John Goodlove

Dark sky saves money, energy, benefits environment

2010-03-05T14:44:00.001-06:00

A $14 shield clipped to the flood light on your garage can help save the world.

Poorly designed and installed outdoor lighting in the United States wastes billions of dollars each year in energy costs, harms wildlife, blots out the stars and has little effect on crime, according to lighting and environmental experts.

"The answer is not more light but the right kind of light," says Cindy Luongo Cassidy, co-owner of Green Earth Lighting of Driftwood, Texas, one of the growing number of companies specializing in environmentally friendly outdoor lighting.

That $14 shield will point the light down where it is needed and reduce glare. "Consumers have been told that if some light is good, then more must be better,'' Cassidy says. "Cities and towns have never been more brightly lit, yet there is more crime than ever before."

Less light at night actually improves security because excessive glare blinds onlookers. Using dimmer lights reduces the stark contrast between lit and unlit areas. The reduction in contrast allows your eyes to adjust more quickly, making it easier to spot prowlers. "If you tone (lighting) down, you will be able to see where you didn't before," Cassidy says.

Properly placing lights and using lower wattage bulbs saves money, an advantage attracting interest from more cities across the country. In the United States, $4.5 billion in energy costs are wasted each year in outdoor lighting that shines up into the sky, according to Cassidy.

Increasing security and saving money are two reasons why thousands of communities have tackled the issue of light pollution, says Robert Gent of the International Dark-Sky Association in Tucson, Ariz. The non-profit IDSA, with 11,000 members in 75 countries, promotes quality outdoor nighttime lighting.

A dozen states, including California, Georgia and Texas, have laws regulating highway lighting. More cities are adopting ordinances regulating outdoor lighting, including Ames and Hiawatha in Iowa.

Former Hiawatha Mayor Tom Patterson received an IDSA Executive Director Special Award in 2007 for his efforts in making Hiawatha’s commercial lighting ordinance one of the strongest in Iowa.

In Hiawatha, a suburb of about 2,600 north of Cedar Rapids, residents living near car dealerships initiated the push for tougher lighting regulations. Patterson says he was surprised when businesses embraced the regulations. “It was a big risk (for Hiawatha). It’s easier for big companies to challenge a small community.”

More businesses are discovering bright lights don't pay off. A study at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., showed bright lights at service stations created safety hazards because motorists' eyes took too long to adjust after leaving the stations. "What they did not expect was the sales increases from reducing the glare of lights," Cassidy says. Reducing the glare made stations easier to spot by customers.

Artificial illumination from diverse sources, including businesses, homes and street lights, may also contribute to health problems by upsetting the 24-hour day/night cycle in human and animals.

Medical studies show that exposure to artificial light at night stops the production of hormone melatonin in humans. Melatonin, which is triggered by darkness, has been shown to stop the growth of breast cancer cells.

The reproductive cycles of turtles and frogs are also interrupted by artificial light, Cassidy says.

"By regulating lighting we reduce energy consumption and take better care of the environment," she says.

Reducing light pollution, Gent says, is a "gift to everybody, and to our future. The greatest tragedy of all is the loss of imagination and wonder at the night sky."

"Badge of honor": Cauliflower ears show pride in Hawkeyes and wrestling

2010-02-13T17:22:00.004-06:00

Picking wrestlers out of a crowd is easy — check the ears. You’ll notice “cauliflower” ears — swollen, lumpy masses of tissue that resemble the garden vegetable. Doctors say infection and loss of hearing are risks of cauliflower ear, but wrestlers shrug off the permanent cosmetic damage, proudly wearing the badge of honor.

University of Iowa Coach Tom Brands says non-wrestlers often stare at his cauliflower ears, asking if they’re a birth defect. “When you explain it the them, they’re very intrigued, and then when they grab it, they can’t believe it,” he says. “They laugh, they oooh and ahhh, they giggle.”

If you want a cauliflower ear, start by repeatedly smacking yourself upside the head. Small blood vessels in your outer ear will rupture, forming blood clots. Your ear will swell as the skin separates from the cartilage. “It hurts like hell,” says UI wrestler Dan Dennis, 23. “It’s really sensitive, it’s really touchy, real soft,” says the 133-pounder from Ingleside, Ill.

Matt Doyle, UI assistant athletic trainer, treats ears with ice to reduce swelling, following up with pressure. Proper treatment is essential to preventing infection. If your cauliflower ear continues to sprout, the damaged area will be drained with a needle and syringe. “The badge of honor is how many cc’s of fluid you get out,” Brands says.

Your cauliflower ear will bloom again if not treated with pressure quickly. Padding is taped, stapled or stitched to your ear to apply pressure. If you neglect the treatment, the fluid and damaged cartilage solidify. At this point wrestlers, who work out and compete year-round, often give up on treatment, preferring to sport hardened lumps for ears.

Now rub your fingers over an ear — don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt — there’s something hard under the skin. Brands will let you grab his ear as a testimonial. “Squeeze hard as you want,” he says. “Squeeze it hard.”

Doyle, who wrestled at Marshalltown High School and doesn't have cauliflower ears, acknowledges wrestlers ignore treatments. He’s the one-the-mat cauliflower ear expert, reporting on current treatments at a fall conference and helping produce a DVD showcasing cauliflower ear among UI wrestlers.

“Some wrestlers are a little dingy and actually want cauliflower ears, it’s kind of like it’s our trademark,” says Dan Gable, UI special assistant to the director of athletics and former wrestling coach. “However, you don’t really need them.”

Wrestlers like Gable carry on a tradition almost 2,500 years old. At the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, Greece, the mythic hero Hercules is depicted as an Olympic athlete, right down to his cauliflower ear.

In the practice room at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, having a cauliflower ear looks to be a prerequisite for stepping on the mats. “Almost everyone at this level has experienced at least one,” Doyle says.

“I'm not a big fan of it,” says Dennis, the 133-pounder. “But it comes with the territory.”

“They’re just part of the business,” says 21-year-old Matt Ballweg, a 157-pounder from Waverly. “You can just tell he’s a wrestler, he’s got those ears.”

“It defines who you are,” says 23-year-old Brent Metcalf, a 149-pounder from Davison, Mich. “It’s like a part of you.”

“It’s part of my history, it’s part of who I am,” says 32-year-old Doug Schwab, an assistant coach for the Hawkeyes. “We’re wrestlers, it’s who we are.”

Who has the worst-looking ear? At a team practice, Brands pauses to consider the question. “Steiner?” Mike Chapman, founder of the wrestling magazine WIN, agrees. “Terry Steiner had the big one. It looked like a doorknob.”

Steiner, coach of the United States Olympic women’s wrestling team in Colorado Springs, laughs at the honor. His ear may not be big as a doorknob, but, “If I put on a stocking cap it looks like I’ve got a golf ball on the side of my head,” the former Hawkeye wrestler says. “If I walk into a restaurant, people on my right side will be talking about my ear. It looks like a deformity.”

Cauliflower ears are not only good for picking wrestlers out of a crowd; you can also use them to scout opponents. If a wrestler’s right ear is mangled more than the left, that means his or her right hand is the power hand. When your opponent tries for a takedown, his or her head will be on your right side. “You’re standing in line at a tournament in Russia and you don’t know your opponents, look at their ears,” Brands says.

Wrestlers who compete internationally usually have the ugliest ears. International competition doesn’t require headgear, unlike collegiate and high school rules in the United States. Headgear not only protects ears but also prevents concussions.

Former UI wrestler Dan Glenn of Inver Grove Heights, Minn., a suburb of St. Paul, says he considered plastic surgery to repair his ears but decided to keep the look. “There never was a convenient time,” says Glenn, a three-time Big 10 champ and All-American. “The opinion that I got was it still going to be different, it won’t be like it used to be. It sounded like my cost-benefit ratio wasn’t going to be that great.” Today, as a pediatric dentist, Glenn says, “I tell my patients I was born on a different planet. Some of the moms kind of roll their eyes.”

Surgical repair may be needed if hearing is affected by swollen ear canals, says Dr. Grant Hamilton, UI clinical assistant professor in otolaryngology. A surgery may take as long as six hours and still not result in a normal-looking ear. “You literally have to abrade all of the skin off that calcified material and whittle it into the shape of an ear,” Hamilton says. Doctors use a drill with a cutting bit “and just carve it out,” says the head and neck surgeon.

Hamilton says wrestlers aren’t the best patients, and he understands the “badge of honor” mentality. “People get piercings, people get tattoos, people do all kinds of things to their bodies to identify with a certain group and that’s fine,” he says. “Wrestlers like to look like wrestlers.”

Interview with Mary Grace Herrington, CEO of Iowa Public Radio

2009-12-09T20:22:00.006-06:00

Mary Grace Herrington was appointed chief executive officer of Iowa Public Radio in January 2009. She had been assistant vice president for advancement operations at Creighton University in Omaha. She has a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Arkansas and has experience in commercial broadcasting, business development, marketing and advancement. (The telephone interview transcript has been edited for publication.)

Q. You have been on the job since January; reflect on your tenure so far.

A. There are a couple of things. Iowa is really lucky, because I’ve been in the Omaha-Council Bluffs metro area for the past 20 years and the public radio operation there, which is run out of the public schools, is very, very limited. There is no local news, no news talk shows or local news reporting. They don’t have reporting in the field truly going out and capturing the flavor and culture of the community and doing public radio features and in-depth reporting. All you have is what commercial radio is doing, and their objectives are a little different in terms of reporting.

My first reaction (when hired) was how rich a public radio culture we have over here. Monday through Friday we have two one-hour locally hosted and produced talk shows (The Exchange and Talk of Iowa.) To have two locally produced shows is very rich in terms of public radio service, and to just to have field reporters truly covering as much as they can in our 21 (core) communities. We were able to add a Cedar Rapids reporter in January. We have field reporters in five (major) markets now.

On the music side of the house, it just gets better. I come from a market where students are playing records at night doing their best to pronounce Mozart or its just syndicated programming. Sixty-five percent of our classical music service is locally produced and hosted by people on our staff; and we do live broadcasts.

Also, in the music department we have alternative music that was branded as Studio One a couple years ago. That’s where you have everything from Beatles medleys and classic rock during the week to Sunday afternoons’ The Folk Tree, where we focus on blues and folk music and interesting bands from the state of Iowa.

Q. Is this a good time to be public radio?

A. Here’s what different, and I’m not sure every state is adopting this, and they’re watching to see how this works for us. What we have done is the three universities, under the leadership of the Board of Regents, came together and said we probably in the long run won’t survive in a siloed environment so let’s come together and operate under one entity. That strategic objective and that concept alone is what is helping this organization fare well in the economic downturn. I’m not seeing that in other states. There are very few statewide networks where the universities have come together to create this operating agreement and work as a large team and deliver this media to the state. I think that is key to our survival and key to the success we’ve had. We’re a guinea pig, and people are waiting to see how we do.

Q. What have been some of the challenges you have faced?

A. I inherited an amazing leadership team with hundreds of years of combined experience in public radio. The hard part has been, like anything, I was the new person who came in and was charged with picking up on the efforts of realigning the operation, an initiative that started in 2005 and did not get finished. So it’s kind of tough, I’m the new person and that’s one of the initiatives that have to lead.

I would say the Board of Regents, the Iowa Public Radio board of directors, the university presidents and key stakeholders throughout the state have been extremely supportive because they recognized those were very tough decisions, but that they were strategic in nature and they’re to ensure that Iowa Public Radio and all of its stations are here for the next three, five and 10 years. Had we continued down the path we had been going on, that probably would not have been the case.

Q. How so?

A. It’s funding, operations management, efficiencies; whether it’s public radio, the symphony or the arts center or pick any non-profit organization the past five to 10 years, even universities, you will find there has been a shift in leadership to where they are no longer ‘programming’ presidents but fund-raising presidents. There has been definite shift in the thinking, in the mentality of what should drive, and who should be the driver, for the sustainability of that non-profit organization.

If you aren’t being very strategic about managing your development activity and not always relying on state or federal funds, you’ve got to rethink that. That’s exactly one of the first things we did here was to rethink our development operations. It’s almost as if we need to assume that five years from now we do not get an appropriation from the state and we do not get a financial appropriation from the universities.

We need to look inside and re-engineer ourselves from a funding perspective. How can we reorganize and be in a position to replace that funding over time.

Q. How will you do that?

A. We had one or two folks in each of the markets that were more your traditional underwriting sale rep, like a commercial radio or TV sales rep, they would sell underwriting spots on public radio. It worked at the time, but that’s one of the areas we changed right away. In higher education in the past 10 to 15 years there has been a shift in how a development officer approaches their development operation.

We have retrained and retrenched inside. (The development process is) building a culture of philanthropy, it’s not just a quick sale, but it’s a relationship that starts with standard practices of managing a portfolio, working through discovery, cultivation, stewardship of those gifts. It’s already improving the efforts our development officers are doing. (From FY ’08 to FY ’09) our underwriting was up 42 percent, our member count, those members giving individually, was up 9 percent, their giving was up 7 percent, and the average gift was up 8 percent.

Q. Where do you see IPR in five years?

A. If I had a crystal ball, thinking about some of our long-term objectives, we would be fully serving the entire state of Iowa. Once you get to about Atlantic, Iowa, we really don’t have anything after that to serve the western side of the state. There’s a couple of things were doing in partnerships to help that. We allow KIOS in Omaha to retrieve any news packaging we do free of charge. We have created a similar partnership agreement with the community college in Sioux City.

The ultimate goal would be fore Iowa Public Radio to have stations in the northwest and southwest, to have field reporters stationed there, and have development officers stationed there to cultivate those markets in terms of revenues.

Q. Are you glad you took the job?

A. This is the best job. I remember going to a seminar and seeing Tom Peters say if you don’t jump out of bed every day and you can’t get to work and just fully sink your teeth into what you do, you need rethink what you’re doing. When I joined this organization, the good, the bad, the ugly, everything, this is that job he was describing. I absolutely love Iowa. I really love getting out into the Iowa communities, because it seems Iowa has preserved all the great Americana. I’m grateful every day.

Part IV: Interview with David Perlmutter, director of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication

2009-05-16T09:51:00.006-05:00

David D. Perlmutter is the new director of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication effective June 30. He comes to Iowa from the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. Perlmutter is author of several books, including "Blog Wars." Watch him on The Daily Show. He explores the historical context of online social media, politics and society at PolicyByBlog. He also writes an academic careers column, P & T Confidential, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The following is an interview with Perlmutter conducted in May. This is the third of four excerpts. (The telephone interview transcript has been edited for publication.)

Q. At the beginning of any new trend, there are lots of unknowns. How do you see the changes coming in journalism?

A. It’s wrenching. If you read Tom Friedman’s “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” part of what I’m trying to tell students is you’ve got to think globally. You’ve got to think about the fact you’re in competition with the brightest graduates of colleges in China, India and Russia. What skills do you have that they don’t? What work ethic do you have that they don’t? What entrepreneurialism do you have that they don’t?

America doesn’t have a monopoly in technology or advanced development of the workplace anymore. Sometimes I think, in my critique of American society, is that we’re “tenderizing” our children to have their feelings not hurt by competition, or falling down or getting hurt or losing. We want them to avoid all pain and distress.

I think the economy they’re entering is one in which there’s going to be a lot of pain and distress, they’re going to have to compete pretty hard and they’re going to be knocked to the ground, they’re going to have pick themselves up and come back twice as hard.

If we raise a generation of kids who can’t even conceive of failure, then they’re going to fail once, then that’s going to become permanent because they won’t ever understand how to come back from failure. It’s part of a big package. It’s not “If we teach them this one thing then everything will be fine.” I just don’t believe that to be true anymore.

Let’s face it, if you graduated in 1965 with a degree in computer science you went to work for IBM and you pretty much expected you’d be working for IBM for 40 years and you’d get a gold watch and a pension and a thank you very much. Does anybody have that prospect anymore? I don’t know if our students want that. If you talk to an 18-year-old and say, “Would you work for the same company doing to same job for 45 years?" That’s not even in their mental apparatus to appreciate like that’s good. I don’t think they want that kind of job.

Q. Is the accelerating pace of change feeding fears of an “apocalyptic” end to journalism?

A. It seems apocalyptic when you’re in your 50s and you’ve been doing the same thing for many years. Our students are going to be the most likely to succeed in this new world. Let’s face it, when you’re 22, talk about adaptability, your body and mind are much more flexible than 40-somethings. I think they have the greatest chance of success in this world. Essentially they’re going run it, they’re going to determine what it is and they’re going to run it.

When I graduated, if I was going to go into the profession that was it. Maybe I went back to get a master’s degree, but a lot of times a master’s degree was something to put something on your corporate resume. I think of the idea of lifelong education of our students, maybe they’ll come back to us in five years for some more training. We have to create some more flexible models in academia; the 16-week course is something out of the Middle Ages. Maybe we have to have shorter courses and more workshops and pack two or three intensive tech courses into one semester. We have to look at all that. The university itself has to adapt. What I told our faculty and students, the bazaar is open. Let’s try anything and see whether it works. As long as it follows the laws of the state of Iowa and the regulations of the University of Iowa, I’m willing to give it a try.

That’s how you have success: that old cliché about how Thomas Edison discovered 9,999 ways not to make a light bulb. You’ve got to experiment, everybody in business knows that, everyone in science knows that experimental failure is part of success. Nobody ever discovered the next great invention by just trying it once. We have to have that spirit at schools of journalism and mass communication as they do in Silicon Valley.

Part III: Interview with David Perlmutter, director of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication

2009-05-15T10:05:00.004-05:00

Q. Can the small start-up model be scaled up to cover news on the local, national or international levels?

A. It depends on your standards and definitions. For example, there are a lot of people in foreign countries who blog, some of them do it entrepreneurially, some of them do it because its their passion. If you want to find out what’s going on in Iraq, you can read The New York Times and such, but you can also read a Marine Corps major, you can read Iraqi blogs, and human rights groups blogs. You can fill your whole day reading that.

I sort of deny we have no coverage because of entrepreneurial or independent media. It’s different in form and maybe it’s different in quality, too, but certainly a lot of stuff is out there for people to sort and sift through. There are people doing investigative reporting, they’re doing in-depth reporting in Afghanistan or wherever, they’re just not doing it for The New York Times.

Locally, that’s a good question. It seems a lot of people don’t want to invest in somebody to cover City Hall anymore. Will that be replaced by the local blogger? I just don’t know, but the fact is, there are local bloggers who are doing this.

There are two possibilities here. The dinosaurs are dying out and the little mammals are coming out of their holes saying, “Oh, there are a bunch of evolutionary niches we are going to fill.” So it’s not going to be that bad, the content will still be there, (the niches) will be filled by different forms by different people. That’s one possibility.

The other possibility is there will be parts of what used to be called “traditional journalism” like long-term investigative reporting, which nobody is going to pay for anymore, and I would call that disastrous if it happens, but unless somebody steps up…. I know there have been some calls for a non-profit model where foundations sort of underwrite newspapers or something, but that’s something I don’t have solutions for yet. I’m waiting to hear from somebody on how you create a revenue model on that kind of content.

Q. Is the age of the big corporate chain over?

A. I wouldn’t say that. I think that we’re going through a cycle. I can’t believe multi-nodal ownership is going to end and all papers will just be owned by independent individuals or families or a guy in his parents’ basement. I think there’s still going to be big media companies creating content, especially content that is just too expensive for an individual. You and I can be the most talented Photoshop people on the planet but we’re not going to create the next “Star Wars” film in our basements. You still need somebody to spend $100 million to make some of these things. Likewise, I think some of the larger news operations, like the Associated Press, (will survive), it’s hard to imagine the Associated Press replaced by just eager individuals working for nothing.

I think the big media company will survive, but I think it will survive in a leaner form, it will survive in a different form, and it will probably survive after some shedding of debt. One of the real problems of large companies is they have such gigantic debt, it’s hard for them to make a profit after they’ve paid their debt to whoever they owe their money to. A lot of the small family media companies are still doing OK, they’re still making 10 percent to 15 percent, and it’s just that if you have 25 percent debt service, it’s hard to call 10 percent to 15 percent a profit. In some ways, the big companies are more challenged than some of the smaller companies. I can't believe they’ll just disappear.

Our students should be prepared to work for themselves. Or work for a company in Bangalore or in Beijing. It’s not the world I graduated into, where I was pretty sure if I graduated from a good university and didn’t have a criminal record, I was pretty much certain to get a job at a company, I’d have a pension and they’d take care of me if I did a good job. Where is that world now? I don’t see it anymore.

Part II: Interview with David Perlmutter, director of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication

2009-05-14T12:45:00.005-05:00

David D. Perlmutter is the new director of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication effective June 30. He comes to Iowa from the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. Perlmutter is author of several books, including "Blog Wars." Watch him on The Daily Show. He explores the historical context of online social media, politics and society at PolicyByBlog. He also writes an academic careers column, P & T Confidential, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The following is an interview with Perlmutter conducted in May. This is the second of four excerpts. (The telephone interview transcript has been edited for publication.)

Q. Can students and journalism schools keep up with the pace of change in journalism?

A. I would say a lot of journalism schools are innovating faster than the industry. We’re not waiting to get a memo from The New York Times about what we should teach. We’re innovating, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but it’s not a case of we’re trying to catch up. In some ways, my vision of the future is one in which industry, entrepreneurs and the academics should be pooling resources and ideas to help each other.

It’s a very different world than when I went to journalism school, where it was more of a case of, “Well, let’s bring in the industry people and they can tell us what they’re doing and make sure our students are learning that.” I think that model is dead. Nobody in industry believes in that model anymore. They want to learn what the students are doing.

The future is the 18-year-olds. They’re the people who are going to create the industry of the future. Who’s got a monopoly on 18-year-olds? We do. I have 32 students and they’re spending two to three hours a day on Facebook. That’s more than television, certainly more than newspapers, more than anything else they’re doing except their iPods and their iPhones. Has the media industry adapted to that yet? No.

I’m learning more about the future than many other people are. The university is one of the most exciting places. Every journalism school I know is going through radical curriculum revisions and reassessments. We’re paying attention. We’re trying to reinvent ourselves as much as anyone else is.

Q. Are changes coming soon enough to “save” journalism? Is the current business model dead, and the landscape is wide open?

A. I don’t think anybody has discovered the magic model yet. The way you would judge if it was successful, first would be a mode that delivered the level of quality that we used to say was broadcast quality or journalistic standard. Accurate information, fairness, ethical, interesting, good storytelling, professional quality. The things we used to say were good journalism.

Also, people could make a living doing it and be a revenue stream for a company to survive. If you could combine all of those …. But I don’t think anyone has a proven (new business model) yet. If you look at Facebook and Twitter, they’re basically successful, but they’re not making any money yet. They’re losing huge amounts of money. In fact, if they were car companies, they’d be declaring bankruptcy. It’s because people see the future potential that they’re willing to keep investing in them.

Nobody has sent me a memo, or I’ve seen a case, where somebody has figured it all out where you can have a revenue stream and the quality put together. There are a lot of very successful smaller models, somebody who has a plumbing blog or something like that and making a very good income from Google ads, but you’re talking about one person. But I think that’s the key, it may very well be our students working in their basement for themselves and making a good income that a reporter used to make 15 years ago, a middle class income, but that’s it. They’re working for themselves; they’re their own boss, their own CEO and CFO.

Part 1: Interview with David Perlmutter, director of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication

2009-05-13T12:55:00.011-05:00

David D. Perlmutter is the new director of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication effective June 30. He comes to Iowa from the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. Perlmutter is author of several books, including "Blog Wars." Watch him on The Daily Show. He explores the historical context of online social media, politics and society at PolicyByBlog. He also writes an academic careers column, P & T Confidential, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The following is an interview with Perlmutter conducted in May. This is the first of four excerpts. (The telephone interview transcript has been edited for publication.)

Q. How should journalism schools prepare students for the changes under way in the field?

A. At schools of journalism and mass communication, and I want to stress the mass communication part, we don’t know where our students will be working tomorrow, or five years from now. They may be working in communications at the White House, they may be working in communications for the Sierra Club, they may be working in communications for Exxon Mobil or they may be a reporter in New Hampshire.

The key is we want to provide graduates who are adaptable, flexible, not only in their mental state and their cognitive abilities, but also their technological skill sets. A parent might ask me, “What job will my so or daughter get?” and I say, “I have no idea” because I don’t know what are going to be the jobs five years from now. The jobs that our students are going to have 10 years from now, maybe we don’t even know what their titles are, they haven’t even been invented yet. That adaptability is the Swiss Army knife model of getting ready for the future: if you need to be a screwdrivers, you can be a screwdriver, if you need to be a magnifying glass, fine, I can do that, too.

It used to be 20, 30 years ago, when I first went to a school of journalism and mass communication; we trained somebody to be the camera guy. The person, it was usually men because the video cameras were big and heavy, would get a job at a TV news station and be the person who filmed at the scene. They maybe skipped between stations, but pretty much they’d be doing the same thing for 30 years. Now, I don’t know if the camera guy and woman needs to be an editor needs to be able to do on-air, needs to be able to put up stuff on the Web site, needs to do the Facebook page.

Again, that’s adaptability and a willingness to learn new things, that’s going to be the most important training that we give them.

Q. What needs to change in journalism schools?

A. I’m pretty proud of schools of journalism and mass communication, we adapt. Let’s face it, if I go into a classroom and say, “OK, I’m going to tell you about the latest thing in mass media and it’s called the Internet, maybe you’ve heard about it," I’d be laughed out of the room. My students are spending two hours a day on Facebook. I’d better be telling them about Facebook and what’s coming after Facebook.

Schools of journalism, more than any other place in the whole university, have to adapt or we become laughable and irrelevant. The pressure is on us as much as it is on students and on media themselves. Twenty years ago schools of journalism and mass communication were less concerned with technology because we assumed students would learn a lot of that technology on the job quickly. We were more concerned with critical thinking, strong writing skills, strong visual communication skills.

Now, we certainly need to do all the old things very well. Yes, our students should be able to write well, be able to tell stories in images and words, they should be ethical, they should be very knowledgeable about the history of communications. They should do all these things well, but I sense we can’t assume that they’re just going to learn the technology later, we have to train them.

I do believe we need to increase strongly the technological component, whether its Flash, video editing, how to put up a Facebook page, all the different kinds of technology out there, we need to do more of it. I think the students want it, and I think the industry wants it.

Twenty years ago, we were concerned about producing students who would get a job in the media industry. But now, I don’t think its necessarily the case that all of our students are going to be working for some media company somewhere. I think a lot of our students are going to be working for themselves or they’ll be permanent freelancers. They’ll get income from media companies but they won’t officially be employees, they will be competing against other freelancers, or they’ll be banding together with other people to do start-up companies.

One of our challenges is to ratchet up the entrepreneurial training of journalism school students and think more in terms of adding value to themselves to either own companies, rather than just thinking of were can I get a job with somebody else.

Where's the "watchdog?"

2009-02-11T13:03:00.006-06:00

The first installment of the column Nick Bergus and I are writing for the Corridor Business Journal has been published. In the column we take a look at reorganization under way at The Gazette in Cedar Rapids. Nick has some good comments on his blog, but he calls me "grizzled." If my chronological age is older than Nick's, that's OK, but my thinking is a lot "younger" than many people who are not as chronologically challenged as I. (I'd hate to think Nick was engaging in stereotyping!)

I'm just not as confident "watchdog" journalism is a high priority at The Gazette, or media in general, right now. Talk is cheap. Many reporters and editors beat their chests chanting "journalism" in public, but in budget meetings, money rules. Actions show up on page 1. If the "watchdog" role was a high priority at The Gazette, the paper would not have disbanded its award-winning investigative unit several years ago. Advertising and marketing do not give a whit about being a "watchdog," they want money and happy advertisers. Controversy and conflict irritate advertisers, even when they're not involved. Change is coming to journalism, but the "watchdog" will be chained to the doghouse more often.

Are dedicated, smart people worrying about this problem? Sure. But pressure often changes priorities. Will The Gazette succeed with its "reorganization?" Maybe. The company can define success any way it wants. I only hope the company is not buying the newest, shiniest deck chair for the Titanic.

We're back!

2009-02-02T15:52:00.004-06:00

Sorry, I haven't posted any new entries in awhile — classes, papers and projects have gotten in the way. I did spend some time updating my resume, writing samples and published designs. Take a look, and let me know what you think. Next is updating my favorite links. I have so many, it takes awhile to tag and organize them all. Stay tuned, I'll be back.

Oh, and that's not a photo of me at right. That's Ginger the Welsh Corgi. She's 14 1/2 years old now, and slowing down a little. The hips hurt, the eyesight is not as sharp as it used to be and the hearing is fading. That does sound like me.

It's "whack-a-deer" season

2008-11-17T12:01:00.015-06:00

If you live in Iowa, chances are very good you've smacked a deer with your car, or you know someone who has. My wife hit a deer a few years ago, driving the Honda in the evening on a local gravel road hit. She wasn't going fast, about 20 to 25 mph, when the medium-sized

deer ran across the road in front of her, hitting the car in the right front bumper. The deer ran off, seemingly unhurt, and the car, after two grand in repairs, hasn't been quite the same since.

I've had lots of close encounters with deer, but have hit only one so far. Actually, the deer hit me. I was driving down Mount Vernon Road east of Cedar Rapids late in the evening when a deer ran out the ditch. I saw the big buck coming and swerved to the left into the other lane, but the deer bonked right into the side of the pickup. When I got home I checked for damage, but the only mark was a clean spot in the dirt just behind the passenger side door. Driving the same route the next day I saw a dead deer lying along the road. I'm guessing the deer broke its neck smacking the side of the truck.

Got any good deer vs. car stories? John Carlson, columnist for the Des Moines Register, wrote an entertaining column Sunday about deer and drivers in Iowa.

In the column, Carlson mentions some interesting facts from State Farm Insurance:

The number of deer-vehicle collisions in Iowa has increased 12 percent in the past five years.
There's a 1 in 105 chance a typical Iowa driver will hit a deer in the next year.
Those are the same odds as being audited by the IRS.
Iowa is fourth in the U.S. in likelihood of a driver hitting a deer, behind West Virginia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Check out YouTube for some car-deer video.

This is for the two old people in that Prius

2008-11-13T12:45:00.014-06:00

Another day on the highway and another day stuck behind a line of cars following two old people in a Prius who can't drive faster than 52 mph. Without going off on a huge rant here, I'll rely on some actual scientific work to make my point.

Old people can't drive under pressure — well, not exactly, but according to a recent study published in the journal Psychological Science and picked up by Science Daily, older adults alter their behavior more than young adults when under stress, particularly in situations involving risk, like driving.

"In the stressed group, older adults were not only more cautious but were jerkier drivers, braking and restarting almost three times as much as their calmer peers," according to Science Daily. "The differences in the effects were consistent even when the researchers accounted for gender, level of education, mood and health self-ratings."

In other words, if you're old and lack confidence in driving like an actual human being, get off the road.

At least, don't get in front of me.

You are not alone

2008-11-11T09:50:00.011-06:00

"Where did all these people come from?" was my thought while driving down Highway 1 Monday morning. Heading south past Solon, 17 vehicles in front blocked my path and 12 vehicles followed me. I was stuck. For me, a notoriously impatient driver, this is maddening.

The Iowa Department of Transportation sheds some light on the number of commuters on our highways. Here are some facts:

Interstate 235 in Des Moines near 42nd Street is the busiest spot on Iowa's roadways with a 2006 average daily traffic count of 113,000 vehicles per day. (The IDOT's most current numbers are from 2006.)
The stretch of Interstate 80 between Highway 1 and Interstate 380 had a 2006 average daily traffic count of 46,200 vehicles per day. (That sounds low by my guess. It's surely higher two years later.
The 2006 average daily traffic counts on Highway 1 were 5,000 vehicles per day between Mount Vernon and Solon and 8,200 between Solon and Interstate 80. (Some days, it looks like all of those vehicles are ahead of me on the road.)
The roads maintained by the IDOT represents 8.2 percent of the total road mileage in the state, but those roads carry 61 percent of all traffic. (That makes sense, since we're a rural state.)
There are more public road miles (114,194) in Iowa than interstate miles in the entire 50 states. (I could use another of road miles on my commute.)
Iowa is 13th in the nation in the number of roadway miles. (We kick Rhode Island's butt!)
There are approximately 39 miles of road for every 1,000 people in Iowa. (I want my share now.)

Now, think about all that when you pay taxes.

Jammed in a sardine van

2008-11-07T10:43:00.015-06:00

Tired of following the highway train of cars heading down the road each morning to the University of Iowa? Leave the driving hassle to someone else and join a van pool.

More people are getting out their cars. According to an article by the UI News Service (written by former colleague Anne Kapler —way to go, Anne!) the UI Van Pool uses 85 vehicles to haul almost 900 commuting employees daily.

The Van Pool is celebrating its 30th birthday this year. Here are some of the numbers from UI Commuter Programs:

4: Vans in 1978.

85: Vans in 2008.

48: Participants in 1978.

877: Participants in 2008.

4: Communities served in 1978.

34: Communities served in 2008.

1,198,424: Van miles in 2008.

84,934: Gallons of gas used by vanpool in 2008.

361,079: Gallons of gas saved (est.) by using vanpooling in 2008.

Here are some tips for riding in a vanpool. (Not endorsed by the UI.):

Do not talk politics — Your fellow riders may not appreciate your "Sarah Palin and a pit bull walk into a bar..." joke.
Do not talk religion — Until you pray out loud when the driver passes six cars uphill on a two-lane.
Do not douse yourself with perfume or cologne — Your fellow riders are not sleeping, they've been asphyxiated.
Do not use your cell phone — Thirty minutes of endless chatter about your latest colonoscopy is about 29:59 too long.
Do not pass gas — You, not the van.

Send me your vanpool tips! Time to hit the highway.

Welcome, commuters!

2008-11-06T13:14:00.009-06:00

Did you get stuck in Interstate 380 traffic today? Have too many other drivers discovered your favorite Highway 1 shortcut to the Hawkeye game? Did you spend more time commuting to work today than you did talking to your kids before school?

Take heart, you're not alone.

Studies by Iowa State University's Center for Transportation Research show the number of Iowa commuters is rising. For example, in the 2000 Census 22 percent of working Iowans commuted to work outside of their home counties. Judging by the number of cars ahead of me on the highway this morning, that number is surely higher today.