475 skills exam

And here's a little poll about whether you prefer this blog or the newer one I've been using.

Adios, Blogger

As I previously threatened, I'm leaving this joint.

I decided I'm using this blog enough to get it the way I like, plus making a snazzy new graphic was a good use of time I had reserved for my thesis and ethics paper.

Fortunately the new blog will be easy to find, if you know me well enough to spell my last name: lisawaananen.wordpress.com.
Not the pinnacle of creativity, but sometimes functionality is more important.

References That Are No Longer Clever list

Today the New York Times presents a whole slew of related letters in which distinguished readers want to point out they know their Orwell better than columnist William Kristol, who used an essay by Orwell about Rudyard Kipling to explain why Democrats don't know how to get anything done. It actually is that unnecessarily complicated; read it yourself.

Gag. Having read "1984" is not really worthy of snobbish pride. It should just be embarrassing if you haven't read it. Shame on the NYT for perpetuating the self-perceived cleverness of these people.

I started my References That Are No Longer Clever list a while ago with this one. I try to keep from one-upping them in pretentiousness by keeping the rest of my list fairly short:

• any reference to Bob Dylan singing "the times they are a-changin'"
  
• quoting Murrow's fear comment ("We will not walk in
  fear ... ")
  
• referencing Warhol's 15 minutes of fame, especially when commenting on internet memes or phenomenons
  

To make it clear, I think these are all fine references and certainly relevant in discussions of today's world. But relevant is not the same as clever, and they've been trotted out a few too many times to be used in a self-congratulatory way.

Personally I think Kristol's argument is a weak one - I'm not so far removed from high school that I can't recognize desperate stretches for literary synthesis - but I do respect his attempt to invoke Orwell for something beyond the most obvious.

And now, live from the intertubes

Here it is.
(BRETT: If you are checking this, the autoplay did work but I turned it off because it was driving me crazy.)



I was going to make a shorter version to actually comply with the two-minute limit, but then I decided it just wasn't worth fighting with Audacity any longer than necessary.

"Welcome to the Evergreen podcast for the second week of February, 1927.

An unusually small number of WSC students failed during the past semester, registrar Frank T. Barnard announced. He said two weeks will be allowed for making up incompletes. Although final registration reports are not in, it is estimated that enrollment this semester will be approximately the same as last semester.

The Husky five will come across the Cascades to meet the Cougar hoop aggregation Saturday night in the second cross-state match-up of this basketball season.
The dope favors the Washington squad after they won the first tilt 39 to 16. There is hope, however, that the crimson and gray will emerge from its slump for an upset like the one against Idaho before the disastrous Coast tour.
Remember to wear your rooters cap to support our valiant boys of the hardwood ..."

Thanks to Victor Graf, Christina Watts, Nick Eaton, Mike Feigen, Dan Herman and Brian Everstine for their vocal talents. An additional thanks to Victor and Nick for their technical support.

Wherein Audacity makes me cry

Audacity decided my podcast file no longer existed when I was about three minutes from being finished. I cursed a bit and snapped rather more than usual at the rest of the newsroom that "reoccuring" is not a word while editing tonight's final story.

Then I started over.

To the Pacific and back

Jacob, Christina and I went to the beach Saturday. The weather was favoring us and the tide was low. We spent a few hours finding sand dollars, climbing on rocks and, as Jacob said, "playing chicken with the widest ocean in the world."

We also took a lot of photos, and maybe I'll post more of them later finally up and switch my blog to WordPress since I'm sick of this not uploading and displaying any of my photos properly.

The original thesis question

The fundamental question – Is journalism ethical? – has rattled around in my conscience ever since the first summer I thought to call myself a journalist. It's the only thing in my life to keep me up at night and then it comes to me in nightmares, and it's what got me into this thesis in the first place. These are the three pieces I think of most:

"Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse."

Janet Malcolm
"The Journalist and the Murderer"

"My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: Writers are always selling somebody out."

Joan Didion
"Slouching Towards Bethlehem"

"An old woman was walking down the road when she saw a gang of thugs beating a poisonous snake. She rescued the snake and carried it back to her home, where she nursed it back to health. They became friends and lived together for many months. One day they were going into town, and the old woman picked him up and the snake bit her. Repeatedly. "O God," she screamed, "I am dying! Why? I was your friend. I saved your life! I trusted you! Why did you bite me?"
The snake looked up at her and said, "Lady, you knew I was a snake when you first picked me up."

Hunter S. Thompson
"Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie"

Back at work

I accidentally took someone else's drink at Starbucks in Ellensburg.

It was her fault for ordering almost the same thing right after me, and Starbucks' fault for putting hers out on the counter first, my fault for not immediately recognizing the difference between "tall" and "grande" due to my relatively limited experience ordering coffee-type drinks, and Christina's fault for saying "yes" when I whispered "Is this one mine?"

So I did the right thing by apologizing and clearing up the confusion. I also got a bigger drink than I paid for.

And that was probably the worst thing that happened during the whole weekend trip to the Grays Harbor area, so Christina and I returned to the newsroom quite pleased with ourselves. Anyway, more on this later before I return to the typical thesis and history stuff.

A story for Valentine's Day

First of all, Allison left us all lovely presents (pictured here), which I found when I came to print my paper at the last minute before ethics class. It was also a good day because someone had already used the printer so it didn't take six minutes to warm up.

When I was walking to ethics, there was a guy on crutches and a girl walking in front of me. I'm not sure if they were a couple, but it makes the story better to think they were. They were parting outside the CUE and before she left, the girl stooped down to pick up an Evergreen for him from the box since the crutches made it hard for him.

This is what Christina said when I told her this: "Wait, that's your Valentine's Day story? I kept waiting for him to give her a present like out of his pocket or something."

Nope. To anyone reading this, and especially to those who know why I'm wearing green today, have a lovely Valentine's Day!

1905: Women aren't so bad after all

The Evergreen had a female editor-in-chief for a few months in 1899, but 1904-05 marked the first time a woman led the newsroom the whole year. Her name was Zella Bisbee, and she was a Spokane native who majored in mathematics and physics. She seems kind of humorless, but that's okay. Here's what the 1905 Chinook had to say:

"It has been said that a lady was not fitted for the editorship of a college paper, and not without some reason. Nevertheless, the fact that we have had a lady editor during this entire year and a college paper that has been up to the standard of any in the Northwest in every particular, has proven conclusively that there are exceptions to this rule. The other members of the staff, it is true, were loyal in their support, but the burden of work and responsibility were borne by the Editor."

Thesis, interrupted

And this is the face Christina made last weekend when we thought the only thing wrong with her car was a little snow covering. We have since discovered the front door was left slightly ajar through two feet of snowfall, the battery died and could not be easily jumpstarted, and there is mold growing on the back seat. Gross.

This is the vehicle Christina and I will be theoretically using to get over to the other side of the state this weekend. The plan includes emus, ocean, Irish cream and an exchange of hostage books.

It also means I won't be getting much work done on my thesis in the next few days. This is probably bad, but I'm not much of a worrier.

Where I work

Many people mistakenly believe I'm a very organized person. I am fairly organized, but in a very organic way. I let my things create their own places, rather than forcing some sort of structure. Anyway, here is my desk in the newsroom, where I do pretty much all my editing, writing and classwork.

1. stack of Chinook yearbooks from the following years: 1905, 1904, 1902, 1910, 1911, 1909, 1899
2. paper organizer with notes, documents and press releases for stories I’ve written or plan to write
3. fortune (from a cookie): “Be prepared to modify your plans.”
4. lightsaber, green
5. Stack consisting of:
- weekly copy chief comment sheet
- 2008 AP Styleguide (the only one in the newsroom)
- Phil 201 course packet
- WSU Police logs
- Com 440 course packet
- Moscow Co-op publication
6. basket containing:
- blue Tupperware full of ibuprofin for Brian
- colored thumb tacks
- tin of safety pins
- paring knife
- mending kit
- Splenda packets
- teal white board marker
- red pen without cap
- green plastic fake grass
7. Pullman Transit brochure
8. more WSU Police logs
9. sheet where I tallied different majors represented in the paper last week
10. computer monitor displaying Jetset
11. label with police contact numbers
12. Post-it checklist of things to do this week
13. Crayola markers
14. letter from the Public Records office and other miscellaneous papers
15. last week’s papers
16. turquoise chair, not rolly
17. old keyboard that I want to trade with Brian for the new style
18. Post-it note with old appointments
19. (obscured) screwdriver, best weapon in the newsroom
20. Tiny bucket for business cards
21. red iPod, CougarCard and (obscured) tiny bottle of magnolia blossom lotion
22. violet water cup saved from the Super Bowl party
23. Nalgene, probably empty
24. Old computer tower, same one I used as a copy editor in Fall 2006 before we got iMacs last semester
25. existential Post-it from Victor: “today. tomorrow.”
26. bowl with spork and can of minestrone soup
27. stack consisting of:
- pica pole
- books for my thesis (“Better Than Sex” by Hunter S. Thompson, “Image Ethics” by Gros/Katz/Ruby. “Visions of War” by David D. Perlmutter, “Vietnam: Reflexes and Reflections” by Sinaiko)
- January issues of The Chronicle of Higher Education
- books for reading (“The Literary Journalists” edited by Norman Sims, “Sometimes a Great Notion” by Ken Kesey, “Chrome Yellow” by Aldous Huxley)
28. stack consisting of:
- issues of the Evergreen (Feb. 8, Feb. 6, Jan. 17
- sports section from The Spokesman-Review (Jan. 25)
- The New York Times (Jan. 29, Jan. 22)
- “Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine” by Thom Jones

From the past, coming soon

The actual audio isn't finished since we got an extension, but here's the graphic I'm putting together for it. Blending interests, I'm doing my required 475 podcast as if it's an Evergreen podcast from 1927.

Fun was more important than historical accuracy – it's more like how we like to imagine 1927. However, all the stories and much of the text* is authentically from February 1927 issues of the Evergreen.

Why 1927? Because it was the oldest book in the archives room that I could reach without difficulty.

The actual 1927 Evergreen staff looks like kind of a dour bunch, though the women had awesome names: Theda Lomax, Lyla Appel, Georgia Grimes, Lucille Weatherstone.

*UPDATE: I want to specifically mention that the Lucky Strike advertisement is entirely authentic, and not meant to glorify smoking. Those who know me, especially from the Evergreen, know how I feel about that. The logo does look cool in the graphic, though, and some weeks it seems like Lucky Strike cigarettes were entirely responsible for the financial health of this newspaper. Cigarettes and men's suits dominated printed Evergreen ads back then, and there were always a bunch for typewriters at the beginning of a semester.

Just wondering

Me: Victor, what are you doing?

Victor: I am wearing a postmodern hat.

Friday night thesis fun

I'm not the slightest bit embarrassed to be working on my thesis this Friday evening, which is an indication that I haven't been working on it as diligently as I should. Also I know no one reads this. Also I'm not by myself, so it's not that bad.

Anyway, here's a bit from a book aptly called "Press Photography: Reporting with a Camera" that sums up what I'm looking at with this whole project:

"But the favorable court decisions [for press freedom] have not entirely relieved the minds of photographers and editors, for there still remains the moral question involved. One newsman put the question this way: 'What business has a photographer to make a living by treating human tragedy as a natural resource?'"

Here's another quote, from a different book, from Dorothea Lange regarding her famous Great Depression photograph "Migrant Mother":

"There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that pictures might help her, and so she helped me."

No. 3 in the Pac-10, sort of

That last bit from the 1904 Chinook caught my attention. If the Evergreen held a place of distinction in "the college journalism of the West," what did college journalism actually look like at that point?

Here's a rundown of when the Pac-10 student newspapers joined the tradition:

1871 The Daily Californian (at Cal)
Remarkably, it's had pretty much the same name ever since it began as one of the earliest college newspapers in the country and one of the first newspapers at all in the West.

1892 The Stanford Daily
Originally it was called The Daily Palo Alto.

1895 The Evergreen

1899 The Arizona Wildcat
It started with the stupid name Silver & Sage, later evolving to the Arizona Weekly Life and the University Life before getting a name that sounds marginally more like a real paper.

1900 The Oregon Emerald
It was the Oregon Weekly until 1909.

1906 The Daily Barometer (at Oregon State)
Its predecessor started in 1896 as a monthly literary magazine, then finally turned into a real weekly newspaper.

1906 The State Press (at Arizona State)
It started out as the Tempe Normal Student and then the Tempe Collegian. In 1890 they started a 1-page supplement to a professional local paper. It was called the Normal Echo.

1909 The Daily (at University of Washington)
UW technically had a paper called The Pacific Wave in 1891, but I'm not counting that because then they would be earlier than us.

1912 The Daily Trojan (at USC)

1919 The Daily Bruin
It didn't get its name until 1926, after putting in a few years as the Cub Californian and the California Grizzly. They also had a paper of sorts called the Normal Outlook from 1910 to 1918.

1904: 'The white light of truth'

Here's a rosy view of the journalistic mission from the 1904 Chinook. It's a bit dense.

"The most distinctive characteristic of present day college life is the college paper. Our fathers knew no college paper, and the only way that they knew of their fellows in other colleges was by word of mouth, and that word was usually steeped in the deepest venom before it reached its destination. We should feel glad, therefore, that the white light of truth and fairness shines down upon our educational world through the medium of the printed page.
The first attempt to found a college paper in the Washington Agricultural College was in the 'Crib' days of our college, when the 'Record,' a paper which would do credit to an old established college, was launched by Mr. Hull. The journalistic light shone fitfully, flickered and went out leaving our college without a medium of communication with the outside world. Our big brothers were not men who hid their light under a bushel and in 1894 the frail bark yclept 'Evergreen' was launched upon the sea of trouble with W.D. Todd at the helm. Although the angry sea has often threatened to crack the ribs of the frail craft, it has sailed steadily onward, never missing a number in the nine years of its existence, and it now occupies a distinct place, not only in our community, but in the college journalism of the West."

No hiding the truth in 1903

From the 1903 Chinook, one of my favorite passages ever:

"Of the 'success and futility' of the Evergreen it is useless to speak – every one connected with the college knows all about that, especially the futility. Neither would it be worth while to trace the history of this remarkable enterprise from its earliest beginnings in the dawn of the Washington Agricultural College down to the present time. It is likely that no one but students of economic science and history (possibly biologists also) would be interested in such an account, and it would be better for such students to so 'source work' than to depend upon any statements we might make. We will simply leave it recorded here that the Evergreen is in the eighth year (tenth, if we include its predecessor, the College Record) of its promising career, and that the present staff go about their work as if it were really important.

Lunch with the editor

This is like the opposite of history – Here's a photo from today of Evergreen editor-in-chief Brian Everstine looking professional (minus the Doritos) while no one comes to visit his weekly Lunch With the Editor at The Bookie. It's every Wednesday from 1 to 2 p.m., in theory. He is dressed so classy because he attended the Student Advisory Board meeting at the President's Residence in the afternoon. He forgot how to tie a half-windsor knot for about half an hour this morning, but fortunately remembered in time to get his tie on.

WSU history > postgame show

Apparently paging through old Evergreen tomes is contagious. It warmed my heart to see my fellow editors enthralled with achives books I left around the newsroom a while after the final thrilling moments of Super Bowl XLII. They were amused by alcohol advertisements and articles about the booming popularity of videocassette technology.

What I was looking for were the last times the WSU campus was closed. This was a big question last week, and there was a surprising lack of anyone at WSU who could say for sure. This is what I found:

Feb. 9, 1996: Flooding forced road closures and made the administration question how many faculty members would make it to campus. Faculty and staff were still expected to be at work if possible, and canceled classes were not rescheduled.

Nov. 22, 1985: Snow and cold temperatures around the state prompted WSU officials to cancel classes the Friday before Thanksgiving break. Classes from that day were made up on Dec. 7, a Saturday.

Jan. 4 and 5, 1982: The first two days of spring semester classes were canceled after snowy weather statewide kept students from returning to Pullman. Classes had to be made up on the following two Saturdays.

May 19 to 22, 1980: After ash from the Mount St. Helens eruption blanketed Pullman, hindering travel and raising health questions about air quality, classes were canceled for four days. President Glenn Terrell considered closing WSU for the rest of the semester, but decided to reopen. More than 1,000 students applied for emergency leave due to medical or psychological concerns.