Kid and Caboodle

I am really glad I work for a supervisor who allows me to work from home regularly once a week. I find I am often more productive on my telecommuting days than on the days I am in the office because I am not distracted by people constantly stopping by my desk with questions. This ability to work without interruptions is especially important when I am trying to write my weekly blog entry for work. I also can end my day later than usual if the office needs me because I don’t have to rush out the door to pick up my son from school, and I can start my day earlier when needed. Recently, for example, I began my work day at 4:30 a.m. to cover a news event.

Telecommuting not only saves me time (my daily one-way commute is over an hour), but it also saves me money because I don’t have to pay the cost of parking and the round-trip subway fare. It is also good for the environment because I don’t have to burn gas driving to and from the subway station. It’s a win-win situation, in my opinion!

I have heard people scoff at the idea of telecommuting, asking how one can measure employees’ productivity. To these people I say, “How does one normally measure productivity?” It is not how many hours I am sitting in my cubicle that makes me productive; it is how many projects I complete within a given time period. If you look at all the things I process every day — articles, podcasts, photo galleries, videos, Web pages, solutions to technical problems, etc. — you know I’m working. I am a professional; I don’t need someone standing over my desk to ensure that I am doing my job. If I were goofing off, you would know it because the number of things I process would drop.

I’m thankful that some people — if not all — understand this.

I’ve been looking at various Web sites and newspapers all week trying to find inspiration for a new post for the group blog I contribute to at work. No luck yet. I’ve noticed that lately I’ve been having bouts of writer’s block more and more often.

Well, perhaps that’s not quite accurate. What I think is happening is that I’m beginning to censor myself. I’ll read about something and think, “That’s interesting!” But then I’ll say to myself, “My blog entry has to be about democracy, human rights, or government. I can’t see how this fits with any of those topics.” At other times I’ll think, “I wrote about that already; I shouldn’t repeat myself.”

I wonder if these concerns are really important, though. Why not let the blog facilitator decide if a potential blog entry is too tangential? So far my track record has been excellent; I’ve had only one blog entry rejected as too far off-topic. True, it was annoying to have all the time I spent writing that piece wasted, but perhaps I should trust myself more. And what’s wrong with going back to an issue and exploring a different angle or looking at it in more depth? The way the blog is structured, with different writers taking turns, it might be fine to write on a specific theme for a while and have some continuity.

One complication with the blog is that I don’t exactly know when a specific blog entry will be posted. This has made me reluctant to write anything time-sensitive. But I suppose scheduling is really the job of the blog facilitator, not mine. My job is to write.

But I still don’t know what to write about this week ….

I’m off Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving.  Somehow having a shorter work week doesn’t translate to less work to do, though; I just have to do five days’ of work in only three.  Sigh.

Haven’t written any Kid and Caboodle posts in a long time, mostly because I’ve been spending so much time “microblogging” on Twitter and Facebook that general observations and ideas aren’t usually staying in my head long enough to simmer and turn into something interesting. I’ve also been contributing to a blog for work since the end of April, so I’ve had a creative outlet for the longer pieces I can produce. I’m still trying to decide how much of a division I want between my personal and professional lives; should I keep Twitter mainly for professional material and Facebook for personal stuff?  I’m not sure it is even possible at this point to separate the two worlds since I have family members, friends and co-workers in both networks. How do others manage this balance, I wonder?

BRAIN SPEED BUMPS 

Started the morning by attending Merrill Perlman’s session on “brain speed bumps.” She presented several stories that contained mistakes and asked the audience to find them. I had a terrible time with every single one of the exercises and am thoroughly embarrassed. I hope that the problem was that I wasn’t quite awake at that hour rather than that I’ve lost my edge as an editor! 

Perlman gave a list of things that should set off alarm bells for editors and indicate that something should be double-checked in a story:

– Coincidence
– Internal inconsistency
– Repetition
– Superlatives and modifiers

She also advised editors always to check names, foreign languages, and things that are often corrected in their own publications. Perlman also warned that errors often travel in pairs.

BLOGGING ETHICS

The second morning session I attended was titled “Blogging Ethics,” and featured Bryan Murley of Eastern Illinois University, David Sullivan of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Bill Walsh of the Washington Post.

Murley started off by comparing blog entries with print articles. Blogs entries, he said, are written in a personal style, are shorter than news articles, include hyperlinks to other stories, are narrowly focused, and can contain multimedia such as videos or audio clips.

Murley said copy editors can help bloggers by:

– authenticating links
– editing copy before it goes live
– “adding to the link economy” (giving primary sources to draw readers back to the piece)
– gauging comments
– tracking online conversations about a topic

Murley also discussed Twitter. Twitter is a conversation, he said; do NOT dump your RSS feed into Twitter. Instead, manually post selected items on Twitter with headlines written to lure readers, and engage people on Twitter in conversations. (Julio Ojeda-Zapata also made this point in the “Twitter for Journalists” session yesterday.)

Bill Walsh talked about his own experiences writing The Slot, a blog about errors he finds in copy. He noted that bloggers write about things in which they are interested, and often they are unofficial experts in the subject. This is in contrast to regular reporting, in which writers are sometimes assigned stories about which they know nothing.

David Sullivan discussed workflow. How can publications feed Twitter and update blogs quickly while ensuring the accuracy and fairness of the material being published?  These things don’t go through the normal editing process, but there still needs to be some sort of editorial review for them before they go live.  Sullivan also brought up the difference between objectivity and fairness. People have their own opinions about everything; it is part of human nature. We cannot really be objective. But we should always try our best to be fair in our coverage.

Other topics discussed included how to handle blog comments and whether to notify readers when a story on the Web has been changed.

ACES has posted its official write-ups of today’s conference sessions on “Twitter for Journalists” and “Editing With Your Mind’s Eye.” Also, attendees have posted photos from the ACES conference on flickr (mine aren’t on this page because I haven’t set up a flickr account yet).

1. A map of the skywalks in downtown Minneapolis:

2. Some pictures of the skywalks:

3. Some of the food at the ACES opening reception:

4. My coworker Helen and I:

5. What’s that display?

6. Truffles!

This afternoon I attended two sessions — “Committing Acts of Conscience … Ethical Decision Making in a Digital World” and “Editing With Your Mind’s Eye.”  Both were fascinating in different ways.

The first session, run by Sara Quinn of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, focused on how to maintain ethical standards of accuracy, clarity, verification, etc. in digital media.  We have the same standards in print and on the Web, but the pressure to post things immediately, the use of multimedia, and other factors make the task of adhering to these standards much more challenging for online journalists.  One presentation was especially striking to me:  three virtually identical videos of a woman in the Minnesota National Guard and her 5-year-old son talking about her work, including the possibility she could be killed.  In the first video, the woman and her son simply spoke.  In the second video, a piece of ominous music played in the background during the interview.  The third piece used a cheerful song.

It was fascinating to see how the exact same interview took on very different moods based on the background music.  The second video seemed to emphasize the threats inherent in the woman’s work, while the third seemed to downplay them.  As the presenter said, “The problem isn’t that music doesn’t work; the problem is that it works too well” sending subliminal messages.  Background music in videos adds a layer of meaning, and we must be careful when deciding to use music to remain true to the original intent of the piece.  We also talked about how the woman and her son would feel if they saw the videos with the music.  Throughout the interview, the woman talks about how she works to reassure her son that she will return from her tours of duty.  Using ominous music in the background would seem to counteract that effort.  The cheerful music in the third video seems to downplay the threat of being hurt or killed; is that false to the reality of the situation?

At the same time, the editing of the video clips also involves care.

“Editing With the Mind’s Eye” was a much more light-hearted presentation.  The speaker, consultant Merrill Perlman, said errors in stories can be likened to problems in movies.  There are improperly framed pieces, single source stories, “foreign language” items, inappropriate “colorization,” continuity errors, etc.  I think the example that made me laugh the most was the one demonstrating the problem of too many numbers:

Passenger traffic at JFK, Laguardia and Newark airports totaled some 83.9 million in 2008, up 3.6 percent from the previous year.  At the agency’s four bridges and two tunnels, total vehicular traffic, measured in the eastbound direction only, was approximately 118 million, a 3.9 percent from 2007 levels.  On PATH, ridership grew 2.6 percent to about 62.2 million passengers ….

ZZZZZZ.

Had a brief walk at lunchtime.

Here is the view from my hotel room.

Just finished with today’s morning sessions for the American Copy Editors Society (ACES) conference.  So far, it has been both an educational and an entertaining experience.  I’ve been taking pages of notes about everything from writing good headlines to using Twitter effectively — far too much to post here.  I’ve also been laughing at the irony of some of the things that have been happening: 

– During the opening session, ACES President Chris Wienandt told listeners that the conference program guide contained a typo, and offered a prize to the copy editor who could find it first.  Conference attendees found three — a missing apostrophe and two misspelled names.

– During a session on “Twittering for Journalists” presented by Julio Ojeda-Zapata, a technology writer for the Pioneer Press, the speaker experienced problems with his laptop presentation, his iPhone and his microphone.

– Presenters have been talking about how important it is to stay connected through Twitter and other online fora.  When I asked them if their presentations were available online, though, they told me that thought hadn’t occurred to them.

– I’ve been writing down lots of tips about using Twitter — far too much info for me to post on Twitter!

On a more serious note, these are the rest of the conference sessions I’m planning to attend over the next few days:

THURSDAY P.M.

Committing Acts of Conscience
Editing With Your Mind’s Eye
Opening Reception

FRIDAY:

Brain Speed Bumps
Blogging Ethics
What Else Can I Do With These Skills?
Usability, Data Projects, Flash, S-E-Oh-No!
Banquet and Silent Auction

SATURDAY:

Making the Switch:  Implementing a New Publishing System
The SEO Headline Game
Small Staffs Forum
Smackdown!  Merrill Perlman vs. Bill Walsh (With Points for Style)
Closing General Session
Post-conference party

More info on conference sessions is available at the ACES Web site:  http://www.copydesk.org/