In Praise of True Photographers

An MMU student taking photos for the Mount Mercy Times, a channel 9 videographer and a Metro Sports photographer. And me, but you can't see me. Photographers all in dark, MMU AD in white behind them.

These days, the existence of cell phones means that most people are always carrying a camera that can shoot both still images and video.

But, just as having a PC with Publisher on it doesn’t make you a graphic designer, neither does your iPhone make you a photographer.

I was thinking about that this on Saturday in the Hennessy Recreation Center at Mount Mercy University. The university is on Thanksgiving break now, which means few students are around, but the Mustangs had a men’s basketball game that afternoon.

So, I bicycled to campus to grab a newspaper camera from the closed library building (where the paper office is and to which I have a key) for a student to borrow.

And I stayed for half the game to shoot some images.

I don’t know if basketball was the original sport that I shot years ago with my Minolta 35 mm camera. I know that the Calumet at Muscatine Community College had a basketball team, but I don’t recall where they played (there was no gym on campus) nor whether I shot any images of their games (I was one of the editors of the student newspaper at MCC back in the day).

Anyway, I know that I shot some basketball games at Marycrest College, as well as some soccer. At the time, the longest lens I owned was a 135 telephoto—no change in focal length.

My favorite shot of over 120.

At the game this weekend, I had a much nicer camera, my current Nikon D3100. Yet, most of my photos aren’t any good. I shot over 120 images, and consider only a few of them passable. Some samples are on this blog post, a few more can be seen in a Facebook gallery.

These days, as traditional media contract, one endangered species is the news photographer. It’s too easy to give a reporter a camera and tell her to shoot her own images, or depend on the kindness of strangers and their many photo-taking devices.

But I think the really good news or sports photographer is a rare breed worth preserving.

In this day of YouTube and instant photos and videos, we’re awash in images. That doesn’t mean we’re awash in good journalistic images—ones that really tell a key part of the story, that communication the action and emotion of a key instant.

And that kind of image is not easy to capture. Granted, I wasn’t using a really good camera—while my Nikon is an SLR digital camera and came with a 70 to 200 mm zoom, neither the camera nor the lens are the best for this kind of photography.

I can’t blame my low “hit” ratio on the camera, however. I’m a decent amateur photographer, and in my newspaper days, my photo skills did serve me well—but I was never primarily a news photographer.

A metaphorical tip of my imaginary metaphysical hat to those who are news photographers—you preserve instances of history in a way that writers like me should respect and recognize for the artistry, difficulty and skill level that good sports or news photography requires.

A picture is worth a 1,000 words—but only if it’s in focus, well composed and dramatic. And that’s not easy.

I know not much is going on in this image, but I kind of like it anyway. Under Armour vs Nike. When I left, Under Armour was out-scoring Nike about 4 to 1.

When Does the Media Turn Doctors into Santa Claus?

Some good news and not so good news from my media life this week:

A son-in-law was featured in an English newspaper because his earlier genetic research contributed to new cancer treatments. That’s good news.

Dr. Martin speaking Thursday. Her presentation was part of the fall Vietnam series at MMU.

A professor at Mount Mercy University reminded her audience that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is not Santa Claus, and that the answer to the old question posed in a 1960s anti-war folk song—“when we they ever learn?”—sadly, seems to be “not yet.”

Congratulations Dr. Matthew Moscou for the research you’re part of that makes the world a better place. However, it’s important to recall that Moscou isn’t a magician who waived his magic wand and came up with a new cancer treatment—but part of a community of dedicated scientists working quietly behind the scenes, slowly uncovering mysteries of the universe. Someone else applied the genetic knowledge Matt uncovered studying barley to cancer cells in humans.

A link to the story about Matt is at the end of this post.

And media don’t always report well on science, which is a problem. Our public support for science has not always been high, and we have a cultural distrust of intellectuals of all sorts, including scientists. That has clear and negative impacts on our political life, such as denying, and failing to talk intelligently, about big issues such as global warming.

Anyway, it was nice to see Dr. Matt in the news in a positive way. Shifting gears, Dr. Martin spoke at Mount Mercy Thursday of last week about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and a famous speech he gave in which he articulated his reasons for opposing the Vietnam War. Since King had benefited from  civil rights legislation pushed by President Johnson, that opposition was gutsy.

And King spoke of the folly of our involvement in no uncertain terms.

Dr. Martin speeaking.

King tends to be remembered today for the “I Have a Dream” speech and his language about a society where the color of skin does not matter. That message is sometimes co-opted today by people who argue against efforts to promote diversity, on the grounds that such efforts are not color blind.

I don’t want to get into that particular quagmire right now, partly because I’m no expert on the topic and partly because I’m personally conflicted. But certainly our modern use of King's words out of context do him and his cause no favors.

Final view of Dr. Martin.

I do want to note something Martin said. I don’t know which writer she was quoting, but she recalled that someone once said that today there tends to be a “Santa Claus-ification” of King—to remember his 1963 speech, and ignore some of the harder criticisms and more controversial positions he took beyond that speech.

King had courage. As Dr. Martin noted, his concerns about military policy and nonviolence should echo today.

And we in the media should be careful of our tendency to simplify stories in order to create more digestible narratives. King was not Santa Clause. Scientists aren’t magicians.

But Matt sure does look nice in his British lab outfit! See the story.

Adventures In Free Rabbit Ears TV

TV in bedroom, with antenna.

I recall rabbit ears. Years ago, it was the way that my family got TV. That was back in the 1960s.

They were tall, maybe 3-feet long, and sensitive. To watch a particular TV station required rotating the antenna and then playing with the angle of the “ears” until everything more or less settled on a grainy black-and-white image with so-so audio.

And that’s the way it was for many years. At some point, maybe when we moved to Muscatine or maybe in our later years in Clinton, we upgraded to a rooftop antenna and earned better reception.

But for many years, it was just the rabbit ears. I recall that it was a rare day—maybe when the atmospheric conditions were just right—that we got an IPTV signal in Clinton. We mostly subsisted on the Big 3 network affiliates from the Quad Cities. I watched the moon landing, mankind’s greatest technological adventure to date, on grainy black-and-white images courtesy of rabbit ears in our living room in Clinton.

Can you say “Capt’n Ernies Cartoon Showboat?” How about “Acri Creature Feature?”

The first antenna was OK, but no channel 9.

Anyway, those antenna days have suddenly returned. The local cable system in Cedar Rapids finally wised up and digitally scrambled their signal, so you can’t get the first 13 channels for free just by plugging in your cable. I don’t really blame them. But I had just purchased a small digital TV to replace a failing TV in our bedroom, so I was interested in getting some TV signal—without paying a cable TV bill.

At Menards while buying some fall flower bulbs, I saw a display of a cheap digital antenna for $8 or so, and I purchased it. We plugged into our new $99 digital TV, and voila, we did indeed get several stations: Channel 2, Channel 2.2, IPTV (3 channels) and an ION family of channels, as well as Home Shopping Network.

However, that left out Channel 9, and I am interested in that station. Better local news and “Modern Family” both come from that source. A quick check of the KCRG web site revealed the truth: You need rabbit ears. The $8 antenna is more like a plastic tray. So, we’re going to party like it’s 1969.

My wife and I were shopping in Target tonight, and I ended up over in electronics. And for $10, there it was, a GE rabbit-ear antenna.

Innovative TV technology of the new century.

So we bought it, and I plugged in. The stations that we got with the $8 antenna seem to come in slightly better. ION breaks up now and then, but who watches ION? We get duplicate IPTV channels with the new antenna, so there is no doubt Dowtown Abbey will be available in January (honestly, that was a large part of the motivation for the whole project for both my wife and I—we need the comfort, months in advance, that we won’t miss what the Dowager Countess will say).

I noticed that if I “play” with the modern rabbit ears, it tends to mess up whatever station it’s on. With the digital channels, most of them are best left alone—no rotating or adjusting or fiddling with the antenna. They come in crystal clear or pretty much not at all.

So we’re back in business—we can have our morning news and our shot of IPTV when we want it.

Still, it does feel a bit weird. Honestly, rabbit ears?

The Opening of the Wall

Dr. Joe Nguyen at the opening ceremony.

Thursday night was an emotional one at MMU. The Moving Wall came to campus in the morning, and a rainstorm pelted down on the workers as they were midway through installation.

They powered through. They were men and women on a mission.

Later, after skies had cleared, I took part in the afternoon opening ceremony. It was very poignant. In particular, I felt a chill as an MMU student, a veteran, read the names of Linn County’s own who are on the wall—who died in the Vietnam War.

She chocked up a bit reading the names. I felt the same just listening.

Following the opening ceremony, that evening there was a panel discussion in Flaherty where Professor Joe Nguyen asked a panel of veterans some questions about their Vietnam experience.

Flaherty was packed for the veteran's panel. Joe Nguyen leads discussion.

There were three American veterans, and three from South Vietnam’s armed forces. One of those Vietnamese veterans, dressed in a crisp white naval uniform, was Joe Nguyen’s father. To say there was a charge of emotion in the room several times would be to understate it. I’ve never seen a room so packed that was, at times, so quiet and attentive.

Most presentations in our Fall Faculty Series “Stories We Tell: Legacies of the Vietnam War” will be less than an hour. Thursday’s panel went on for 90 minutes or so, and when it ended, I think most people in the room wished we could take a break and continue. There simply wasn’t enough time to hear all the stories these men had to share.

MMU Times student reporter at event.

This is a blog about “media,” which implies a channel through which communication passes (like this blog). But you can experience a small piece of the legacy of Vietnam in an unmediated way. A travelling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the famous “Wall” in Washington DC, is set up in the lawn in front of Warde Hall, which is why we had the Thursday events.

It’s a quiet corner of campus, which feels right. Come on down and see it for yourself.

And if you missed the great programs we had Thursday, remember that there is a whole series of events that goes into November. Use media—check out the MMU web site for more details.

More photos of the real stars of Thursday night:

 

 

Welcome to the Blogosphere, New Writers

Students writing blog posts in library commputer lab.

As I often do in media-related writing classes, I am requiring a group of students to maintain their own personal blogs.

There is a baker’s dozen of students in the class, and I’ll update this post in about a week when they establish their URLs.

I require blogging for several reasons—mainly, so students in communication are comfortable with the genre and aware of it. But also to get students into the habit of thinking of their writing as public performance that anybody can see.

So, after I post the links, you all are invited to follow them. I’m looking forward to what these 13 new blog writers will have to say.

I hope some of them will keep their blogs going after the semester is over. Most of all, I hope they all benefit from being forced to write regularly in a different voice and style than other, academic writing, that they are doing for me.

To The 20 Students Who Are Considering The Times

Madison Coates (right), Editor-in-Chief of the "Mount Mercy Times," gives information to a student who is inquiring about the newspaper. Madison, by the way, is a nursing student.

I recall, sometimes, how the newsroom at the “Columbia Missourian” seemed like a jungle or swamp. If you stepped in there, you never knew what variety of snake would grab you or how long you might be lost.

Yet, I stepped in there a lot, and I don’t regret it. Of course, when I was a student at Mizzou, I was a graduate student—and time in my life was more precious than time was when I was a young undergraduate adult. I had five young children while I was in graduate school, so I couldn’t afford too many open-ended journeys into the unknown news swamp.

Madison and Todd Cross, Campus Editor, at Involvement Fair.

Still, I had wonderful experiences there. The best, I think, was a semester I spent reporting at the Capitol Bureau in Jefferson City, covering the state legislature. What an interesting place to be, and what a challenge it was to write about.

Why am I writing to you, the 20 who signed your names to say you’re interested in the Mount Mercy Times? We had an Involvement Fair on campus today, and many of you put your name on our sign-up sheet and took the paper with a bit of information.

Don’t forget—Sept. 1, 3:30 p.m., Lower Busse Library—the first Times staff meeting of the semester.

I am writing to you because I truly believe several things about a student's experience at a university. One is that, while classes are important (I am a professor, after all), what really can make your education come alive is connections and events beyond the classroom. For instance, when I was an undergraduate, I was for a time active in a drama group—it was an odd thing for a journalism student, and a great source of stress, but also a wonderful experience.

I also wrote for and then edited the student newspaper at my hometown community college, and then became the editor of the paper at the college where I earned my BA (I was actually recruited to go to that college as the newspaper’s editor—and there’s nothing like being editor of the campus paper to make a new transfer student put down roots in a new place very quickly.)

After college, my career path took me to newspapers, so my editing experience was directly relevant. But I think I would have gained a lot regardless of my major. As a newspaper editor, I was a student leader who wasn’t chosen by my peers, but rather rose through the ranks of a meritocracy.

And because of that rise, I had some unique opportunities. When I was at the community college, I covered meetings of the college district governing board—my first public meeting stories. When I was at the liberal arts college where I earned my BA, I met monthly with the president, just to get some perspective on what was going on. I think I was the only student who so regularly had contact with the president.

So you think you might want to join the “Mount Mercy Times?” Well, good. It’s a great idea. You may get to know Laurie Hamen, President of MMU, if you stick with it and become an editor of the Times. Even before that, you’ll go places and meet people and learn far more about MMU then most students will.

The students newspaper flag at MMU.

Most of you won’t pursue newspaper careers, and many of you won’t work directly in communication fields. But the skills you’ll pick up at the Times, the ability to get information and translate it and present it, and the management experience of being in a student-run group—those are lifelong fringe benefits which means your decision to be part of a student newspaper will forever enrich your whole college experience.

At least I hope so. It all depends on whether you stick with it and actually take part. Please, sign up for stories or photo assignments or video assignments, and get them done.

There may be times along the way when you’re being driven crazy with novels to read and papers to write and tests to study for, and the Times will seem like a giant time swamp, a place where you enter and never know when you might emerge.

Cheer up. I won’t lie, being a student journalist is hard, which is why so few do it. But in the end, it’s so worth it. I hope you stay with it long enough to learn that for yourself.

The Horror, The Horror

Posted on Flickr and Wikimedia Commons,
photo by Doug Kline of Robert Duvall's costume.

In 1979, one of my sisters and I had an odd “Vietnam” Saturday. We drove to Moline, Illinois, where the largest cinema complex in our area was located, and watched two movies, practically back-to-back.

One was “Hair.” The other was “Apocalypse Now.”

Sunday night, I re-watched “Apocalypse Now.” I’m not sure how well “Hair” has aged, but this retelling of “Heart of Darkness” in Vietnam is still a movie classic. It’s a strange narrative, a more than slightly off-kilter story that starts inside a claustrophobic room in Saigon.

I also rented a copy of the documentary that was made some years later about the making of “Apocalypse Now,” but I have not watched it yet.

“Apocalypse Now” is very episodic, with discrete scenes taking place as a small Navy patrol boat moves up a river to deliver an assassin whose mission is to eliminate a rogue colonel. There is the famous assault on a village staged so that a helicopter cavalry commander could find the best waves for surfing.

Most quoted lines from the movie: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Or: “Charlie don’t surf!”

Later, there is the tense search for mangos that ends in a tiger attack. There is the massacre of the civilians in the sampan. And finally there is the encounter with the rogue colonel and his strange tribe of followers deep in the jungle.

As a narrative, it follows the source material, the colonial novel “Heart of Darkness,” surprisingly well. Instead of a jabbering Russian, there is a photojournalist extolling the genius of “Colonel Kurtz.” I did find myself wondering at the story, a bit. If they had helicopters that could deliver combat troops to a village with ultimate surfing waves, and that could pick up a patrol boat and put it where they wanted—why did they bother riding that boat all the way up the river? Why not start the journey at the eerie bridge that was the last American outpost?

For that matter, the ending of the movie is a bit unsatisfying. Why is the assassin popping up out of the water with a machete and sneaking up on the colonel when he’s been spending days in the colonel’s company previous to that?

Still, despite my minor qualms at the plot, I think the movie has a lot to offer. It puts you on edge, and has a lot to say about the dehumanizing effects of violence and war.

I’ve now binge watched “Apocalypse Now,” “Full Metal Jacket,” “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Platoon.” It’s been an odd week. Of the four, “Platoon” and “Apocalypse Now”are the most evocative.

In part, I suppose, that’s because neither Mathew Modine nor Tom Cruise seemed to fit their leading roles well in “Full” or “Born.” In part, it’s because the other two movies are more surreal, taking you to some other place and time and making you feel that you’re not in Kansas (nor Iowa) anymore.

“Hair?” Honestly, it’s not enough of a Vietnam movie for me to include it on my watch list. For now, the Vietnam film fest continues. Again, if you have any suggestions, feel free to comment.