’ll remember it.
We can talk about the big party after your first book signing for “All Over But the Shoutin’.” It was Atlanta and several of us ended up crashing on your floor. Or maybe it was you crashing on the floor. We’ll remember it. Luckily you lived right across the street from one of the oldest if not THE oldest Krispy Kreme establishment in America.
Rick Bragg goes for a walk with his mother, Margaret Bragg, who is the inspiration for his new book, “The Best Cook in the World.” (Photo by Terry Manier)
I remember you, me and Howard joining up and navigating the streets of San Francisco. We were looking for fine dining and wound up in a burger joint. It was a good burger joint though.
I can remind you of how my wife, Catherine, pointed out with semi-feigned indignation because my name was in the “Shoutin”’ book (page 158) but NOT her name.
You grabbed a book and wrote on the title page: ‘Dear Catherine, You’re in the book now, Sunshine.’
She loved it.
We got plenty to talk about, my time in California, your wedding in Memphis, Randy, families and friends. I mainly just want to follow up and make sure we do make a plan.
This is about breaking it down. All the way down. To the word.
Word is John Archibald and Alabama Media Group won a Pulitzer Prize last week, awarded for a series of John’s columns that had words that often shined a light on injustice. It’s a huge deal in the journalism business to be given this, the highest award in our line of work.
But what does AL.com’s winning the Pulitzer Prize mean for readers?
John Archibald gave readers insight into an investigation of the governor with examination of dozens of impeachment documents. These are the words from a bodyguard’s journal.
If nothing else, it’s a confirmation that there’s been effort and success at being a watchdog in the public’s interest and an advocate on the right things, the right side.
On the controversy over Confederacy monuments, Archibald said:
At this point in our history – after natural and manmade disasters, after church bombings and scarlet letters on our chests that had nothing to do with football, after the Civil Rights Movement, after revolution and reconciliation, after hard-fought progress and a quest for better hearts, is this really our story?
A 150-year-old war in which our forefathers sought to leave America rather than allow freedom for all?
Is that who we are?
I know what the Pulitzer award means for me:
More proof that words are precious; words can connect us. Or tear us apart.
Words that Archibald used to expose hidden wrongdoings have had effects, both immediate and repercussions we haven’t even seen yet. His words have begun (or continue) the dismantling –slow as it seems — of corrupt politics in Alabama, where deals have for too long been made for the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many.
You know that feeling you get when you lean back on two legs of a four-legged chair and suddenly you realize you’ve gone too far? You know that feeling? A split second of feeling totally out of control?
I feel like that all the time.
That joke reformulated by me from deadpan comedian Steven Wright is essentially about words.
There is not a word for that feeling.
Sure you can say ‘out of control’ or you can say ‘scared’ but none of that matches or encompasses the specific instance of leaning back in a chair and nearly losing it. There’s no one word for that. In fact, it takes several sentences to explain.
My own word for that? Yikes!
But that doesn’t exactly capture everything. And that’s also the word that describes the feeling you have as the roller coaster begins its descent.
There is a word (or phrase) for a feeling that people report to have that they feel like they have been in a place they had never been or are in a situation that they feel like they have already lived through.
English speakers appropriated the word from France: deja vu.
(Technically that’s two words but those two words, six letters total, go together to represent a complex idea. See how long it took me to explain it.)
Words are symbols formed by assembling letters. What are they symbolic of? Thoughts? Are we not thinking in words, already? Take away the words, what do we have?
A frustrated person.
Catherine told me the story of a 100-plus year old nursing home resident, barely 5-feet-tall, who attacked the staff. I mean she hit and kicked the staff. She had a urinary tract infection and that hurt. But she could not communicate that. Getting physical at a century old was all she had to fall back on. The need to communicate is a strong one. One wonders if our world leaders could better communicate, we might avoid the violence that stains humanity.
Someone asked my daughter what her biggest fear was. And she couldn’t think right away what it was, but eventually hit on one that is a big one for many: Fear of failure.
That used to be my biggest fear, and I think a lot of people live with that.
My greatest fear now? It’s losing my words.
Unfortunately with Lewy body dementia that’s a key symptom. I already find myself struggling to come up with some words. This occurs mostly during speaking and not as much when I write.
In conversation with my colleagues and friends it is subtle but I realize it is there: my struggle for words. It’s like in my brain I am searching a cavernous warehouse for one little item, one little word.
It’s an Amazon.com warehouse only when they push a button to have a robot/machine fetch the item from among a million things, the robot sighs. Like the robot in Lost in Space with its plug pulled. I’m left rummaging through this warehouse. I find a ladder, go up to the top shelf and there it is. My word.
I’ve done this before, it’s deja vu.
Actually, my word is ‘restorative.’
“The ocean’s waters are really …., um, really …) I start this sentence in a conversation about the beach, but I can’t finish because I can’t think of the word. Amazon warehouse thing kicks in. I’m on my ladder looking. Why is it always on the top shelf, I mumble to myself.
Cold? someone offers, you mean the ocean is cold?
RESTORATIVE, I finally answer a little too loudly. Everyone sighs with relief.
I have an aunt who has brain damage from unknown origin. Could have been a high fever as a young child, we don’t know. But she’s been this way as long as anyone remembers and currently lives in a group home.
She can talk but does so only if you ask her questions and typically they must be yes or no questions. She’s now in her 70s but seems like a child. She, now and again, will have a little crying jag, clearly out of frustration that she can’t communicate. She’s got so much to say, she just can’t find the words.
Painting by Jean Gill.
She’s a voracious painter. She has won awards. Here’s one of her paintings.
You may remember my stories about Porter Heatherly the little boy who died at 4 of a rare genetic disease. He never uttered a word in his short life but he was loved by many and spurred fund raising and research to find a cure for GM1.
And you may remember me writing about my former boss, now in a memory care unit. I hadn’t seen him in decades, he recognized me and wanted to talk newspapers. But what came out was word salad. He couldn’t string the right words together. And he knew it. And his eyes showed the frustration.
I don’t want that.
But with me, realistically, it will happen. Hopefully some years from now. But some cases I have read about say it can escalate quickly.
So now, while I can, I want to express myself as I have done all my life through the written word. To those who have cared for me, family, friends, colleagues, parents, cousins. Those I never met or haven’t seen in forever who have offered prayers, contributed to my bucket list trip, my Mike Madness tournament. To all those who have put up with my sometimes morbid sense of humor (to Hannah, Emily, Claire and Catherine.)
Hicks prepares to sing at the bus station. (Mike Oliver)
OK, so you know us journalists. Alway looking for the irony, the anomaly, the thing that seems out of place.
It’s Friday and a couple of us in the AL.com newsroom heard about the grand opening of the intermodal bus/train station where featured live would be American Idol star and Birmingham native and barbecue entrepreneur Taylor Hicks.
We ambled on over.
So there was a big crowd of city of Birmingham folks who knew what was going on. The other half of the nearly packed bus station was made up of travelers who seemed confused by the whole shindig. There was no sign, that I saw, that said Taylor Hicks was about to perform. And Taylor is the kind of a guy who would go unnoticed in a Publix grocery store.
I’m leading up to my ironic observation.
The ribbon gets cut. Former Mayor William Bell is there, current Mayor Randall Woodfin was there and council members whom I can’t name and other city folk were there.
So what does Hicks open with. “Living for the City.’
People were dancing, waving hands, clapping, bumping to a cool Stevie Wonder funky groove. I had to admit I was nodding along to the beat.
I still had the song in my bobbing head going back to the office.
Then I remembered the words.
Taylor may have subbed out some words? Don’t know because I really wasn’t able to hear the words clearly with bus station accoustics.
Here’s the words from Stevie Wonder, which would not necessarily be the Chamber of Commerce version of the city.
-=-=–=-=-=-=-
A boy is born in hard time Mississippi Surrounded by four walls that ain’t so pretty His parents give him love and affection To keep him strong moving in the right direction Living just enough, just enough for the city
His father works some days for fourteen hours And you can bet he barely makes a dollar His mother goes to scrub the floors for many And you’d best believe she hardly gets a penny Living just enough, just enough for the city yeah His sister’s black but she is sho ’nuff pretty Her skirt is short but Lord her legs are sturdy To walk to school she’s got to get up early Her clothes are old but never are they dirty Living just enough, just enough for the city
Her brother’s smart he’s got more sense than many His patience’s long but soon he won’t have any To find a job is like a haystack needle ‘Cause where he lives they don’t use colored people Living just enough, just enough for the city
Just enough for the city Living for the city Just enough for the city Enough for the city Just enough for the city Living for the city Just enough for the city
-=-=-=-=-=-=
A great song. And Taylor did a fine job with it: In fact, Taylor sang the song in one of the rounds in 2006 when he won American Idol, so not an off-the-wall choice. It’s just there was some irony because the Wonder song isn’t exactly a love letter for the ‘the city:’
In fact it is actually a brutal and scathing critique of ‘the city.’
AL.com’s Dennis Pillion has a story this morning about the sighting of a one-in-a -million genetic anomaly, a yellow cardinal, seen in the Birmingham area.
Auburn University researchers say this cardinal is yellow due to a rare genetic mutation. It’s been photographed around Alabaster, Alabama in February 2018.(Jeremy Black Photography)
First thing I thought of was the band Bright Eyes led by Conor Oberst and his references to yellow birds in two songs of the album ‘I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning.’
From the song Poison Oak:
And I never thought this life was possible You’re the yellow bird that I’ve been waiting for The end of paralysis I was a statuette
From the song We are Nowhere and It’s Now
Did you forget that yellow bird? How could you forget your yellow bird? She took a small silver wreath and pinned it on to me She said, “This one will bring you love” And I don’t know if it’s true But I keep it for good luck
I don’t have this on vinyl, so this is not a ‘countdown’ record. But I recommend Conor Oberst’s work, both in Bright Eyes and out of Bright eyes. Check the videos and his references to ‘yellow bird.’
This is an actual vinyl 45 rpm record I received a very long time ago from a man, an assistant prosecutor in Gadsden, Alabama. I was doing a story about this 30-something who wanted to be a judge. He was making news by railing against sitting judges in Etowah County, alleging ethical lapses and such.
Maybe I was committing an ethical lapse taking the 45, but i think its value then was under our company policy prohibitions.
The man running in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat is now facing a wave of allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior with underage girls.
I’m not going to comment right now on guilt or innocence or the guilt and shame of the innocents.
But I do want to say that I have a regret about that time way back in 1982 when I, a cub reporter, was living in Jacksonville, AL for nine months covering Anniston, Gadsden and Talladega for the Birmingham News.
My regret: That I didn’t spend more time in Gadsden. More time covering Roy Moore.
Curious about the music? I’ll reserve judgement on that as well, but you can listen yourself.
