Spelling

"Speed dating" our adult children...

The Game of Life?  Here's a square that doesn't exist...Empty Nest.  I can't decide if that's one that should send a player forward or backwards.  I do know that nothing really prepared me for my newborn babies or the sense of loss when they moved away from home.

When our kids were small, John and I used to treasure the handful of solitary hours on a weekend.  A softball game, a sleep over (somewhere else).  Bliss!

TV news was no less the task master when I wasn't a news director.  Most days were 10-12 hours plus the commute (I've always been salaried, somehow).  Sometimes we stole family time from our kids by playing video games (Dr. Mario) on their time and I wish we had those hours back.

Carly is now in Reno with her partner Denis.  She has a great job at Whole Foods.  Chaz is a senior at the University of Tennessee.  Both are adults who rarely need help from Mom and Dad. 

This weekend, we'll all be together for about 52 hours.  Sorta.  Carly and Denis fly to Omaha at 12:50pm Friday and Charlie arrives there ten minutes later.  All three depart Omaha Sunday evening at around 5:30pm.  In between is the happy wedding of my niece Cheray to Tyler in Brookings, SD (Home of Endless Possibilities), which is about three hours north of Omaha.  Subtract six hours in the car and sixteen hours for sleeping and it's about thirty hours of Together Time with our kids.  Assuming that they won't spend every waking moment with us, it's like spurts of opportunity to make those important parental points that we might have neglected when they were growing up:

•  You can't write Thank You notes soon enough
• The Boy Scout Rules are pretty right on
• Balancing the checkbook is really, really important

We're already old and rather uncool so we have to do this without seeming obvious.  It's not easy.  Especially since I've written it all in a blog that my kids might/could see.

Hey...over-communication isn't a bad thing!

What local news needs to succeed.

It's not about when (4:30am, 9pm, etc)

It's about WHAT.

It's content.  Important stories.  Avoiding the easy news releases.  Looking for the tough angle.  Asking the hard questions.  Never settle.



 Never settle.

Building a brand

Sunday, the Chiefs will attempt what hasn't happened in a hefty handful of years.  Going 2-0 to start the season.

They surprised many with their win over San Diego Monday night in the rain.

I hope these new Chiefs are for real.  I'm fascinated by the young draft class and especially Eric Berry because he went to UT where my son is in his final year (fingers crossed).

EB's website proves he is interested in building a professional brand.  That's great. 

I tried and failed once at using the internet as a way to build a professional brand.  (I'll save you the trouble of google-ing it)

I failed because I didn't remain professional enough.

It's a slippery slope but here I am, back again.  If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!

Wednesday Eve

It's only Tuesday and already my hair is on fire. 

That's not a bad thing.  It's just a thing.  This is the time of year when news directors who work on a calendar-year-budget try to predict the future and guess how much it will cost to run a newsroom for the next year.  I did not budget correctly in 2010 for two big events (Scott Roeder trial, Chiefs camp in St. Joe).  Both were predictable and I'm challenging myself to do better for 2011.

I'm also challenging myself as a leader to learn (and help my team to learn) how we can improve our response to distributing news and information on "the set, net and cell."  Not as easy as it sounds!

And then there's the personal stuff.  Somehow, I didn't pay close attention to how our company health insurance works.  Son Charlie is a full-time college student (in his fifth year; will graduate next May).  His birthday falls at the wrong time of the year and he got too old (age 23) for the Scripps coverage.  We were faced with a COBRA payment of $550 per month (not in the personal budget) through the end of the year.  I, for one, am happy that the health care reform bill will allow me to cover his medical expenses as of January 1, 2011.  And I'm thankful that the University of Tennessee has a health insurance alternative that costs just $350 for the fall semester that will take care of the minor emergencies.  It's not the best but hopefully Charlie can avoid a catastrophic health crisis for the next four months.

New topic.

So what about those Chiefs!?  I watched last night's game from beginning to end (and what the H happened with the KMBC signal for the first eight minutes?)  I looked for an explanation on their website and Facebook page.  Maybe I missed it?  The station got thrashed in the Twitter universe when the "technical difficulties" slide came up instead of the game.  I watched on ESPN2...and made a mental note that I'd always have a plan B and C if I had such a huge game to broadcast.  (Please, NFL and NBC, please?)

Life lessons.  Gotta love 'em!

On this day of remembrance; let's practice tolerance (which is not weakness)

All that and a bag of wackos

The minister of a small church in central Florida hijacked the nation's common sense this week.  Late Thursday afternoon, after days of coverage of Terry Jones' rants, he now claims that he's canceled his plans to burn the Quran on the anniversary of this country's darkest day.

This morning, the folks at Poynter issued some guidelines for coverage of what they called "a lone voice with a tiny following."

Among their suggestions:

 * Cover the reaction, not the fanatic. There are some creative responses to Jones' lunacy. Mother Jones wrote about a group that is rallying people to send a Quran to Afghanistan for every text Jones burns. Local churches and other organizations have planned dozens of events  to draw people away from the Quran burning. Already the response is greater than the event itself. Your coverage should reflect that.

* Talk about how you will react to confrontations ahead of time. A little pushing and shoving can look like a big kerfuffle depending on how you describe it or crop the image. Have a plan to ensure the events are accurately portrayed, so that production work, like creating a video tease or sending out a tweet, doesn't mislead your audience or undermine your journalistic purpose.

* Help your audience understand why this is hate speech, not a simple protest. Hate speech targets an entire group for a particular characteristic. In this case it's belief in the Quran as a holy scripture. A protest denounces a certain action or set of circumstances, not an entire group of people. Jones has justified his plan by claiming the Quran is "evil" and "Islam is of the Devil." He and his followers will burn the Quran with guns holstered at their sides. He admits the act is likely to incite violence.

Fox News announced their intention NOT to cover the burning of Islam's sacred book.  The Associated Press also distributed guidelines but didn't go so far as to say they would not cover the event.  The Columbia Journalism Review says the AP standards were too little, too late.  Perhaps Poynter was a little late to the party, as well.  Joel Mears of the CJR entreats us to "push back against a PR stunt and run in the other direction of a media pack all too ready to pounce on a flame."

I agree, Joel.  By the way, we were among the local Kansas City TV station news departments, who, along with the KC Star, covered the Ringling Brothers circus elephants eating lunch at the Sprint Center this week.

I know this comparison is a stretch but when will we stop being lemmings?

Hail, South Dakota!

John and I spent the holiday weekend with my parents and most of my siblings in Wagner, South Dakota.

I left work relatively early on Friday and we traveled north but because we stopped too many times (darn historical markers, etc!) we spent the night in Omaha and then finished our seven-hour journey Saturday morning.

Just north of Sioux City, Iowa is this sign, welcoming me home.  I always feel such a sense of calm when we cross over. 

There's something very special about the sky in South Dakota...it's so huge and blue on the flat prairie.  Calming and wonderful!

Especially incredible is the night sky.  The nearest "city" is Sioux Falls, two hours away, so there is not much light pollution.  The sky is just amazing.  You can easily see satellites, moving quickly through the dark canvas.

We wondered if they photographed us, sitting around our campfire Sunday night as Dad recalled his days in the Air Force, working on the B-36 Peacemaker during the Korean War.

Dad's stories were interrupted every so often by coyotes howling in the cornfields.  It was thrilling (and chilling) to hear them so nearby.  Coyotes are not dangerous to humans but once we realized how close they were, Lucy and Sidney, Pam and Perry's dogs, got kenneled, just in case...

Dad's brother, my Uncle Noel Wiechmann, was quite a photographer and Dad was able to secure his cameras and a tripod recently so, using Uncle Noel's tripod, I tried to capture the brilliant stars with my digital camera.  The shutter was set at 16 seconds and the aperture at 2.8.  Not the greatest because reality was so much better.  I was disappointed but when I go back in three weeks, I'm going to try again (after consulting with Brett Akagi).

I may need to use my uncle's 1970s-era Olympus.  I wonder what batteries it needs?

I saw many friends and relatives during the time we were in Wagner.  Here is the incomplete short list with their former names--Paula Faughender, Ina Miller, Don Doty, John Chrisman, Bruce Chrisman, Jeff Uecker, Julie and JoAnn Winckler, Sherrie and John Wiechmann, Jane Wipf, Pearl Weber, Patty Sip, Rod Cozad, Mark Gau, Chris Andersh and Karen Kocer.  Forgive if I didn't mention you!

Monday, we went to the Wagner Labor Day parade.  In this photo you can see my sister Pam talking to her grandson Hudson, John, Paula's husband Randy, my mom and dad and Cheray Gibson and her soon-to-be-husband Tyler Christiansen.  This was just before it started raining...

Thankfully, the rain was short-lived.  The procession, however, was not.  We were thankful when, after an hour and a half of grass-roots politicking, old tractors, some floats, one marching band and a lot of antique cars, we finally saw the horses.  Horses mean the end of the parade!  We hustled across the street to have lunch with the United Methodists.


In doing so, I apparently missed the big story of the day.  This wagon went into the crowd later down the route when something spooked the horses.  We were near the beginning of the procession but I got a shot of the horse-drawn buggy (seen here in much calmer times) when I was trying to capture the hilarious image of a motorized cooler.

Thankfully, the injuries were minor. 

Another great Labor Day in Wagner, South Dakota!

Early morning news

Some say we're lemmings but at WMC in Memphis, the 4:30am news has been SOP for nearly a decade.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/business/media/01morning.html

Get used to it folks, the day starts sooner and ends earlier.