Christmas Drew

Posted on December 23, 2010 by Patrick Garvin

When my brother and I were in elementary school, there was a girl in his class named Eve. She had a brother named Drew a few years older than me. Well, being elementary school kids, my brother and I thought that if her family celebrated Christmas Eve on December 24th, they must celebrate Christmas Drew on December 23rd. To a 10-year-old and a six-year-old, this made perfect sense, and was totally hilarious.

In the years since, the Garvin family has continued to celebrate December 23rd as Christmas Drew. By “celebrate,” I mean we say, “Happy Christmas Drew!”

In recent years, Drew has worked at a restaurant near my parents’ house. My mom recognized him and excitedly informed him of the tradition we based on him and his sister.

He apparently didn’t find it as funny as we did.

Happy Christmas Drew.

Today’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” fronts

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Patrick Garvin

I looked through Newseum today to see how papers covered yesterday’s repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” This is not an exhaustive showing, but a handful of examples.

San Francisco Chronicle photographer Paul Chinn’s photos from the San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Center were featured on at least two fronts today.

First, he was on, as you’d expect, the Chronicle’s front page:

That woman second from left is Zoe Dunning, a retired Navy commander and a lesbian.

From Marisa Lagos’ story:

[Dunning] came out in 1993 and was one of the first people to be challenged under the policy implemented by then-President Bill Clinton.

Dunning won, but her defense strategy was later deemed unacceptable by military leaders, meaning she remained in the service but others were unable to use the same defense. Until her retirement three years ago, she was thought to be the only openly gay person serving in the U.S. military.

“I’m living proof that the presence of a gay person doesn’t damage unit cohesion or morale,” she said. “I’ve seen 14,000 people discharged since then – 14,000 lives that were changed or altered or sometimes destroyed. … After 17 years of work on this, I am witnessing the end of this destructive policy. These are tears of joy.”

For more of Lagos story, go here.

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Another photo of Dunning, also by Chinn, was featured on today’s West Hawaii Today.

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That above-the-nameplate treatment made me thinking of The Virginian-Pilot, so I checked their front. Here’s how they handled the story:

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Closer to home, The Boston Globe’s page featured a chart showing the number of homosexuals discharged from the military:

To read Mark Arsenault’s coverage, go here.

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And finally, today’s Fresno Bee was interesting. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” story was stripped on top, above a centerpiece about gay teens coming to terms with their sexuality. Those of us in newspapers know that centerpieces are planned days, if not weeks, in advance, so this timing was coincidental, though fitting.

To read Tracy Correa’s story, go here.

Citizen journalism we can all get behind

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Patrick Garvin

I share with you today a man’s reflections on the lessons he learned from cancer. This was published on a site wholly dedicated to “citizen journalism.” In other words, user-submitted content.

This was published Tuesday, Nov. 30, two days after he died.

My favorite part:

4. Cancer has taught me to be a more patient and loving father.

…I am more patient with [his daughter]. I treasure all of the little things she does because I know I won’t be there for all of the big milestones. I may never see her drive a car, but watching her driving her Power Wheels Jeep up and down our driveway, turning to look over her shoulder before she backs up, is a cherished memory I will always have.I may never see her get married, but hearing her talk about “boyfriends” at the age of four already raises those protective feelings in me. I may never see her graduate from school, but seeing her starting to read and write, knowing things even I have trouble with, I know she is going to be just fine.

But it’s not the cry factor that leads me to share this with you. It’s that it highlights the possibilities of citizen journalism sites. Some time back, the Columbia Missourian and the Missouri School of Journalism started MyMissourian.com, which came with the tagline, “Grassroots Journalism for Mid-Missourians.”

From the website:

All content on MyMissourian comes from stories submitted by you! Go to “Share a story or photo” to start your own conversation.

With some rules:

1. No profanity
2. No nudity
3. No personal attacks
4. No attacks on race, religion, national origin, gender and sexual orientation.

I heard some grumbling about citizen journalism attempts, and must admit that besides the occasional Facebook post, I didn’t check out many of these postings. I’m sure the YouTube videos I chose to watch instead were not worth it, but at least I’m honest.

But this piece was pretty moving. I’ll admit, I wouldn’t have checked it out had it not come recommended via Facebook and Twitter by Jacqui Banaszynski, who is a Knight Chair Professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, Poynter Fellow, Pulitzer winner and teller of some of the best stories I heard in J-school. In other words, it took someone with serious street cred to make me even look at this piece. After reading this piece, I should be willing to read it even if it’s posted in a men’s room stall.

Sure, there are probably some real bombs that get e-mailed to the site, and whomever has to wade through those deserves a beer. But if there more straightforward, honest and humbling pieces like this, then I’ll continue to read MyMissourian.com. From New England.

The effects of bullying, and how school could be

Posted on November 28, 2010 by Patrick Garvin

The Boston Globe today ran its fourth story in its series of occasional articles on bullying and its impact on children, adults, and institutions. In this piece, several adults recounted the torment they experienced as adolescents. For many of those adolescents, the memories are vivid even now, decades later.

…while many of those bullied as children move past it and thrive in adulthood, a surprising number say they have been unable to leave the humiliating memories behind. Their accounts are supported by a growing body of research suggesting that the bullying experience stays with many victims into young adulthood, middle age, and even retirement, shaping their decisions and hindering them in nearly every aspect of life: education and career choices; social interactions and emotional well-being; even attitudes about having children.

For example, one of the adults — Anthony Testaverde — feels his path in life could have been greatly different if not for the effects of his bullying:

Testaverde was an honor roll student who dreamed of a career in technology or engineering. But he also suffered from a spinal deformity, and said he was ostracized as a “freak’’ and “hunchback’’ throughout his high school years. He never went to college, largely because he feared being bullied again. A self-taught electrical technician, he said he might have done better for himself if it weren’t for the bullying. Deeply self-critical and preoccupied with what others think of him, he said he cannot be at ease in large groups and has found it hard to stay at one job, because even minor workplace conflicts trigger fears and the urge to flee.

“A part of my life has been robbed,’’ he said. “It’s like the show ‘Lost,’ where there are two storylines — one on the island, and one if the plane never crashed. Sometimes I think about what would have happened, if I hadn’t been as depressed, if I could have taken more risks.’’

In my experiences, many adults are remorseful for how they acted in high school, even if they weren’t bullies. I’ve seen people reach out to old classmates to apologize for perceived slights, even if the bullied student doesn’t remember the incidents. But for people like Testaverde, the damage was more severe than being made fun of for liking Marilyn Manson, Charles Bukowski and fine art. For him, the damage had life-changing effects.

By the time many of these bullies become wiser with age and maturity, the damage is done. They realize a fraction of the pain they caused, and now can’t do anything but apologize.

Another piece in Sunday’s Globe explores the effects of bullying on the teenage brain:

A new wave of research into bullying’s effects, however, is now suggesting something more than that — that in fact, bullying can leave an indelible imprint on a teen’s brain at a time when it is still growing and developing. Being ostracized by one’s peers, it seems, can throw adolescent hormones even further out of whack, lead to reduced connectivity in the brain, and even sabotage the growth of new neurons.

These neurological scars, it turns out, closely resemble those borne by children who are physically and sexually abused in early childhood. Neuroscientists now know that the human brain continues to grow and change long after the first few years of life. By revealing the internal physiological damage that bullying can do, researchers are recasting it not as merely an unfortunate rite of passage but as a serious form of childhood trauma.

I think that bears repeating: the brains of kids who are bullied in school can resemble the brains of kids who are physically and sexually abused. Chilling, eh?

Both are sobering reads, but eye-opening.

Another Sunday read shows how high school could be. In today’s Florida Times-Union, Mark Woods tells the story of Cara Stieglitz, a high school student with Down syndrome who was voted homecoming queen in a landslide. When Cara was a freshman at Fletcher High School, her parents Dave and Melanie Stieglitz prayed that God “send a friend to Cara. One friend. Someone to sit with her at lunch.”

“As a parent, that pulls at your heart,” Melanie Stieglitz said of picturing her daughter sitting alone.

So every Tuesday, she went to school and ate lunch with Cara. And on Sundays, they prayed that someone else would join her.

Of course, the story ends happily. Not just for the Stieglitz family, but for the school. Cara could have been the prime target for bullies, but she ended up being their homecoming queen. How she, her family and her classmates persevered for this to happen is a great bookend to the Globe pieces mentioned above. The story reminds us that the stories of the outcast students don’t have to end with misery and tragedy.

These stories can end with a different kind of tears: the tears of joy that a parent can experience watching his daughter with Down syndrome become homecoming queen. The tears that teachers at her school can have, knowing their students rose above the nature of bullying and became heroes. The tears of strangers reading her story, miles away in Cambridge. Because however out of place one might feel, there’s Cara, who became an emblematic example that bullying doesn’t have to be the norm in our high schools.

Oct. 10: In Case You Missed It

Posted on October 10, 2010 by Patrick Garvin

You probably didn’t miss much of this stuff, as it received lots of play, retweets, reposts and the like. But check it out anyway.

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At Sam Zell’s Tribune, Tales of a Bankrupt Culture [New York Times]

Yes, this is THAT Sam Zell article, detailing the environment at the Tribune Company in the nearly three years since Sam Zell took over.

Some of the more salacious stuff:

Mr. Michaels, a former radio executive and disc jockey, had been handpicked by Sam Zell, a billionaire who was the new controlling shareholder, to run much of the media company’s vast collection of properties, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, WGN America and The Chicago Cubs.

After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat down and said, “watch this,” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts. The group sat dumbfounded.

“Here was this guy, who was responsible for all these people, getting drunk in front of senior people and saying this to a waitress who many of us knew,” said one of the Tribune executives present, who declined to be identified because he had left the company and did not want to be quoted criticizing a former employer. “I have never seen anything like it.”

On the deal used to buy the Tribune Company:

“I’ve said repeatedly that no matter what happens in this transaction, my lifestyle won’t change,” he wrote to his combination employees/shareholders. “Yours, on the other hand, could change dramatically if we get this right.”

On the changes in work environment:

One of their first priorities was rewriting the employee handbook.

“Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use,” the new handbook warned. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process.” It then added, “This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.”

On certain leadership appointments:

Mr. Abrams, who describes himself as an “economic dunce,” was made Tribune’s chief innovation officer in March 2008. In his new role, he peppered the staff with stream-of-consciousness memos, some of which went on for 5,000 typo-ridden, idiosyncratic words that left some amused and many bewildered.

“Rock n Roll musically is behind us. NEWS & INFORMATION IS THE NEW ROCK N ROLL,” he wrote in one memo, sent in 2008. He expressed surprise that The Los Angeles Times reporters covering the war in Iraq were actually there.

And, on the direction the company is headed now:

And management still is confident that the new thinking has Tribune on the right track. The company recently announced the creation of a new local news format in which there would be no on-air anchors and few live reports. The newscasts will rely on narration over a stream of clips, a Web-centric approach that has the added benefit of requiring fewer bodies to produce.

“The TV revolution is upon us — and the new Tribune Company is leading the resistance,” the announcement read. And judging from the job posting for “anti-establishment producer/editors,” the company has some very strong ideas about who those revolutionaries should be: “Don’t sell us on your solid newsroom experience. We don’t care. Or your exclusive, breaking news coverage. We’ll pass.”

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Mark Woods: The last shall be first in what matters most [Jacksonville.com]

Mark Woods’ column about a cross-country runner with several obstacles. Grab your Kleenex and call your mom.

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10-10-10! [mentalfloss.com]

In honor of today being the 10th day of the 10th month in 2010, Mental Floss has several top 10 lists. My favorites:

Celebrities reaching out to LGBT youth

Posted on October 3, 2010 by Patrick Garvin

By now you’ve heard about 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, but just in case you haven’t, he was outed as gay on the Internet and subsequently jumped off the George Washington Bridge to his death.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project. That was triggered by Billy Lucas’ suicide, which was one of a few in the last few weeks. Just this past week, even after the news of Clementi’s death, another gay youth’s suicide was reported.

Ellen DeGeneres felt moved enough to record a video about these events:

Her last line echoes the sentiments of Savage’s “It Gets Better” project:

“Things will get easier, people’s minds will change, and you should be alive to see it.”

Savage created “It Gets Better” for LGBT adults to create videos to let the youth know that no matter how shitty it might be now, “it gets better.” When I posted about it a few weeks ago, Dan and his husband Terry were the only ones to have posted a video. Now there are several videos. Take a look, as they are quite encouraging and representative of the richly diverse possibilities you can have as an LGBT adult. But, you need to be alive to see it.

Elsewhere on the Internet, I found this ad from the “Give A Damn” campaign:

The “Give A Damn” project has an impressive roster of celebrities — gay and straight — who are lending their name and time to this cause. From the website:

The Give a Damn Campaign is for everybody who cares about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality.

But, it’s especially for all you straight people out there! Whether you’re already an active supporter, want to show your support for the first time, or hadn’t given equality a lot of thought before and now want to learn more, we are here to help you get informed about the issues and get involved, at a pace that works for you.

You’ll find a lot of useful information throughout this site—information that’ll engage you, surprise you and move you. You will also find a bunch of ways to get involved and show your support and encourage your straight peers to show theirs as well.

For all you gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender folks—we need and want you here, too! Because this site is also for you. Not only will you learn new things that might surprise and interest you, you’ll also find a lot of useful tools and resources that will help you encourage the straight people in your life to give a damn.

And then, through my friend Greg, I found this PSA on behalf of the Trevor Project:

If you’re in Jacksonville, Fla., the Jacksonville Area Sexual Minority Youth Network can be reached at (904) 389-0089. Nationally, the Trevor Lifeline can be reached at 866-4-U-TREVOR (866-488-7386), where youth can speak with a trained volunteer counselor.

I know firsthand how it can suck to be an LGBT youth, but it gets better, and we need you around to see it.

Web Comic: 10 Reasons You Should Hire a Journalist

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Patrick Garvin

In March 2009, Jill Geisler of Poynter wrote an open letter of recommendation to potential employers with 10 reasons why they should hire journalists. Specifically, the letter was aimed at getting jobs for those who had been laid off.

I don’t have to tell you how it hasn’t gotten better for the newspaper industry in the year and a half since that was written. Paper Cuts tracks layoffs, furloughs, cuts, etc., and after a while, they’ve all seemed to blend together.

Thus, I had some motivation to dust off Ms. Geisler’s words and turn them into a web comic. If you were recently laid off, here’s some ammunition to use with your potential new employer. If you’ve got a resume from a former journalist, here’s why you need to hire this person yesterday.

Jill Geisler writes:

When journalists volunteer for church, school or civic organizations, they are inevitably asked to work on communications projects. Their writing is clear and succinct; their photography and design skills make whatever they’re working on look more polished and professional. They’re sticklers about copy editing and will raise the quality of even your internal memos.

Journalists are anal-retentive perfectionists who can’t turn off their brains. Try watching a documentary with a reporter. Show a designer a menu with Comic Sans and count how many seconds it takes her to cut you. Ask a copy editor what his favorite word misuses are. These are people obsessed with quality and correct execution of their crafts.

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Jill Geisler writes:

Their work lives have been defined by deadlines. Blowing a deadline is a cardinal sin in the newsroom culture. Tell them when something is due and you’ll get it — or you’ll get a bulletproof reason from a nonetheless-contrite employee.

Journalists will eat at their desks – or not eat at all – if they’re worried about a deadline.

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Jill Geisler writes:

In recent years, journalists have been required to do more with less. Reporters and photographers took up videography, editing and blogging. They file stories for print, broadcast and online, some while also tweeting.

And journalists are always working on at least two or three projects, all while having to answer to editors and interview sources.

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Jill Geisler writes:

Imagine a job in which you have to learn things every day, then turn around and teach those things to others. That’s exactly how I’ve described the challenge and absolute joy of journalism at student career fairs. That skill set demands that journalists take in and process information with extraordinary efficiency and clarity, a benefit in any line of work.

By necessity, journalists have to know at least a little about a lot. They have to take complex tax laws and condense them so that people can process the issues in the time it takes to read 20 inches. And they have to do this while also figuring out how to explain proton therapy, red light cameras and new council regulations. All for stuff due in the next day or two.

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Jill Geisler writes:

They’ve been trained that “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Journalists know that asking why and why not, looking at multiple perspectives, digging beneath the surface, challenging conventional wisdom, discerning patterns, finding context and thinking about “what’s next” improves any story. Just as it improves job performance in most any field.

Journalists have to call “bullshit” on conventional wisdom. They have to be able to explain every choice they made in their story in case a news editor calls at 10 at night with a question about some quote or arcane piece of legislation.

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Jill Geisler writes:

Even in social situations, you’ll find friends rely on their journalist buddies to gather information. Scout the restaurant. Get the background on the car I’m thinking of buying. Vet the new school superintendent. Help me find the best doctor for my condition. Journalists know how to do research — fast.

They can Google-stalk potential boyfriends like nobody’s business. Give them a name, and they’ll be able to get you a list of every traffic ticket that person has ever had. By the second date, my friend Joe knew more about his now-husband than Chris probably knew about himself.

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Jill Geisler writes:

Your organization may or may not have embraced all of its online opportunities, but journalists know firsthand why the Internet matters. Sure, some news folks adopted an online mindset more slowly than others, but now many are well-equipped to help you execute online strategies — blogging, creating video and audio, connecting through social networks. They’ve been brought up to speed in the past several years as their newsrooms expanded their horizons.

Remember how we said journalists are multitaskers and quick studies? They’ve had to become web Jedis without the help of a Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi. Many of the web skills you’ll see out of these people were gleaned from newsroom experience. These were things they had to learn, whether it be because someone else left, or because they wanted to make themselves indispensable the next time layoffs came around.

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Jill Geisler writes:

If you’ve ever complained that your team has a 9-to-5 approach to the job, hire a journalist. Some may think they’re crazy, but they’ve often followed stories, not schedules. They’ve dropped everything for breaking news. They’ve gotten up in the middle of the night to catch a perfect picture of the moon or listen to a source who could talk only in darkness. They took on the work of laid-off colleagues while still doing their own, for as long as they could. And they still have energy.

I know journalists who’ve canceled vacations because of breaking developments in huge stories. There have been times when I’ve seen editors in a newsroom on every day of their vacation. I’ve seen reporters come in multiple times on weekends, just to double-check things and answer questions for the copy desk.

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Jill Geisler writes:

Imagine signing on to a job where you promise not to accept gifts that others could, must take pains to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest, should keep your opinions to yourself, are expected to question authority while respecting the law and to recognize that your work carries the opportunity every day to do good or harm.

Journalists didn’t just sign some statement saying they’ll comply with the organization’s policies, file it and forget it; they chose a profession that embraces a code of ethics and wrestles with its obligations daily. You might think they’ve fallen short over the years. But if you want to ask a great job interview question, ask journalists about some of the ethical minefields they’ve successfully walked and how they made it through while minimizing harm.

You would think you’d get into writing about sports or entertainment to get free perks, but a journalist would rather starve than do something he thinks would compromise his integrity. Some journalists don’t even like accepting a soda from a source.

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Jill Geisler writes:

That’s why they’re hurting right now. The journalists you may hire have been faithful to their vocation, even when the going got more than tough. They’ve adapted, learned new skills, added duties, taken pay cuts and furloughs, mourned the loss of colleagues and coverage, and kept on doing work that mattered. What does that mean to you? Speaking as a management coach, I say it means this: hiring journalists presents you a terrific opportunity. Give them a job they believe in and they’ll work like hell to help you succeed.

Journalists have taken jobs in towns you’ve never heard of just so they could work in newspapers. They have skills applicable to many jobs where they could make much more, but they’ve chosen to stay in journalism, even when it meant working weekends and odd hours. They’ve missed birthdays, weddings and other important milestones because of their devotion to journalism. They’ve lived hundreds of miles away from family and dragged spouses across the country just so they could continue working in journalism. This is not a job, this is not a marriage, and this isn’t even a vocation. To a newsie, journalism is something much bigger than all of that.

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UPDATE: Congratulations to Lisa, who found the typo in #6. See, everyone needs a copy editor.

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Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: “Gay” vs. “homosexual”

Posted on September 21, 2010 by Patrick Garvin

Between “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and Prop 8, there are lots of gay issues (and terms) in the news. These issues tend to be difficult for many media outlets to cover, as no one wants to offend anyone. Not the same-sex couple who traveled to Canada to get married. Not the fire-and-brimstone pastor who thinks all “homosexuals and sodomites are going to hell.” Not the average guy who might not “understand the lifestyle” but nevertheless says, “I love my dead gay son.”

In some cases, pastors and randoms are interviewed for stories in which they have no real stake. There could be a series of vignettes about same-sex couples who’ve been together 17 years and fought for benefits and survived illness after illness. And then, an awkward transition…. “While these couples want to get married, not everyone agrees. Just ask Joad Cressbeckler….” To be sure, not all of these are tacked on, but it makes me wonder: How did the media cover Loving vs. Virginia back in the 1960s? How cringe-worthy would that coverage appear if we looked at it now? How similar or different is it from how the media is covering these current civil rights issues concerning gays and lesbians?

Not only are the topics controversial, even the terms are hotly debated. A 2005 Gallup poll surveying moral attitudes placed onto the lives gay and lesbian Americans showed that “homosexual” has negative connotation to it compared to “gay”:

Proving the power of language in the debate, survey responses were nine to 10 percentage points higher when the term “gay and lesbian” was used instead of “homosexual.”

Earlier this year, a CBS News/ New York Times poll found that wording was key when asking whether Americans support allowing gays to serve in the military.

In its analysis of the 2005 poll, Daniel Gonzales Ex-Gay Watch pointed out the “right of any minority group to self-determine their own descriptive terminology.” It’s no longer acceptable for black people to be referred to as “negros,” Gonzales pointed out, so gays and lesbians should not be referred to as “homosexuals,” he argued.

For what it’s worth, here’s what’s in the GLAAD Media Reference Guide:

OFFENSIVE: “homosexual” (as a n. or adj.)
PREFERRED: “gay” (adj.); “gay man” or “lesbian” (n.)
Please use “lesbian” or “gay man” to describe people attracted to members of the same sex. Because of the clinical history of the word “homosexual,” it has been adopted by anti-gay extremists to suggest that lesbians and gay men are somehow diseased or psychologically/emotionally disordered – notions discredited by both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association in the 1970s.

And from the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association stylebook:

homosexual: As a noun, a person who is attracted to members of the same sex. As an adjective, of or relating to sexual and affectional attraction to a member of the same sex. Use only if “heterosexual” would be used in parallel constructions, such as in medical contexts. For other usages, see gay and lesbian.

Patrick Garvin: Blog

Tag Archives: trends

Christmas Drew

Today’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” fronts

The effects of bullying, and how school could be

Oct. 10: In Case You Missed It

Web Comic: 10 Reasons You Should Hire a Journalist

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: “Gay” vs. “homosexual”