How designing for different web browsers is like throwing a dinner party

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Patrick Garvin

Designing web sites and interactives for different browsers is like planning a dinner party for widely different guests. None of whom has RSVPd. You don’t know who could show up, so you have to be prepared that they all could.

The most fickle is Internet Explorer, which is like that guy who was really popular in high school but hasn’t really done a whole lot since then. He invited himself to your party after hearing about it from someone else. He’s nice and well-intentioned, but planning for him is a pain in the ass.

Depending on the version, Internet Explorer can’t handle SVG, and when it can, it needs a lot of special help if you want to animate the SVG. This is the equivalent of a party guest who doesn’t always drink booze, but when he does, it’s Budweiser from a can and he’s hammered by the the third beer.

Beyond that, Internet Explorer can be finicky about aspects of CSS that other browsers can handle without any problem. Like break points in media queries. This is to say that this Budweiser-drinking party guest is also lactose-intolerant, but sometimes drinks milk anyway and then complains about it. He doesn’t eat red meat or chicken, but does eat turkey. He’s allergic to nuts, gluten, oats, soy, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, white onions, food products made in July, and pickles cut the long way. He can’t eat black beans because they give him horrible gas.

Some versions of Internet Explorer can’t even recognize borders applied in CSS, which is the equivalent of this party guest saying, “Bee tee dubs, I’m allergic to water.”

You can’t just uninvite him, either, because he’s still popular among many circles and you can’t risk the fallout that could come from cutting him off. His retired family members no longer work, but they could still show up and wreak havoc at your party.

He might not show up, but just in case he does, you want to have something he can have. Maybe a jar of gluten-free air.

Much more agreeable is Safari, your bubbly coworker in her mid-20s. Just as Safari shows up in every Mac product, this party guest shows up at every party you have, usually 10 minutes early. Safari handles CSS much better than IE, which is to say that you don’t have to worry about this guest not eating any of your tapas. I’ve noticed in some of my projects that CSS break points look a little rougher in Safari, which is to say that if you ask this party guest to pick up chips on the way, she might just get the store brand chips unless you specify the brand you want.

Where Safari can have issues is the css for animated SVGs. This can sometimes cause Safari to flip out, much in the same way that certain hard liquors will send your bubbly party guest into a blackout drunken stupor where you have to confiscate her phone so that she doesn’t keep texting the guy she met on Tinder.

Firefox is much more capable and reliable than Internet Explorer and probably Safari, but that doesn’t mean it’s not without its quirks. Firefox is that friend you invite to the party because you like him even though he can be kind of a snobby, pedantic smartass. Firefox can handle SVG with aplomb, but I’ve had to use an if/else statement to distinguish whether the user has Firefox, and thus whether to apply different JavaScript. This is like having to make a separate booze run because your contrarian friend insists on drinking a more expensive “specialty” vodka that you can only get at certain liquor stores. He uses terms like “craft cocktails,” and if that didn’t make you roll your eyes, his blog about craft cocktail trends as a symbol of populism in the west will shoot your eyeballs from your skull.

These criticisms so far stem from SVG, but there are more generic irritations with Firefox. There are times I’ve had to add “float:left” to the CSS because Firefox has pushed divs with a 100% width all the way to the right off the screen. This is a quirk that even IE didn’t have. This is the equivalent of asking your friend to pick up ice on the way to the party.

“Can you grab ice? The bodega by my house sells pink bags in seven and 20 pounds. We just need one seven-pound bag. Thanks!”

And then from the store, your friend calls and says, “I can’t find anything like what you’re talking about. All I see are light magenta bags of ice that weigh 6.95 pounds and 19.95 pounds. What should I do?”

“Right now, I wish an actual Firefox, like a fox made of fire, would come and eat your face, you pedantic nerf herder.”

In the grand scheme of things, having to add “float:left” or Firefox-specific JavaScript isn’t a deal-breaker. But those things can make designing web packages annoying, particularly because Firefox is so capable otherwise. This is why Firefox’s quirks can make it more annoying than IE. Internet Explorer, with its myriad food allergies and other quirks, is so demanding that you’ll never be lulled into thinking that you don’t have to attend to it. Firefox’s quirks feel like that party guest who throws a tantrum while the host administers CPR to Internet Explorer because he accidentally had water with an ice cube.

But the browser that gets you through this soirée is Google Chrome. Testing iterations of your responsive interactive graphic on Chrome is like having your BFF at your side for this chaotic gathering of misfit toys. Chrome gets you. Chrome knows you inside and out. And that’s not just because Chrome is synced with your Google accounts and thus literally knows everything about you.

Chrome will call you on the way to your dinner party and ask you if you need her to pick anything up at the store. Unlike the other guests, Chrome doesn’t need any more instruction than “ice” or “chips.” Chrome will get it for you and even get you a six-pack of your favorite beer, because Chrome could hear in your voice that you were a little stressed.

Chrome’s got your back.

Chrome can handle SVG with ease, whether it’s static, animated with SMIL, whatever. This is like having a BFF that’s not picky about beer, wine, or liquor. You could even have bottom shelf vodka that stings like rubbing alcohol and your bestie wouldn’t care.

“What y’all drinkin’ on?”
“Burnett’s.”
“Awesome. Gimme some.”

Now, only every once in a while, Chrome will stall on a page and give you an “Aw snap” fail page. But if you refresh it or try it in another tab, it’s dependable again. That’s the equivalent of calling your bestie and saying, “Hey, you wanna get drinks tonight?”

“I would, but it was a long day, I’m just getting home and I have to be up early tomorrow. But what are you up to tomorrow night? I’m gonna make a casserole and binge-watch the last few episodes of Scandal, drinking Olivia Pope-sized glasses of wine. Wanna join?”

“I’m totes there.”

There are certainly other guests beyond these four, but they aren’t as noticeable at the party. Opera is your friend’s friend who your friend invited at the last minute. You like this guy and think that if you lived in the same city, you’d hang out more. And there are certainly many more Linux web browsers out there. These could be the party guests who came because they were walking by your place, heard the music and knocked on your door. You didn’t prep for them, but they seem cool and you don’t mind if they come in for a bit.

As long as they don’t have weird food allergies.

“Should journalists learn code?” Well, what exactly do you mean by “code”?

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Patrick Garvin

There have been many blog posts and articles that pose what has become a divisive question: Should journalists learn code?

There’s a lot of passion in the comment sections on these posts, but I’ve wondered if we’re all on the same page as to what the question means.

“Should journalists learn code?”

What do we mean by “code”? Do we mean HTML and CSS, which are markup languages? Or do we mean languages such as JavaScript and jQuery? Or do we mean Ruby? Python? C++? Journalists who don’t know what they don’t know might be tempted to lump everything together, but they’re not all the same.

What do we mean by “learn”? Do we mean learn everything until we are masters? Do we mean learn enough to be proficient? Do we mean that we should learn some of the basic concepts so we can follow conversations with our colleagues about projects?

Does this mean everyone should learn the same skills? Should reporters, editors, developers, photographers and graphic artists all learn the same programs and languages? Should they all be proficient at an expert level?

“Should journalists learn code?” will mean different things to different journalists, and the anxiety that question brings with it also brings valid concerns. Many journalists equate that question with completely changing their job. Some could think of it in terms of web galleries and managing assets on a web site. Some have told me they think of code as high-level computer programming and thus think of it as losing any aspect of reporting or editing in their jobs to instead solely write code. Others have not-unfounded worries that some newsrooms could farm out more work to fewer people. In other words, they muse, if journalists have to take on more work, and even different kinds of work, how can they do any of it effectively?

These are the concerns of many journalists, and thus we have been asking the wrong question all this time. There’s a better question to ask than “Should journalists learn code?”

The better question to ask is, “How can journalists use technology to be better at their jobs and to make their jobs easier?” A follow-up question can be, “How can markup and/or coding languages help journalists be better at their jobs and to make their jobs easier?”

These two questions are intentionally open-ended, and hopefully have a much more positive spin to them. It doesn’t imply changing your job or having to learn MIT-level technology. “Technology” doesn’t have to necessarily mean “code.” Any journalist who’s used Excel or Google Refine has used technology to make his or her job easier.

This question does not have any one right, binary answer, because each journalist will need different technologies for different reasons based on what his or her job is. As a person who makes interactive graphics, it behooves me to stay on top of the best practices for jQuery and JavaScript. But I don’t expect our metro columnists to feel the same need to master jQuery and JavaScript. They might scrape data, clean up spreadsheets or use coding languages with their reporting, because that can make their job easier.

“Should journalists learn code?” makes people defensive. They get their guards up and lose track of the ways they can mine data and use it to make their projects richer.

Here are examples of how I’ve integrated technology into my workflow to make things easier for me:

*When making bar charts in Illustrator, I never manually type the data values for the bars. I copy the chart, and modify that copy so that the text of the values appear. I ungroup that chart and voila, I have labels without me having to risk typing a typo.

*We tend to make a lot of color-coded maps, so I created templates in Illustrator of the maps we use the most: US, Massachusetts towns, Boston neighborhoods, etc. I saved those as SVGs and then turned those SVGs into HTML. That was just a few clicks and typing of lines. The heavy lifting was writing code for a map generator that would allow me to copy and paste spreadsheet data to color-code the maps for me. It took some time, but it paid off. It creates responsive maps that I can easily pluck onto the website, but I can also print-to-PDF those suckers and have the basis for the print version. People who have made vector maps will know that the “old way” of having to select each state/county individually to color-code it was a pain the ass. And fraught with the possibility of introducing error.

*When working on web projects, I almost always use spreadsheets. Lately I’ve used Google spreadsheets so that reporters and editors can make changes. I then use Mr. Data Converter to turn that spreadsheet into a JSON and then write the JavaScript/jQuery that will cycle through that data and write out HTML for me. I do that rather than having to copy and paste things, because it’s ultimately easier and because copying and pasting things into divs leaves the possibility of pasting in the wrong place.

You might sense a theme in those three examples: All three of them are processes I’ve adopted so as to minimize or eliminate errors. Cutting down on errors is good for us, our bosses, our readers and our sources. It’s good for everyone. Using technology to help me do that was worth any of the effort I put into it. It also taught me skills that allowed me to help colleagues in ways I hadn’t been able before.

The web is to our culture now what water is to a fish. If we ignore the basics of how the web works, we do so at our own peril. The more tools we have in our toolbox, the more our projects will benefit. A reporter who pores over public records could do well to understand how to scrape data from web sites. That same reporter could benefit from knowing how to clean up data, either through Excel or Google Refine.

Given the choice between two equally talented writers, I would bet news organizations want people who can do more with the web, not less with it. It’s going to be hard to find a journalism job posting that doesn’t want someone who has at least a basic understanding of general web concepts. No, that does not mean that reporters will need mastery understanding of HTML, CSS and JavaScript to get a job. But if the reporter is going to be working with designers and developers who will take that reporter’s story and turn it into a web presentation, shouldn’t the reporter at least have a broad understanding of what those people do? The reporter doesn’t need to know how to do those other jobs, but should at least know some of the challenges, including that the way a web page looks on a desktop is not necessarily how it looks on a mobile phone.

Reporters are good at researching the processes and terminologies of the organizations they cover, whether it’s a basketball team or a school board. A good tech reporter doesn’t have to be able to build the technology he’s covering, but he at least should be able to know enough to follow along when talking to sources and then be able to explain the important parts to readers. We should have that same mindset in our newsrooms. A reporter and a developer working on a big web project together will have different roles on that project, but they should at least communicate what they need from each other and how they can help each other most effectively.

11 tips for journalists who want their own website

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Patrick Garvin

As more journalists are putting their portfolios online and creating their own websites, more of my friends are asking for advice on how to do it. I am in no ways an Obi-Wan at this, having launched my website only last year, but in the 17ish months I’ve had this site, I’ve gotten some good advice. And I’ve figured out that some things work better than others. I can’t say I can help you with your “brand”, but I can help you with your site.

1. You don’t have to limit yourself to 3 to 5 clips
You can include the link in your cover letter, explaining that you’ve attached some of your best clips but that more are available at your website. Thus, if someone’s coming to your website, he or she wants to see more of your work. You can show the breadth and diversity of your work in a way that 3 to 5 clips won’t always do. It might even help to break them up into categories. Mine are divided by infographics, illustrations, interactives and miscellaneous. Reporters might want to break them up into categories, whether it be enterprise and non-enterprise, types of beat, etc.

2. Include background stories about your clips
A friend of mine said he included a “clip guide” with his clips when applying to a major newspaper. It included information you couldn’t tell just by looking at the clip: the brainstorming behind the concept, the time frame, the deadlines, etc. He was told that the clip guide was very helpful, as it gave insight into his working process.

At SND STL, speaker Jen Lee Reeves said, “We all do a lot of really good work, but we don’t talk about it. But we should.”

3. Optimize your copy
I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. If you write your text in a way that’s friendly to search engine, you stand a better chance of getting picked up in search results. As my SEO-minded friend explained on the blog last time:

The basic principle is super straightforward: if you have a specific phrase that appears prominently and multiple times in the copy on a page of your site, your site is more likely to come up in the search results for that specific phrase. For instance, ‘info graphics artist,’ ‘info graphics designer,’ ‘Jacksonville illustrator’ and ‘news graphic design’ may all be appropriate for your list. More generic phrases like ‘info graphics artist’ will put you up against more competition, and while they may improve your ranking for those phrases, they may never get you close to the top of the list. As you get more specific, ‘Jacksonville illustrator,’ for example, you’ll be up against fewer sites and can make it closer to the top of the list.

It might seem challenging, but a web producer friend of mine said, “If you’re writing the who, what, when, where, why and how of the story, then you’ll have the important search terms already in there.”

4. Include the names of everyone who worked on the project
There are a few reasons for this practice. It’s good karma to not snub someone and take credit for work they did. They might remember that you gave them credit, but they will also remember if you don’t give them credit. And, in terms of search engine optimization, if someone’s searching for that person’s name, your site can appear in the results. I’ve gotten page views because people searched for co-workers. Florida Times-Union reporter Jeff Brumley’s name nets me a lot of page views.

5. Link to other people’s sites and blogs
Again, it’s good karma, but it’s also good SEO. The search engines look not only at your words, but who links to you and to whom you link. Look at the column to the right of this text. There are some good folks in there.

6. Start a blog!
Again, I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. Chances are you won’t be adding new content to your portfolio every day or even every week. Writing a blog helps you generate more content that can appear in search engines, even if you’re just writing once a week or so. Write about trends in the industry or use the blog to write longer pieces about how one of your clips came to be. Ever read this guy’s blog? Of course you have. Charles Apple’s blog has become a portfolio piece in and of itself. Not just for Charles Apple himself, but for all the people he’s written about over the years.

7. Share your blog and portfolio links on every site you can
Use Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Google+, StumbleUpon, Pinterest and beyond. You’ll reach some people on one site that you won’t reach on another site. By going to where the different audiences are, you can try to hit as many eyeballs as possible.

8. Use the same avatar everywhere
I have Jen Lee Reeves to thank for this advice. It hadn’t occurred to me, but it makes sense: if I want people to recognize me, I should give them the same thing to recognize everywhere I have a web presence, right?

If you’ve got a public account with a social media site and you’re using that account to promote your site and your work, then it behooves you to use one consistent image.

9. Pay attention to metrics and other feedback
Whether you’re using Google Analytics or some other service, see what on your site is getting the most page views. Where are people spending the most time on your site? What topics garner the most views? The most “likes”?

10. Consider your site’s mobile functions… and limitations
Look into whether the sites you use to build your portfolio have mobile-friendly versions. If you code your own site (which I did for the non-blog aspects of my site), then be mindful of how it will look on smaller devices. (Note: coming in 2012, a responsive patrickgarvin.com). If you’re not coding your own site, look into the mobile versions of sites using that same service (WordPress, etc.)

11. Let your site become a portfolio piece in and of itself
I created my website as a home for the clips of which I am most proud, but found I was proud of the site. I worked through kinks with HTML and CSS, and continue to learn more because of what I’ve done with the site. I’ve found that I’ve learned things that I can apply to my job at The Globe. Some of the responsive interactives I’ve worked on in the last few months have been easier because I had played around with code on my personal site.

Any other tips you have for journalists who want their own sites? Comment below.

Do we have “brands”? Or just reputations for our work?

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Patrick Garvin

A question I’ve struggled with recently is whether journalists have “brands.” I’ve heard that term a lot in the last year, at conferences and on websites, and I’m not always sure what to make of it.

I used to cringe when hearing that term. To me, it was a gimmicky word for marketers and advertisers that had no place in the sacred world of journalism. I, and other journalists like me, drew a distinction: Disney, Wal-Mart and Fox have brands, but we were just people. We were people who worked hard and wanted to be known for doing our particular jobs well, but we were just people.

But Joe Grimm, the guy who became known for the Jobs Page and “Ask The Recruiter,” changed the way I viewed the word “brand.” A few months ago at SND STL, he lectured a session called, “Building Your Digital Brand.” His overall message that was that your “brand,” if we call it that, is what you’re known for, and not some image that you manufacture.

If I and other journalists seem sensitive about the term, it’s because we’ve felt under scrutiny for wanting to promote our work. A few months ago, Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post wrote a column about journalists and brands.

Weingarten wrote the column as a letter to a reader named Leslie, who chose Weingarten as the subject of her journalism school graduate thesis. Weingarten writes:

The best way to build a brand is to take a three-foot length of malleable iron and get one end red-hot. Then, apply it vigorously to the buttocks of the instructor who gave you this question. You want a nice, meaty sizzle.

These are financially troubled times for our profession, Leslie — times that test our character — and it is disheartening to learn that journalism schools are responding to this challenge by urging their students to market themselves like Cheez Doodles.

And later, when talking about modern journalists…

Now, the first goal seems to be self-promotion — the fame part, the “brand.” That’s because we know that, in this frenetic fight for eyeballs at all costs, the attribute that is most rewarded is screeching ubiquity, not talent. It is why Snooki — who is quite possibly literally a moron — has a best-selling book. It is why the media superstars of today are no longer people such as Bob Woodward, who break big stories, but people like Bill O’Reilly, who yell about them.

Yikes. That column made me never want to use the word ever again. But Weingarten’s missive also kind of confused me, because I didn’t think it was bad for journalists to share their work. It gets shared in thousands of newspapers a day, so why is it so bad to group it together in one spot on the Internet? When I need ideas and inspiration, I love looking at other journalists’ portfolios. To me, having your work in one spot to share with other journalists (and potential future employers) was a good thing. Certainly not worthy of the hot poker.

Maybe it’s the word “brand” that bothered him. Because it certainly bothered me. But if Joe Grimm and other journalists are just using the word to represent your skills and work for which you’re known, then is there less fuss? Grimm even pointed out that Weingarten himself has made a name or “brand” (gasp!) for himself and that’s why he’s so valuable to The Washington Post. When you read Weingarten, you know what you’re getting and you probably read it (or don’t) because you know what you’re getting.

And it’s occurred to me that’s been true about several journalists I’ve admired over the years:

Mike Royko
Lewis Grizzard
Brian McGrory
Bill McClellan

I like all those guys, but not because of the mystique behind the name, but because I like the work they do.

Which was exactly Joe Grimm’s point:

“You don’t try to brand yourself. The thing that does it is the work. And it has to be real and authentic.”

Think of it this way. Let’s say you’re looking for a graphics person who can also illustrate. You’ll start listing the names whom you know can do what you want, and then you start comparing those people’s portfolios to narrow it down. Then, you’re no longer talking about names, but rather the work and skills that defines those names.

Knowing what you’re good at doing is important as news organizations struggle to stay afloat and rethink their strategies. Grimm says:

“It’s not enough to be good. You have to be good in a remarkable way…

…You need to be good, and you need to be good in a remarkable way, and it has to be a valuable way.”

And why does Grimm suggest this? So that you can do more good work. When I think of it that way, and don’t use the b-word at all, I think I get it.

Ben Folds, “Rockin’ The Suburbs” and the visceral pain of memory

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Patrick Garvin

You can hear a soft but undeniable thud in the first second of “Annie Waits,” the opening track to Ben Folds’ album, “Rockin’ The Suburbs.” That first second and the entire album that followed set the tone for how I would remember the day on which that album was released.

September 11, 2001.

Ben Folds' first solo album, Rockin' the Suburbs

It seems silly and almost blasphemous to mark the anniversary of that album’s release when today has a much more momentous and globally profound anniversary. But for me and for at least a few other people, that album became our cave for months after 9/11. We were 19 and 20, scared of the future, judgmental of our pasts and unsure of the present. That basically describes a lot of my twenties, and particularly my college days. Discovering Ben Folds was rather serendipitous, because he was the patron saint of being scared of the future, judgmental of his own past and unsure of the present. Songs about crazy girlfriends, growing up, suburban nerds and fired journalists would appealed to us, a dorm full of suburban nerds with crazy girlfriends during a time when J-school seemed daunting. And when you consider that the whole album’s theme could be summed up as “musings about growing up and dealing with the pains of impending adulthood,” it seemed fitting for us to discover the album when we did.

Christmas came and with it, New Year’s Day. The visceral reaction to that day was replaced with an abstract “What does it all mean?” perspective, which involved less crying. My friends and I continued our sequences at The University of Missouri School of Journalism, and quicker than we knew it, we were working on projects for the first anniversary of Sept. 11.

And all the while, we were listening to Ben Folds. I saw him live in concert four times between September 2001 and November 2002. My friend Josh saw him at least five times during that same time.

I didn’t realize until now, but my streak of seeing Ben Folds live ended around the first anniversary of 9/11. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Maybe that album was tied too closely to a period that hurt too much for me to revisit on a regular basis. Which is a shame, because that album has some great songs. Of course, one of those songs is about a journalist getting unceremoniously laid off, and that, too, is not something I want to think of on a daily basis.

When it comes to music and Sept. 11, I don’t want to return to that day. I’d rather listen to Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” and return to the summer after 9/11. Springsteen’s album, and particularly the title track, provided a hopeful release for the emotions. If music has to take me back to 9/11 memories, I’d prefer it take me to Sept. 11, 2002.

With “The Rising” and other music inspired by 9/11, I can prep myself and think of it philosophically. I’ve been inundated by enough images, sound bites and musings about that day that I’ve been so overwhelmed that I can’t muster up a reaction.

Memory is a visceral thing. It has its own senses: its own smells, its own tastes, its own sounds. Try as I might to numb myself to certain memories, it is those smells, tastes and sounds that triumph, taking me back in time. Sometimes taking me to places I don’t want to go.

But if I go to the actual music of that day, I go back to the sounds, tastes and memories I don’t want to remember. I can try to suppress thoughts, but smells and sounds are stronger than that. And in the case of Ben Folds, he takes me back to a time before I learned how to suppress things.

RELATED: 9/11 in pop culture

What did your headline say? Same-sex marriage? Or gay?

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Patrick Garvin

The New York State Senate passing a bill allowing same-sex marriage was huge news, as was Governor Andrew Cuomo’s signing that bill into law later that night. Most New York papers gave that story big play on A1 on Saturday. Depending on which paper you saw, you either read that the bill allowed “same-sex marriage,” or that it allowed “gay marriage.”

I used to be a hardliner about using those terms in newspapers. I argued that “same-sex marriage” not presumptuous the way “gay marriage” was, and that it was more accurate. Here were my reasonings:

“Same-sex” refers to the genders of the couples, rather than the orientations of the people in the couple. If a man marries a man, we know they’re a same-sex marriage. But we don’t know that they identify as gay. They might identify as bisexual. Or, they could identify as straight. Or one could be gay and one could be bi, or one could be straight and the other gay. That seems like a stretch, but it could legally happen. As far as I know, the states that allow same-sex marriage don’t use gay tests. In all of the U.S., a lesbian could marry a gay man, but many wouldn’t think that makes it a “straight” marriage.
If a lesbian did marry a gay man, and thus both people were gay, could that be a “gay marriage”? Don’t say it can’t happen, because I know of at least two cases where it has happened.
There’s no law against the marriage between two gay people. As stated above, a gay man could marry a lesbian. The law is that two people of the same sex can’t get married, but as far as I know, the law doesn’t say that two gay people of the same sex couldn’t get married. I think two straight men would find it just as hard to get married in Missouri as two gay men.

Now, it might seem I’m being pedantic and splitting hairs. I totally understand that, which is why I don’t really make a deal about it anymore when talking to people in casual conversation. In general, I think we’re lax in conversation in way that we probably shouldn’t be in print. In conversation, I can ask for a “Kleenex,” even if you don’t have Kleenex brand tissues, because it’s become acceptable in conversation to refer to all tissues as “Kleenex.” “Dumpster” is no longer specific to the company, but can mean any large metal trash receptacle. We know what we mean.

But in print, we still hold to those rules. Every copy editing professor I had in college made it a point that if you don’t know it’s a Kleenex, call it a tissue. If you don’t know it’s a Frisbee, it’s a flying disc. I had one professor tell me of a correction a paper had to write when a reporter referred to a man as “African-American” when the man was not American at all. “We don’t make assumptions,” another professor told me.

I would mention all of these points to copy editor friends, many of whom agreed with me. But one smart copy editor friend of mine said, “Yeah, but ‘gay marriage’ sometimes fits in a head spec better than ‘same-sex marriage.'”

Thus, her paper’s policy was to use “same-sex marriage” in all copy, but give latitude in case “gay marriage” fit better in the headline. I’ve not explored too many other papers’ policies, but I would not be surprised if other papers have that policy, too.

And for the publications that use both “same-sex marriage” and “gay marriage” in copy, is there a policy for when to use one and not the other? Or is it OK to just switch them so as to not repeat the same term? I’d be interested to hear what discussions have gone on in other newsrooms.

I won’t deny that this dissection of language might seem anal-retentive. But I was a copy editor. It was my job to think this way.

More of The Boston Globe’s Bruins pages, infographics

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Patrick Garvin

Last weekend, The Boston Globe published a special section commemorating the Boston Bruins’ season and Stanley Cup victory. The section was emblematic of all the good coverage that the paper had published all season, both in the sports section and throughout the paper.

Here are some of my favorite pages The Boston Globe produced for the Bruins’ appearance in the series with the Canucks. Click on any of them for a larger view.

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The preview section
June 1, 2011

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Here’s a closer look at that “Raising the cup” package:

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Here’s a nice comparison of the two teams:

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Game graphics

Both Daigo Fujiwara and Luke Knox worked hard at putting together full pages breaking down the shots, the goals and the performances of each player for each game. Each of these ran the day after the game.

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In total, there were seven of these pages, one after each game. Daigo had quite the task: plot each point on the ice, and then find a full-body photo that wouldn’t cover the points, and then cut it out and put it in the graphic. And do it all on deadline.

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You’ll recall game 3 when Aaron Rome of the Canucks hit Bruin Nathan Horton on the chin, knocking Horton down. The instant replays tried to show what happened, but it wasn’t until I saw this graphic by Dave Butler that I fully understood what had happened.

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The special section
June 19, 2011

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This page features another great graphic by Daigo. I helped plug in some of the initial numbers, but he did much of the heavy lifting.

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Other

Daigo and Tom Giratikanon put together this cool online graphic showing how far into the playoffs each of Boston’s four main teams have gotten, going all the way back to the Boston Americans (now the Red Sox).

I got to put together the print version:

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These pages are only some of the great pages that the Globe produced this past season. I hope we’ll get to do it all again next year.

5 best crazy Macho Man videos on YouTube

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Patrick Garvin

Let’s not mince words: Randy Savage’s “Macho Man” character was one of the craziest that ever appeared in the World Wrestling Federation. And this is an organization that churned out crazy by the boatload.

Not only did Savage epitomize the cult of masculinity in pro-wrestling, he celebrated it, cultivating a persona around “macho” and “manly” behavior. Or, a persona around what World Wrestling Federation writers of the 1980s assumed macho, manly behavior to be.

If you never saw any WWF segments in the late ’80s or early ’90s, then you have no context for how incoherent these guys could be in their interviews. Admittedly, today’s wrestlers will win no awards for their oratories, but they make “Macho Man” Randy Savage and The Ultimate Warrior look like Barack Obama and 2001-era Tony Blair. Hell, even Jodie Foster’s Nell was more coherent than some of the segments with Macho Man and The Warrior.

I first discovered the WWF when I was 9 years old and my friend Adrian showed some of the Saturday morning show. I was hooked. These guys wore flamboyant, neon colors and screamed at each other unintelligibly. In other words, these guys were my primer for 80% of American gay bars; I just didn’t know it at the time. I watched until I was 12 and my father told me that he was uncomfortable with me watching a “sport” where so many of the stars used steroids and drugs. (I’ve thanked my father for this, by the way).

So, if your father also prevented you from watching WWF, or you had too much class to watch it, then you probably didn’t get to see any of the defining moments of Randy Savage’s crazy “Macho Man” persona. Luckily, thanks to YouTube, these videos are available.

Without further adieu, I present the best of Macho Man’s ridiculous WWF/WCW moments. Rest in Peace, MegaPower.

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Miss Elizabeth’s decision

As a kid, I’m sure I earnestly watched this, thinking it was the stuff of sports legend. Now, I watch it and realize it was a soap opera for the guys who mocked their wives for watching “Dynasty” but were too insecure to admit they wanted to watch it, too.

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Jake “The Snake” Roberts’ cobra bites “Macho Man”

Savage was a good guy at this point, and Roberts was a bad guy, and their fighting and feuding had the same macho posturing that all the other wrestlers had in their feuds. Except Roberts had a cobra, which trumps the normal tough guy talk. Roberts lured Savage to the ring, beat the crap out of him, tied him in the ropes and then let his cobra bit him. According to Roberts’ “Pick Your Poison” DVD, the cobra bit a lot longer than he was supposed to bite. Also in that clip, Ted DiBiase is inexplicably shown talking about being bitten. But never mind the Million Dollar Man; this shows a cobra biting a dude in the ring. I’ve watched lots of hissy fights on “Melrose Place” and “Desperate Housewives,” and very few things have come close to being this awesome.

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Savage and Mean Gene Okerlund

There were other great interviews Macho Man did with Mean Gene Okerlud, but there are too many good quotes in this:

“My curiosity is killin’ me just like a cat would be killed! By the curiosity!”

“Your mustache is crooked!”

“Your beard is a little sideways!”

Every time this guy says “Yeaaaaaah,” I think of White Zombie’s “More Human Than Human.”

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“Be A Man, Hulk!”

The lyrics are priceless:

They call you Hollywood? Don’t make me laugh
Cuz your movies and your actin’ skills are both trash
Your movies straight to video, the box office can’t stand ya
While I got myself a feature role in “Spider-Man”

That feature role in “Spider-Man”?

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White-haired Randy Savage plays with his own action figure

Randy Savage plays with a special doll commemorating his outfit at Wrestlemania VII. Where he lost and was forced to retire. But he looked pretty anyway.

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Unfortunately, YouTube didn’t have my favorite ridiculous clip, in which Macho Man lost to the Ultimate Warrior and then was forced to retire. Sensational Sherri, Savage’s manager at the time, got upset and beat the crap out of him until Miss Elizabeth appeared in the crowd and then beat the hell out of Sherri. Macho Man then realized he’d been a jerk, and then proposed to Miss Elizabeth. They got married at Summer Slam later that year. It was ridiculous, and I loved it.

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INFOGRAPHIC: Pro-wrestling deaths compared

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Patrick Garvin

Last week, WWE wrestler “Macho Man” Randy Savage died in a car crash in Florida. He was 58.

When Savage’s death was announced on Friday, there was speculation that he might have suffered a heart attack before crashing his car. As of now, there’s been no confirmation of that speculation. But if Macho Man did die of heart-related conditions, he would not be alone when compared to his fellow wrestlers who have also died before turning 65.

I conducted a brief, non-exhaustive survey of the wrestling stars to die in the last 20 years before reaching their 65th birthdays. This includes both men and women who were in WWF/WWE or WCW. I culled my list from a larger list, and then looked up individual wrestlers. I left off Terry Garvin because there’s speculation on his birth year. (He does have a really cool surname, though).

Of that group, a good number of these deaths were heart- or drug-related, if not both. Additionally, there were two suicides.

Some things to point out:

Andre the Giant was a huge guy, so it’s understandable that he’d have heart issues.
Yokozuna and Earthquake were also huge guys, so it’s understandable that they’d have general health issues.
Dino Bravo was rumored to have been murdered because of mob connections.
Owen Hart died during a WWE performance.

If looking purely at this list, it would seem that “Macho Man” Randy Savage is one of the older wrestling stars to die. In this list, he’s second only to Gorilla Monsoon.

Again, this list does not include every wrestler, and is not meant to imply that Gorilla Monsoon and Randy Savage were the oldest former wrestlers at the times of their deaths. It does succeed in showing, though, that in dying at 58, Savage outlived some of his colleagues by at least 10 years. In the grand scheme of things, 58 would be considered a young age. But in pro-wrestling, where these guys put their bodies through all sorts of physical activity, Savage was almost elderly.

Snakes on a train!

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Patrick Garvin

A funny thing happened on the way to the office on Thursday. A woman announced she had lost her snake, causing unrest among fellow passengers and slight delay on the red line.

You might have read Eric Moskowitz’s brief about it on Metro Desk. Or Moskowitz’s story in Friday’s paper, in which you-know-who was quoted. Or, you might have read the first-person account.

Yes, this was a popular story on Thursday. That says a lot, considering what else went on that day:

Governor Deval Patrick was inaugurated for a second term
Ellen Weiss stepped down as the top news executive at National Public Radio
Former Massachusetts state Senator Dianne Wilkerson was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for taking $23,500 in bribes

And yet, the phantom snake slithered its way into the news cycle.

Of course, I still could see a snake on a train sometime:

The T does not expressly prohibit snakes. Guide dogs and other service animals are allowed at all hours, while nonservice pets are allowed only during off-peak hours. Dogs should be well behaved and properly leashed, while small domestic animals must be carried in lap-size containers and kept out of the way of exits, according to T policy.

Good to know.

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UPDATE

This story continued. Melissa, who lost her snake, put an ad on Craigslist (which has since expired). In an interview with WCVB-TV, Melissa shared pictures of Penelope, the missing snake.

Joel Abrams of Boston.com put together a dramatization of the event, using Xtranormal, a text-to-movie site.

Most of the dialogue comes direct quotes of Melissa, either from Eric’s story, my account or the Craigslist ad.

Patrick Garvin: Blog

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