The message is the media

Key West Citizen composing room, circa 1960. Wright Langley Collection, Monroe County Public Library (bit.ly/keyspix)

Key West Citizen composing room, circa 1960. Wright Langley Collection, Monroe County Public Library (bit.ly/keyspix)

I put this list of links together for Leadership Monroe County's recent session on media. I'm still adding to it, over at the Inside Baseball page.

Some recent stories about the media:

A couple of recent columns from the New York Times public editor (their ombudsman): One on who reads newspapers in print any more and a conversation with author and professor Clay Shirky in response to that column (from The New York Times)

Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron on journalism's transition from print to digital (from Washington Post PR blog)

Laying off journalists (post from Media, Disrupted blog)

In Report on Rolling Stone, A Case Study on Failed Journalism (from The New York Times)

Rolling Stone and the Temptations of Narrative Journalism (from The New Yorker)

Facebook won't kill journalism. It might even save it (from Quartz)

The Virologist: How a young entrepreneur built an empire by repackaging memes (from the New Yorker)

Millennials say keeping up with the news is important to them — but good luck getting them to pay for it (from the NiemanLab)

The Sportswriting Machine (from The New Yorker)

In first year, Vox.com's audience soars on Facebook (from Facebook Media)

Tweeting Mom's Goodbye (from the New York Times)

To find media's future, look at radio's past (from Medium)

Newsonomics: A coast-to-coast newspaper shuffle is taking place (from NiemanLab)

Sites that focus on the media:

On The Media (weekly radio show that you can listen to online or download as a podcast)

Jim Romenesko's blog (blog by longtime media-watcher; many journalists check this site religiously)

The Poynter Institute (nonprofit based in St. Petersburg, Fla.)

Columbia Journalism Review

Knight Foundation, specifically the Journalism & Media Innovation projects

Nieman Foundation at Harvard University

Transom, a nonprofit website that runs workshops to teach audio storytelling and much more

The Public Editor's Journal, a blog by the New York Times public editor (who represents readers and is tasked with investigating, explaining and sometimes criticizing how the Times newsroom does it's job)

Some Twitter feeds to follow:

@brianstelter — CNN media correspondent

@NYTmedia — media coverage from The New York Times

@jayrosen_NYU — NYU journalism professor

@jackshafer — media critic at Politico, formerly wrote for Reuters and Slate

@davidfolkenflik — NPR media correspondent

@PBSmediashift — Guide to the digital media revolution

Bones & Pie. Just go.

Key West has long been absurdly fortunate in its theater offerings, punching way above its weight for a small town. The combination of talented locals who choose to live here and generous patrons who spend winters here and support theater companies leads to some productions that you would be happy to see on almost any stage in America.

Brandon Beach in Locura. Photo by Mike Marrero.

Brandon Beach in Locura. Photo by Mike Marrero.

Now there's something new under our sun.  On The Rock Productions was founded by New York theater veterans Juliet Gray and Landon Bradbary and Key West native photographer/artist/director Mike Marrero. They are bringing locally written pieces to a new island stage, at the Key West Community Theater on Eaton Street. Their first production is called Bones & Pie.

If you are in or near Key West and you are interested in local culture, theater, history or creative endeavor, you should go see this production. It's five short plays, ranging from a quick sketch to a piece that my husband Mark called a "cuzzy bubba tour de force." He meant that as a compliment, and it's so deserving.

In recent years, the summer One Night Stand theater project at The Studios of Key West and the 72-Hour Film Challenge at the Tropic Cinema have shown what local talent can do, and the audiences have been appreciative. And sold out -- in the depths of summer. Now that same spirit is getting more sustained wintertime attention and the results are impressive on just about every level. Two highlights for me: "The Nightwatchman" by Eric Weinberger, performed as a monologue by Chad Newman. Wow. If he dropped or flubbed a line I sure couldn't tell and my attention was held the entire time. (I have a short attention span.) The other was the finale, "Locura" by Mike Marrero. That's the cuzzy-bubba-tour-de-force and it's a two-person piece. Maybe that's called a duologue? Landon Bradbary and Brandon Beach are two local boys who recount their (mis)adventures at the cockfights and beyond. It gets to levels of Conch culture and character that rarely make it to the page much less the screen. And it's immensely powerful in performance.

So like I said ... just go. Bones & Pie runs Wednesday through Saturdays, through Feb. 15. You can get tickets at Keystix. You will want to be able to tell people later that you saw this one.

Here and Here Again

In early 1991 I got the job as a reporter in the Miami Herald's Key West bureau. I was 23 years old. Reporters came down here for a couple years and, mostly, went on to great things within the Herald and beyond.

Dan Keating, Ozzie and me when our office moved to Whitehead Street. John Pancake, the state editor, said he always had a photo taken of the staff when a new office opened. I'm pretty sure photo credit here belongs to Patty Shillington.

Dan Keating, Ozzie and me when our office moved to Whitehead Street. John Pancake, the state editor, said he always had a photo taken of the staff when a new office opened. I'm pretty sure photo credit here belongs to Patty Shillington.

"You're so lucky," the editors in Miami told me. "You'll be there when Fidel goes."

Even though I stayed in the Herald bureau for the rest of the decade, breaking all previous records, Fidel outlasted me at the Herald bureau. And now he and I both have outlasted the Herald bureau itself.

The Herald hasn't had its office in Key West for years and it stopped producing a separate Keys section more than a decade ago, not too long after I left. None of this is surprising given the vast contraction of newspapers in general and the Herald in particular. But it's worth noting because it's the end of a very long and productive association.

Vernon Silver, then of the Key West Citizen, now reporting for Bloomberg in Rome,  and I do a grip-and-grin in front of the plane that that Cubans brought over to retrieve a MiG that had been used by a defecting pilot. Possible photo credi…

Vernon Silver, then of the Key West Citizen, now reporting for Bloomberg in Rome,  and I do a grip-and-grin in front of the plane that that Cubans brought over to retrieve a MiG that had been used by a defecting pilot. Possible photo credit: Jose Cabaleiro?

Earl Adams, a Conch who went on to serve as County Clerk and later, the Key West Citizen's historical columnist, was writing for the Herald in the 1920s, according to county historian Tom Hambright. Reporters went on from here to do great things in Miami and beyond. When I got here, former Keys bureau reporters were working with  great distinction at the St. Pete Times, the Washington Post and U.S. News & World Report. Two people before me, one of the Keys bureau staffers was Jay Carney — who went on to Time magazine before becoming the spokesman for President Obama. Reporters in the Keys covered hurricanes and historic waves of Cuban refugees and political scandals like no other. The other reporter in the bureau when I came was Dan Keating, who taught me a lot about reporting in general and the Florida Keys in particular, then moved on to win a Pulitzer for the Herald in Miami for exposing massive voter fraud (so massive that the courts overturned the election), then became database editor of the Washington Post, where he directed national coverage of the 2000 presidential vote recount.

The Herald's presence in the Keys meant they had knowledgable people on the ground for big investigative projects in the 1980s like Smuggler's Island, which blew the lid off the open toleration of marijuana smuggling on the island, and the Last Stand, which saved North Key Largo. As that piece was being reported, there were developments planned along the island that would have made it into another Miami Beach — and the state wasn't doing a whole lot about it.

Covering Fantasy Fest is always fun. This is the year the theme was Lost in the Sixties — some time in the early '90s. After I filed, I was kidnapped by my future husband because he was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army and their Patty…

Covering Fantasy Fest is always fun. This is the year the theme was Lost in the Sixties — some time in the early '90s. After I filed, I was kidnapped by my future husband because he was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army and their Patty Hearst had bailed. A Miami Herald photographer took this photo but I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember who it was.

Me? About a  year into my time here, I decided to blow off grad school and use the money I'd been saving as a down payment on a condo. The condo cost $80,000 — best financial decision of my life. I've never regretted the other consequences, even as I've sometimes felt like I've had to jump from ice-floe to ice-floe, career-wise. With two people covering a 100-mile island chain, we had to cover everything, which meant we got to cover everything. Murder trials, elections, local government, fun features, environmental trend stories, everything. We took our own photos and figured out how to get the images to Miami. When I started, we drove the film to the airport every day then the Herald sent a courier to the Miami airport to pick it up. By the end, we were scanning prints and negatives and sending them up that way. I met my husband and got married here. I've made great friends of all ages and kinds here, people who now live overseas and across the country, but I'm pretty sure I'll be friends with them forever. I have attended baby showers and quinces and weddings and funerals. It's rare to walk the dog or go to the movies without seeing someone I know, and hearing about some interesting aspect of life here. Key West looooooooves Facebook, but it didn't really need it.

A whole lotta Miami Herald people came to my wedding in 1999. Photo by Rob O'Neal, I think.

A whole lotta Miami Herald people came to my wedding in 1999. Photo by Rob O'Neal, I think.

In truth, though, the bureau job as it was then was a job for the young and I finally burned out. Writing 500-plus stories a year and the constant pressure to fill that space gets old after a decade or so. In 2000 I quit. It took me awhile to find my identity outside of the Miami Herald but I got there. I started reviewing books for the paper and watched with concern and sympathy as the paper surfed the digital storm and reinvented itself. I admire those who have hung in there and continue to turn in good work. Newspapers are so unbelievably relentless in their demand for copy — and the web has to have made it even more so. I have little sympathy for the alums who gripe about how much better it was in the old days. The old days were fat and happy for newspapers and they are gone. Also, my memory is that in those olden, golden days most reporters spent a lot of their time griping about 1) how they were mistreated and 2) how much better things were 5, 10, 20 years before.

And now I'm back to being a Keys-based reporter for a Miami news outlet. On January 5, I'll be opening a Keys bureau for WLRN, South Florida's public radio station. It's the strangest feeling. I feel like I've been preparing for this job for 24 years, learning about the Keys and how to tell its stories for a mainland audience. And I feel like I'm a 23-year-old beginner again, finding my feet in this scary but exhilarating new (to me) world of radio journalism. See you on the radio.

 

 

 

Podcast of the Week: The Memory Palace

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The last couple Podcast of the Week recommendations have been kind of long. Now, let me offer you something short. The Memory Palace is a beautiful work. The episodes vary in length from a couple minutes up to a quarter-hour max. To while away a long car ride, or even a medium-length dog walk, they are useless. But to make you take a small, manageable part out of your day to stop, listen and think, they are perfect. As the title suggests, they revolve around memory and mostly forgotten figures, like aviator Harriet Quimby or singer Jane Froman.

The creator Nate DiMeo has one of those lovely, soothing, low-key public radio voices, giving these pieces a meditative quality as they ask us to remember — or really, discover — people who did remarkable things but have been mostly forgotten. It's like wandering through an old library or antique store with a knowledgable friendly guide.

This week, Slate has been marking podcasting's 10th anniversary with a lot of coverage including a list of the 25 best podcast episodes of all time (more on all that below in the links section). One of those 25 was an extraordinary personal episode of The Memory Palace called Origin Stories. It's longer than most of the episodes and I sat quietly in front of my computer and listened to every word.

Bonus Holiday Podcast of the Week!

The New York Public Library has put up a podcast of Neil Gaiman reading A Christmas Carol. Yes, please, and God bless us, every one! Note to parents looking at road trips in the next few days: This is an hour and a half long.

Podcast Press (un-Serialized, mostly)

With Serial's big finale this week, there's just way too much in way of reviews, analysis, etc. I'm going to collect it all in its own blog post, hopefully soon. Meanwhile, there's lots of other interesting stuff.

Past recommendations:

 

Podcast of the Week: This American Life

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I agree. It's kind of shocking that This American Life hasn't been our podcast of the week yet. Well, now it is.

TAL is the show that's changed everything, public radio and podcasting-wise. It brought a new sensibility to public radio, which you can hear in almost every show out there. It inspired numerous podcasts, including the game-changer Serial, its first spinoff. It introduced us to David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, David Rakoff, Dishwasher Pete and so many more. It lives up to its name, bringing you stories of life in America from the funny to the unexpected to the unbelievably important.

There are too many highlights to imagine in 541 episodes but I'll list a few, mostly recent but a couple from back in the day.

  • Listen to the current episode, Regrets, I've Had a Few. It's got a lot of good pieces but the best, in my admittedly biased opinion, is "Tattoos and memories and dead skin on trial" by Emily Hsiao. She made this story at the Transom story workshop. Which you can apply to right now. Trust me, if you're interested in podcasting or any form of audio storytelling, this is the place to go. If you can't take eight weeks to immerse yourself, stay tuned for other opportunities closer to home.
  • I mentioned this last week but I'll say it again: the TAL episode about Drugs — I Was So High — is really good.
  • Ever think about death? You should. Nancy Updike, one of the founders and most amazing writers/producers from TAL, spent time at a hospice and came out with this piece last spring: Death and Taxes.
  • Speaking of Nancy Updike, check out her reporting from the Green Zone in Iraq (remember that)? I'm From the Private Sector and I'm Here to Help.
  • A couple from the vault: This episode, Fiasco!, is one of my favorites from back in the day. But the one I think about most often might be First Day with its immortal segment, "Squirrel Cop."

Podcast press. As usual, much about Serial.

  • Sarah Koenig was on the Colbert Report! And it turns out Serial's last day and the Colbert Report's last day are the same day, next Thursday. The media universe is re-aligning.
  • Vox, which is one of my favorite news sources these days, asked a legal expert for an analysis of Adnan Syed's case. After this week's episode I am more sure than ever that Serial is going to end without a definitive conclusion. I will be really interested to see the reaction to that.
  • How does Syed's family feel about Serial? This piece in the Guardian lets you know. Generally, they say it's brought them closer together.
  • This is an older piece from the Guardian that I missed at the time but if you're interested in the whole Serial-listeners-on-Reddit phenomenon, it's good. I am torn between sympathy for the Serial producers who are taken aback at the Reddit attention and impatience, as in "what media era did you think we were in?"
  • Best Buy made a Serial joke on Twitter. Um, Best Buy?

A couple non-Serial links, just for form's sake:

Past recommendations: