The first big domino in the newspaper industry's long, brutal tumble fell this week. The Rocky Mountain News, Colorado's oldest newspaper, published its final edition on Friday. And while this wasn't unexpected to the industry's observers, it's still no less a shock to the system.
If you're a Romenesko reader, you've been bombarded with awful news about the industry every weekday for the last several years--layoffs, buyouts, sales, bankruptcies, section closings, you name it. But despite all of it, the papers themselves have remained intact; they're probably the most consistent things in America this side of death, taxes and the Postal Service (and maybe not even that last one). The only exceptions were a couple of papers, like the Christian Science Monitor and the Detroit News and Free Press, dropping from daily to nondaily print circulation. But even those operations were still producing news, still updating their websites 'round the clock. That changed this week. The Rocky isn't just continuing in a different form; it's done. Like, forever.
This video is long, but well worth your time:
Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.
Perhaps the video feels a bit too navel-gazing; after all, we don't do 20-minute videos every time an auto-parts plant in our town closes. But as someone who works at a paper that's been sold twice in the last 15 months, I'm still amazed at how many people in our area were not only aware of our sales, but seemed genuinely concerned. They asked me out of the blue at the end of interviews, "What does this mean for you guys? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?"
It's times like those when I'm reminded that maybe a newspaper does mean a bit more to a community than your standard auto-parts plant (unless you're in Detroit). Not only is it the hub, the lifeblood, and all those other cliches, but it's also something people feel an intangible yet strong ownership in. Like the woman on the video said, hundreds of thousands of Coloradans lost not just "the Rocky" but "my Rocky" this week.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Michael Lewis does it again.
Holy cow. For one blissful hour or so (spread out over three days) Michael Lewis actually made me care about the NBA--or, as the Times would have me put it, the N.B.A.
Monday, February 9, 2009
A humbler road back
A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Son of a Preacher Man by Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.* My brother-in-law had lent it to me, telling me that it was a pretty amazing expose of what really happened behind the PTL curtain. Nope, not really. Obviously, it's got a lot of inside anecdotes, but I found to be a self-serving apologetic for his parents. It should have been subtitled "How the World Has Always Been Out To Get My Parents and Especially Me."
*Actually, I started reading it a couple of weeks ago, too. It's a really quick read.
And that's understandable. Jay's obviously gone through a ridiculously crappy life, and it's pretty awesome that he's come through it to start a new ministry. And he wrote this book in 2000, when he was 24. I'm 24, and I know I'm not at the point where I can look back on my life with any sort of wisdom or maturity. I'm sure he's matured quite a bit since then. So Jay, if you're reading (and of course you aren't, unless you Google yourself and keep clicking on links through page 68), I totally understand why your book comes off that way. You seem like a cool enough guy.
But I've still got a problem with it. Jay spends much of the book bashing Christians for shunning his dad and his family, rather than forgiving him and restoring him to the ministry. Fair enough. But you know why people had a problem giving his ministry back to him? Because he had done some really bad stuff.
The classic example was when Jay got upset with Falwell and folks who took over PTL after Jim resigned because of his affair. Basically, he had had an affair seven years earlier and never told his wife. It only became public when the woman told the press. (PTL had actually earlier paid--or tried to pay, I don't remember if she took it--her to shut up about it, but Jay said his dad had no idea that happened.) So Jim resigned with the idea that he would take PTL back over when all this had blown over. When he did try come back, Falwell said no, and Jay called that "a corporate takeover, pure and simple. Where was the grace in that?" But Jay also says his dad came to Falwell "a few weeks" after he resigned. A few weeks? What pastor in his right mind has an affair, doesn't tell his wife and congregation until seven years later--and even then only because his hand is forced--then expects to have his ministry handed back to him within a few weeks? Rejecting that request isn't a lack of grace; it's called common sense.
Ted Haggard presents a similar situation, and this article by his former writer, Patton Dodd, offers the perfect remedy: He advises Haggard to "go away quietly, do the work of atonement, and let tales of his renewed life spring up naturally." A fallen actor can go back to acting, Dodd says, but a fallen pastor can't just waltz back into ministry because his ministry, unlike the actor's acting, is based on his integrity. And once his integrity is gone, his credibility to minister is gone, too. I think Dodd's last paragraph goes for anyone in public ministry who's fallen in a significant way:
"Haggard can't enter a pulpit, and he shouldn't seek to be a spiritual leader, at least not for eons. He can enter a congregation somewhere, and if he wants to do that, he should, as a fellow traveler with other seekers. And that congregation should embrace him. That's what his spiritual restoration would look like."
And all the people said...amen.
*Actually, I started reading it a couple of weeks ago, too. It's a really quick read.
And that's understandable. Jay's obviously gone through a ridiculously crappy life, and it's pretty awesome that he's come through it to start a new ministry. And he wrote this book in 2000, when he was 24. I'm 24, and I know I'm not at the point where I can look back on my life with any sort of wisdom or maturity. I'm sure he's matured quite a bit since then. So Jay, if you're reading (and of course you aren't, unless you Google yourself and keep clicking on links through page 68), I totally understand why your book comes off that way. You seem like a cool enough guy.
But I've still got a problem with it. Jay spends much of the book bashing Christians for shunning his dad and his family, rather than forgiving him and restoring him to the ministry. Fair enough. But you know why people had a problem giving his ministry back to him? Because he had done some really bad stuff.
The classic example was when Jay got upset with Falwell and folks who took over PTL after Jim resigned because of his affair. Basically, he had had an affair seven years earlier and never told his wife. It only became public when the woman told the press. (PTL had actually earlier paid--or tried to pay, I don't remember if she took it--her to shut up about it, but Jay said his dad had no idea that happened.) So Jim resigned with the idea that he would take PTL back over when all this had blown over. When he did try come back, Falwell said no, and Jay called that "a corporate takeover, pure and simple. Where was the grace in that?" But Jay also says his dad came to Falwell "a few weeks" after he resigned. A few weeks? What pastor in his right mind has an affair, doesn't tell his wife and congregation until seven years later--and even then only because his hand is forced--then expects to have his ministry handed back to him within a few weeks? Rejecting that request isn't a lack of grace; it's called common sense.
Ted Haggard presents a similar situation, and this article by his former writer, Patton Dodd, offers the perfect remedy: He advises Haggard to "go away quietly, do the work of atonement, and let tales of his renewed life spring up naturally." A fallen actor can go back to acting, Dodd says, but a fallen pastor can't just waltz back into ministry because his ministry, unlike the actor's acting, is based on his integrity. And once his integrity is gone, his credibility to minister is gone, too. I think Dodd's last paragraph goes for anyone in public ministry who's fallen in a significant way:
"Haggard can't enter a pulpit, and he shouldn't seek to be a spiritual leader, at least not for eons. He can enter a congregation somewhere, and if he wants to do that, he should, as a fellow traveler with other seekers. And that congregation should embrace him. That's what his spiritual restoration would look like."
And all the people said...amen.
Monday, February 2, 2009
If it's too loud, turn it down.
From Christianity Today comes one of the best (and most constructive) rants I've heard on worship music in a while.
This guy just wants some piece and quiet while worshiping ... and for those darn kids to get off his lawn!
Actually, though, I totally agree with him.
My favorite line:
"Do not compensate for mediocrity by amping it up to MEDIOCRITY."
And yes, I yoinked this post's title from Weezer.
This guy just wants some piece and quiet while worshiping ... and for those darn kids to get off his lawn!
Actually, though, I totally agree with him.
My favorite line:
"Do not compensate for mediocrity by amping it up to MEDIOCRITY."
And yes, I yoinked this post's title from Weezer.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Because whining about it makes it all better.
I have a somewhat thoughtful post on Ted Haggard and meth-fueled trysts coming sometime soon, but before I write that, you'll have to excuse me, 'cause I've got some complaining to do.
The last five months have been some of the worst in recent Wisconsin sports history. It's one thing when your teams are just plain horrible, so you can quit caring about them. It's quite another when they tease you in every single game by losing at the last second. And I can't remember another year when that's happened to my teams as much as this one.
The Packers were the worst offenders, with an epically heartbreaking season. They had nine games that went down to the final two minutes or overtime, and they lost eight of them, including a streak of four straight games in which they blew a late fourth-quarter lead. They had an eight-game stretch this season in which they were outscored by just six points total, but somehow ended up with a record of 1-7. The NFL stat gurus Football Outsiders did an analysis just before the last week of the season showing that the Packers were the unluckiest NFL team in the last 27 years. I've never followed a season like that, where every time your team got a lead, you were so resigned to the fact that they'd eventually lose it--and they proved you right every single time. It's just not fun to have your pessimism backed up so consistently.
(Badger football, of course, was awful, too, though not quite in as gut-wrenching fashion as the Packers. They lost six times, with three of those losses coming on last-minute scores. But they also won three close ones, too. All in all, they weren't an unlucky team--just a horrible one.)
Then came winter, and with it, Badger basketball. This was supposed to be a down year for the Badgers, but nowhere near this painful. Back while football season was going on and no one was paying attention, they split a couple of close games, winning by a basket against two teams (Iona and Idaho State) that shouldn't have been able to hang with them and losing two tight ones against top teams (Marquette and Texas). Then came the conference season, and specifically the last four games. The Badgers lost two straight in overtime, then two more in the last minute to bring their losing streak to five, their longest in more than a decade. This quite thoughtful Badger fan's response after the most recent of those losses sums up my thoughts on Tuesday perfectly.
Oh, and Nebraska basketball? They've led big-time programs throughout most of their last three games, only to fall short in the final two minutes. Tom Osborne had to give them a pep talk this week to tell them, basically, that things can't possibly get any worse.
But enough of my whining. At least we still have Husker football, right? Those lucky dogs.
The last five months have been some of the worst in recent Wisconsin sports history. It's one thing when your teams are just plain horrible, so you can quit caring about them. It's quite another when they tease you in every single game by losing at the last second. And I can't remember another year when that's happened to my teams as much as this one.
The Packers were the worst offenders, with an epically heartbreaking season. They had nine games that went down to the final two minutes or overtime, and they lost eight of them, including a streak of four straight games in which they blew a late fourth-quarter lead. They had an eight-game stretch this season in which they were outscored by just six points total, but somehow ended up with a record of 1-7. The NFL stat gurus Football Outsiders did an analysis just before the last week of the season showing that the Packers were the unluckiest NFL team in the last 27 years. I've never followed a season like that, where every time your team got a lead, you were so resigned to the fact that they'd eventually lose it--and they proved you right every single time. It's just not fun to have your pessimism backed up so consistently.
(Badger football, of course, was awful, too, though not quite in as gut-wrenching fashion as the Packers. They lost six times, with three of those losses coming on last-minute scores. But they also won three close ones, too. All in all, they weren't an unlucky team--just a horrible one.)
Then came winter, and with it, Badger basketball. This was supposed to be a down year for the Badgers, but nowhere near this painful. Back while football season was going on and no one was paying attention, they split a couple of close games, winning by a basket against two teams (Iona and Idaho State) that shouldn't have been able to hang with them and losing two tight ones against top teams (Marquette and Texas). Then came the conference season, and specifically the last four games. The Badgers lost two straight in overtime, then two more in the last minute to bring their losing streak to five, their longest in more than a decade. This quite thoughtful Badger fan's response after the most recent of those losses sums up my thoughts on Tuesday perfectly.
Oh, and Nebraska basketball? They've led big-time programs throughout most of their last three games, only to fall short in the final two minutes. Tom Osborne had to give them a pep talk this week to tell them, basically, that things can't possibly get any worse.
But enough of my whining. At least we still have Husker football, right? Those lucky dogs.
Monday, January 26, 2009
I ain't done can write no more.
Today a reader pointed out to me probably the worst stylistic error I've ever made as a reporter. But it wasn't as bad as it looked, I promise. Allow me to explain.
I was writing an article on the state beekeeper of the year, and I started a sentence planning to write "... he still hadn't done anything." I stopped midsentence and decided instead to write, " ... he still hadn't gotten started." But I forgot to remove the word "done" from my first start. Thus I was left with this doozy:
But a year later, he still hadn't done gotten started.
Ohhhhhhhhh no. Wow. Just wow. We'll just call it a "Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel" moment, and then we'll move on and pretend it didn't happen. Right? Right?
I was writing an article on the state beekeeper of the year, and I started a sentence planning to write "... he still hadn't done anything." I stopped midsentence and decided instead to write, " ... he still hadn't gotten started." But I forgot to remove the word "done" from my first start. Thus I was left with this doozy:
But a year later, he still hadn't done gotten started.
Ohhhhhhhhh no. Wow. Just wow. We'll just call it a "Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel" moment, and then we'll move on and pretend it didn't happen. Right? Right?
Monday, January 19, 2009
Yup, Ricki Lake made something more respectable than Ben Stein did.
I saw two documentaries on consecutive nights last week--Expelled and The Business of Being Born. Expelled is Ben Stein's pet project and could have been subtitled, "What's So Wrong With Intelligent Design?" The Business of Being Born is Ricki Lake's pet project and could have been subtitled, "What's So Wrong With Home Birth?"
I could write a post or two (or ten) about each of these movies*, but I'll focus on one thing that I think distinguishes the latter film as a much better one: Authenticity.
*Five-second reviews: Expelled is pretty meh, though you'd probably like it if you're part of the choir it's preaching to; Business isn't perfect, either, but it's much more compelling, as long as you're OK with seeing a few no-holds-barred live births. If that assessment is all you cared about, you can quit reading now. (As if you needed me to tell you that.)
During our discussion of Expelled at church, Matt noted that movies like these are really not documentaries at all--they're feature-film-length essays. He's right: whereas a documentary is ostensibly someone just turning on a camera and filming reality by depicting a story or illuminating some aspect of culture (Hoop Dreams and Spellbound are great modern examples of what I'd consider true documentaries), these films are meant to make a point. That doesn't mean documenting reality; it means documenting reality as far as it fits the point you're trying to make.
There's nothing wrong with making a movie like this, but Expelled runs into trouble when it spends most of its time pretending that it's just an honest, old-fashioned documentary. Stein frames the film as his globe-trotting quest to determine whether Intelligent Design is as horrible as the evolutionists say. All the transitions went something like this: "I couldn't believe it--could the ID scientists' stories of being booted out by the science establishment really be true? I decided to go Seattle to find out." Do you honestly think we're that stupid, Ben? Of course you think one side is right and the other is just pompous and arrogant--that's why you're making this movie in the first place. Don't try to play it off like this movie is an honest depiction of your search for truth that just so happened to lead to Intelligent Design. It just leads the viewer to wonder, 'What else is being misleading about?'
Lake's approach with Business was the complete opposite of Stein's. Her film is a video essay, too--but it's pretty upfront in acknowledging that that's exactly what it is. She has all the talking heads explain why hospital births are often manipulative and not as safe as they're made out to be, and why home births are a completely safe and reasonable alternative. But then she does something that's almost jarringly honest: She follows five couples through their home-birth process (including her own and her director's).
She doesn't just edit to only show the relative calm between contractions and then cut to the post-birth euphoria. She shows it all: Women in pain; women grunting, groaning and pushing; husbands and midwives trying to talk them through the experience. (Then she shows the euphoria, too.) When an urgent problem develops during the director's own home birth, the scene doesn't get cut. Instead, she's shown hurriedly gathering her things, collapsing in pain in her apartment building's lobby, piling into a taxi and being rushed into the hospital for a C-section. It's not pretty, but it's what happened. And even though it's not the ideal home-birth experience, it makes for a more compelling argument: She lays her cards on the table, tells you what side she's on, then makes it very clear that she hasn't stacked the deck. Despite the chaos on screen, it's quite a reassuring effect. Strange as it feels to say, Ben could learn a thing or two from Ricki.
I could write a post or two (or ten) about each of these movies*, but I'll focus on one thing that I think distinguishes the latter film as a much better one: Authenticity.
*Five-second reviews: Expelled is pretty meh, though you'd probably like it if you're part of the choir it's preaching to; Business isn't perfect, either, but it's much more compelling, as long as you're OK with seeing a few no-holds-barred live births. If that assessment is all you cared about, you can quit reading now. (As if you needed me to tell you that.)
During our discussion of Expelled at church, Matt noted that movies like these are really not documentaries at all--they're feature-film-length essays. He's right: whereas a documentary is ostensibly someone just turning on a camera and filming reality by depicting a story or illuminating some aspect of culture (Hoop Dreams and Spellbound are great modern examples of what I'd consider true documentaries), these films are meant to make a point. That doesn't mean documenting reality; it means documenting reality as far as it fits the point you're trying to make.
There's nothing wrong with making a movie like this, but Expelled runs into trouble when it spends most of its time pretending that it's just an honest, old-fashioned documentary. Stein frames the film as his globe-trotting quest to determine whether Intelligent Design is as horrible as the evolutionists say. All the transitions went something like this: "I couldn't believe it--could the ID scientists' stories of being booted out by the science establishment really be true? I decided to go Seattle to find out." Do you honestly think we're that stupid, Ben? Of course you think one side is right and the other is just pompous and arrogant--that's why you're making this movie in the first place. Don't try to play it off like this movie is an honest depiction of your search for truth that just so happened to lead to Intelligent Design. It just leads the viewer to wonder, 'What else is being misleading about?'
Lake's approach with Business was the complete opposite of Stein's. Her film is a video essay, too--but it's pretty upfront in acknowledging that that's exactly what it is. She has all the talking heads explain why hospital births are often manipulative and not as safe as they're made out to be, and why home births are a completely safe and reasonable alternative. But then she does something that's almost jarringly honest: She follows five couples through their home-birth process (including her own and her director's).
She doesn't just edit to only show the relative calm between contractions and then cut to the post-birth euphoria. She shows it all: Women in pain; women grunting, groaning and pushing; husbands and midwives trying to talk them through the experience. (Then she shows the euphoria, too.) When an urgent problem develops during the director's own home birth, the scene doesn't get cut. Instead, she's shown hurriedly gathering her things, collapsing in pain in her apartment building's lobby, piling into a taxi and being rushed into the hospital for a C-section. It's not pretty, but it's what happened. And even though it's not the ideal home-birth experience, it makes for a more compelling argument: She lays her cards on the table, tells you what side she's on, then makes it very clear that she hasn't stacked the deck. Despite the chaos on screen, it's quite a reassuring effect. Strange as it feels to say, Ben could learn a thing or two from Ricki.
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