What I’m thankful for this year

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! It’s been several months since I last posted here at The Bread Line, but this morning I felt the urge to write here again.

While this blog has been dormant (other than the ever-changing Twitter feed on the right side of the website), my other blog, The Midwest League Traveler, has been going strong. That where I chronicled my summer journey to the 16 Midwest League (Class A minor-league baseball) ballparks and continue to write about baseball-related topics. I’m in the process of writing a book about the ballparks and my experiences visiting them. My plan is to publish the book by the start of the next baseball season, and most nights I’m staying up late to work on it. If you haven’t done so already, I hope you will check out my work at The Midwest League Traveler and if you use Twitter, follow me at @MWLtraveler in addition to @thebreadline.

That brings me to what I’m thankful for this year. In addition to the usual stuff — you know what kind of stuff I mean — I am thankful for the opportunity to be pursuing my dream of writing a book and, in doing so, being able to combine my loves of baseball, road trips and writing. I’m thankful for all the support I’ve gotten from family, friends and even some strangers (people I hear from through the blog or Twitter, or whom I met at ballparks this year), but I’m especially thankful for the unwavering support of my wife, without whom my book project wouldn’t be happening.

Thanks for checking in at The Bread Line. While I rarely post here anymore because of my commitment to finishing my book and pushing it through my other blog and social media, I am glad you stopped here and read this.

Now it’s time to enjoy a turkey day cup of coffee. Have a happy and safe holiday, everyone.

 

What I’m doing this summer

My apologies to readers of The Bread Line who haven’t had any new blog posts to read for several weeks. I was on vacation for 12 days (road trip to Atlanta and Florida) and since then I’ve been busy working on my summer project: visiting all 16 Midwest League ballparks and writing about the experience.

I’m still in the beginning stages of the adventure, having gone only to a couple Peoria Chiefs games so far. I’ve got a schedule in place for when I’ll visit the other 15 Midwest League ballparks (and likely return to Peoria’s park, too, since that’s the closest one to me). I set up a second Twitter account from which I’ll tweet about my Midwest League odyssey: @MWLtraveler. I’m also building a blog at which I’ll chronicle my ballpark visits at www.MWLtraveler.com. It’s still a work in progress right now, so please excuse the metaphorical dust as construction continues, but bookmark it and check back regularly if you want to follow along there, too.

That’s it for now here at The Bread Line. I’ll still be posting here occasionally, but I’ll be posting at The Midwest League Traveler blog a lot more this summer. I hope you’ll like what you read there, and as always, feel free to give me feedback about my writing and the project in general.

 

Obama decides not to release photos of dead bin Laden

President Obama has decided not to release photographs of a dead Osama bin Laden. Here are his comments about the subject, told to “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft:

“The risks of release outweigh the benefits,” Obama said. “Conspiracy theorists around the world will just claim the photos are doctored anyway, and there is a real risk that releasing the photos will only serve to inflame public opinion in the Middle East.

“Imagine how the American people would react if al-Qaida killed one of our troops or military leaders, and put photos of the body on the Internet,” he continued. “Osama bin Laden is not a trophy — he is dead and let’s now focus on continuing the fight until al-Qaida has been eliminated.”

I completely agree with Obama’s reasoning. Here’s what I tweeted about his decision before I read his comments:

“I think that’s the right decision. No need to risk upsetting the wrong people (potential terrorists) just to satisfy conspiracy theorists.”

and

“Besides, would conspiracy theorists really be silenced if photo released? They probably would claim it’s doctored.”

Obama’s comments about not releasing post-mortem images of bin Laden will air today on “CBS Evening News.” The full interview will air Sunday on “60 Minutes.”

 

Twitter breaks (and spreads) the news that Osama bin Laden is dead

Oh, what a night! Osama bin Laden is dead!

I’m not going to spend a lot of time typing this post because, frankly, I want to concentrate on watching news coverage of the al-Qaida leader’s death. But I’d like to point out that the news broke and spread quickly on Twitter, before the television anchors told us (particularly CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who metaphorically seemed to be the last person to arrive at the party). Yesterday I wrote about the news value of Twitter and its varied acceptance level by print reporters (you can read that post by clicking here), and the way so many people learned about bin Laden’s death is a perfect example of why all reporters should be on board with the use of social media.

As I tweeted earlier tonight, “I hope all the print journalists who don’t buy into the news value of Twitter are paying attention to how the bin Laden news broke/spread.”

Finally, I’ll end this post with the sentence I tweeted immediately after President Obama finished his speech tonight: “If I could type the sound of America clapping, I would.”

 

The 3 types of newspaper reporters who use the Internet

It’s my observation that there are three types of newspaper reporters when it comes to Internet use beyond searching for information: those who “get” it and totally embrace its use as a way to report news; those who don’t understand the Internet’s value as a media source and, as a result, resist its use as much as possible; and those who fall somewhere in the middle (they essentially understand or accept the value of online media methods but don’t use them quite right).

The first type is self-explanatory. If you understand the power of online reporting and the use of social media to further the reach of a reporter’s words, you know a reporter who “gets” it when you see his or her work.

The second type is still too common. A great example of this type can be found locally. There are two smaller daily newspapers that primarily cover La Salle County — The Times and the NewsTribune — and they both have reporters who “get” it and reporters who resist having to do anything beyond writing and occasionally shooting a photo for the print product. Reporters at both newspapers obviously were directed to create and use Twitter accounts, and as best I can tell, all the NewsTribune reporters embrace this to varying degrees, but there are still some Times reporters who don’t use Twitter at all — one reporter even locked his account so you can’t follow him unless he approves you doing so! They obviously don’t understand the value of reaching out to a wider audience through such newfangled means.

An example of the third type works for the Chicago Sun-Times. Lynn Sweet, a columnist and Washington bureau chief for the newspaper, uses Twitter and blogs, but she doesn’t do it quite right. Earlier today, she tweeted a reminder that the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner is tonight, and that people can follow her at @lynnsweet for notes and photos from it. That is a good use of Twitter. But when I clicked on the link she included in her tweet, I found her accompanying blog post, which began as follows:

WASHINGTON–The White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner is tonight, with Saturday Night Live headwriter and comic Seth Meyers the headliner. Meyers–I locked eyes with him for a mini-moment at the New Yorker party Friday night–speaks after President Obama, always a hard act to follow.

That is an example of Sweet trying too hard to impress and not quite “getting” it, which she tends to do on her blog. Believe me, nobody cares that Lynn Sweet locked eyes with Seth Meyers for “a mini-moment.” Another example of her trying too hard on her blog is the many instances of her writing “as I reported earlier” or a similar phrase. Newspapers have a long tradition of patting themselves on the back for reporting something first — and I have no problem with that — but when it’s done often by the same reporter in the first person, the writer can come across less favorably.

With that said, at least Sweet is using social media, and she gets credit for that. Too many reporters still resist using social media, and that’s a real problem in the journalism industry.

 

Happy (and solemn) anniversaries!

As I noted in a post yesterday, today is the 5th anniversary of when then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed a universal healthcare bill into law for Massachusetts. But that’s not the only — or even the most important — anniversary of significance to be marked today.

Of course, the most significant is the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. I began to commemorate the day this morning by dusting off my Guns N’ Roses Use Your Illusion II CD and playing it, beginning with the first track, “Civil War.” Then my wife and I hiked at Starved Rock State Park, where there weren’t many people today, giving us the opportunity to truly appreciate the solitude of nature and, at one point, reflect on how far we’ve come as a society since the Civil War — and even since the 100th anniversary 50 years ago.

You don’t need me to explain all that, but I do wish to take this time to mention a few Civil War-related books I’ve read or that are on my to-read list: Jay Winik’s “April 1865: The Month That Saved America” (about the final days of the Civil War and its immediate aftermath); James L. Swanson’s “Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer” and “Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln’s Corpse”; David O. Stewart’s “Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy”; Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”; and George B. Kirsch’s “Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime During the Civil War.”

If anyone has suggestions to add to my reading list, I’d love to hear them. Also, if you have any Civil War sites you recommend I visit between northern Illinois and Atlanta, Ga., during a road trip planned for later this year, I’d love to hear those, too.

* * *

Today is also the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight (by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin) and the 30th anniversary of the American space shuttle program’s first flight. NASA celebrated by not giving one of the retiring space shuttles to Chicago’s Adler Planetarium — but at least the planetarium will get the flight simulator used by astronauts during their space training.

The four space shuttles were assigned to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum near Washington, D.C.; the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex near Orlando, Fla.; the California Science Center in Los Angeles; and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York.

I’ll also be visiting the Kennedy Space Center during my aforementioned road trip planned for later this year. Suggested stops in the TOM (Tampa-Orlando-Miami) triangle are welcome, too. (Baseball games and Everglades National Park are already on the agenda.)

* * *

Finally, today is the 1-year anniversary of when the Chicago Cubs front office started its official Twitter feed, @CubsInsider. This isn’t very notable, except to illustrate a point.

Lately I’ve noticed a few people in my Twitter timeline mention that they’ve been on Twitter for a year now. I’m glad they’ve been on Twitter that long, but I’m not sure why they think the anniversary is a big deal. I’ve used Twitter since early 2009 — proudly ahead of the curve with this form of social media — but I don’t know what day I tweeted for the first time. Nevertheless, if you’re on Twitter and don’t already follow me, I hope you will change that! I’m @thebreadline.

 

Fake Rahm revealed!

From the Chicago Tribune:

Dan Sinker, a journalism teacher at Columbia College, says he was behind the fictitious Twitter account “@MayorEmanuel,” the foul-mouthed doppelganger to the real candidate and mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel.

The Atlantic released the story today, and Sinker confirmed it on his blog and through a Twitter message exchange with the Chicago Tribune.

Sinker’s tweeting as a satirical version of Emanuel was epic.  You can read the tweets, in chronologically backward order, here.

You can read the Atlantic story here. It’s a good read, despite the author’s obvious opinion that Sinker is some kind of modern-day demigod. Don’t get me wrong — I followed @MayorEmanuel and enjoyed his tweets — but the only thing missing from the Atlantic article is the sound of trumpets blowing when you click on the story link.

Sinker probably will be on all the Chicago newscasts tonight, but his first full broadcast interview reportedly will be on WBEZ’s “Eight Forty-Eight” show tomorrow. In the meantime, I hope Sinker takes the advice of the Chicago Reader, which tweeted, “Hopefully @dansinker will get to work on a fake Charlie Sheen Twitterfeed.”

 

Fairness doesn’t always look fair to everyone

My column from this week’s issue of Ottawa Delivered:

Now that Labor Day has passed, the election season is kicking into high gear.

There’s no better time to be a political reporter – especially when there is a tight race to be covered, such as the 11th Congressional District battle between U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D-Crete) and challenger Adam Kinzinger (R-Manteno). And when it comes to pleasing readers, there is no worse time to be a political reporter.

To paraphrase Charles Dickens, it is the best of times and the worst of times.

The goal of any political reporter, including this one, is to give fair and balanced coverage to the candidates and the issues. Unfortunately, there are people I like to call Pavlov’s Politicos: They love any media story about their preferred candidate, and they call anything other than that biased reporting.

Case in point: Last week I covered a Halvorson campaign stop in Ottawa. As we do with all our articles, I posted a link to the story on Facebook. That’s where a Marseilles man suggested – tongue-in-cheek, I hope – I must be receiving monetary contributions from the congresswoman because I write “fluff” stories about her. I checked out his Facebook “likes,” which include Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, FOX News, the National Tea Party and nothing that appears to be remotely associated with Democrats.

So it follows suit that the commenter doesn’t like Halvorson. And apparently, because I covered a Halvorson event in the course of doing my job, he doesn’t like me, either. Or perhaps he just doesn’t like my writing. Doesn’t matter, really. I just wonder if, when he reads my coverage of a Kinzinger event, he feels the same way about my article.

I’m not mentioning the man’s political leanings to insinuate anything about Republicans. I mention them because a few days later, I received an e-mail message from somebody I know regularly attends meetings of the Bureau-La Salle Tea Party complimenting last week’s issue of Ottawa Delivered. Noting the spread of political stories in the issue, which included my Focus story about local political campaign volunteers and an in-depth interview with Halvorson, the e-mailer said the “good objective articles” were providing “a fine public service” to readers.

Apparently he wasn’t offended by the Halvorson article in the newspaper. Which brings me to my greater point: We don’t pander to any politicians here at Ottawa Delivered, and while I don’t expect to please everyone, I hope that readers will respect our attempt at providing them with views from all sides of the political arena: Democrat, Republican, tea party, independent, etc.

When our newspaper received compliments about its political coverage from a tea party member, a staunch Republican and a couple of union members all within a week’s time, I knew we must be doing it right. And I hope you agree. Because even if you don’t agree with the views expressed by the people being covered in a particular article, I hope you’ll at least respect the way we reported them.

 

Civil discourse breeds respect for others

I like to think the heated arguments over health-care reform that we see on television aren’t the norm.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy a spirited debate about issues – I’m all for such conversations as long as they don’t get out of hand. People should feel free to disagree with each other in a point/counterpoint way, not a loudmouthed, name-calling way. A debate without civility is an argument that never wins over the other side. (It’s true you might not win the other side over anyway, but at least your decorum should be respected by your opponent.)

Last week when I wrote my column for Ottawa Delivered about the new health-care reform law, I knew there would be plenty of people who disagreed with me. As always, my charge was to state my opinion and back it up – and to do so in a respectful way that made my points without resorting to cheap shots at those who would disagree with my stance.

I believe I succeeded in that task, and I’m proud to say that those who commented on my column and the health-care issue in general on Ottawa Delivered’s Facebook page kept the conversation civil and respectful of each other, even though there were definite differences in opinion being expressed.

Some people agreed with what I wrote. Others disagreed with me, but weren’t rude about it. I like to think this is the norm among those who engage in the health-care debate in “real America” (in other words, not on TV or otherwise in a glaring spotlight of mainstream media attention).

With that said, I want to compliment Adam Kinzinger for taking the simple step of saying a few words to defuse any potential ugliness that might have been waiting in the wings at his health-care forum in Ottawa last week.

When it comes to the health-care reform issue, I don’t agree with Kinzinger, the Republican nominee in Illinois’ 11th Congressional District race. I think the new health-care reform law isn’t perfect but is a move in the right direction; he agrees with the Republican party line of “repeal and replace” (which really isn’t a feasible plan, in my opinion). But as someone who values civil discourse, I appreciated Kinzinger’s appeal to his town-hall attendees not to jeer those who disagreed with them.

Guess what? It worked. Sure, most of the crowd probably agreed with Kinzinger’s point of view, but there were at least a few in the audience who didn’t – and they made it known through polite exchanges with the candidate.

I also liked that Kinzinger acknowledged there are some parts of the new health-care law he agrees with – specifically, not letting insurance companies deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions, and allowing children to be insured under their parents’ plan until age 26.

Noting there are some good things to be found in an opponent’s plan can go a long way in fostering civil discourse. Unfortunately, politicians and mainstream political pundits willing to admit somebody with an opposing viewpoint has a decent idea might as well be placed on the endangered species list. That’s part of the reason why a relatively unknown politician like Barack Obama could ride a promise of bipartisanship all the way to the White House – because, in my opinion, most people want civil discourse rather than continual partisan bickering that accomplishes little.

We should expect no less from our elected officials. But remember, they ultimately take their cues from us. We must set the example for them – not the other way around.

A version of this column will appear in this week’s issue of Ottawa Delivered.

 

The lion’s lasting legacy

I write a political column for Ottawa Delivered, a hyperlocal Web site and weekly newspaper that covers Ottawa, Ill. The following column, which was published Thursday, is about Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy, who died Aug. 25. It was the most-read article on the OD Web site Friday.

* * *

The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy last week prompted me to do a Google search for any connection the so-called “lion of the U.S. Senate” might have had to Ottawa.

Turns out the book “Death at Chappaquiddick” was published here by Green Hill Publishing (now Jameson Books) in 1976. Written by Richard and Thomas Tedrow, the book focuses on one of the lowest points in Kennedy’s life – when, after leaving a party, he drove his car off a bridge, resulting in the drowning death of 28-year-old campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne.

The Chappaquiddick incident is the most notorious of Kennedy’s long and storied public life. As it turned out, Chappaquiddick was the boiling point, the moment in Kennedy’s life when all the tragedy he endured leading up to then finally came to a head. 

Thinking about that, it occurred to me that no matter which side of the political aisle you’re on, Kennedy is worth admiring for his tenacity in the face of adversity.

Lesser men might have quit public life in the face of a brother’s assassination. Two of Kennedy’s brothers were assassinated, yet he carried on as the public face of a very visible political family, shouldering his pain the way he knew best – by using the legislative process to help the less fortunate.

In addition to Chappaquiddick and the assassinations, Kennedy had other experiences that might have set back others. His oldest brother died in World War II. His sister Kathleen died in a plane crash. He survived a plane crash in 1964. His son Edward Kennedy Jr. lost a leg to bone cancer at age 12. Another son spent time in drug rehabilitation for cocaine addiction. The list goes on. And so did Kennedy, never shirking from what he saw as his duty to his country.

Whether or not you agreed with Kennedy’s politics, there should be consensus that the longtime Massachusetts senator was a good example to us all.

Whenever he faced setbacks – even the most heart-wrenching ones – he always pulled himself together and did what he thought was right. And he continued to live life to its fullest, even when faced with his final setback, brain cancer.

We should all strive to do the same.

* * *

For those of you who use Twitter, you can follow me there, too! My personal account is @thebreadline and my work account is @OD_Politics.