I-magic-nation

"Magic Forest," 12 x 12 acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

The world, creation, humanity, burdened down with the "reality" of  technology, science, cultures and "logic" spirals out of control with war, inhumanity, pandemics, with so-called "sapiens" living unintelligently, committing eco-suicide by killing the planet.

Most seem to have forgotten, or lost, or squandered or negated another reality--that of imagination, of the spirit, of magic.

Yet there are still places of magic, of the super-natural, of health and happiness in the crevices of our minds that we never touch or have drugged with everyday existence. You find them in all the arts, in nature itself, if you look, if you imagine.

We desperately need magic more than ever, to rescue us from our depressing "reality" that is not working intelligently for us. 

Amid this latest carnage, I began thinking of physical places that are magic to me, where I am closest to creation and the creator. Only then does creativity take place, from close contact, in my imagination.

A few of those are deep forests, in fact, or in fiction, like Tolkien's Mirkwood,  or Robin Hood's Sherwood, or the Pacific Northwest's rainforests, or ... 

Thus this painting.

The 27th year begins

Students crowded  the halls again at the University of Central Oklahoma as I put the finishing touches on the two classes I begin teaching tomorrow.

27 years ago...Only Mark Hanebutt and I are still in the department. Decesased, Charles Simmons at right, and Woody Gaddis at left. Former secretaries Nancy Brown and Virginia Dodson, Susan Gonders and retired Dennie Hall.

It's a long way and a long time from that first semester in August of 1990...back when email was in its infancy, cell phones rare, and computers scarce. Outside our building were gravel parking lots. The journalism department was small--with only five full-time professors. I moved here after four years at OSU where I was earning my doctorate, and received about a 30 percent raise.
Since then there have been thousands of students, a digital revolution, personal and professional defeats and successes. At our departmental retreat last week there were 35 people present. We have about 700 majors in several fields, ranging from what used to be called "Journalism" to general communication fields.
Tomorrow I teach  "Blogging for Journalists," and a new class for me, "History of Journalism." In May I taught "Twitter for media," unheard of ten years ago. The history class will spend almost half the semester on events since  Watergate. The attacks of 9/11 are history for today's students.

The years go by

Now I'm the old man of the department, trying to stay somewhat current with all these changes and young students.  
They don't learn the way students did in 1990, much less than when I was in college. So I have to teach differently. I still teach writing and thinking and observing, but most of all I have to inspire and lead my students so they will be able to adapt. 
Our world is changing so fast with technology affecting everything around the world that except for the basics, just knowing stuff won't be a key to a successful career or life. If you don't believe it, watch this clip on the world they will face--the first two years of their education may be obsolete by the time they graduate: Did You Know?

The Department now, Mark Hanebut at left, white shirt. Me, second from top, right

Warning--this video will disturb you, and it does my students. The question I have for them after they view it is, "How and what am I supposed to teach you?"
If you want to follow my courses, I've set up two blogs--sort of digital textbooks-- that carrying the assignments and other material. Click here for a look at the first day's materials: BlogblogUCO and I Am Journalism.
So tomorrow, this old prof will arrive about 7:30, open the door to my office, get some coffee, and once more, before the crowd arrives, mull in silence for a few moments to get mentally ready, once again, going on 27 years.

All a-twitter about journalism and more

By @okieprof

(A version of this appeared in the Oklahoma Press Association Publisher last month as part of my monthly column, Clark's Critique.)

“You need a ‘Batman belt’ to be a journalist,” Dave Rhea of the Journal Record, the daily business newspaper,  told my students this year.

Even though the context was my new “Twitter for Journalists” class, he was specifically talking about journalists having a lot of different skills, not just about technology. They need to be versatile, able to get the story out in several ways.

I think that’s true of anyone out looking for a job and career these days.

He describes twitter as part of the “disruptive technology” that has changed almost all industries in the past few years, but none more so than journalism.

Geezers like myself may scoff at twitter and other social media in all areas, and almost everyone overlooks  that journalism has always been a child of technology.  I’ve had to try to educate myself on this new-fangled stuff, especially since working journalists like Dave and others, advised us academics that our students need to be adept at it.

In teaching the class—two weeks of six hours a day, with all sorts of majors in it, I’ve relied on bringing in professionals in all fields, and we have learned much.

I’ll admit, as someone near the end of a career, I don’t need or use twitter much  other than to promote by blog, but I’m convinced  anyone involved in journalism and communication needs to know about it. So what follows are some brief—in keeping with the briefness of twitter—pointers from my speakers.

·       Almost every major news story in the past few years has been broken on twitter.

·       Twitter has become almost a new wire service.

·       It’s especially valuable in local news, if you have a strong list of followers who can keep you updated.

·       It’s a fast way to get news, but you always need to verify

·       Rather than harm writing, it ought to help it, by making you value every word.

·       It’s more a conversation than Facebook. Facebook has a longer “shelf life.”

·       Twitter is the New Age paper boy.

·       Don’t write anything on twitter, or your blog, you wouldn’t want your grandmother to read.

·       There is nothing off the record with a room full of people, and twitter.

·        Media isn’t dying, just the old profit margins.

·       Having 140 characters is no excuse for being incomplete.

·       With twitter you have an entire network of sources to choose from.

·       Someone always knows someone who is the source I need.

·       Twitter works best in breaking news when mainstream media can’t yet assemble all the facts.

·       It can be a living, breathing tip sheet for facts, sources and story ideas.

·       Social media blurs the lines between personal and professional.

·       Twitter is not ruining journalism.

·       It’s still about content.

·       Twitter is like any other tool. Do something useful, and it’s useful.

In addition to Dave @jdavereha, my other guest speakers include Mike Sherman @MikeSherman, sports editor for The Oklahoman; freelancer and former community journalist Heide Brandes @HeideWrite; broadcast veteran and UCO colleague Desiree Hill @dezhill; Good Egg media guru Sheri Guyse @MyJrny; and HR maven Jessica  Merrill @blogging4jobs. Follow us all, if you wish. I’d be glad to reciprocate. Merrill has written a book that is invaluable, Tweet This—twitter for business.

Four more items.

 There are many tutorials on twitter on YouTube if you need advice. I also use Twitter for Dummies.

The Oklahoman’s sports headlines are an example of successful tweeting. Sherman has a huge list of fans who tweet him suggestions for headlines on games. The Oke takes them, edits and revises, but it is reader interaction and citizen journalism at its best.

In advertising and PR, twitter is essential . Guyse noted that the last several restaurants opened by Good Egg spent not one dollar in advertising for successful openings. It was all social media that brought in crowds.

All the speakers said they wouldn’t hire people who couldn’t use twitter professionally. 

Power pointless

I hope this isn’t pointless and powerless.

“I hate powerpoint,” a colleague said recently in a national meeting, while a speaker fumbled for some techie to make “Powerpoint” work on the computer screen.

In the meantime, the audience figited, lost interest, and most of all, lost the point.

Powerpoint is a computer program that is supposed to help speakers, to help education by superorganizing presentations with cute graphics, point by point slides on a big screen everyone can see.

But most of the time it does far more harm than anything else. First of all, most people who use it have no idea of readability factors breaking every typographic rule, and slides are cluttered with stupid graphics and colors and gimmicks sliding across the screen that look terrific but can’t be read. Secondly, the speakers feel compelled to read, word for word, everything on the screen, which is as exciting as a English teacher reading out of a textbook. Then, most times, the program won’t adapt to the new computer, and techies take over, trying to make it work, since nobody bothered to test it ahead of time. Then if it does come up, it probably has obscure computer codes showing and little boxes for the cursor to click. Then it may be off center or poorly lighted. And  in the dark room, students go to sleep or text away, bored out of their skulls. Technology doesn’t make a teacher…that’s the point.

The audience meanwhile, suffers. We’re experts at this in academia, but this ineptitude and insult to education and communication is also invading churches, chambers of commerce and schools.

We are at the mercy of the technocrats. Neil Postman in Technopoly says techies are the priests who can run the machine but have no expertise in the message, in the content. But since it’s the fad to use it, the teacher is shackled. I’ve seen a witty, and very good speaker—a vice-president at UCO speaking to the entire faculty--reduced to slavery to the system and incomprehensibility because the Powerpoint didn’t work right, and then couldn’t be read since the equivalent of the entire Constitution was on screen in 6-point type.

Technology the tool controls us, rather than the other way around.

Powerpoint is used to stifle greatness and impose structure. It is needed by poor teachers, but they can’t use it, and it brings great teachers down to their level.

How would it work in the “real” world? If these were major advertising agencies vying for a multimillion-dollar account, Powerpoint would lose the sale. Nothing matches good posters and visuals controlled by a prepared speaker with passion.

That’s what power point does—rob a speaker of passion.

One shudders to think what Powerpoint would have done to Socrates, or Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount, or the Declaration of Independence, or Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, FDR’s radio chats, or Churchill’s “blood sweat and tears,” Ike with the troops on D-Day, Bastogne’s “Nuts,” or Ghandi, or Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” or Art Linkletter or Robin Williams’ humor. Or Billy Graham’s sermons.

“”Blessed are the….”and Jesus pauses and waits for the techie to change the slide…and the wrong one comes up…”Pharisees who strain at a gnat.” Can you see this? We might all be speaking German if Churchill had to wait for Powerpoint to work before he could put the English to sleep with another boring presentation.

Today, we live in a world of no oratory or passion and Powerpoint will make sure that continues, a crutch of mediocrity.

At a meeting in India, one speaker  got laughs when he said, “Here’s my Powerpoint.  I have a point, and you have the power.”

The US military in the Mideast is crippled by Powerpoint, and the story made the front page of the NY Times this past year. Two power points a day paralyzes the officers and us. No wonder we’re not winning.

Nor teaching.

What we have is a comedy of the pointless and a powerless fad.

I don’t want to be pointy-headed and point fingers with these pointed remarks however.

So, wait till I get this on a power point presentation, and you can go to sleep.

What’s the point?

Is it pointless?

Is it powerless?

Get the point?