Cool video from UVMtv staffer Chase Martin, founder of Dayzed Productions.
If you’re looking for an example of late-afternoon life at the University of Vermont, this isn’t a bad place to witness it.
Great up-to-the-minute coverage by the campus newspaper! Hitting the highlights as they need to be hit. More to come in Tuesday’s edition and online at VermontCynic.com
Some recent tweets:
BoT Meeting: Sharp increase in student need for aid not foreseen by financial administration; making selective use of “scarce resources.”
BoT: SGA President Bryce Jones questions executive relations with student body, administration thinks “not competent enough to contribute.”
BoT meeting:University President Fogel says key to national acclaim lies in recruitment of non-resident students; more selective enrollment.
Combining as many of my passions as I can, I’ve launched a new radio segment called Writers @ WRUV, in which I interview and then happily listen to some of Vermont’s best writers for a little less than an hour a week.
The show is broadcast at 10:05 a.m. weekly on WRUV-FM in Burlington—90.1 on your radio dial—and simultaneously streamed at WRUV.org.
Last week, we heard from novelist Philip Baruth, who read a little story about the Grateful Dead and the, um, walking dead. Next week, we’ll hear from writer and recently elected state legislator Suzi Wizowaty. Should be a great time.
As a journalism prof and adviser at a non-journalism-major school, I spend a lot of my time rah-rah-ing about the good things in journalism—which I believe, of course, and not only because a free press is the cornerstone of a free society—but there’s a great post today on 10,000 words, one of my favorite blogs, titled “10 Ugly truths about modern journalism,” which should be required reading for all the j-aspiring students out there resilient enough to take it!
In my news-writing class, I’ve been trying to help my students to incorporate sensory detail into their writing. In journalism this is especially important because, as I think of it, using sensory detail—relying on the five senses to describe what a reporter sees, hears, feels (in the sense of touch) and, when appropriate, tastes and smells—is the only sure-fire way for writers, especially those just beginning, to relay a scene to a reader that is free of bias and writerly interpretation. You don’t need to say a woman is beautiful (opinion) when you can say she has flowing blond hair and pale blue eyes (at least closer to objective description, though we could argue over whether “pale” is subjective).
In class, we start with the sentence “A boy is riding a bicycle, eating an ice cream cone.” After the students rightly identify this as telling—”There’s no description, so it can’t be showing,” they tell me—I ask them to close their eyes and tell me what they see. They always start off with the “boy” or “bicycle,” but before long they’ve put tassels on that bicycle and a red beanie hat with a spinning propeller on that boy. As we move through sight, then sound, touch, taste and smell, the white board fills up with their imaginings. Typically, as we progress, the story takes a dark turn: a gang of neighborhood toughs, whooping and yelling “Ai-ya!” jumps out from the behind the jagged brick wall on the right, or a cat crosses paths with the boy, hits his tire, and the squish of the kitty’s gelatinous insides coincides with the grating crackle of the boy’s teeth as they impact the pavement and snap, the metallic tang of blood filling his mouth.
Showing, via the five senses, is so much more delicious than telling.
It’s not easy, though. It takes time. I’ve been struggling in my own writing with getting into this business of detail-oriented writing. I’m impatient. Right now, I’m trying to write a passage describing how my friends and I, descending a narrow alleyway in an old-world neighborhood in Zigong, China, look up to see a pair of pedicabs at the bottom of the hill, the drivers out and ready to fight at a perceived slight. This is in 1999, a few days after NATO had launched an attack in their Serbian air war, killing three Chinese journalists, and tensions in China were, as they say, running high, with protests against Americans and anyone, really, who was white.
I have my little crew—five Americans and two of their Chinese friends—strolling down this hill, cracked gray buildings pressing in on either side, funneling them toward the waiting, angry pedicab drivers—and I can’t move the story forward. I know what needs to happen, but I’m stuck in the action. Impatient, I don’t care about the details: I want to throw my team headlong into the waiting drivers. But the more I write, the more the passage feels like caricature. I could give the men at the bottom of the hill—what? yellow teeth? close-set eyes?—but that won’t make them any more real. What I’m writing is fiction, but it’s also something that, in my own life, a decade ago, came very close to happening. I close my eyes, and don’t see anything.
So—Procrastination, the bad-influence friend of the writer—led me online to search for inspiration. I don’t know that I’ve found it, but I did find a spot on the Colorado SU Web site meant to help me out, to remind me that telling is dry, and that showing, with all five senses, brings the reader in. I’m posting it here so my students won’t think I’ve made up this five-senses stuff, that it actually works. I’m posting it here to remind myself as well.
Writing is a damn hard business. We want to rush on. We want to let it “flow.” But most of the time, every word is a challenge. You sit there, in the dark, facing the computer screen, fingers jabbing the keys, and dreck troubles your screen.
But not always. I remember a time, years ago, when I considered myself a “serious” writer—which is to say that I spent more time and more of my ego on it than I do now—when I’d sit and tinker for an hour with a sentence rather than trying to fly my protagonist and his friends down that hill. Rather than rushing headlong into combat, I’d note the gray blanket in the window, used as a curtain, and chitter of a rat, somewhere just out of sight. This was a beautiful time for me, as a writer, even if I didn’t get out more than a sentence or two an hour.
This morning, as Procrastination tells me that writing this blog post is a fine use of my time, I squint into the screen (while my daughter calls me for breakfast, my 3-year-old, chanting Poppa, Poppa, it’s time, it’s time), waiting for the sentence to emerge.
Just for fun, an end of summer 2009 quiz by Gail Collins of the New York Times.
Get them all right, and you’re a certified, certifiable news junkie!
Welcome to UVM, Fall 2009: A beautiful day at the counter-revolution
I had a somewhat religious experience today, stepping into the world of the Westboro Baptist Church, the church made up of the family members of the (so-called) Rev. Fred Phelps.
Fred Phelps, who has been in my tertiary life for the past 20 years or so, entered my POV in the late 1980s when I was an undergraduate at the University of Kansas. He and his brood—most of the members of his “church” are related to him by blood, some of them by marriage, some not—came onto the KU campus to preach their particular version of hate: gay people are going to hell, as are those who support them. Same goes for non-whites. And Jews. And anyone not like Fred.
That’s what we called him at KU. Fred. Everyone knew Fred. The local devil.
Since then, Fred has gone on to bigger things: garnering national notoriety for protesting the funerals (seriously, funerals?) of the victims of AIDS and war. In Fred’s mind, the former were going to hell for their homosexual connections, the former because they fought for a country that allowed anyone to have a homosexual connection. I remember pretty vividly when Fred et al protested the funeral of Matthew Shepard: 21 years old, the victim of hate crime. tied and left for dead on a fence near a Wal-Mart. Killed because he was gay. Fred was outraged that the country would feel sympathy for this young man. Very preacherly of Fred.
I’m a journalism adviser now. In my mind, all I really need to do is warn of the comma-splices and near-libels of my students. But today, as a member of the local office of Student Life, I found myself—almost by default, as the local protector of First Amendment freedom—attending the WBC’s latest presentation.
Today is the day—a great day—that same-sex couples can, finally, legally, be married in Vermont. Though I’m not that religious myself, allow me to say: Hallelujah.
Of course, Fred’s progeny had to show up and say Boo.
I attended the protest as a journalism adviser taking some pictures for posterity and as a Student Life staffer ready to help out any students who felt threatened by bigots on campus.
Here’s what surprised me: While Fred’s ilk–the whole half-dozen available–showed up with their hate, our students showed up with love and defiance, perfectly mixed.
They sang songs, chanted their anti-hate chants and made 20 times more sound than the ever-smaller, ever-less-significant FredPhelpsian protestors.
As the Topeka crew held up their “God Hates You” signs, I couldn’t help but think: Even these ridiculous protesters don’t believe anymore what they say. After 20+ years, they simply go from town to town—occasionally suing people who assault them, in order to fund their travels—selling their wares. Spiritually bankrupt. Empty. Pushing. Pushing. Pushing.
Twenty years ago, as an undergraduate in Kansas, I felt alone. I knew that too many of my classmates believed, on some level, that Fred was right. That homosexuality was wrong. That the straight whites were the chosen people. That anyone NOT LIKE US was going to Hell. Of course, I knew this was untrue. But, as I felt out my environment, I found far too many people who, speaking out or not, agreed with Fred.
Today, I came close to tears. Certainly I had goosebumps. The counter-protesters outnumbered the protesters 20 to 1.
As I followed the protesters from their first stop to their second, Fred’s clowns seemed smaller by the footfall. (And, at the second location, a trio of students actually showed up in clown costumes, asking “Is this the circus? I knew the circus was here!” How lovely.)
Fred Phelps and his ilk scared me 20 years ago. Today, they are nothing.
Tomorrow, though they don’t know it, they will be less than nothing.
The day after that?
I feel as though America has grown up since my college days. This is a most excellent feeling.
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In the photos below, please to note: The protestors, numbering a half-dozen-ish, are on the left. The UVM counter-protestors, on the right, numbering at 20x the protesters’ number, are on the right.
Vermont Public Radio offers three-month internships three times a year to college students interested in public radio news. Students seeking college credit for production experience in a broadcast newsroom are encouraged to apply. The internship is centered on VPR’s daily news magazine, Vermont Edition, and is focused on researching news topics, pitching stories, learning basic audio production, and assisting in tasks that keep an active newsroom running smoothly.
Internships provide hands-on experience and as well as a great reward educationally, but VPR is unable to provide compensation for the internship.
One candidate may be selected for each three-month internship:
- September-December: Application deadline is July 15, decision by August 1
- February-April:Application deadline is November 15, decision by December 10
- June-August:Application deadline is March 30, decision by April 10
Click here for more information about this internship and other VPR jobs.
I’ll be going offline—or at least into some dark holes of Internet availability—for the next seven days and so won’t be able to update this page as reliably until I return from some travels. For those who want to continue to follow this developing story, I’d encourage you to check the Morgan State student newspaper, The Spokesman, which is doing a good job of updating events as they happen.
A couple of readers have asked to see a copy of the censure letter to Morgan State. The report can be found online at the College Media Advisers‘ Web site. You can also download a copy here.
I’ll be back with more news on this case when I return. Updates will be posted in the original article on this issue.
UPDATE: Morgan State U in Baltimore receives national censure after removing college media adviser from her post
I’ve been helping College Media Advisers as an adviser advocate this summer with a case at Morgan State University in Baltimore. The college’s media adviser, Denise Brown, was removed from her job following a series of stories and editorials written by her students and non-staff freelancers that were published in the student-run newspaper, The Spokesman.
In a letter sent last week to Morgan State President Earl Richardson, CMA, the national professional organization for media advisers to which I belong, condemned Morgan State “as oppressive of students’ rights to free expression and hostile toward those professionals it employs to advise the student press.”
CMA’s notice of censure can be found here. Outlets covering this story have been listed below. I’ll update the list as additional outlets pick up the story.
POSTED AUGUST 3
POSTED JULY 31
POSTED JULY 30
- The Baltimore Sun: “Morgan State Embroiled in Freedom of Speech Controversy”
- ABC 2 News, Baltimore: “Morgan Staffer Alleges Wrongful Firing”
POSTED JULY 29
- Editor and Publisher: “Organization ‘Censures’ University Over Student Newspaper Adviser’s Exit”
- The Afro American Newspapers: “National Group Censures Morgan State”
POSTED JULY 28 and BEFORE
- Inside Higher Ed: “The Press and Morgan State U.”
- The Student Press Law Center: “College media group censures Md. university over adviser’s firing”
- The Morgan State Spokesman: “National Journalism Group Censures Morgan, Says University Environment Not Conducive to Healthy Journalism”
- The Afro American Newspapers: “Morgan State Fires Longtime Newspaper Adviser”
- Foundation for Individual Rights in Education: “Morgan State University Facing Big Trouble over Press Censorship”
