I don’t usually think about social issues while grocery shopping (ok, I do, but this line sounds better) but today I was struck by something I found in, of all places, the diaper aisle.

On my way to pick up tortilla chips I was literally stopped in my tracks when I saw this:

Proctor & Gamble, the makers of Pampers, gets it. People like to see themselves represented. In movies. On TV. In their local newspaper. Even on their box of diapers. It matters that there are more than cute little white babies on these boxes of Pampers. The multiple pictures tells the consumer that P & G  is aware of and thinking about their customers. Just as they know that one diaper doesn’t fit all, not all customers are the same, either.

Why do so many other businesses have such a hard time with this?

I learned a lot while working for Gannett. They got it very early on and really opened my eyes to the importance of diversity — as a business imperative and as the right thing to do. That was 30 years ago. You’ve probably heard this speech a million times by now. I know I’ve preached it and taught it at least that many times. And I’ll keep preaching it because far too many people are slow to learn it. Diversity matters. Representation of all people matters. Each of us matters.

This is how they celebrate your birthday at Texas Roadhouse. Yes, I'm on a saddle. No, I'm not drunk.

It’s my birthday and I love Facebook on my birthday. I love getting so many birthday wishes from so many different parts of my life. With three words and a comma — Happy Birthday, Karen — more than 50 people have taken me back to high school, back to daily snow falls in Rochester, NY; to my first day on a golf course, to my second go round as a undergrad college student and to today, where I teach at a terrific school with terrific students. And all before 9 o’clock in the morning!

Now, at 1:30 p.m., I have received more than 100 birthday wishes and — trust me, I’m not lying when I say this — each one is special.

Now, my mom is not on Facebook — I’ll get a traditional birthday card from her. And it will be the most special part of my day today.

I hope everyone’s birthday is as special as mine has been.

Sunrise outside Las Cruces, New Mexico

I made this trip back in July 2010, hoping to get in two visits to my family that year. I also had a convention in San Diego, so the whole trip took just more than two weeks. When I arrived back home I swore that, even though it was a good trip, I would never do it again. It was long, hot and, frankly, expensive.
I’m trying to figure out what has changed since then that allowed me to jump in the car and head 1,700 miles southwest to Phoenix for Christmas. (And 1,700 miles back.)

One of the things that has changed is the two dogs. I learned the hard way that I should have made holiday boarding reservations the day I arrived home from my 2010 trip. Well, maybe not that early, but it should have been done in August. I started thinking about the reservations on Thanksgiving.

And then there were the airline reservations, which I also thought about on Thanksgiving. By December 1, when I had no reservations of any kind, I started to wonder why I was dragging my feet on this. To the best of my knowledge, the reason was that I didn’t want to leave my boys. That meant that if I was going to go to Phoenix, I was going to have to drive. (The difficulty of flying with two dogs is a rant for another day.)

And you know what? This was great trip and the right decision for me at this time.

The trip delayed a day due to a blizzard in New Mexico, but that was the only problem — no flat tires this time. The only “problem” I encountered was also in New Mexico, a stop by the state police for having too many things hanging from my rear view mirror (damned parking permits.)

Back in July 2010 I made the trip in a 17-mpg truck. This trip was made in a 43-mpg Volkswagen Golf. I should do the math, but even I can see that this trip cost me less than half as much in fuel.

Frankie made Mom's newspaper reading a bit more challenging.

After that trip in July 2010 I didn’t feel like heading back to Arizona just five months later, even for Christmas. Maybe the gap was one of the things that made this trip so good, but I’ve already been admonished by Mom—18 months between trips doesn’t work for her. It was good to be with Mom. She loves the dogs and I know she misses having one or two around the house. It feels good to share Frankie and Alvie with her.

The trip, more than anything, was just plain relaxing. I was spoiled by several home cooked meals (that I could actually taste) and time at the dog park with my younger brother, his girlfriend and her dogs Wyatt and Josie. No high expectations, no running to see 20 other friends, no schedules to keep. I accomplished little of note and I’m OK with that.

Not as much by way of photography this time, but I did get some book listening in (Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods and Queen Latifah’s Put on Your Crown going out, a Patricia Cornwell mystery on the way back. Looking forward to the new Grisham and the Steve Jobs book.)

The colors in the landscape were considerably drabber this time of year, but still provided great scenery. As with seasons, I love the change in scenery as I crossed the Southwest.

This time I’m not going to say that I’ll never do this again. Instead, I feel blessed that I was able to do it again.

Frankie meets a Great Dane at a dog park in Phoenix. He was not intimidated in the least. Neither was Frankie.

Today is the first of what will be more posts in 2012 than in 2011. I have struggled with the identity for this blog, partly because Twitter, Facebook and blogging have several cut into my work on my own journal. One possibility would be to use this site for more personal work. I will continue with a mix of topics: journalism, photojournalism, sports, journalism ethics, my cemetery project, etc. but I need your help since you’re the ones reading this blog (thanks, by the way.)

In 2012 should I include more of my personal work? I will blog more in 2012. I will continue to have a mix of topics, but would you like to hear more personal stories from me? (I can guarantee that the blog will not be dominated by stories about my dogs.)

Last month I finally bit the bullet and decided to pay for the online version of one of our local newspapers. I go to the site several times a day and quickly run out of my 10 free pages per month. When Columbia Tribune first started its version of a pay wall I did what many people did: used different browsers to get additional free page views per month. I have three browsers on my computer and didn’t feel like adding more. Plus, as a professor, trying to teach students all about journalism, it seemed to me that I should be doing the right thing: paying for the hard work Trib journalists have done and not find ways to cheat the system.

Today I gave in and gave money to an organization I’m less confident of but find myself using often: Wikipedia. We teach our students not to use the site as a source but as a reference to other, credible sources. Even with that kind of usage I find myself going to Wikipedia many times per month, so I’ve decided to make a donation to their cause. With all of its faults, there are a lot of benefits to Wikipedia and I often use it as a starting point for research. In some cases, it’s the first and only place I need for the information I need (what is a pork pie hat?) As often as I use it, I should be throwing some money their way.

Then one day someone paid for one of my posts on this blog via Kachingle. I had no idea that could happen. I know that our paper, the Missourian, uses Kachingle, but I’d never looked into it. So after I received a payment I decided to look into it as a way I could be helping to support more good works of journalism.

I have to say that the purpose of Kachingle makes a lot of sense to me. With the Internet we’re usually bouncing from site to site, reading a little here, a little there, a video on one site, an in-depth story on another. I like the idea of mini payments (I think they call them micro payments) because I can support these various journalistic works for as little as a few cents per piece instead of having to pay a monthly amount for each of the sites I visited. The problem is that I can’t figure out how to do it. I will be the first to admit that I have read all of the instructions — that’s because I found them confusing.

So I need Kachingle for Dummies. Anyone out there want to walk me through it?

Because we don’t have enough computer lab space for nearly 400 students per semester, we needed to find a quality editing program they could afford to buy for their required laptops. Our professors were able to negotiate a favorable educational price for FCPX for our students. It’s higher than I would like—the cost of two or three text books—but the program is good and they don’t have books to buy for this class.

Since our students are using it, well, that means I have to learn it. We had a one day training session with our in-house Final Cut trainer, Olga Kyle. I fall into that lucky bunch of people who have tried iMovie (and hated it) but didn’t have too much time invested in Final Cut Pro 7. That makes the transition pretty easy for me. The interface in FCPX is friendly but the a little too simplistic for someone who has created more than a few videos. While I learned a ton, there’s only such much you can learn in a few hours. Here’s my most recent video. Below it is a list of things I couldn’t figure out on the fly.

This practice video was an afterthought. I shot the interview footage just to try out the camera angle and use of a wireless mic. Those two things were successful. Then I decided to play around with the program by adding some still photos. Here’s what I couldn’t figure out quickly and tons of excuses. Remember, this was a practice video!

• How to separate the audio and video tracks.
• The still photo/intro slide covers up a shaky shot. When press conference started I wasn’t quite ready.
• I couldn’t figure out what size to make the stills, so several don’t cover up the video.
• I have no idea how to use curtains.
• I did resize the photos in Photoshop. Through trial and error I came upon a size of 2200 x 1200 pixels at 72 ppi. Even at that size the jpg files were about 6mb, which seems unreasonably large but then, the stills look like crap in the video.
• The only transition I could find was a cross fade.
• At the end I just ran out of energy and put on last crappy video clip in.

What worked:
• It’s easy to move clips around and easy to do referencing.
• I think this technique (video and stills) could work well to make the post game press conferences more interesting.
• Colleague Reuben Stern suggested adding simple caption info and even some stats to the video. I love those ideas.

WHAT I LEARNED: I like working in FCPX and I need to keep at it so that I don’t forget the few things I know. Though the price is a bit high, I’m glad we were able to get FCPX for our students to use.

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I need to write more, I need to get more of my thoughts out of my head and into yours. Aren’t thoughts just like other possessions? I cleaned out my garage today and managed to throw or give some things away, but not enough. I kind of feel that way about my thoughts. Every now and then I need to give some away.

Well, that 12^th month was last month. Today, I got a new ‘do.

This decision was much longer than six months in the making. I’ve been sporting my natural look for at least eight years (that’s when I came to Columbia.) The decision to go natural was pretty easy: convenience. I’m all about the roll-n-go when I get out of bed. Nothing is easier than a natural hairstyle for that.

But my hair doesn’t allow for frequent changes—unless I want to shave it off. After all these years, after short and even shorter cuts, after four different hair colors, I finally grew tired enough to try something really new. Well, you voted and here you have it. Karen Mitchell in a Mohawk.

Sunday night and Monday afternoon. (Yes, this image has been flipped horizontally)

Yes, technically this is a Mohawk, but it’s nothing like what I remembered from the 60s and 70s. Today’s Mohawks are less about shaving the sides and more about spiky length on top.

A lot has changed in hair care since I last had my hair straightened. No more lye, hot combs and Murray’s pomade. Instead it’s no-lye relaxer (no sting, no smell!) a ceramic iron and macadamia oil.

I’m amazed and happy with the style. As Kim, the stylist, was showing me what I could do with my new hair, I could hardly contain myself. I can wear it stick straight or do the spiky thing and about a million styles in between. I’m excited.

The color, by the way, is a happy accident, the remnants of my last dye job and new growth that’s both gray and dark brown. I love that it’s dark on the side and color on top.

Thanks for voting.

Short version:

• This is a totally new program, a move that was technologically needed. (from a 32-bit structure to 64 bit.)
• You can’t equate it with any other version of Final Cut. Accept that now.
• It’s backend architecture is quite strong.
• It’s front end interface is too amateurish, but that’s the market they were aiming for.
• The high-end professional market is really small — I’m told just 2% — so as a business move it makes sense to want that consumer market. (One reason for the significant price drop.)

Longer version:
I can accept all of these things about FCPX (pronounced “pro ten.”) If I were a solo operation my decision would be stay with my current version of FC (Express in my case) for another year while Apple responds to all the comments about FCPX. Apple will be making continuous changes (they’ve already had two updates) and what we’ll see in a year will be markedly different from today’s product. And better.

If you can’t afford to wait for these upgrades I’d say accept that you have to learn something completely new and dive in now — it WILL get better. If you don’t think you can do that, take advantage of one of the many “crossgrade” (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/avid-adobe-pile-on-final-cut-pro-x-with-cheap-crossgrades/51795) offers popping up from Avid and Adobe. I talked with a super user today and he tells me that FCPX makes wonderful use of the full power of your computer. In just four hours of testing the app he found that it will cut significant production time in his work. If he were grading it, he’d probably give the back end architecture an A+.

The interface, however, is another story. There are numerous things he either can’t do (he’s using FCP7 now) or hasn’t figured out how to do. I watched him work and found the interface to be a nice compromise between any professional editor and iMovie. I can see how Apple was designing for mom and pop editors. I also know enough to see exactly the kind of problems this new interface presents for the power user. There are just too many quirky user problems for those who already know how to use video editing software. It’s unfortunate that Apple decided not to use an interface more like FCP7. Grade for the interface: C-.

With the release of FCPX, other versions of FC are obsolete and support for them will fade out, probably over the next year (that’s just a guess.) This pretty much forces companies to make a move — or continue to work with software that will never be updated. Consider a move to FCPX as on the same learning curve as moving to Avid or Adobe Premiere.

Apple answers questions about FCPX

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In the next post I’ll talk about our particular conundrum: deciding which program to use for teaching.

“Yeesh the AP obit for Clarence Clemons better be a novel, because nearly an hour after story broke on Twitter no wire copy available.”

The tweet was from Kevin Young who  graduated from Missouri School of Journalism a two or three years ago and is working at a newspaper — legacy media. He was working as web producer at the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi. He’s with it enough to see how the journalistic climate is changing. Is AP getting it?

Clarence Clemons had a stroke six days ago and died today. Any journalist worth his/her salt would have had an obituary ready. I know that the AP and many other news organizations have scores of pre-written obituaries ready for situations just like this. I don’t think it’s unfair for this journalist to call out AP on the one hour time lapse.

We have taught our audiences to expect this of us. We have taught them to expect news to get to them quickly. We also strive for accuracy, which takes time. That’s why news often lags behind Twitter and Facebook messages. But in this case journalists had nearly a week to prepare this obituary and should have been ready to go on the wire in a matter of minutes.

More journalists need to be thinking like Kevin.

My last night in Shanghai was wonderfully uneventful. I was able to spend the morning following the Missouri softball team in the Women’s College World Series. Their game went 13 innings and lost on a walk-off home run, the only run of the game. The women had a good year, improving on the great year they had last year.

But did I just digress? I guess I should go to bed.

Ok, let’s just go to the photos. If they don’t have captions, they will later.
Click to view slideshow.